The end...and the beginning.

Well kids, it's time to put this one to bed. I bid you peace of mind, because it's invaluable. Anything else, you're on your own. The first post to the new Blog, "Rebel Chef," was posted tonight and may be found at www.rebelchefone.blogspot.com. Cheers

Moving on...

This blog is at an end. It has served me well, and also been a giant pain in the ass for reasons I choose not to share.
I thank everyone who has ever taken the time to read these ramblings and hope if nothing else, it served as a cautionary tale.
I will continue to write, however, a new blog is in the works, "Rebel Chef" soon to be on blogspot, detailing how a man at 49 chooses to start a career, working his way up the ladder from the bottom, without the benefit of culinary school, to become a Chef.
My next post will be my last and a rollout for the new blog.

Thanks again, it's been a wild ride...

The glitter fell off way too soon...

If something seems too good to be true....

Yeah, I know.

The relationship I was in is over. That's all I need to say.

Time to move on.

In the belly of the beast...one more time.

The business. Restaurants...up until now FOH (front of the house) but a passion for cooking, creating and being recognized for my meager efforts has landed me in the kitchen.

Outside responsibilities have kept me from culinary school so I'm doing it the hard way...learning as I go. Apprenticing as a prep-cook under two very accomplished Chef's while working as a line cook under yet another inspiring executive Chef and friend.

In the business, and I'm afraid fast food doesn't count-they could be making mufflers for all the artistry involved-we who work professionally making other peoples food are a clannish bunch-a tribe of sorts.

We thrive in the heat; the flames, the military precision of a "rush"...with the language of a busy professional kitchen almost musical. Orders yelled, responses short, "Yes Chef," being the most appropriate. We are tattooed, with burn marks on our forearms, many in some sort of recovery as the business can take a toll, some waiting with held breath for the after work "wind down" being alcohol, or other substances. Some with families, many divorced, tempers short, expectations high that we can "hold the line" and not be placed "dans la merde" or "in the weeds" forcing the flow to an interrupted standstill.

The customers expect their food fresh-hot and exactly the way they want it. (Often times with special variations as to what the menu items should be, having zero knowledge of the hours of back spasm, heat stroke inducing labor involved in first writing a menu and then preparing the items "as they are"...sure, feel free to throw a kink in the flow, without this, or this on the side or add this....sweet Jaysus...they just don't know.)

But that is what we do. Most of us have tried to live "out there" but we always come back to it. For the most part we are misfits, who understand the others in the tribe, tip generously when we get to dine out (often at places we can simply afford-rarely where we work) but critical to a fault. We could always do it a little bit better.

Two jobs are common-making food for you in one place, then another for the rest of you. We are not paid exorbitant salaries-those of us in the trenches, and ends must be met.

But it's the life-tickets rapid firing into the kitchen-a ballet of organized chaos; fast moves and sharp knives, 500 degree ovens, open flames, crushing criticism for mistakes, but deep respect when it's done right.

The majority of us have not had the luxury of culinary school and those of us who have, started in the trenches anyway- searing 40 lbs of chicken breast, trimming the same and slicing the chicken paper thin. Twenty pounds of homemade potato salad, quarts of dressing made from scratch, flash freezing, washing pots and pans, sharpening knives (nothing worse than being cut with a dull knife-ugly, terrible wound) cleaning grills, using industrial degreaser that scars the skin and burns like hell when it does, sprained backs, hands useless for anything more than curling around a glass at the end of the shift, legs like rubber, knees shot from 14 hours on your feet on concrete- sure order something special, we are more than happy to remove the already mixed cranberries, one by one from your cranberry chicken salad.

At almost fifty years old it takes either clinical madness or deep passion to begin this career move. Which is it? Hard to say.

But I wouldn't have it any other way...

The Man I hope to be...

Yes, I have changed. My oldest friends recognize it as do I.

But there is still a lot of work to be done. I am in a better place, spiritually, than ever before and am thankful for that.

That being said, I am no Gandhi. I am no spiritual giant. I'm trying to make sense of a world I never thought I would be in and am still making mistakes. Sometimes very hurtful, thoughtless mistakes causing pain to people I truly love.

That is one of many aspects of my personality that needs a drastic overhaul.

I had considered ending this blog and starting a new one, but fear this one is just not through. This blog has chronicled my first fifty years on this planet. Fifty years of selfish, immature, dysfunctional behavior. I would like to think that the next part will be the opposite.

I'm not the guy that overcame adversity as a young man and bettered himself for it. I tried self reliance for years, and it failed me.

I stayed on the fringe, off the radar, and have paid a price for it. Some of us have ridden outside the herd for so long, when it's time to come in, we don't know how.

The new blog, starting perhaps on my fiftieth birthday, will chronicle whatever time I have left. Suffice to say, I'm not getting another fifty out of this ride, but will continue to write about the journey, for however long that may be.

