Sublime

He walked past strangers and cataloged their pain.

Some of the best cuisine in the world — whole roasted fish, Tuscan-style, for instance — is a matter of three or four ingredients. Just make sure they're good ingredients, fresh ingredients, and then garnish them. How hard is that?

I hadn’t, I realized, returned to France, to this beach, my old town, for the oysters. It wasn’t the fish soup, or the saucisson, or the pain raisin. It wasn’t to see a house in which strangers now lived, or to climb a dune, or to find a perfect meal. I’d come to find my father. And he wasn’t there.

chicanery.

explorers invariably give their names to the places that haunt or kill them.

Suggested Reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain In the Drink by Kate Christensen Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats by John Keats Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller Down and Out

I went for the money. The first chef’s job that came along I grabbed. And the one after that and the one after that. Used to a certain quality of life – as divorcees like to call it, living in the style to which I’d grown accustomed – I was unwilling to take a step back and maybe learn a thing or two.

Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life—and travel—leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks—on your body or on your heart—are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.