Strangers in a Strange Land….
I woke up with Anthony Bourdain on my mind, as many of us have. Now that he is gone, everything shifts to a higher and more interior level. That is how it is when someone leaves this beat-up old planet.
“Bourdain is looking kinda rough,” I had said to my son recently. Sure enough he was. The first time I caught a glimpse of him on TV, he looked decidedly different. He was wearing flip-flops and a short-sleeved shirt as he walked down the street. His elbows out an an angle, he was clearly interesting to watch.
And thousands of us watched him stride into territory we knew nothing about. And we sat and ate with him as he ate with strangers in a strange land. But he had the knack of easy friendship. He was rough but amiable. And so very bright.
You could see his restless inner animal. He stalked stories relentlessly to share with us, the viewers. We took it for granted, as we do everything precious. And then suddenly they are gone.
I eat alone. So to eat vicariously with Anthony and his guests was something quite different. I could not have held up to what he did and ultimately, neither could he.
We all seek peace despite our best efforts to sabotage something that priceless. Peace is a gift. I hope he is experiencing it now. I feel we will all watch him in an endless loop of grace now. He is gone, gone, gone beyond, as the old saying goes. A tear falls into that pool of peace, for that is how peace comes.
Vicki Woodyard
Donate and get a copy of my newest book, “The Edge of Enlightenment.”
He is a great loss to us all. Incredibly honest and forthcoming about his past drug abuse and his own weaknesses, yet he never needed to apologize forr being who he was. With Obama or a nameless peasant, he was the same, just himself. We so appreciated his window on the diversity of this planet. It may be hard to walk away from celebrity, it must have demands we can hardly imagine.he wore it better than most.
Well-said! He was a very deep soul. There is no doubt in my mind that he had no will in this. It was not something
he chose to do consciously. It came from something he had no control over. We are all surprised at how much we loved him, aren’t we?
Celebrity must be a particular type of poison that not all can recover from. Our culture takes no responsibility in this, sadly. We are told to buy the hype without questioning what it will do to the person being poisoned by admiration of the public, which just as easily casts them down.
He was not only a good man, but a beautiful man to look at, a wise man to listen to, and most of all, so easy to love. In some ways I am reminded of Leonard Cohen when I think of Anthony. They had similar good looks and great intensity of spirit.