I was on my way out the door this morning when Cindy called me back upstairs. She wanted to share the news with me. Anthony Bourdain was dead. By suicide. At age 61.
My guts hurt and my eyes filled. Thirty minutes into my commute Soundgarden’s ‘Blow Up The Outside World’ came through the stereo. It was all I could do to not pull over.
I didn’t know Chris Cornell. But I did have the good fortune to spend 2-3 days at a time in his company on a couple of occasions, and if I was forced to use only one word to describe him it would be ‘gentle.’
The word I would have chosen as recently as this morning for Bourdain would have been ‘alive.’ And I just assumed that would always be the case.
I’ll cop to it. In my time as an adult male there has only been one counterpart who I didn’t actually know that I looked at and thought to myself: ‘That’s it! This is the guy. HE is who I want to be.’ I’ve felt that way for more years than I can remember.
Now, like so many others, I sit and wonder.
But the exposure was long enough. His impact on me will last.
[Photo: Four of the five books on my nightstand when I woke up this morning (and for years prior) Out of shot, Vonnegut ‘Breakfast of Champions’.]
Chris Smith, Author 