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My sister has a screenprint of Anthony Bourdain hanging in her kitchen. It's a huge headshot of him wearing those cool-guy-forever sunglasses and his usual knowing, close-mouthed smile-scowl. She didn't know him personally; she was just a fan. He represents something to her that I think is what he represents to most people: freedom. Or rather, a free-spiritedness that was unyielding in its quest to find happiness in all the magical things life had to offer regarding food, drink, and travel. And his version of that life was hypnotically Dionysian, if not self-destructive. But every time I look at that picture in her kitchen, I can’t help but think that its existence would mortify him. At least, that’s my hope.
After he died on June 8, 2018, it became more apparent that the big giant, exciting life, the one that thousands of people envied, was not enough to save him. A couple of years ago, when Charles Leehrsen's unauthorized bio, "Down and Out in Paradise," was released, he tried to puncture the mythology of Anthony Bourdain. The book was reviewed widely, often dismissively, by critics who felt that Leehrsen's "honest" approach was ghoulish and tacky. Many of the details that were leaked in the reviews focused on Bourdain's final doomed months with the actress Asia Argento, including many of the broken-hearted texts he sent her up until the moment he hung himself in a French hotel room. (The texts were believed to be released by Bourdain's second ex-wife, who had access to all his accounts and was in charge of his estate.)
Today, June 25, would have been his 68th birthday. In the build-up to what’s now recognized as Bourdain Day, I asked the author Laurie Woolever, his former deputy, if there was anything to write about him that had yet to be written. (I'd already interviewed her a couple of years ago about the more complex parts of Bourdain's life upon the release of her book, “Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography.”)
But then I thought—was Bourdain aware of how big his life had become? Did it imprison him? She had some thoughts.
"The moments that stick with me were the times Tony was frank about his weariness. We were in Manila in early summer 2017 at the World Street Food Congress, having just come from a shoot in Sri Lanka, where everyone had been sick. It was the end of the TV shooting season and he seemed completely burned out. The crowds there loved him so much and were so eager to get a selfie with him everywhere he went, even at breakfast in the hotel. He was supposed to stroll around and meet food vendors that had come with the hopes of being in his New York food hall, but he got completely mobbed and had to be led away by literally ten security guards, and he expressed frustration and disappointment at having been unable to move freely.
Other people were good at marveling at his big life; I think he was too self-conscious to ever frame it in those terms, out loud, but there were certain professional milestones that he was giddy about. Like being a writer for Treme, and making episodes of TV with Darren Aronofsky and Christopher Doyle, and getting his boyhood wish to travel to the Congo. Maybe that counts as acknowledging his big life?"
I bring up Bourdain’s big life because, in the past few weeks, I've had a wonderful burst of what is known in AA as "The Promises." I recently vibrated with joy that my life is no longer what it used to be eight years ago before I got sober. But it's strange—all the things I had assumed would make me happy in sobriety never panned out the way I thought they would. Many of the dreams I'd had before I got sober simply do not matter anymore. There are no more dreams big enough to replace this wild new reality. My life is much smaller than it used to be, but it's also the biggest it's ever been. Funny how things work out that way.
Progress, not perfection.
Anyway–how are you?
Our July Check-Ins run next Tuesday—and I’d really love your help. The perfect length is 250-300 words. Feel free to share your triumphs, setbacks, or whatever else is bringing you down. We're here for all of it.
Here's a GREAT example of what we're looking for.
“This last month has shown me without a doubt my sobriety is more of a rock, one that I'm currently hanging on for dear life as I watch my life get deconstructed piece by piece: Fiancée and I broke up, she started fucking someone new three weeks later. We bought a house together so we are still roommates right now. Oh, and the house has a main water line that was buried too shallow so our entire pipe system froze up and we have no running water. (The city and the three plumbers I've talked to have all suggested I wait for it to thaw.) Also, my dog is sick and, on top of that, my daughter's daycare provider recently got Covid.
So I've been working from home with an ex, a sick dog, no water and a hyped-up toddler. Still haven't poured a drink, and I don't think I'm going to. I wouldn't be able to handle this if I did.”
EMAIL ME HERE: ajd@thesmallbow.com subject JULY CHECK-IN
It will be published NEXT TUESDAY.
