What the actual fuck…?

 I remember, early on in high school, thinking to myself and my journal, that we are screwed. Ronald Reagan had just introduced his Trickle Down Theory. I knew then that this was a grift in order to steal our (the middle class and the poor’s) money and give it to the filthy rich scum that support politicians. The real rulers of the “free” world.   

But I lived in a red state. I didn’t know that at the time. Honestly I didn’t really pay much attention to the world. It seemed so large and far away from my life that it wouldn’t ever matter to me. I quickly learned the error of my ways. What happens in the US has a profound impact on the entire world.

Fast forward 50ish years.  Everything I was ever taught was a White Washed Lie. All of it. It was all a lie in order to rewrite white history and erase the horrors and atrocities perpetuated by white colonizers.   To erase the fact that white people  stole land form natives. Instead of learning something from them and working together, they murdered, raped, pillaged and plundered. Taking everything in their path, never once thinking about the consequences of their greed.

 I digress…

Now, Politicians are still trying and succeeding at stealing our money, our health care, our social security our Medicare; basically everything they can get their greedy fucking fingers on, they are going to steal, and there is nothing we can do about it. So FUCK us!

And then, somehow(people are retards) they convinced most all of us,  it’s the brown and black people that are keeping us poor. Not the handful of folks that live on mountains of money. 

Right? Isn’t that the way of Emerca. Power and excess for the rich - While the rest of the 98% struggle to survive. Literally, struggle. It’s 2025 people, and we are still taking the scraps with an “Oh thank you, this is too much for us unworthy peasants.”  So we let them take more.

Now we have the National Guard and military personnel in our streets, racially profiling everyone that isn’t white. No Due Process, No Serving the public’s best interests, mo mercy. Attaching US citizens, all while making bounties on our heads.

What. The. Actual. FUCK is going on?

Cruelty is the reason and the purpose, and the goal. Cruelty, against everyone that isn’t white.

I recently started looking into some of my families history. (quick side bar: I was unknowingly, raised to be a racist) What I found is that my family has only been in the US since 1887. That’s it. Now my family has conveniently forgotten that fact. My great grand parents were from Czechoslovakia. My great grand mother was still alive when I was born. She died in 1970.

Now much of my family are trump people. I am NOT! It breaks my heart to see them continue to vote against their own best interest, when I know that they are not mean or evil, but, merely mislead by the very people they trust to look out for their best interests. However, they believe all of the propaganda. It breaks my heart.   

My own family, that were raised by immigrants, now want other immigrants to be deported.  To be denied the very rights that they all enjoy. 

My therapist and I are happy to report that I have broken that cycle of misled anger and abuse. I can see the world and people for what they are. I left home as soon as I was able,  and I grew. I learned. I traveled and observed  others. And everywhere I have ever been,  I realized that we are all the same. We all have the same want’s and desires. A better life. 

Simple.

A few of us want more from life. More from humanity. Not just the same status quo. We’re better than that and you should be too. It’s not hard to be a better person. It takes energy to hate.

 FREE UKRAINE      FREE PALESTINE     FREE AMERICA 

                                                                         FUCK TRUMP 

                                                                ANTIFA TO THE DEATH

Pain...

 It’s been more than 35 years now. In all that time there has not been a single day that I have been pain free. Not a single day.

People love to ask how you are. How you’re feeling How are you doing. The answer is always the same, Great. Never better. You cant just tell someone that you feel like hell. That practically every inch of you hurts. There is no comfortable position to stand, or sit, or move, without being in pain.

Part of the problem is that I don’t look like I should be in pain. I don’t always act like I would be in pain. I laugh. I crack jokes. I go to work. I try to suffer in silence. I have no visible injuries, wounds, or alignments, I tell doctors that I hurt and they automatically assume I’m after drugs. I have had every joint in my body X-rayed, scanned, MRIed, CT mylogramed, photographed, monitored, measured, probed a prodded. 

I have also spent years in physical therapy, psychological therapy, acupuncture, massage, aroma, pharmaceutical therapy. I have yet to find a Doctor that can diagnose what ails me aside from arthritis, and severe wear and tear from enjoying and surviving my teens and twenties.

On the standard pain scale, 0-10, 

a normal, average day for me is between a 6-8. That’s on the edge of moderate, and into the severe pain range. Everyday of my life.

Capitalism and Time, the theft of human souls!

 Where does six years go? In the blink of an eye, she’s gone. I can still see myself, sitting down with my new iPad, this iPad, and writing down the first chapter of Life on The Line. The story of my time in the restaurant industry.

It’s been six years. Six, years. 

Loosing the last 18 months has been easy. Being disabled has a way of sending your life into “Groundhog Day”. 547 days ago my disability started; all but about 20 of those days have been pretty much the same day. Everyday spent in pain. Over, and over, and over…..

If not for my dogs, I would be locked in a padded facility on a farm somewhere. Talking to the voices in my mind. 

Is internal screaming a bad thing? How much screaming is normal, either internal or external? My screaming never stops. Ever. No matter what I’m doing , I can hear it. At times, it’s so loud I can’t hear people I’m talking with. At others it is like a soft buzzing. An ear worm 🐛.

The other four years? Gone. Some photos, good memories, and bad. Gone. Time spent toiling for the profit of others. Wasted. 

What are you toiling for? For whom? Is it worth your short time on this rock? 🪨 

Life On The Line...

Chapter one

I jumped into cooking on a bit of a whim. With little to no hesitation. After spending many years in the art business I was looking/needing to change my life. 