I would dearly love to stop doing the things I do that cause people, some who know me, some who don't but know of me, to view me as a complete asshole. I am man enough to own that and will continue to stand strong and work on the Man I hope to be.

You may ask, what would that look like? For me it would be a man with a sense of compassion and responsibility for the people he loves. A man with a sense of honor and guidance. A man who can view his life, not as a series of constant mistakes, but as a series of lessons, designed to get me to that place.

A man with a sense of duty and service, placing his loved one's before all else. A man that can communicate verbally, as well as he does with the written word. There is a big difference in what one may read and the things I say. Having been too scared to talk as a child due to a horrible stutter, I didn't. And no one showed me how. But I never stuttered on paper and took pride and satisfaction in that. But now I have to learn to communicate without blame or defense or reaction.

I hope there is still time. But if not, I'll know I went out trying to be that man, instead of settling for who I used to be.

And that, will have to be enough.

Sometimes the end of the road is the best place you can be.

I haven't written in days. There is a reason for this. The narrative of this "life" if continued, would go on for another ten years, before arriving in the present.

I can't do it to you and I can't do it to me.

Those ten years were simply a loop of everything prior. History does have a way of repeating itself, unless change is initiated. If nothing changes, nothing changes.

The pain. The failure's. The pipe dreams. Struggling. Staying dry and getting wet. One last bad marriage and another disappointed little girl...no need to go through it any more.

It would be repetitive, and I'm afraid, boring because of it.

When I began this blog, I had no idea any one would read it, but I was writing more for me than for an audience. I needed to come to a place of peace with my past, so throwing it all out into the universe was one avenue of healing. More work needs to be done, but what I set out to do has been accomplished.

My today is better than any time in my life. My "now" I would not trade for any ten years I ever had. I am viewing the world through a "new pair of glasses" (thanks Chuck) and I know from where the blessings and changes stem.

I have been blessed by those of you who have read any of this blog, much less all of it, and I thank you. I will continue to post, but from now on it simply be a daily journal, while I begin working on the material contained within for publication as a book.

It's been promised to a few of us that "we will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it." For me that promise has come true.

I am at peace.

At last...

A minor surrender equals a very small victory...

I realized I had no where to go. No home, no family or career. I had family in Dallas but I was not willing to subject myself on them. Somehow, I had to find my feet.

I did, and I began to shuffle.

I performed all the exercises I was told to. Prayer; forgiveness, the letters to my Mom and Dad, but they were empty and I felt, pretty futile. I had yet to learn to follow directions with willingness.

It was mentioned I could continue whatever type of recovery I was in living in a controlled environment in Temple. There was a center there for Veterans to stay. The domiciliary. I would have to apply and meet with a board of Doctors.

My options were gone, so I began the process.

A Bluebird bus took me from Waco to Temple for the review board.

The panel was about a dozen medical professionals, headed up by a skinny Vietnamese Doctor.

What a plick...wow, he actually talked down to me in the review. I learned later he did this to all the Veterans, as did the majority of the government teat sucking staff.

With the amount of Vietnam Vets at the Dom I wondered how long before his head was found on a pole.

I plead my case, carefully omitting the real reasons. My alcoholism was holding it's breath, afraid I would spill the beans. I was accepted into the Dom and I felt like my disease clapped me on the back after it was over.

I packed my small amount of stuff, including the coffee cup and moccasins. The jewelry box I gave to my girls.

I shared a room with an old veteran, dying of lung cancer and renal failure. My nights were filled with his phlegmy coughing and moans of pain.

Boy, that was good for depression.

The Dom was across the street from the local college, so I applied for financial aid, got accepted and became an art major. I loved to draw, (see escape) as a kid and I thought maybe I could learn something.

I gained part-time employment as a desk clerk in a local hotel. I kept that until the night one of the housekeepers boyfriends showed up drunk. She met him in the lobby. Loud words were exchanged. He slapped her. I heard a roaring in my ears and everything went red.

The next thing I knew the police were there, pulling me off. Appears I had piston punched him in the face until he stopped moving. I didn't remember it.

I was my Father's son, after all.

So much for kinder and gentler. But that was my makeup, to defend the weak. Did it without thinking, which was good, because if I thought about it, there was no way I would willingly choose to do that. Unless a loved one was in danger...then, all bets were off.

However, I was let go. Whatever. I was looking for a job when I found that one.

Of course I was thinking a lot about my parents. And death. There had to be something after this, I thought, because if not, why bother?

One afternoon I was walking to a convenience store to get a diet coke. The sky was that light Texas blue and filled with huge, cotton candy clouds. So I began talking to my Dad.

