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.  

Anti-Mindfulness II - sitting around in my mental underwear.

The phrase in my title was my attempt to articulate a desire to find my tribe, which I still am searching for. I guess I need to elucidate further. The use of the word elucidate might help illuminate here. Most of the time, I have always been frustrated at what I perceive to be the imprecision of basic language and I am always searching for the perfect word to describe the concept I'm trying to convey in an effort to be as concise as possible. My best friend back in Ohio once described this as the ability to sum up some really really idiotic situation with a single word that always had him in stitches. But he seemed to be the only person who seemed to understand what I was trying to express most of the time. Most of the life I've felt misheard/misunderstood (a lot of that is tied to my relationship to my mother - which is going to remain outside the scope of this post -) and I've found myself feeling like I had to dumb down/simplify just about everything I've felt like saying most of my life. And the worst part was that when I felt the strongest emotions about a subject I often locked up completely.  

So I coined the phrase "wanting to be able to sit around in my mental underwear" to describe how I wanted to be in the company of people where I could say whatever I wanted and be fairly confident that I would be heard and understood. The reality is that I spent more time trying to find the best way to say something that I rarely actually got around to expressing my thoughts freely. 

An author who seemed to have this ability to express effectively a lot of his thoughts that were very similar to mine in terms of world view and emotional context was the late author Anthony Bourdain. I even plagiarized a quote of his to use as part of my Facebook intro:

"... my snark is never entirely genuine, nor is it completely irrelevant."

It's only occurred to me now that the snark I display is an expression of my emotion much more than it's a reflection of my intellect, which is fairly formidable if the results of certain test scores are accepted into evidence. (Now I have to take a moment to think about whether I've been more intent on expressing sympathy or empathy which threatens to take me WAY beyond the scope of this post but if I don't mention this here I'll likely forget.) But the original premise was to express my frustration at feeling unable to communicate the thoughts that were important to me at that moment.

I had a six year old violin student named Jason who reminded me of me at that age, he was also taking piano lessons as well computer coding classes and was clearly quite bright. His mom found him a challenge and noted the affinity that Jason had quickly developed for me so she asked me for some advice. I told her that he reminded me of me at that age, and to expect that he would really be excited about something, and he go on and on about something she'd not be able to comprehend, but the best way to respond to that would be to ask: "So you're really excited about this, huh? He would say ."Yeah!" and run off and be perfectly happy. She greeted me at the door the next week and immediately told me "You are a genius."

The point is that I've been able to perceive and understand some things at a level most people just don't seem to grasp. And I've spent a lot of my life trying to communicate not just the concepts but also the level of wonder that comes with such profundity. What I see now is that all these things were created - by a Creator - and it's not realistic to expect other parts of creation to understand or perceive the profundity - but the Creator will. And it follows that focusing on the profundity of the Creator is both natural and much more satisfying. 

So I'm now pondering on mindfulness being just one way of acknowledging both the Creator and His Creation, while anti-mindfulness is the denial of that Creator, and making something else the object of wonder and worship. 
 

Mindfulness - what is the opposite?

There's a new network TV series named The Irrational I decided to watch starting back in October. The main character is a psychologist who survives a terrorist act, a bombing of a church that left him with burns on over 60% of his body and scars on his face.  Given my fascination with the work of Kazuo Ishiguro it seems natural that I'm drawn to principles that are used in solving crimes in the series, particularly in that what we perceive and remember are actually quite unreliable in terms of what the reality is.

After only two episodes I found myself hoping that the show catches on. If the show does more than entertain, people might be prompted to review and reevaluate their own memories and experiences, which has become "truth" in our culture. And as people can acknowledge that their perceptions and memories have in fact always been colored by biases which are varied in origin, they will be prompted to seek a truth from outside of themselves.

My personal observations & memories are no less subjective than anyone else's so I need to examine and identify my own biases. For example, in this week's episode, they show the results of an experiment where subjects are instructed to observe in order to answer a specific question. The results are that because of fixating on identifying a specific fact, we typically completely ignore other things that occur.   I need to examine how often I'm looking just for the answer I want that I ignore answers that refute the agenda or answer other questions that need to be asked. 

