Shine a Light

Ah, a season of milestones have come and gone. My oldest daughter graduated from Dalhousie and my youngest graduated from high school. Both of them have many years ahead of them to hit the books in pursuit of higher education, but today serves as a chance to look around and take in the show. Proud and reflective are the two emotions running through the noise of the day. And looking to tomorrow.

Facebook posts abound with friends and family celebrating the same things in their worlds, the spring right of passage as we move through the seasons and our lives. Watching our kids and the kids of our loved ones grow up right before our eyes. What will tomorrow bring?

The Light That Failed is the title of a book by Kipling that I have never read so this won't be a book review, sorry to disappoint. I bring it up because I am a fan of elegant verse that can mean so much to so many, and this one title has been knocking around for a little while in my melon head. I'm not sure why but I suspect that the words strike somewhere deep for me.

As parents most would agree our biggest fears revolve around our kids safety and happiness. Nurture and nature come to the fore ground as we wish "success" for our babies. What that success looks like is less about stuff and more about the heart. Life is messy at the best of times but if we spend a little time ensuring our hearts are taken care of then those messy bits will, hopefully, be more manageable, not as over bearing as they can sometimes be.

I wonder what the future holds for my three little birds not only in a personal way for them but in the greater world at large. Sometimes it does feel like we are at a cross roads of sorts lately. The orange idiot is doing more harm then most of us could have foreseen and every new day something else happens to darken the horizon a bit with him and people like him at the reigns of power. I'm not going to get into a diatribe about all that now as there might be one or two minor posts about all that already and there may be one more or so in the future. This is about staying in the light.

We all have choices to make in our lives and my hope is that my kids and all of us around them are making choices that are beneficial for all of us, not just a few or for one alone. In this season of prom dresses and grad pictures there is always great hope mixed with terror at what tomorrow brings. For all of us. Taking either baby steps or grand leaps into the future one should know that the only thing that is certain is that the future is coming, the world is spinning on its axis and it ain't gonna stop.

I am both filled with hope and not a little bit of fear for what tomorrow brings. I'm not fearful for myself but for all of us together. But when I hear of the amazing things that people can accomplish, that humanity, sacrifice and love are still the norm I have to believe in the better angels to finally shut down the devils that seem to never sleep.  The good things are often drowned out and simply not broadcast as much because lets face it, if it bleeds it leads, which means we have to work harder and smarter to ensure that the light doesn't fail.

What will tomorrow bring? I don't know. My hope is for more love and laughter and a shift to a gentler version of the world. Fighting everyday to keep that light from failing because darkness is no place for anyone to live a life in.


Bonne chance mes amours

D

Dear Fuckheads 2.0

I feel like a little explosion of aimed vitriol is in order today. And you won't even need to guess at whom. Please excuse me while I lose my shit for a moment or two.

You orange fuck face! You douche canoe of the highest order. I don't even know where to start, what douchey thing matters the most? You, as dotard in chief, have muddied the world of just about everything that you aim your stupid fuck face at. Trade, immigration, international relations, the gun debate, the health and welfare of your people, truth, justice, sanity and everything in-between. You sir have managed to normalise and thus desensitise the world to your bat shit crazy proclamations, antics and twitter rants. By sucking the oxygen out of the world you have changed the environment. Between you and those laughable congressional sycophants "fucked up" doesn't go far enough in describing the world that is around you.

I suppose if you ask any of the the hundreds of families that have children locked up in converted Wal Mart's and quasi concentration camps they would definitely say that their plight needed the most attention. The image of a mural of Drumphs face, the American flag and the saying "sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war" in one of these facilities is simply chilling to me. "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work will set you free) at the entrance of Auschwitz comes to mind. Or the old Soviet posters from the cold war era proclaiming the glory of the state and triumph of the worker. How is this possible? How can a country founded on the principles contained within their constitution, strengthened by generations of welcoming the world and being a beacon of freedom turn into this fucking mess? When you use the bible to try and justify your actions you are no better, excuse me, you are exactly like the Taliban and their ilk.

If you ask nations that have been allies and trading partners to that train wreck of a country on our border then you would get a whole new set of answers when it comes to incomprehensible trade policies and foreign relations. Canada is a security risk now? Really? We burned down the white house? That stupid Cheeto actually stood there and said that trade wars were easy to win. I know, I can't help but laugh either. They are not you ignorant piece of shit, they cause collateral damage that is next to impossible to quantify and if I was a betting man somehow you and your pals will come out just fine. Instead you cosy up to the likes of Kim Jong Un, Rodrigo Duterte and your pen pal Putin while casting shadows on your traditional allies and strongest trading partners. You don't run foreign policy like a dry run of your insipid show The Apprentice you dumb ass.