I asked him...if there was something else...if we did continue on after this veil of tears, to let me know. I was going to purchase a quick pick at the store for the cash five lotto. Back then spirituality had a price. If any of his answers were yes, if he could hear me at all, I simply asked him to influence the ticket. That was that.

I let the machine crank it out, and I had my five numbers.

I had just finished an episode of the X-files that night when the lotto results came on. I had forgotten about it.

I dug the ticket out of my 501's and watched as one number, then two and three and four hit. I missed hitting all five and won $450.00.

It actually scared the shit out of me.

Be careful what you wish for...

I don't think it rained at all...

Heat.

Washed out blue sky, and the odd, big white cloud. For thirty days.

It was Texas after all.

I had been placed on Prozac for the depression, and Trazadone...for the nightmares. After about a week, the anchor came loose out of the mud and I started to look at things other than my feet.

It was still heavy, but now there was forward movement. Guess it was progress.

My Doctor was a woman from India. We began to discuss grief and mine was thick enough to spread on toast. Then we came to loss, and worked backward...

As we worked through it, it became evident that loss and abandonment, were my two major issues. I didn't know it, but my entire life reflected that, and for many years afterward, I simply reacted to it.

Today, if someone I love says "we need to talk..." I understand the words, but my brain tells me they're leaving, or they want me to.

I lost my Mom to alcoholism and the court system, after they declared her unfit. I lost my Dad to his personal demons and subsequent rage.

I lost my innocence to sexual predators. And I kept on losing...especially those I loved.

Later in life I learned that if they had no intention of leaving, my actions made sure they did. I became oddly comfortable with loss...I could predict it...I knew what it felt like...it was what I knew.

The medication helped the depression, but nothing changed my perception. I didn't get it yet. I didn't know that if I kept doing what I always did, I would get what I always got.

We talked. Or to be more accurate-she listened and made notes.

I made a coffee cup, and a jewelry box and moccasins, and they called it therapy.

All the while looking at the sky, sensing it had gotten bigger, since my Mom and Dad were now a part of it. I asked for guidance, a sign, a voice out of the tree's...anything.

What I got was a hot wind...that said nothing at all.

It was my thirty days in the desert.

If it had rained, maybe it would have been different.

A family affair...

The meds kept me under the radar. The television, mounted on the wall, was apparently tuned to the Matlock network.

All Matlock all the time, interrupted by episodes of "In the heat of the night." The nights were thick with late spring, Texas heat.

Three days of close observation-with smoke breaks on an outside porch-encased in the same gauge mesh that covered the windows. Once outside the familiarity of the building was even stronger, but the reality was always just beyond my reach.

How am I feeling? Do you want to hurt yourself? Others? Tell us about your alcohol and drug use...

Man, I covered that up. My alcoholism was so strong it was making my decisions for me. It couldn't stand it if I didn't romance the pain.

I was just there for depression...the using, (I told them) was a byproduct.

They nodded and never spoke of it again.

On the third day, I ate a fried egg. With watered down ersatz coffee.

At night the meds were stronger, and in the twilight between awake and complete black, the crying and isolated screaming from the other vets was stark, sharp and terribly lonely.

But the meds worked and night after night, I would spiral slowly into nothing at all.

They kept the dreams at bay...except one.

My oldest daughter, a baby in the dream, standing in a dark, barren landscape, wind blowing through naked tree branches. She had the voice of an adult and would hold her little arms out to me...it's okay, Daddy...I'm here. (Today is that little girls birthday...twenty seven years...she doesn't visit anymore, in dreams, or reality...)

My crying always woke me up...then shuffle down to the nurses station. Gulp a plastic container of juice and try to shake it loose.

Back to a fitful sleep, until first call.

Then do it all over. The memory of the building kept bugging me. It was an old complex and had been on the ground since the fifties.

A moment of clarity on another hot, dry, endless day.

I visited my Father here when I was four years old. WWII vets called it shell shock. Then battle fatigue...now it's PTSD. He had been housed and treated in the same building.

This shit runs in families.

I had come full circle.

A true psychotic break should leave one breathless...

I came to hearing Andy Griffith.

You have got to be shitting me. God has the voice of Matlock? I hate that show.

Apparently only if the afterlife consists of cheap, thin pajamas, with property of the V.A. Medical Center stamped above the right breast.

Brown tile floors; washed out brown walls, big, almost floor to ceiling windows, covered in large gauge steel mesh. Window fans that could power an air boat, slowly blowing hot air throughout the ward.

A thin antiseptic smell-pine sol- with a liberal dose of "end of the road."

At first I had no idea how...then snapshots of the day before, flashbulbs brightening brief memory.

My roommate, finding me, wanting to call 911.

Talking him out of it, promising I would go to the V.A. Throwing what I could in an overnight bag, including a carton of camels. Leaving the rest behind.

My ex-wife and my babies, picking me up. Driving to Waco. One of the largest V.A. nut hutches going. Tears.