My first instinct is to justify/defend; it's hard to stay in the moment. or as the character Charlie Crews (played by Damian Lewis) once said during an episode of Life:

"I wasn't in the moment.
If I'd stayed in the moment, if I'd stayed present I would have been OK but I didn't.

I was thinking about where we were going next. So I left the moment when I should have been completely in the moment which is when people usually leave the moment because the moment is just too much!

The moment is pretty much almost aways too much!

I was thinking about where we were going next."

It seems to me that the #1 enemy of mindfulness is probably the iPhone. Most people's eyes are glued to their phone 24/7, even when they're with a group of people. I've managed to resist the enemy by sticking to a flip phone. I display it proudly and tell people that I'm not going to be the guy who comes home from the beach with white marks across my chest resulting from staring at my iPhone the entire time.  This suggests that I was already aware of the inherent dangers of anti-mindfulness. 
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I started this post almost three months ago, and I've had some time to examine the concept of mindfulness. I haven't done much to practice mindfulness since then, in part because it seems to me that the real subject is what mindfulness seems to solve - and that mindfulness is not necessarily the only solution. It might be more accurate to suggest that anti-mindfulness has taken such a toll resulting in a level of stress that makes intentional mindfulness extremely difficult. 

I have no answers, yet it occurs to me that it might be to tied to appreciation of simplicity for simplicity's sake; maybe it's enough to enjoy something without feeling the need to justify/defend the emotional response. I remember a dinner night at the park during the pandemic, telling some of the people how I'd driven home after a strenuous day at work, enjoying the cool breeze with the windows, chewing on some ice, no one else on the road and the level of contentment I felt at the moment. I could see from the expressions on their faces that they were tracking the moment with me.  

As someone who appreciates cuisine, not to mention the mastery of cooking techniques, I'm somewhat bemused how some people collect restaurants like badges; they merely want to be able to say that they've eaten there even though they couldn't really identify what made that particular restaurant special. I'm *really* amused by folks who drop major coin to consume Wagyu burgers. Wagyu beef is special because of how marbled the fat is; grinding it to make a burger is like taking a piece of Venetian glass and shattering it to make a stained-glass window. But who's to say that I'm no less... frivolous by preferring to patronize "authentic" ethnic restaurants and being able to identify the unique characteristics of the eight major regional Chinese cuisines and making fun of Americanized places like Panda Inn?

Or being able to identify that like I did Saturday night that someone took a different harmonic route instead of a basic V-I from F to Bb by taking the F in the bass, sharping it to become 3 of D7 which started a V of V of V of V of V of V (D/G/C/F/Bb) chord sequence. There's a musical genius out there named Jacob Collier who IMO is destined to reshape the concept of jazz by himself because of his understanding not just of harmony but also of rhythm. Yet whenever he talks about what he does, he always does so from an emotional perspective. For example, to describe what's commonly referred to as an anticipation, Collier describes emotionally as the sense of wanting to come 'home'. 

A Pale View Of Hills

is the title of (Nobel Prize winner) Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel. I'm sure I've mentioned Ishiguro in a previous post and speculated on his success as a writer being a reflection of having to try and integrate world views with some mutually exclusive values as he was born in Japan but moved to Britain as a child. Having listened to some of his interviews, a constant theme in his works includes a conscious intent to illustrate a specific (generally undesirable) trait or combination of traits (one he typically can identify in himself - or in those around him) and intensify the impact of that trait in a central character. 

In A Pale View Of Hills, the main character is an older Japanese woman named Etsuko who married a British man she met in Japan after the war. She now lives in England and is visited by her daughter Niki shortly after the suicide of her elder daughter Keiko whose father was her first husband, a Japanese man named Jiro. The visit by the daughter prompts Etsuko to reminisce about her past, specifically about one summer involving an acquaintance she made after WWII. Through her reminiscing the reader can infer that Etsuko was born into an upper class cultured family and that she was being raised to be a violinist. Some tragedy befell the family resulting in Etsuko being raised by a family friend, perhaps a mentor, who was a well regarded intellectual/instructor before WWII. She married into the family and was pregnant with Keiko. In events not recalled, she was eventually widowed, ostensibly during WWII.

