If I Could be Anthony Bourdain

April 28, 2008 - Monday

Last week I got to meet Tim O'Brien. What he said was quite interesting, but one thing in particular caught my attention. He was talking about the difference between truth and reality (a great question asked by a student, by the way), and he said something I want to always remember.

He said he can imagine that it hurts pretty bad to get shot it the face. He doesn't have to get shot in the face to know that. Profound, right?

My original reaction was to use this analogy in an argument against censorship. What better way to experience the difficult situations of life than through books – through imagination.

Then I remembered why I love literature so much. It's the experiences. I can't afford to travel the world, and I'm just not really interested in trying the delicacy of tripe, but I want the experiences. I love to go outside of the person I try to be every day and go into the mind of someone else – someone foul, or brave, or sacrificial, or troubled.

Sometimes I want to be Anthony Bourdain. Travel the world, creeping out into the night searching for the perfect soup.

Think of it. I depart the plane in the early morning Hong Kong sun, my face covered in the gargantuan sunglasses of one who had too many drinks and too little sleep. I immediately discover that my luggage was mistakenly sent to the village of Sun-Niu, so I berate the baggage claim personnel with profanity-filled insults, blowing my stale cigarette smoke breath into their repentant faces. They bribe me with airport vouchers to take my foreign English curses from their office, and I subsequently use their money to buy imitation designer shirts and jeans from carts outside the airport to clothe me during my stay in this God-forsaken city.

I'm tired. The flight was hell. So I check into my hotel and into my deepest sleep, knowing that the true delicacies I seek only come out with the moon. When I finally wake,
I make use of my hotel-issued toothbrush and shampoo, and then saunter from the hotel, head full of wet hair.

I stop at the first street vendor I see. What's here, I ask. The small, flour-covered woman responds in a language I do not understand, and I somehow decide that the sounds coming from her mouth must mean noodles, so I order a steaming bowl of fresh noodles and pay her for her wares. Instead of a smile, I thank her with a half-hearted grunt. She yells at me. She's had her way with me and now she's ready for me to move on and make room for the next hungry customer.

I'm on a Hong Kong street with a bowl full of noodles. What to do now? Eat, I suppose. So I plant myself on the sidewalk near the opening of a neon-lit alley and begin carefully eating and analyzing the noodles. I notice their texture, and just as I begin to savor the incredible flavor my attention is drawn away. There, in the alley. What is it? The scent. It suddenly overcomes me. I am overcome. Could this really be what I've come all the way across the world to find?

Yep, I'd make a good Anthony Bourdain.