Wind through an open window, and more tears.

The eyes of a kind, older nurse, calming me down.

A cupful of pills, washed down with diabetically sweet, warm, red kool-aid. Then dark.

The pills should have had me down for a full 24. I had no idea when I went out, or what time it was now. I simply knew it wasn't long enough.

I liked the dark, with no dreams. I wanted it again, because this reality was bullshit.

I heard crying, then sobbing and screaming.

Poor bastard, I thought. Someone needs to sedate that man. I wondered what nightmare drove him here.

Then I heard my children's names through the sobs.

Stardust and straightjackets...

Stardust...my Dad's favorite song.

At his memorial three of his musician friends played it. The first few notes reduced me to wracking sobs, while I held my twins for dear life. They were too little to know what was wrong, or why Daddy was so upset, but my little troopers hugged me back, and were very brave.

What kind of man relies on four-year old daughters to hold him up emotionally? The kind with nothing left I guess.

I don't remember much of the service but I do know the coffin was empty as he had opted for cremation. I was glad it was empty. It made things less real.

As usual, my pain and focus was all about me. I couldn't console his wife, or his brother or anyone else...my pain was greater than anyone's. It had to be. My selfishness disturbs even me.

But I knew one thing...

My parents, as screwed up as they were, having an emotional and spiritual toolkit containing only a hammer and a bottle opener, were gone.

I was alone in the world without a rudder. No guidance or direction had ever been given me and I didn't have a play book. Thirty-five years old, and I felt like I was truly alone in the world.

I couldn't pick up the phone grudgingly anymore to make the obligatory phone call. I couldn't bitch about them to friends. I couldn't blame them for my failings.

All I could do was miss them.

I stayed in my attic room for three days, only venturing downstairs to pee and get water.

I talked to them, I talked to myself and I went a little bit mad. The screaming "WHY? WHY? WHY?" in the middle of the night must have been unsettling for my room mates, but crazy will certainly guarantee your private time.

Eventually, with tears streaming down my face, I picked up the shotgun. God didn't exist, my parents had abandoned me for good and my babies didn't really know who I was. Two failed marriages, failed careers, a failed life.

The only thing strong about me was my self pity, self-centeredness and my willingness to use people, places and things to patch up the holes. I had run out of all of them.

I thumbed the hammers back one more time, and placed both barrels over my heart.

I just knew it was going to hurt.

I pulled the triggers.

CLICK.

My roommate had removed the shells.

I laid on my mattress and cried, until I could cry no more...

Take it from someone who has fallen...it's a hell of a long way down.

The next few months were a blur.

The hole in my soul was wide open, a cold wind blowing through it.

Part of me was not here anymore. She wasn't out of town...or in a foreign country. I could cover every inch of this planet and she would not be here. My Mother was gone.

I didn't drink, but used every other conveyance to try and stop feeling. Nothing worked.

(Authors note-never do cocaine right after eating beef ribs...I'll spare you the details.)

It was during this period that my Father elected to cease the medication he was on to combat his congestive heart failure. He had been reduced to an oxygen tank and a wheelchair, this man that used to fill ballrooms with his presence.

He had chosen to move on. He made his peace with God and hospice took care of him in his home as every day he got smaller and smaller.

Our peace was unspoken but we had stopped the jousting. I was hurting too much to defend or attack. He was too medicated to hurt. I suppose it worked out.

I would visit a couple of times a week, not staying long...I couldn't. I remembered sitting on his lap when I was too little to know what anguish was... smelling his smell, hugging his neck, dying for his approval.

But I could not approve of him dying. He was supposed to live forever... isn't that what Daddy's do?

My oldest brother came to visit, healing the 20-year rift the old man had started. We never had the chance to be close, but would have taken it, I know. (He died a year later-heart attack after work, walking to his truck on a muggy Houston night.)

When not visiting I would sit alone in my attic room. I would hold a double barrel shotgun, loaded, and place the barrels on different parts of my body, knowing all I had to do was thumb the hammers back and squeeze, just a little.

Eventually I tasted gun oil, but decided vanity wouldn't allow me to blow my head off. (How's that for ego?)

My Uncle called me on a night in March, telling me if I wanted to see my Dad one last time, this was it. They expected him to go sometime in the night.

I don't remember the drive. I remember him laying on a hospital bed in his living room, breathing fast, wispy breaths, his dry, paper thin lips making a small puffing sound when he would exhale.

He woke up and saw it was me holding his hand. His eye's smiled and he said, "I'll love you forever..." and he slipped back into sleep.

I left but can't tell you how I got back. There was a roaring in my ears while the rest of the world had been muted. Time was stopping and all I could do was watch.

About two-thirty in the morning, my Father was dead.

The hole in my soul had become alive, and it screamed in pain.