Your constant lies and attacks on the free media are simply Hitler's regurgitated and extruded spam like shit. Your lies are making the world an uglier place and unfortunately for the half of your country that doesn't support you America is being dragged down further than anyone thought possible. How sad a commentary is it to say "God I miss W".

What really is the icing on the cake, or in this case the ring around the latrine is the way so called Republicans follow you blindly down that shit strewn garden path you have imagined. I can't fathom how anyone can look in the mirror and lock eyes with the reflection in front of them...shame on you all. If you actually believe and support the shit he spews then you are without a doubt an idiot and a racist. If you are going along because you want to bask in the reflected orange glow then you are simply a piece of shit. End of story.

I admit I have grown weary of the gas lighting and constant barrage of lies and more lies. The brain can take only so much of this. But then I remembered that what these twits want is for you to lose interest, shake your head in disbelief and change the channel. This way they can simply do more of the same without anyone paying to close attention. And I remember this quote from Edmund Burke:

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

That is everyone. You, me and them. We let this fuck wad win again with his blithering band of supporters and he will be scraping the faces off of Mount Rushmore and replacing them with his head. How he plans to colour that monument is beyond me but you get the sense that he would do it and open up a golf course nearby serving the best chocolate cake ever.

No, I'm afraid we need to turn up the volume and speak the truth about all the ism's this ass hat represents. So join me in a resounding "Fuck Trump!!!"

Elegy for a Chef

When you grow up in an industry such as mine you don't often find role models and heroes

to emulate, sure we had cook books and recipes and history to look back on and learn from but not a lot of the inside scoop as it were. Our traditions were passed through stories about the good old days, every cook you came across would have their versions of the same stories you were living. Epic screw ups, tyrant chefs, idiotic co-workers and the constant hum of foolishness that runs through a younger persons world. Before the advent of the celebrity chef you simply didn't know, on a wide scale, what really went on behind those doors to the kitchen. Anthony Bourdain changed that.

He released Kitchen Confidential in 2000 or so and it spilled the guts on a world that I lived in, minus about 10 years and one incredibly large city as a backdrop. The book was an expression of honesty and debauchery that shined a light on a world that is hard to believe is real. There are chapters contained within that you could easily insert my life into as just about any other cook I know. The people we know and work with, the patrons, the owners and bosses and all the other players in an industry whose sole purpose is to do for others. Service, the good and the bad, is at the heart of it all. I recommend the read highly, Bourdain had a way with words that painted a picture that was both beautiful and raw, no illusions of grandeur or false sense of importance. It was ok that we simply cooked food, did our best to have fun while working in conditions that nobody would willingly want to go into and lived to tell about it. He was the enemy of pretension and froo froo in food and in people. He was authentic and imperfect and he will be missed.

The book not only laid bare the inner workings of the kitchen world but opened up his life to scrutiny. He was painfully honest about his addictions and demons, he struggled mightily to overcome the day to day battles, too often with chemical help. The fact that he was as honest as we was endeared him to many of us in the trenches and in some ways we took his victories as ours because we know how it really is to be surrounded by fire, raw meat and sharp knives. Along the way he shone a light not only on the world of restaurants but on humanity itself and this I fear is where we will miss him the most.

Through his seemingly dream like job of travelling and eating his way around the world he showed us the essence of humanity. As he pointed out we all have traditions around the simple and fundamental act of sharing food. As much as we are different we care for our children and have a need for community, dignity and love in much the same ways. He showed us this by being an honest broker of authentic life around the world. Tales from around the table over dishes both humble and extravagant are at the heart of his ability to connect us all together. This broken and imperfect man did more then tell you how to braise a lamb shank, at the very least he showed that it was more than ok to walk beside uncomfortable waters and experience the dark, because in the end that was the way to truly see and appreciate the light.

It's interesting to me that Scott introduced me to his book all those years ago because in many ways Scott and Bourdain are alike. Iggy Pop fans, off kilter anarchists and left leaning truth speakers, as hard as it may be to hear that truth sometimes. No reservations indeed.