It started with a class in 1998. A gift, to sit in with a local chef and watch them prepare something amazing. Then you get to taste the somethings and take home all the recipes. 

Then I learned that I could volunteer to assist the chefs. I could take the class, work along side the chefs and it was free. A win win. 

After volunteering  several times, I asked one of the chefs what it would take to become a cook. She invited me to visit her restaurant to see what I thought.

The next day I showed up excited to see the action of a real kitchen. After a few hours of me trying to stay out the way, in a very tiny space, she said, "I would ask you what you thought but you haven't stopped smiling the entire time." I hadn't. I loved it.

It looked like it would be a great deal of fun. Playing with food and getting paid. How naive.

She offered me a job. I started the next night, training on the saute station, I took to it right away, and stayed for almost 4 years.

I got lucky. She was an excellent chef on the verge of a great career. It was her first restaurant so she spent a lot of time in the kitchen. But she was a hot head. She screamed and yelled at us. Occasionally throwing things at us. Like plates of food. God help us if one of her plate wasn't what she wanted. It should be 13 inches tall and it's only 12, you had better duck. She would not hesitate to throw a full plate back at us through the window if she wasn't pleased. She was horrible, but brilliant.

Through it all I learned a great deal. It fed a passion I feel toward food. It's an art, it's creative, it's sensual. It's also very hot, horrible hours, low wages, no security or benefits, and very stressful.  Serious cuts and burns are part the daily joys.  The pressure can be over whelming. It's a running joke in every kitchen that it takes a special kind of crazy to survive in the restaurant industry. It's funny because it's true.

Kitchens are a counter culture that most never see and even fewer understand. Cooks or BOH (back of house) are a strange mix of people. Under educated, over educated, lots of drugs addicts, drug dealers, alcoholics, ex-cons, illegal aliens, witness relocation, students, drop outs, burn outs, mid life crisis, and at times the occasional killer, predator or flat out psychopaths. 

They are also a close knit group of transients. Usually accepting of everyone's quirks. You have to be. Conditions are close. The hours alone make it hard for you to have friends and sometimes family whom aren't in the industry. We work nights, holidays, weekends. Some places are never closed, 24/7, 365. Your days off are during the week. You run on a schedule that is almost the opposite of the rest of the world.  It can be great to have days off when the rest of the world is working. places are less crowded, and most things are open.

It is also very difficult to maintain any sort of normal relationship. If you're not in the industry the life style is difficult to understand.  I practically missed my child's entire life between ages of 7 and 10. It contributed to my divorce. 

It's the hours we work. Horrible, late, long. Most cooks are night people. As I write this it's 2am. 

At my current position, a Sous Chef at an international hotel chain, I work an average of 60+ hours a week. 10-12 hours a day, five days, often it's six. Often it's as many as 20 days in a row without a day off. 12pm to 12am or later. I spend the first two hours checking everything out, checking in with other sous', cooks, managers, going over the line set up, mise en place, specials, prep, banquets, special events, and the restaurant.I have to do my own line work and mise en place. The next 6-7 hours are spent on the line as the saute/grill chef. I run the line. I cover a section that is 14 feet long. The hot side is responsible for all of the entree dishes for dinner and a few items off the bar and pool menus, not to mention room service.  It's very hot. On average it runs about 85-120 degrees.  There are few breaks, sometimes none. It can be crazy busy one night and slow the next. Most night we serve about 200-300 covers a day. The last couple of hours are spent cleaning up, putting things away, going over inventory, placing orders, writing the prep list, organizing walk-ins,checking the other cooks line and cleaning, helping the dish washer clear the pit, checking in with the night cleaners and sending a nightly passdown email to all of the managers and chefs. 

Give or take...



 
 

Lost In Invisiblity...

When I was much younger, I wondered if I might be invisible. Not all the time, but often. I could be surrounded by people and wouldn't get noticed. They would look right through me, never at me. Now as I continue to age I'm convinced that I am actually invisible,  from time to time. And never by my choice. I just seem to fade out and then eventually back in.

It's an odd sensation.

It's been almost a year since I closed my studio. I miss it like breathing. I can feel it pulsing through my veins, calling to me. It never stops. I can hear it. I can't turn it off. I worry I may never get back.
The responsibility of being an adult never seem to diminish. The world always wants, no,  demands more and more and is never satisfied. Always more.

I don't understand what we've done. What we've become. I can see where things are headed ever so clear. Am I the only one? Can anyone else see what we have done to ourselves? That it's getting worse, not better? That greed, selfish ego, corruption and lies have become the norm, and are accepted as if it always been that way. Or always should have been that way. I just don't know anymore.

I scream. The louder I scream the softer my voice. No one hears. No one listens. No one cares about anything outside of their own beliefs, right or wrong, good or bad. There has become no room for growth or improvement, or knowledge. At what point do we stop striving to be better? When do we stop asking questions? When do we decide that we know everything we need to know and stop taking in additional knowledge? Why do we stop learning? Or more importantly, why do we start refusing to learn and think that we know everything there is to know? And then decide that everyone else is wrong even when confronted with empirical evidence and scientific proof?

Just why? Common sense is no longer common. Education has become the enemy of those in control. Education is feared more than any other threat. Truthful knowledge is power and its dangerous.

So I scream. I stand in the middle of the street and I scream out in pain from the bottom of my soul. Surrounded by people I scream from the top of lungs...

...nothing. No response. No reaction. Like I'm not there.

Silent.

Invisible.

Lost...