Reflecting on the Stars

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I love words. I love quotes. I love poems. And I love the sky. 

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For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long return. 

-Leonardo da Vinci

Hitch your wagon to a star.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light,

I've loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. 

-Sarah Williams

I know nothing with any certainty,

but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

-Vincent Van Gogh

Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human? Pointless really, Do the stars gaze back? Now thats a question.

-Neil Gaiman

On WWABD, alligator, and spicy noodles

Anthony Bourdain died last week. And I'm still not over it, which is weird considering how totally unacquainted we were. I never thought of myself as somebody who could be so heartbroken by the death of a celebrity. But Tony wasn't just a celebrity, he was a writer, chef, and foul-mouthed traveling foodie who ate spicy noodles ALL THE TIME- all things I wish I could be, all the things I wish I could do. Maybe I'm a jealous person by nature, or I've just grew out of that 'anything can happen, the world is my oyster' phase of adolescence, but I've always been envious of the life he lived because I knew it would never resemble mine.

This weekend, I found myself as a musical festival of sorts on a grassy, hilly pasture in the middle of nowhere. Think Stagecoach with less reputable bands, and a lot more county. It was rumored that one of the food trucks was cajun style and had alligator on the menu. Was it a wise decision to order alligator and cajun 'boudin' balls on the last night of the 3 day festival in which all 3 days were 90 degrees and beyond? Probably wasn't the freshest, probably wasn't the wisest... but then I thought to myself, "WWABD-What Would Anthony Bourdain Do?" He would have ordered the damn alligator. And, so, I did. 

The one thing that shocked me in the aftermath of Tonys death, was the sheer outpouring on his behalf. Now, I'm surprised that I was surprised. He was an infectious, authentic human, filled with curiosity and humanity. He lived life in motion. He lived fiercely, unapologetically, indulgently. And so the irony does not escape me, considering the way he blinked out of our world so prematurely. I think about these things with my arms wrapped around the toilet, at 3am, the night of the alligator. I also wonder to myself how many times he had found himself in my likeness after many gratifying nights of cold brews and spicy noodles. I mean, the man DID love his spicy noodles. And, well, he definitely liked his cold brews too. I can imagine him saying something to the likeness of how much more palatable it was going in than coming out. And I can imagine him waking up the next morning to do it all again, not so fresh alligator and all. He probably would have found some insightful, philosophical life lesson about all of this. But I am not Anthony Bourdain. And I can only continue to find moments to honor a spectacular man, and everything he has taught me. 

Things I have learned from Anthony Bourdain

Sometimes its about the food, and sometimes it about people sitting down together over a table of said food. Because food can bring us together. 

We are all just people who are doing our very best. So many people want to go on and on about our differences. But our differences are so much less important than our similarities. 

There is great importance in curiosity, happy accidents, and winging it.

And finally, order the damn alligator. 

Nancy Drew, and ugly crying

I used to love reading books when I was young. I was the kid that had to be told to put down the book and go to bed, or to clean my room, to do my homework, go to school. My favorite part of elementary school was library time. I was really into to mystery books then. Nancy Drew was a bad ass-  I had almost every yellow spined book and I was very meticulous about arranging and rearranging them in numerical order. Basically, then, everything but reading was an obligation.

In the last 20 years, time has gotten scarce, life has gotten crazy and weird, and kind of a lot to handle sometimes. I don't have homework anymore, but now I'm self employed so that basically means that my entire day is a long homework assignment that was due yesterday. I don't have to clean my room, now I have an entire house to clean and I actually like doing it. I stress out about things like life insurance and retirement... and what the right work/ home life balance is, which is extra alarming because I work at home and all that gets kind of tangled together. I've lost my yellow Nancy Drew books. I don't even have a book shelve to rearrange because we have iPads and kindles, and amazon.com is the only library I go to now.... which makes browsing for books less magical and more "I should add some toilet paper to my cart before I forget".

But a few years ago I discovered audio books, and they have saved my life from the mundane of long drives and bad tv shows. I listen while I cook, I listen while I drive, I listen in waiting rooms. My taste in books have changed considerably from Nancy Drew, but I do still love a good mystery. My favorite book read last year was A Man Called Ove. It was one of the first as I was getting back into the throes of reading again. And it knocked me on my ass. As in, its been almost a year since I read the book and I still don't know what I can say about it except it's a wonderfully tender story about loneliness, and despair and hope. The novel is funny, heartbreaking, poignant, and it had the most perfect and satisfying ending, to which I ugly sobbed for about an hour. I've read (I mean heard?) quite a few books since then, and all I know is the books that I love the most are the ones that make me cry. Like a lot. Like bawling over my simmering spaghetti sauce, or ugly crying so hard driving down the road that I think I should probably pull over because the roads are getting blurry and fellow drivers are probably thinking that I just found out my long lost Aunt Lorene died. The catharsis is real, guys.

I think the lesson learned here, is that I like stories that transport me to another place and another life. Ones where I find so many similarities to my own, that it's comforting to know my wants and struggles are shared. And stories of people so different that me, that I can understand the vastness of our world and the people in it. And those stories just happen to make me ugly cry.

Let's sob it out, together, guys.