Bourdain transitioned from crazy ass chef to world travelling conscience of the common man. Winning awards and walking the red carpet didn't take away from the fact that he wanted to bring everyday stories to us all, for in those stories he was sharing not only authentic food but authentic people with the rest of us. And saddened as we may be by his end, with questions and disbelief, I think we are better for having him here for a small part in our lives. His wit, his view and his humanity will be missed.

R.I.P. Chef

The Dance of Love and Freedom

If you were to look through the multitude of posts I have written here you may come away with the notion that I am a cockeyed optimist and a not so secret hopeless romantic at heart. Well, you'd be right. My rantings about a multitude of things aside, the over arching message in the tapestry of my life, especially over the past 5 years or so, has been about being the way I am. Always.

Putting words here has been cathartic and enlightening, helping me to process the things I needed to process. In the same way putting myself out there in the dating world since my separation and divorce has been at times illuminating, invigorating, frustrating and to say the least interesting. I've learned things from every single relationship I have had and I have also learned that there is no one right way to do this, it simply is a case of putting yourself out there and waiting for the right person to walk in to your life.

And then it happened, seemingly out of nowhere I met her and the world became a different place. None of the "rules" I had come to know and expect were being followed. The heart decided and the mind followed closely behind, as "they" say, "when you know, you know". I knew, with very little doubt, that it would happen for me at some point. I always kept an optimistic outlook when it came to matters of the heart so when we met and we knew, it wasn't at all scary or shocking. What was shocking was the way it took hold. Almost instantaneously, as if we saw in each other exactly what we wanted and even more importantly we saw the other person whole.

So this is what it's supposed to feel like? Totally raw and exposed and yet without fear. The words to describe this sometimes do not do it justice but being utterly and completely in love sure goes a long way. Truly I am feeling blessed that she has come into my life, allowing me to be myself, both free and completely open. Everything I have said over the past few years here about living life out loud and without fear or regret is being played out in real time, for both of us. There is nothing we can't deal with as we journey together to whatever our future is. We do things for each other not to score points on some virtual tally sheet but because we want to. It brings us pleasure to do for the other. To know these things and to understand them is the essence of what I feel true love is.

Tammy my love, I get lost in your eyes and in your smile so much that I feel I might miss something if I look away. Your open and wide heart is full of a love that I didn't know existed and you have made me a better person simply by walking into my life that brisk March day. You have me completely and fully. Always.

Je t'aime Bella

Daniel

RFK and The Little Pill

In the world of medicine there is something known as The Placebo Effect, essentially the mind is convinced that the pill or shot you just had will take away your pain. There is no active medicine that actually does so, as they are generally sugar pills, but your mind believes it to be true and acts accordingly, calming you and reducing your pain. On the face of it all this sounds like voodoo medicine but it has been proven that the mind can and will convince itself it is no longer in pain because it believes that the little pill is actually a very real pain killer. The effect won't cure you of cancer or reduce your cholesterol but it might take the edge off of that round of chemo. The brain, simply amazing.

While we are just scratching the surface of its capabilities, the mind has already shown itself to be a  powerful and amazing thing. An infinite capacity for greatness in many forms, one would need only to open their eyes to the wonders that have sprung forth from that grey matter between our ears. Art in a myriad of genres and scientific and technological discoveries that have sent men to the moon and injected tiny nano robots into our blood stream, truly a wonder to behold.

And no less deserving of our appreciation is the heart. Not our beating muscle deep in our chests but our humanity and compassion. The look of love as a mother holds her child to the love on full display between soul mates, this to me is the mortar for what our minds can construct. The yin and yang of our lives, the heart and mind.

Yet, despite all that we are often crippled with a world seemingly bent on destroying itself. Wars rage out of control confirming two facts only: 1) War is profitable and 2) The human body is no match for hot metal. The art of division based on just about anything seems to have grown more bold lately, as if they are emboldened by the actors around us that figure they can say and do as they please. The environment, depending on who you listen to, is on the verge of collapse with scant chance of redemption or already past the point of no return. We have garbage islands floating around the ocean, rising sea levels and "weather events" that inflict ever greater damage. Shit, there was video released a few weeks ago of a Budweiser can sitting at the bottom of the ocean in the deepest trench on earth. Can't even go in style, we are drinking Bud as the planet gets sick...ick!

