Avoiding Writing About Anthony Bourdain – A Summer Morning Photo Blogpost
This photo blog is lovely, but it is also a cop-out. This is me still avoiding writing about Anthony Bourdain’s suicide that took place on June 8th in a hotel room in France. Many of the pieces I’ve read about the incident state that Bourdain was staying in a “luxury” hotel, as if it’s impossible for dark despair and self-loathing to seep through luxurious walls. As if wealth and fame can prevent cruel suicide by hanging. They can’t. Of course they can’t.
Hear me read this post:
I’m dodging chronicling a suicide that somehow touched me a little personally. For now, I’m avoiding putting on paper words that can’t come close to describing the depths of hopelessness that cause suicide. I’ve visited some of these deep, desolate places, and I suppose that in reality, I’m avoiding my own pain. I’m avoiding telling what Mr. Bourdain’s story reveals about my own story.
So this sunny Friday morning, I’m writing about the riotous birdsong that woke me at 4:30. Instead of cursing it, I rolled out of bed, pulled on my yoga pants and a sweatshirt, and I grabbed my camera and headed out the backdoor. During the summer, time lets me do that.
It was just dark enough still for the light mounted on the garage to detect my movement and flood the backyard with light. It was dark enough for the decorative solar lights in the garden to still be glowing.
No wonder the racket woke me up. The birds were going crazy! Groups of four to six magpies flew by low and directly ahead of me, squawking and zig-zagging, still drunk from last night’s party and making their crooked way home. Wrens were singing songs sweet enough to make love by, and sparrows were tweeting to friends and neighbours today’s local gossip.
The train’s whistle, the steady creaking of its cars, and the thrum of its wheels, steel on steel, joined me as I walked up the hill. Already the weather warned me about the daytime heat to come. I wore two shirts on this adventure. I could’ve comfortably worn one.
When I got home, the itching notified me that an early-rising mosquito had bitten my rearend, sneaky little insect. I didn’t see any bugs out this morning, and yet somehow a mosquito found me. Truthfully, mosquitoes always bite my butt when I wear my yoga pants out walking. Note to self: Don’t wear yoga pants when going for a walk.
I crawled back into bed feeling sleepy and satisfied. I’m sorry that Anthony Bourdain will never again have to worry about a mosquito biting his butt in any region of the world. I’m sorry that he will never again wake at 4:30 a.m. to hear birdsong sweet enough to make love by.
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Lori Knutson 