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Recent Check-In Highlights:
“After years of cycling through a pattern of addiction and abstinence, my partner finally experienced a powerful reckoning and shift and began attending AA and got a sponsor. He's been sober for 90 days and has attended 90 meetings in 90 days. It's been jaw-dropping to see how much he's changed in just these few months. It's like this invisible fortress he had around himself has been coming down in huge waves: He can access and express his feelings, and I can connect with him. He's now allowing himself to cut back on the demand of daily attendance. I'm keeping my anxiety about it to myself, wanting only to cheer him on and tell him how proud I am of him and how much I love and, value and cherish these changes. But I'm so anxious about losing everything and of things returning to how they were. I don't want that for our lives. But I believe most people say that relapse is part of it. I don't want it. I want us to be the exception. Is that silly and even stupid sounding to say? I just want this feeling, this state of being, this relief to last.”
“My 33-year-old son is my favorite human. He’s also an asshole of an alcoholic. I’ve run the gamut of trying to get him help, and nothing has worked. I recently decided to let go-let God and just be his mom truly. I realized if he is never going to choose sobriety and dies from this horrible disease, I want him in my life, not out of it. I miss him. But damn, the truth is I can’t fucking stand him when he’s drunk, and he is always drunk. I wish someone would tell me how this is ever supposed to work.”
“I'm just so angry, and I know I'm being a smug asshole, but this disease is cunning and exhausting. I've been trying to detach with love, not question if he's drunk, nor demand that he not be. I've been hands-off, not insisting or even so much as hinting at him returning to meetings. I'm furtively, furiously clawed at my fear, anxiety, and control addiction to put the focus on me. Let it begin with me, for fucks sake. I've been trying to work my own program as the spouse and daughter of alcoholics. But can the family disease kindly fuck off?”
“For years, I wondered how much you needed to drink to get the shakes. And then, about six years ago, I found out. But what scared me the most was when I learned about anhedonia the hard way. (Anhedonia is the lack of interest, enjoyment, or pleasure from life's experiences.) I learned about it by living it. Yes, I had gotten divorced after 20 years of marriage, and my ex made it a 3-year nightmare. Yes, my dog died two days after my divorce court appearance. It was easy to feel self-pity. And I had moved to a new place where I knew no one. And then there was the pandemic. I gave myself permission to drink away the pain. But then I found myself dependent on alcohol and unable to enjoy the things that had always kept me going. Most importantly, playing music. It scared me. Perhaps that is why I haven't been tempted recently.”
This is The Small Bow newsletter. It is mainly written and edited by A.J. Daulerio. And Edith Zimmerman always illustrates it. We send it out every Tuesday and Friday.
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ZOOM MEETING SCHEDULE
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*****
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A POEM ON THE WAY OUT:
Forbidden City
by Gail Mazur
***********************
Asleep until noon, I'm dreaming
we've been granted another year.
You're here with me, healthy.
Then, half-awake, the half-truth—
this is our last day. Life's leaking
away again, and this time, we know it.
Dear body, I told you, pleading,
Don't Leave! but I understand you
can't say anything. Who are we?
Are we fictional? We don't look
like our pictures, don't look like
anyone I know. Daylight
flickers through a bamboo grove,
we approach the Forbidden City,
Looking together for the Hall
of Fulfilling Original Wishes.
Time is the treasure, you tell me,
and the past is its hiding place.
I instruct our fictional children,
The past is the treasure, time
is its hiding place. If we told him
how much we love him, how much
we miss him, he could stay.
But now you've taken me back
to Luoyang, to the Garden of Solitary Joy,
over a thousand years old—
I wake, I hold your hand, you let me go.
ALL ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDITH ZIMMERMAN
Maria Bustillos did a great, great profile and interview with Bourdain. She couldn’t find someone to publish it so just posted it at her Popula website. https://popula.com/2018/07/15/bourdain-confidential/
No hindsight required to see that it was a profile of someone on the run from something, whatever. (Not quite going to speculate.)
And credit to Maria or not, but it was the kind of piece that our exceptional establishment media would never touch these days. A bunch of decades ago, it was pretty common but then we entered a period of decline.
Anyway. Worth tracking it down…
Great post all the way through! And that poem at the end...that hits hard.