But hark, what is that noise over yonder? Hope is gesticulating wildly in the corner. Look here, look here she pleads! What if we try this? Or maybe try that? Maybe if we do this we can stem that red tide? Our grey matter got us into this mess so one would hope our grey matter can help to get us out. Maybe we can take a lesson from the past and simply decide that this is the way we want to go? A path towards the light, towards love, towards one another. Maybe, almost certainly, the mind could use a helping hand from the heart. I believe that the heart is all too often forgotten in this equation. Oh that crazy heart! The struggle is real and the struggle is eternal but really, in the end, we have to get them, the brain and the heart, working together for the betterment of not only ourselves but for us all.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the silencing of a progressive liberal lion in the making. RFK cut down in the prime of his life while looking to be subject to others. Warts and all, his dream was the one that was meant for all of us. He chose to walk on in life searching for the positive and working for a better tomorrow. What if he had lived? What if Martin Luther King had lived? Where would we be?

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

Robert Kennedy

Today was also the anniversary of D-Day. The beginning of the end for the Nazi's and the last time that a war of such magnitude was fought for "the right reason" if there ever was one. As a world we stood up to a genocidal bully and much was lost in the battle for freedom from tyranny. Abraham Lincoln had said, in the Gettysburg Address, that we owed a debt of honour to those that had given their last full measure of devotion and I can think of no better way to honour all those that had given theirs in WW2 to truly find a way to build a better world for all. Let slip ancient divisions and ideological entrenchments, throw off the yoke of ism's and let peace find a way.

It seems almost too easy to shut the door on the outside world and all of its ills, but that is when we need to get up off the mat and try even harder. We are our best hope for the future, no magic pill to do the work, nothing more than our hearts and minds coming together with others and doing what needs to be done. For a better tomorrow we just have to decide to do it, individually and together. No more and no less.

Ciao
D

Nice To Meet You

The person next to you is the greatest miracle

and the greatest mystery you will ever

meet at this moment.

The person next to you is an inexhaustible

reservoir of possibility,

desire and dread,

smiles and frowns, laughter and tears,

fears and hopes,

all struggling to find expression.

The person next to you believes in something,

stands for something, counts for something,

lives for something, labors for something,

waits for something, runs from something,

runs to something.

The person next to you has problems and fears,

wonders how they’re doing,

is often undecided and unorganized

and painfully close to chaos!

Do they dare speak of it to you?

The person next to you can live with you

not just alongside you,

not just next to you.

The person next to you is a part of you.

for you are the person next to them.

Prissy Galagarian

Today at work someone said something that caused a pause for thought. She told me that another server found it strange that I seemed so at ease with students, that they never would have thought I was a "family" man. Of course this person knows me not, other than the guy walking around in the white jacket. And certainly my profession has an image that has been cultivated over a long period of time and truthfully, one that serves me well from time to time...don't be pissing the chef off is all we're saying. So I don't blame him for coming to that conclusion, it just made me chuckle to think what "others" may think. Those that know me will get a laugh at the idea since it's pretty well recognized that I'm pretty easy going, much like my personality doppelganger cat Boots. Life is far too short for all that other nonsense.

Like that person next to you, I have a lot going on both externally and internally. Battles won and lost, battles still going on. But I'm here, next to you and next to many others, just like you are next to many people. It would be quite easy to get overwhelmed with the everyday and lose site of the truly important. Think of what you're going through and consider, just for a moment, that the person next to you is doing the same. Maybe that different view gives you new perspective to consider while eating your banana staring into the world?

10:00 at night and I'm probably not coherent enough to be writing this but I had an idea and I wanted to follow through with it. People next to me and happiness?

Where is happiness born? I'm sure I don't know save to say that the person looking back in the mirror is where I would start. I believe that our happiness begins with us, we can't win it, meet it, find it on the side of the street or along the River Thames. It comes from our own sense of self and our understanding of our place in the vastness of the universe. After that, it can either be enhanced or torn down. Making choices that work towards enhancement is where I place my faith in.

Everyday I am gaining more perspective into my own past and I am coming to understand the insidious nature of not being seen, not being appreciated and not being valued. It takes a lot of time to build yourself up while you can be torn down in a matter of seconds or over a lifetime. Either way, those scars heal hard and slow. We develop our coping mechanisms, our walls are constructed and fear of one sort or another is our biggest obstacle to finding the next rung on the happiness ladder.

"Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear"

George Addair

That quote might be a entrepreneurs calling card but I would argue it is as a good a sentiment as any for life in general. In fact if I was inclined to get a third tattoo it might very well be that. In the end we all have our fears to face, you, me and the person next to us. We're truly in it together, warts and all. So in the end I choose hope and love as the guiding principles of my life, with a healthy dose of humour and tomfoolery of course.

Photo courtesy of my friend Margo

Pit and the...

And now for something completely different, at least compared to the past few weeks.

Hidden deep within the bowels of my mind are stories related to "the band." Some of I have written about already, such as our last legendary performance in Dennis' basement as the last summer of our youth wound down. Or when the drummer came home from Portugal and decided that he wanted to get married to someone he had met while visiting the old country.

We had some good times banging the instruments around for a few years, myself as a somewhat willing but untalented participant as I was simply brought along because I was one of the guys. "Sure I'll play the bass, that's the one with only four strings right?" It worked out OK in the end. I had people willing to be patient and teach me what I needed to know to be able to play along, we had a loyal following of friends that enjoyed our escapades into the world of Battle of the Bands and most importantly, for the most part, we had fun. We also had a stupid name, Revelation. Back then and back there if you uttered that word you were for sure a Genesis cover band. Except we weren't of course despite playing a song of theirs, we simply couldn't think of anything better. Well, someone did but as a group we were too scared to use it. But we should have...oh how glorious it would have been for the emcee to announce, "up next, Don Bosco's own Pit and the Stool-drops!!!" We wimped out.

I think it may have been Steve who made the recommendation, since he was always making ass references and had little respect for "norms." But being young and not as rebellious as we should have been, which by the way is quite the thing to say about me and my heathen brothers and sisters, since there was almost no line we wouldn't gleefully cross. But here we chose the safe road so as not to upset the Catholic school hierarchy we all lived under. For the record though, I voted for the Pit moniker, in a losing cause obviously. Democracy at work, three to two in favour of not being labeled Stool-drops, so down the toilet the name went.

Who can say where we would have been had we chosen the other name? We may have been ahead of our times when thinking of the bands that followed in the 90's and beyond. Hootie and the Blowfish, Butthole Surfers, Ben Wa and the Blue Balls. We'll never know. But of course having a great name wasn't the only thing holding us back. The biggest factor to us not having a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is that most of us knew it was simply a distraction, something to do for fun and for chicks. As a group we weren't very serious about pursuing a life in music. Looking at where we are now; an investment banker, an engineer of some sort, an insurance executive and little ole me as a chef, we were probably right not to be so passionate about being the next big thing. Me thinks Pit et al would not have gone very far, despite our cool name.

The second and final year we entered Battle of the Bands at our school was really a special time for us all. In many ways we were at the top of our high school game. We came and went as we pleased, we enjoyed a level of notoriety that bellied our disdain for popularity and the little band of misfits made up of my closest friends simply lived out loud pretty well. When we played that year we played for our buddies. It was quite special to be up on stage, not petrified with fright like the year before, watching people sway and sing to the music that we were playing. Were we the best musicians? Probably not. Certainly I wasn't, though Dom and Danny were pretty darn good players of their particular instruments. We played with some heart and had picked some songs that got the crowd involved, which in the end is what music is about, the connection with the listener.

When we won, we won it for all of us. I still recall Dennis and Steve leaping over the chairs to be with us when it was announced. It was elation and we soaked it all in for the rest of the night. Drunk on life was the comment later on when we gathered at a pizza shop to enjoy the spoils. And I was. An au natural high that left me and all around us with perma-smile.

A simpler time with simple goals, simply happy. A few months later we would play together for the last time. Within a year we had gone from friends until we die to a remember when glory days recounting. Who would have thought? Obviously we weren't unique in that way but it didn't hurt any less when one chose to think about it. Last year when I was back in the big smoke for the U2 concert, a bunch of us gathered together for a few drinks at the remnants of a bar we used to frequent. We shared stories and talked of our lives in the present. It was nice and it was fun, and despite promises to the contrary, we went back to our lives as they were before that afternoon. Best intentions aside, life got in the way. It is kind of sad but I would imagine most of us were well aware that it would be that way. Almost 30 years of time having passed between us all.

So Pit and Stool-Drops are a happy memory. Alongside all those other happy moments that formed such a big part of my life for a few years. I'm sure I get a twinkle in my eye when I speak of those days...partly boastful of my own stupidity co-joined with all the other morons and part joyful memories of days gone by.

Cheers to you all
D