Her father-in-law (and presumably her own family) had held political views now denounced by the postwar culture, resulting in a considerable loss of prestige and standing in the community. It appears that the father-in-law, depicted as being an overbearing father to Etsuko's husband, never came to grips with this. After being widowed, Etsuko, in accordance with Japanese customs and traditions of the period, moved in with an uncle on her husband's side. This is conjecture as some of these details are actually ascribed to a remembered acquaintance named Sachiko who was also widowed with a daughter. Several motifs permeate Ishiguro's works, which include unreliable memories often exhibited through the use of what Ishiguro himself described as an ironic gap. This motif in particular can be inferred in Etsuko's recollections; we can't be sure if Sachiko is in fact Etsuko and Ishiguro himself remarked that his work was in some ways too subtle in his first novel. 

Ishiguro himself has described his first three novels A Pale View Of Hills, An Artist Of The Floating World, and what might be his best known work Remains Of The Day as having main characters being people of the generation that preceded his and how their lives were changed by WWII and how they dealt with the impact of those changes.  

If we have perceived Ishiguro's subtlety astutely, Etsuko was born into a cultured Japanese family of very good standing as it would have been regarded in pre-WWII Japan. She was a gifted violinist. The loss of her entire family led to her being adopted by a peer of her own father whom she still calls Ogata-san even after she has married his son. She gives up playing the violin. We see the behavior of giving lip service publicly to those in authority modeled in how her husband deals with his overbearing father. It would have been customary to have continued to live in the father-in-law's household after marriage, but her husband Jiro elected to move out. If we interpret Sachiko's words and thoughts to be those of Etsuko, Etsuko's future was "a few empty rooms" in the home of her uncle as a member of a disgraced family. Sachiko is depicted as a snob, driven to find a rich foreigner who will marry her and take her and her daughter away from Japan.

If we correctly attribute the thoughts, words, and actions of Sachiko and her daughter Mariko to Etsuko and Keiko, the needs of Keiko were made completely subsidiary to Etsuko's need to leave Japan. This is depicted rather indelibly in the account of how Sachiko drowns Mariko's adopted kittens while Mariko watches. Sachiko herself is remembered to have asked of Etsuko if she thinks that Sachiko is not aware of how terrible of a mother she is. This, other remembrances and interaction between Etsuko and Niki suggest that Etsuko is aware at some level that her words and behavior often contradict each other.     

Keiko never adapted to life in England. She eventually just stayed in her bedroom, venturing down to the kitchen daily to get her meals which she eats in her bedroom. She eventually moved out of the house and got a room in Manchester, where her body was eventually found after committing suicide. A brief moment of insight is suggested in Etsuko's description of the obituary, mentioning how Keiko was described merely as being 'fully Japanese' and that she had committed suicide, observing that Britons naturally associated the two ideas, perhaps because how kamikaze pilots were used in later stages of WWII. Etsuko is a sojourner in a strange land.   

Niki seems to exist to be a foil for Etsuko. She's observed her mother's behavior and is fully aware of the inconsistencies in Etsuko's words and behavior. She wants to be able to love and care for Etsuko, but finds it difficult to be around her. She's struggling to reconcile the 'sacrifices' Etsuko made to bring Keiko to England while Keiko was clearly unhappy being in England while trying to reassure her mother that these sacrifices were necessary. 

As sad as the account is of someone making extreme choices to achieve a goal of changing their circumstances, it's made even more tragic when Etsuko remarks that she is considering selling the house and moving into something smaller. This suggests that while Etsuko is constantly commenting on how much she enjoys her life, the reality is that it's still not enough, despite what it cost her to achieve it. 

I reread the work recently and was compelled to compose this, and I'm trying to figure out why. I now understand myself well enough to know that when a story/incident/account affects me in this way there's an emotional resonance, the source of which is still buried somewhere in my subconscious trying to work itself to the surface. 

There are some parallels; my sister was born in Hong Kong while I was born in the U.S. It occurs to me at this moment that Etsuko is a narcissist. My mother exhibited narcissistic behavior, though she clearly was never a snob. If anything, she was acutely aware of her own humble background and carried around a lot of shame which she bequeathed to me. I suppose that I see parallels in my own behavior and in those depicted in Niki; I was unhappy and completely unsure of what kind of goals to pursue except those that I believed were expected of me. I guess I need to let this to continue to percolate a while; I actually started this post at least three months ago. While starting another topic (which will follow shortly, hopefully) I saw that I'd never published this. So here goes.

