God is the Ocean
This guy is sitting much too close to me. I mean, he’s not really, it just feels that way. His spacial awareness is making me think about things I don’t want to think about and I’m supposed to be writing you a newsletter. He’s reminded me that I have a cold. My tummy hurts. I need to pay an invoice. And send one. Get my car smogged before June. And draft a will.
“Write about how God is the ocean” is all my wife said as I left the house this morning. Now I’m at a Starbucks and this guy is making me feel far from God. There were so many seats and he chose this one.
Is he reading what I’m writing? What am I writing? Why can I hear him through my headphones? Why does he move around so much? He’s very twitchy. All I can see are all the other tables he could have sat at. Why do I let these things bother me?
I open my email and it’s filled with newsletters about the new A24 trailer for the Anthony Bourdain movie called Tony — which feels like a Disney movie with swear words: a coming of age version of his tragic and inappropriate life made for the masses. Maybe that’s what I’ll write about. I’d analyze why it is that I liked him in the first place and how I feel now. I’ll wonder why people insist on sending me Bourdain stuff to this day? Perhaps that is a better topic than finding God in the ocean.
I remember how I discovered him. I’d come home late from a party or friends house and my dad would still be up watching TV — often Bourdain’s first show No Reservations. My dad liked Food Network when it was new and this guy he was watching seemed different.
I’d sit down with him and watch for a bit. It didn’t play out like TV I was used to. The show was lo-fi, it felt like it was edited on a messy desk, cluttered and featured a guy in a leather jacket smoking cigarettes indoors while talking with the barkeep about “the town.” Usually somewhere like Memphis, Tennessee. All before he eats a street hot dog with squid ink. I thought, “This is kinda cool.”
I would go on to read Kitchen Confidential and pledge my allegiance to Bourdain, appointment viewing all his shows, reading his books and adopting his philosophies while on the road. He wrote and spoke truth. Raw. Unfiltered. A guy who had an interesting and informed opinion on everything. Be it writing, corruption, drinking, traveling or cooking. He seemed implicated in it all too, but willing to share instead of cover it up, like we’d become so accustomed to.
Bourdain has since gotten the “Eat Pray Love” treatment and you can probably buy signage of his quotes for your kitchen at Hobby Lobby. His worst nightmare. He managed to drift his persona so far away from the prostitutes, heroin and boozing that we can gift his ephemera on a placard to your mom for mother’s day. But the Tony at the end wasn’t the one we fell for. The end of his life became a swollen mess that he tried to conceal instead of share with us. That was his mortal mistake.
I gotta get out of here, I think. This guy is still sitting way too close to me. What would Bourdain do? Ah, that depends on which Bourdain you’re asking. Think again. What would I do?
I knew the answer. I always know the answer. Maybe my wife is right. I should pray.
I drove to the same spot my dad taught me to surf and looked out at the May gray horizon. I saw sandpipers eating sandcrabs; I watched boats drop Roughnecks off on the oil rigs; then I suited up and paddled out into lackluster, bumpy surf alone. Conditions were gray all over and underwhelming. As usual. As soon as I got in though, I knew exactly what Eleanor was talking about this morning. It was her way of saying, “Please go surf, Travis.” Amen.—Travis Ferré
One of the best paintings of all time. Jan van eyck what a legend