The Bear

 is/was:
- one of the address names i used for a few email accounts some 30 years ago. what i didn't know that it was also apparently part of gay vernacular at the time and a few people thought i was broadcasting an alternative life choice at the time. i thought i'd mention that just because;
- the name of a cable series centered around a chef trying to open a restaurant in the chicago area. the chef in question is trying to revitalize a place run by his older brother who has committed suicide ;

this post has to do with the second clause. i decided to binge watch season two to get caught before i watch season 3 which i downloaded earlier this yearbut haven't made the time to watch yet.

the episode in the series that prompts this post is episode 6 which centers around a family christmas dinner in the past where the now deceased brother is still alive and the main character has returned from from doing a stage in copenhagen (ostensibly at noma, but they don't explicitly say so).

the matriarch of the family is played by jamie lee curtis (who is amazing in her role) who is apparently bipolar, alcholic or both. the stepfather is bob odenkirk (better call saul). i admit that i was surprised that the series managed to get two heavy hitters like that to guest star in this episode.

my attempts to describe the episode would not do it credit. i will say that it resonates for me in part because i am more or less estranged from my immediate family, but IIRC the reviews of the episode when it was first released were all suggesting emmy nominations for the episode. 

anyway, find a way to watch the episode, especially with the holiday season approaching. 

Unforgotten II/What A Day

Just finished the fifth season of the series, and the villain is portrayed completely unsympathetically. But he is imprisoned based on the false testimony of one of the descendants of the people he's mistreated badly over the years. And so the season/story line ends.

The story is written so artfully it's a challenge to see the actions leading to imprisonment as the act of a vigilante. A person who's committed a pattern of abusive and narcissistic behavior for decades resulting serious emotional trauma/damage over generations of a wronged person and has used their position and power to avoid recompense finally gets punished. It feels so right somehow. But it's not. 

It occurs to me that it feels right in large part because it seems that the damage and hurt will always be a part of who they are. And because of that, punishment deserves to be enacted. But those who believe are told:

"He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

I confess that in my struggle to overcome the coping mechanisms I'd developed to deal with the pain I've carried around, I'd lost sight this promise. I've wasted a lot of time mourning over missed opportunities, financially and relationally. Fortunately, Phil Keaggy reminded me in the first song of his first album he cut in 1973 (both titled "What A Day". I spent most of my high school years listening to that album trying to play a lot of his songs (not realizing that there was a lot of serious overdubbing going on!) .

"When we get Home, our Eternal Home

There'll be no more sick and dying
No one is sad, no one is alone
And there will be no more crying
He will wipe away every tear
From His children's eyes
And put a smile upon their faces
What a happy day when we see
Our Lord in Paradise"

I'm prompted to review all the tunes/lyrics on that first album, and I'm struck by how clearly Phil Keaggy both understood and was able to articulate that understanding in the songs he wrote. And as he's said: "So many years. I still believe."   For me, it might be more appropriate to say: "So many years, so much I never understood about what I thought I believed."

Unforgotten

is the name of a fictional British TV series that follows a team of London detectives that solve cold cases involving disappearance & murder. Part of the appeal of the series comes from as how the murder mystery unfolds, the emotional ramifications of the crime on the lives of those affected (including the detectives investigating the crime) are also explored. 

This post is prompted from having binge watched season two. The story starts with the discovery of the body of someone reported missing for over 25 years. The person was murdered. Interwoven into the story are seemingly unconnected characters who are gradually revealed to have some relationship with the victim: a teacher trying to move up in the system despite a poor academic history, a homosexual barrister in the process of trying to adopt a young girl who is struggling with anger issues, and a nurse who has problems maintaining relationships and boundaries at work as well as at home. It turns out that in this case, these characters are all victims themselves - of sexual abuse - who met each other while getting psychiatric care. They end up forming a pact to kill each other's abusers. The murder victim is one of the three abusers. The lead detective manages to find evidence that all three abuse victims knew each other at the time their abusers were killed, and then finds them together meeting to discuss their situation. The lead detective is conflicted as to what constitutes justice in this situation; they're still experiencing symptoms of their trauma which are in their own way much more punitive than incarceration, and each of these victims are in vocations which help the less fortunate, so rehabilitation isn't an issue either. The lead detective decides to drop the case.  

