The
other night I was watching Anthony Bourdain’s
Parts
Unknown on TV. A few weeks earlier Bourdain
committed
suicide while filming on location in France.
What
a shame. He gave a lot to his viewers. I myself
was
a big fan. Each week I shared vicariously his travel
experiences
from around the world.
On
several occasions Tony revealed, albeit briefly,
glimpses
of his personal history which included heroine
and
cocaine addiction in previous years. In one episode
he
took part in a therapy session with a group of recovering
addicts.
He said of himself that there was this emptiness
within
him as long as he could remember. Who knows,
perhaps
a character flaw, a dark side within him he just
couldn’t
explain. Having myself experienced the same
(including
a lifelong battle with addiction), and having
been
diagnosed and treated for clinical depression, I
could
relate to Tony’s underlying insidious condition.
Be
that as it may, in the Parts Unknown I was watching
the
other day, Tony and a lady friend of his were at the
Aqueduct
Race Track in Queens, New York. They were
in
line to place their bets. Tony’s friend noticed him taking
a
bill out of his wallet. “Is that a hundred dollars, she asked
with
surprise?” “Yeah,”Tony replied, “I feel dead inside,
maybe
this will revive me.” His friend placed her five-dollar
bet
and they went to their seats and waited for the race.
Turns
out, the horse Tony picked, the one he had non-
chalantly
bet a C-note on did not win, place or show.
This
particular episode of Parts Unknown ended, and
for
all the unknowns going on inside his mind, Anthony
Bourdain
had apparently been revived. He was still alive.
And
at least for that day, a hundred dollars was a small
price
to pay.
Tony
will be missed. He lived to be sixty-one years of age.
Chris
Hanch 6-24-18
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