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A Chef’s Block


Rice is life. About that stuff that went down last month. I was walking on a long journey to places I did not know or understand. I knew I was not eating. I knew I was not sleeping. Somehow I felt that the momentum of my entire life could push me through the valleys of cold depth that I was traveling. It never occurred to me that this defies logic and also physics. I did not care. I supported this corner of the world with the things I had acquired. And I foolishly thought that they could endure. All along the way, I never lost my inspiration and that was the one thing I was very pleased to find. After all, I have spent so much time being equally unimpressed with everything under the sun.

 Racing toward the western horizon with my foot on the floor. 2 AM had just passed, then it happened without warning. The engine stops. I feel my emptiness wrap around me as it catches up to my lost momentum, like dropping from the speed of sound in which it suddenly overtakes me. I did not know that this was even possible. Where is my inspiration now? Where is my drive? I just sit on the side of a lonely desert road, hours before dawn allows me to see what sort of mess this is. I am really lost. I don’t know what to do with this.

 I turn the key but there is no life. Even worse, I don’t even want to turn the key! As the first hour passes my darkened mind considers throwing the keys into the desert and just walking down the road. Betrayal kills me at the thought of this. Adding this to the list of things I have treated so recklessly. I keep asking myself, what now? But the answer is not there. Who am I now? I quietly sit in the dirt. I evaluate all that I have. I have decided the sunrise could come years from now or even perhaps never again. I am aware that only I can do that. The question is, do I want to? Like other things in my past, getting up can only happen if I embrace falling down. So I sit.

 I feel the coolness of the ground. I am connected to the earth. Almost accepting the loss I have suffered is actually helping even though I have no idea how. In the quiet, I know the sun is going to shine again. There is a blind faith inside of me that says a passion to be is still here. In my silence, I can see the light of something from a distance, like an old friend coming into view. Rage is coming to breakfast. Where have you been? I know now, that I can get up off the ground, turn the key, and with passion and fire inside of me, I can do it! I can cook again! I can really cook! That unending source of ambition and fire and creativity lives breathes, and jumps again! How I have missed that. As my speed and momentum build, the sun breaks the horizon and I say the words with an honest heart. I promise to never take this for granted again.





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