My initial response prompting this post was to make an observation about the damage a lot of us carry and how that influences our daily behavior and how important it is that we remember that these people need to feel safe before they can begin any sort of meaningful healing process. But from a Biblical standpoint: "Vengeance is mine! I will repay!" is pretty unequivocal, yet I found myself sympathizing/empathizing with the abuse victims and not categorizing them as vigilantes. I suppose this was the intent of the writers of the show. The vigilantes are abuse victims and the abusers are viewed solely from the viewpoint of their victims.

I was violated/penetrated in a different way - yet I experienced justice of a sort when my attacker was convicted of premeditated attempted murder but she was also found to be insane so instead of incarceration, she was committed to a mental hospital and it's expected that she won't ever be released as the risk of liability would be extreme if she were to attack someone else. 

I'm a big Tolkien fan, and what Frodo said near the end of The Lord of the Rings as he forgives Saruman for corrupting the Shire has always stuck with me:

"...He is fallen, and his cure is beyond us; but I would still spare him, in the hope that he may find it."

and it pretty much encapsulates my attitude about the person who attacked me. It would probably help to explain that when someone is mourning a loss, what I usually say to them is that I hope that God gives them an answer that they can accept as the typical response is to ask why some perceived calamity has occurred. My answer for my assailant was that she'd been hurt herself and was merely displacing her anger onto me. 

But back to the original thought: regardless of how sympathetic the story of the vigilante, it's still wrong.

Tom Selleck as Jesse Stone

Preamble: Jesse Stone is a fictional character created by the late Robert B. Parker who wrote a series of detective novels. Tom Selleck has starred as Jesse Stone in a series of movies adapted from Parker's novels. The first movie chronologically (it was actually the second movie in the series) was titled Night Passage. There's a scene depicting Jesse's first act as police chief (which I have bookmarked in my video viewer; in a moment where I'm probably revealing more about myself than I intend, I like to rewatch certain scenes in TV shows/movies, often for reasons I can't explain at the moment I decide to bookmark a scene. Over time, I can identify the source of emotional resonance that's triggered by the scene, and it usually leads to me consciously coming to grips with something that's been buried in my subconscious that I've been carrying around for decades that typically holds me back in some significant way - and I find that I no longer am all that interested in rewatching the scene.

You amateur (or professional) psychologists can make what you will of why I continue to watch Jesse respond to a call concerning domestic abuse. The smarmy ex-husband who habitually violates a TRO is convincingly portrayed by Billy Baldwin. He smugly tells Jesse that he simply goes to court where they issue another TRO, and he's out in about 20 minutes - and that there's nothing Jesse can do about it.  The ex-wife asks if that's true. Jesse agrees that the TRO won't have any effect, but it's not true that Jesse can't do anything about it - and promptly place kicks Billy Baldwin's character in the crotch and then tells the ex-husband that if anything happens to the ex-wife or anything of their children, Jesse will kick the Ex-husband around the town until he looks like roadkill, and if the ex-husband is annoying like he was in their initial conversation, Jesse might well just shoot him. 

All that was actually preamble to the subject of this particular blog entry. (As to why I keep watching it, this scene along with a lot of others reinforces the idea that the good guys get to win and I'm sticking with that for now.) The scene starts with Jesse arriving at the house with the exes quarreling inside. The eldest, a daughter, is waiting outside with an officer, who is told to watch the daughter and make sure that she doesn't come in as Jesse enters the house. There is a second officer waiting inside who tells Jesse that there are two more children upstairs on the second floor. Jesse asks this officer, who he has just met, if he has any children. The officer responds that he has three children of his own. Jesse tells the officer to go upstairs and do what he can to make those children feel safe.

Here ends the preamble. Or maybe not; Tom Selleck has carefully crafted a long and successful career portraying characters who typically do the right thing. I suppose that it shouldn't be a surprise given that he's a co-founder of Character Counts! Choosing to portray Jesse Stone was an unusual choice, because the character of Jesse Stone is clearly damaged as he's an alcoholic who lost his job as a homicide detective in LA as a consequence of drinking, which seems to have started after his wife left him for another man. The point is that despite the things he's experienced, he still instinctively seems to know the 'right' thing to do. 