American Born Chinese Secret Asian Man

 I suppose I should start by saying that if you don't have immigrant parents, you're probably not going to get this. This is of course the reason why it should be stated. 

About 15 years ago Gene Yang created a graphic novel called American Born Chinese. I'll cut and paste a few things said about the work:

"A tour-de-force by New York Times bestselling graphic novelist Gene Yang, American Born Chinese tells the story of three apparently unrelated characters: Jin Wang, who moves to a new neighborhood with his family only to discover that he's the only Chinese-American student at his new school; the powerful Monkey King, subject of one of the oldest and greatest Chinese fables; and Chin-Kee, a personification of the ultimate negative Chinese stereotype, who is ruining his cousin Danny's life with his yearly visits. Their lives and stories come together with an unexpected twist in this action-packed modern fable. American Born Chinese is an amazing ride, all the way up to the astonishing climax.

American Born Chinese is the winner of the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award, a 2006 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature, the winner of the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: New, an Eisner Award nominee for Best Coloring, a 2007 Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, and a New York Times bestseller."

"Innovative and unsettling, Gene Luen Yang’s 2006 graphic novel explores Asian American identity through three very distinct narratives. One is a coming-of-age story about a new student who is the only Chinese American in his school. Another focuses on the iconic Chinese mythical figure Monkey King. And the third centers on Chin-Kee, a character meant to embody the most damaging Chinese stereotypes. Chin-Kee’s presence in American Born Chinese is intentionally offensive—and therefore controversial—but Yang’s intent with the harmful dialogue that surrounds the character is to force young readers to dissect the implications of racism and the complexities that come with growing up Asian American."

Sadly, some fans of the work missed that last point entirely and wanted to have Chin-Kee dolls made that they could buy because the character was "cute"- perpetuating the stereotype. Gene Yang has stated that his one regret is not making the Chin-Kee less accessible.

Fortunately, in making the series, they rewrote the character to be an asian former actor named Jamie Yao who was cast in a TV sitcom as Freddie Wong, an accident prone character whose shtick was to say the line: "What could go Wong?" right before he was subjected to some sort of Three Stooges type slapstick injury. His being typecast in that kind of role prompted him to leave Hollywood and teach theater to college students.

What made this even better is that the actor playing the role Ke Huy Quan had a similar experience in real life, having been a child actor in The Goonies as well as in one of the Indiana Jones movies. He ended up becoming a stunt coordinator and production assistant for almost two decades before being encouraged to attempt a return to acting after the success of the movie "Crazy Rich Asians" (I had a black friend tell me how he understands Asians better after seeing that movie. I figuratively just bit my lip and tried to smile.)

The character Freddie Wong being subjected to all those accidents in the show became a meme, resulting in a reunion panel of the actors in the sitcom. The emcee first tries makes the character wear a wig emulating the bowl haircut of the character in the sitcom. Eventually he asks:

'What was it like playing such an unforgettable role for so many years?'

Jamie first commented that there weren't many people who looked like him in roles on TV, so he was grateful for the opportunity. He went on to say that he was only offered roles as nerds or neighbors. Or as a ninja.

The emcee then asked what kind of roles Jamie had been hoping for, to which Jamie responded that he wanted to play the hero as "it's every kid's dream, right?". The emcee suggested that Jamie was hoping for a call when Batman was being cast. to which Jamie responded:

"You know, I teach classical theatre to college kids. And we talk about character a lot. When I say I wanted to play a hero, I mean, I just wanted to be someone who goes on a journey, shows some courage, helps others.

A hero can be a person with superpowers, or they can just be... be someone who fights for something that matters.

My parents were heroes. But as I said, people like that weren't on TV back then."

There's complete silence for a moment in the studio while there are pans of the other actors on stage, as well as of the audience. The emcee then offers the thought that hopefully, this is changing, to which Jamie replies:

"I hope so. And I hope that there's a kid out there watching this who feels he doesn't have to be a punchline, who believes that *he* can be the hero."

