Perfection

What is it and why are we so obsessed with finding perfection in every aspect of our own existence. The perfect relationship, perfect job, perfect food, perfect life. Truth is that as human beings we always look forward to what is impossible and unrealistic for us. Perfection is unachievable in this world and the constant hunt for it develops a morbid and unhealthy dependence on results as a measure of our own value. Trivial desires get lost on the way, as they won't help to reach the goal. With them humanity gets lost; we become more like machines and less driven by feelings. Love for what we do doesn't mean as much as 'be the best at what we do'.

Or at least that's what it looks like on the surface.

Since High School, I always loved to think one step further and try to climb the building to have a different perspective. So what is it about the obsession for perfection? On the way to perfection, we learned to enjoy the closest hints of it. But that simply means finding beauty in what, at the end of the day, is imperfection. And it is in this that everything we work for comes down like a cards castle. We do realize that a woman's body cannot be perfect by definition. But we enjoy it. We enjoy the irregular shape of their nose, we enjoy the silky pleasure of messy hair on our face. Those hands that rotate around, finding their way to our cheeks, freezing them at the beginning, but for then leave space to a warmth that persuades us to let our restrictions fly away and just fall into their arms. There, where even the giants want to rest, we find feeling with every sense that we are alive. We touch the smooth and velvety thighs, we smell peaches and vanilla in their perfumes, we hear them singing and like Ulysses we decide to abandon ourselves to the sirens, we see them in all their beauty and in all their shyness to expose their bodies. We love them. We love the imperfections we see and we love those we don't see. 

Imperfections are also in a fine wine, aged for years, where oxygen ruined the freshness of the wine but enhanced other aromatic compounds. That red vivid color developed and twisted in different shades until that intense brick red that we can see nowadays. Is it perfect? Perhaps not, but it is still one of the best voluptuous pleasures drunk with a rare fillet mignon on the side. 

So it is food. Chefs nowadays always look for the perfect combinations of flavors and plating techniques. The perfect quenelle and the ability to replicate the same movement over and over again having always the same exact results. In a professional environment, it comes natural, as we want to always be at the top of our game in serving the guests. But that is not what most of the people love about food. Having in front of me a perfect plate that looks dead it's not filling me with desire. Cooking mustn't become a factory exercise. Cooking and eating can be art, and it is indeed an art of imperfection. It's a craft of knowledge, passion, and feelings. In every dish, a Chef should put his past, present and future. Me as a guest I want to eat and understand what is the story of this meal, I want to have memories from my past passing by and flashing me like thunders in a hot summer. The imperfections are what make it real, what will make it unforgettable. A slightly runny ice cream with strawberries will make for a much more interesting and playful meal. It will create memories that otherwise would just be linked with good food... But who remembers those ones?...

We eat with eyes too, and as a woman, a course mustn't be perfect. 

Perfection is overrated. 

Suicide

It is with a sad post that I'm coming back to write in my personal space of extraordinary ineptitude towards life. A couple of weeks ago I got shot by the news that my hero as a teenager committed suicide: Chef Anthony Bourdain. I just can't think about a person that influenced more my life as a human, as a chef and, at the end of the day, as a food lover. I looked at him like the example to follow and as the person that never let his personal history (that if you read any of his books you would know about) come in between himself and the love for food and life.

Or at least that's what I used to think.

He has given up to all his monsters hidden in the closet. He managed to change many lives, but he couldn't do the same for himself. And that's what hurt me the most.

We will never know what was inside his head to think that this earth was not his place anymore, but most of the times we wouldn't understand anyway cause the choice is not rational. It's not based on any concept that regulates our lives. It's something deeper that only who came close to can really understand.

And I did.

The first time I thought about suicide was back in high school when I wrongly thought that the world hated me in any case and that all the love I was receiving from my friends was simple compassion towards an insecure and useless teenager. At that time though I was too weak and the thought went away for a quite long time. It came back stronger at the beginning of my university career, but even there it was more of a desperate attempt at getting some sort of attention. But then the real shit happened and to be honest this is the first time I found the strength to even write or talk about what happened. It was May of 2 years ago and my at the time girlfriend decided that I wasn't enough for her anymore. I was all of a sudden lost, alone and with my university graduation pending a couple of months in front of me. I cried, and cried and cried until I didn't have a single spare tear. Then the desperation stopped and all I felt was emptiness. Going out and talking to my friends were just two of the different masks I was wearing during the day but that fire that once was burning so strong inside of me was getting weaker and weaker. I didn't want other people to think I was going through all of that and I started isolating and closing the armor around myself, maybe trying to save that small flame from the strong wind that the outside world had become to me. 

And the day came.

Imagine this: you, the bridge, some light rain during a summer warm night, no one close enough to talk you out of the situation, listening to your favorite music cause fuck going away with a shitty soundtrack. I'm sitting there for maybe an hour, on the edge between life and death, and the only thing I could think about was if I had to suffer more or if that solution would have been painless. As I'm thinking and listening to Hurt by Johnny Cash I remember looking up to the sky and feeling every raindrop gently touching my face, as giving me the last caresse from this world that at the end of the day I thought I didn't deserve. I stand up and I tell myself that that was the right thing to do, that people probably will never understand but that it will be their problem after all. 

At that moment I was literally a couple centimeters away to the end of my worries. But that's where I was wrong. Suddenly the song ends and here I am, with the noisiest silence I have ever heard in my life. My heart was running and both my legs and arms became heavy. Too heavy to keep on. My sight starts abandoning me too and I enter this tunnel vision where the only thing I can see is the darkness that surrounded me. It was happening. 

Bye papa, bye mama, bye all my friends that had to deal with me for so long, bye to all the people that believed in me, bye to my dreams, bye fun moments, bye late nights talking bullshit in front of a beer, bye my dearest snow that I would have liked to surf for one last time, bye all the good food that I haven't yet tried, bye Parma ham, bye all of the countries that I planned to visit. Bye.

Bye my loved one, the person I was ready to give my life for, the person that made me to not do a postgraduate course just to follow and stay beside for the rest of my life. Funny, ain't it, that the person you thought was your life has been the same to end it.

Bye.

I don't know how long that moment was: it could have been a couple of seconds as well as a couple of hours. Something was just missing, there was something wrong. a rock in the mechanism that didn't let me go. And so I came back, I headed home with nothing going on on my mind. I went to bed and I stared at the white ceiling. I was empty, I was confused and once again I confirmed to myself that that was and is not my destiny.

And here I am today, still keeping up and still wondering what kept me here that night.

Probably that thing is the only real difference between me and Chef Bourdain. Details that saved my life and didn't spare him.

In these days I see different people trying to justify what he did, cause we need a reason. A powerful gesture like that without a reason is frightening our columns, but the truth is that it just can't be explained. We can talk about it and we can try to help the people that are still alive and struggling every day, but we can't find reasons. That's way above our power.

I want to give the last bye to Anthony, for everything he represented to me.

He taught me how this world is truly beautiful and how in every corner of the globe there is some sort of hope for things to go better. If I'm still here telling my experience partially is because of him, cause that little sparkle that he lighted in my heart never stopped bring me somehow to the light instead of falling in the black hole.

I thank you and I wish you peace in your next adventure.

Rest in Peace, Chef