His first instinct upon arriving is the protect the children - to make them feel safe. That point went by me for years, until I was led to consider the idea that the vast majority of our choices are driven not by intellect, but by emotion. And as long as emotions are a factor it's nearly impossible to have any sort of meaningful conversation on an intellectual level. Learning to embrace this idea has had a profound impact on my ability to teach and communicate in general - when my goal is to try and impart/exchange meaningful information, I make a point of trying to ascertain the emotional state of the other people involved. And if fear is part of the equation is any way, my primary goal is to try and address that fear by making them feel safe. 

This came into play last night while counseling one of the people who used to come to dinner for years. I helped him get a job during the pandemic and he's remained gainfully employed and has been living indoors for over three years. I've broached the subject of getting his GED so he can consider moving up into a position with better hours, or maybe even into a different job that's more convenient commute wise. Last night I went into how often our decisions are based on fear and needing to feel safe before we can make good decisions and he was able to admit that he was afraid of failing, and he needed to be convinced that a plan was a positive thing.

Medium Raw

 is a series of essays published by Anthony Bourdain (RIP), whose rise to fame started with his book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.  Medium Raw was published next. He starts with an account of being invited to have ortolan (illegally).   Bourdain names no names, but describes other members of the guest list to make it clear that only that most respected chefs in the U.S. were invited - and him. Bourdain is well aware that he doesn't belong at this event, even if he is invited by his best friend (Eric Ripert) who appears to have hosted the event. While he's studied cooking at the CIA, Bourdain is painfully aware that he's not qualified to work in any of the restaurants run by anyone else on the guest list - including La Bernardin run by Eric Ripert.

The account in the prologue is well worth reading, but it's what follows in the prologue that prompts this entry. While enjoying the ortolan, Bourdain recounts a moment when he's at a low point in his career and clearly miserable, made even more poignant that during this moment someone he knew in college who went on to achieve some level of celebrity happens to enter the establishment where he's behind the lunch counter.

"I hadn't seen the girl since school, when I, too, it had appeared to some, had a career trajectory aimed somewhere other than a lunch counter. I was praying that she wouldn't see me back there but it was too late. Her gaze passed over me; there was a brief moment of recognition - and sadness. But in the end she was merciful. She pretended not to have seen."

Bourdain had been ashamed of working at that place, but in a moment of clarity, he saw that that moment had led to the current moment. Had he not made a series of bad choices, he would have never had the experiences that led to writing Kitchen Confidential, and he wouldn't be licking ortolan fat off his lips with people he describes as the 'gods of food'. 

My Superpower

This post is prompted by a TV episode from a new series (and season 2 has been approved! yay!) called The Irrational which centers around a main character who is a psychologist often called in to consult on criminal investigations. One thing I appreciate about the series is that the main character devotes as much effort into addressing the emotional impact and responses of everyone involved in the crime being investigated and not just the perpetrator.

It turns out that the investigation in this episode is the result of the main character being the victim of horrific burns suffered during a terrorist bombing of a church. Another person who has suffered similar injuries believing that they caused the event which also resulted in the death of another person. While acting as a grief counselor, it's determined that arson had been committed and an investigation ensues. The perpetrator is identified and apprehended, but not before the perpetrator locked the main character inside a burning building, prompting him to revisit his memories of the bombing.

The poignant moment occurs when the main character is visiting the burn victim afterwards, and he confesses that his goal had been to try and give the burn victim hope. But that was wrong, and his choice had been prompted by his own unwillingness to go back and revisit his own memories and the reality was that even after 20 years, he still had a long way to go to reaching some level of closure. 

So the reality was that he didn't have much to offer in terms of giving her hope, because what had happened had been so horrific. But he's survived. And he blurts out: "It's like my superpower."

That scene had a lot of emotional resonance for me. It'll be eleven years ago in about 5 weeks when my life was irrevocably changed when someone came up behind me in the park and plunged a box cutter into my neck severing the anterior branch of my carotid.

Before that event, I used to be anxious about a lot of things. But surviving that has led to a sense of being indestructible (though I definitely feel the effects of aging). The night I was attacked, I was wearing a black fleece that they cut off my body in the operating room. Even though just about every piece of clothing I was wearing was cut off (and I remember thinking: "I just got these pants!") and eventually returned. Everything was blood stained, including the fleece, but for some reason I stitched the fleece back together by hand, washed it, and kept wearing it until the fleece was eventually misplaced (and it will pain me until death that I lost it). It was like that black fleece was like Kevlar and wearing helped contribute to a sense of invulnerability. I can't help but wonder if the misplacement of that fleece was an event designed to prompt me to acknowledge my mortality.