For those who know me well, I trust that you'll understand how deeply this resonates with me and I won't go into that any further here other than to acknowledge that I've written my own "American Born Chinese" with my concept of Secret Asian Men, which addresses the racial stereotyping I've encountered in my personal experience.

The thing is that I now realize that I need to make a choice. It relates to a blog I once posted about bowl haircuts, which is one of the stereotypes that's a common motif among kids with asian immigrant parents. While I hated the bowl haircuts I got, my most vivid memory had to do with not feeling heard when my dad accidently clipped my ear and then attempted to invalidate the pain, first by denying that he'd clipped my ear, and then proclaiming that it wasn't that serious when he couldn't refute the blood trickling from my ear. The point was that the memory of feeling invalidated became the larger injury and what often results of that kind of experience is that the need to be heard/validated dominates any attempt to communicate, and the common result is that truth is wielded like a weapon, which prompts anyone listening to respond defensively and to expect that the other person seeks revenge or compensation.

And the message is going to have to go in two directions: to those who don't understand how hurtful it can be to be constantly exposed to racism, malicious or otherwise - and also to those experiencing the racism. For now, the message is going to be: 

1) We want to be heroes;

2) We become heroes by fighting for things that matter;

What *matters* is going to vary for each individual, but hopefully it's always going to include helping others along the way.

Anthony Bourdain

Anyone who knows me well knows I'm an Anthony Bourdain fan. It's not that uncommon; everyone seemingly wanted to be Anthony Bourdain based on the lifestyle he led, traveling to all the places he wanted to visit and getting to try all these different cuisines. But it was more than that. He travelled the world with a humility seeking to learn things he didn't know and to listen to stories of people who otherwise would have no voice. He was smart (and I mean really smart) enough to understand how much he didn't know and able to project that so as to become a perfect guest no matter where he went. But for me, I became a fan after I read a couple of collections of essays he wrote *after* he penned Kitchen Confidential (which put him on the map) called The Nasty Bits (2006), followed by Medium Raw (2010). The best way I can put it is that I felt a resonance, not just intellectually as well as emotionally, but also... morally/ethically in terms of what was right and wrong, that there was a sort of kinship in terms of world view (which has been extremely rare in my experience), even though he was an atheist.

It turned out that his lifestyle and celebrity came at great cost. Although the persona he projected on screen was genuine, he was also an extreme introvert and whenever he went out in public he was typically beset by hordes of adoring fans. It's alleged that shortly before his death he was telling people that he hated his job as a consequence.

It's been five years now since Anthony Bourdain took his own life while filming in France. The world has moved on, but I find myself still mourning his loss. Those closest to him made a documentary about him called Roadrunner, which I've watched. There's clearly a respect for Bourdain in how they presented details leading up to his suicide that are not accusatory in any way, even though they were clearly concerned about how certain things were going on. However, another account written from a sensationalistic perspective provided certain details strongly suggesting that Bourdain took his life due to unrequited love. It was obvious that he was smitten with an actress with whom he'd become involved and actively supported for certain causes and that relationship had had an impact on his work. He went as far as to have her work on an episode he filmed in Hong Kong and the rest of the crew noted how enthused he'd been about that. While filming in France, he saw a picture on social media of his love interest romantically involved with someone else. He texted her to let her know how he felt about that and she allegedly replied "stop busting my balls" to which he replied "ok" - and then hung himself. 

Someone I respect once said that the loneliest moment in life occurs when you've given your life to something, and it lets you down. CNN crafted a few episodes to complete the last season, and one episode was dedicated to Anthony Bourdain and it tried to document what he was that made him so successful. The closing shot includes two people sharing what was most meaningful to them. One was a rocker who'd pretty much achieved so many things that no one ever would, and his response was: "...the nicest stuff right now, it's very embarrassing but really - being loved, and appreciating the people that are giving it to me.". The other was a simple shopkeeper: "...and I guess that's what we all want as human beings, isn't it? To be loved, to be cherished." Given the circumstances leading up to his death, I find myself wondering if that was intentional. Either way, it's certainly poignant.