Inventing Your Life
“Traveling Can Be
Ugly – Do It Anyway”
By
Rob Claudio
I have been contemplating the loss of endearing food and travel journalist Anthony Bourdain who passed away a few weeks ago. Like the rest of the world, I am still walking through a loss of someone who I felt I knew because of his work, even though I never personally met him. I had been a fan ever since I watched one of his first episodes on the Travel Channel and found him to be brutally honest, funny and sarcastic all rolled into one person. Like many of his fans, I was highly attracted to the fact that he did not eat at fancy well known restaurants. In many instances, he ate on the street at small independent places where many times it was a mom and pop type of restaurant or even a food cart, which had the best bite in town. He spoke to people on their level and looked them directly in the eye, which I felt was with deep respect shown to those he met. He also may not have known how to speak the language of the person that had cooked some food that he had purchased, however, that didn’t stop him from asking them questions through an interpreter or complimenting them on how savory and delicious their food was. I kept a mental log of the countries and cities I felt I wanted to visit, as a result of his journeys. I did appreciate that he still told you how a meal tasted, even though sometimes it was not something he particularly cared for. In all, it was the honesty of his story telling through adventures in diverse countries, cities, towns and villages where he highlighted the one common thing that all of us human beings can easily relate to and that was simply food. Sometimes the back story of the dish, took a stroll through the politics of that country or the atrocities that people survived and as a result, the compelling story that came with each taste was just as intriguing. In scouring different social media sites and hearing how fans from many walks of life reacted to his passing, you can tell that his connection to people was deep. I watched several episodes which ran on his last network as part of their tribute to him, many of which they felt were his favorites and it was a welcome guilty pleasure to relive some of those same chapters that I had seen before. With each passing view, I mourned his loss a little bit more as I kept thinking after each episode, that there would be no further new places that he was going to highlight for me. One of the many noteworthy things he said in his discussion for his passion in doing this, was that traveling can be ugly and yet, one should do it anyway. This resonated with me, because I felt that he was talking to the traveler persona in me that would love to visit different and exotic places in other parts of the world, while leaving the comfort of a luxurious resort in order to be among the real people along with its noteworthy delicacies of that country. Sometimes, the anxiety of not speaking the language or knowing the culture, can make traveling feel disorienting as well, which can take ugliness to another level for some. This was one of the key messages I felt he was trying to convey, as he wanted us to be more well-rounded human beings. Through his video journals there was the elimination of bias or prejudice, every time one got educated about a different culture or type of meal that you thought you would never like, simply because you never tasted it before. Having a side dish of education and cultural awareness along with your main dish, had never looked so tasty. I know that nobody else can ever fill the shoes of this person who has now departed, because they will not have had the same type of life experiences to reference. While we await the potential of a new individual that can connect us the way Anthony did, I gratefully say thank you for the good work that you produced while you educated me on the many things I did not know about other people, countries, cultures and most importantly savory eating. I hope that while we travel towards our next life after this one, Anthony is helping discover and explore new parts of that next world, so that he can tell us all about them when we finally arrive. May you finally rest in peace, as you travel and taste food from another more beautiful place.
