2
" The other day as I was stepping out of Star Grocery on Claremont Avenue with some pork ribs under my arm, the Berkeley sky cloudless, a smell of jasmine in the air, a car driving by with its window rolled down, trailing a sweet ache of the Allman Brothers' " Melissa," it struck me that in order to have reached only the midpoint of my life I will need to live to be 92. That's pretty old. If you live to be ninety-two, you've done well for yourself. I'd like to be optimistic, and I try to take care of my health, but none of my grandparents even made it past 76, three killed by cancer, one by Parkinson's disease. If I live no longer than any of them did, I have at most thirty years left, which puts me around sixty percent of the way through my time.I am comfortable with the idea of mortality, or at least I always have been, up until now. I never felt the need to believe in heaven or an afterlife. It has been decades since I stopped believing-a belief that was never more than fitful and self-serving to begin with-in the possibility of reincarnation of the soul. I'm not totally certain where I stand on the whole " soul" question. Though I certainly feel as if I possess one, I'm inclined to disbelieve in its existence. I can live with that contradiction, as with the knowledge that my time is finite, and growing shorter by the day. It's just that lately, for the first time, that shortening has become perceptible. I can feel each tiny skyward lurch of the balloon as another bag of sand goes over the side of my basket. "
3
" There are some who are still weak in faith, who ought to be instructed, and who would gladly believe as we do. But their ignorance prevents them...we must bear patiently with these people and not use our liberty; since it brings to peril or harm to body or soul...but if we use our liberty unnecessarily, and deliberately cause offense to our neighbor, we drive away the very one who in time would come to our faith. Thus St. Paul circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:3) because simple minded Jews had taken offense; he thought: what harm can it do, since they are offended because of ignorance? But when, in Antioch, they insisted that he out and must circumcise Titus (Gal. 2:3) Paul withstood them all and to spite them refused to have Titus circumcised... He did the same when St. Peter...it happened in this way: when Peter was with the Gentiles he ate pork and sausages with them, but when the Jews came in, he abstained from this food and did not eat as he did before. Then the Gentiles who had become Christians though: Alas! we, too, must be like the Jews, eat no pork, and live according to the law of Moses. But when Paul learned that they were acting to the injury of evangelical freedom, he reproved Peter publicly and read him an apostolic lecture, saying: " If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?" (Gal. 2:14). Thus we, too, should order our lives and use our liberty at the proper time, so that Christian liberty may suffer no injury, and no offense be given to our weak brothers and sisters who are still without the knowledge of this liberty. "
5
" England once there lived a bigAnd wonderfully clever pig.To everybody it was plainThat Piggy had a massive brain.He worked out sums inside his head,There was no book he hadn't read.He knew what made an airplane fly,He knew how engines worked and why.He knew all this, but in the endOne question drove him round the bend:He simply couldn't puzzle outWhat LIFE was really all about.What was the reason for his birth?Why was he placed upon this earth?His giant brain went round and round.Alas, no answer could be found.Till suddenly one wondrous night.All in a flash he saw the light.He jumped up like a ballet dancerAnd yelled, " By gum, I've got the answer!" " They want my bacon slice by slice" To sell at a tremendous price!" They want my tender juicy chops" To put in all the butcher's shops!" They want my pork to make a roast" And that's the part'll cost the most!" They want my sausages in strings!" They even want my chitterlings!" The butcher's shop! The carving knife!" That is the reason for my life!" Such thoughts as these are not designedTo give a pig great piece of mind.Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland,A pail of pigswill in his hand,And piggy with a mighty roar,Bashes the farmer to the floor…Now comes the rather grizzly bitSo let's not make too much of it,Except that you must understandThat Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,He ate him up from head to toe,Chewing the pieces nice and slow.It took an hour to reach the feet,Because there was so much to eat,And when he finished, Pig, of course,Felt absolutely no remorse.Slowly he scratched his brainy headAnd with a little smile he said," I had a fairly powerful hunch" That he might have me for his lunch." And so, because I feared the worst," I thought I'd better eat him first. "
9
" Then in June Linda got sick. Word went around town that Roger was looking real serious 'cause his wife was 'took ill bad'. So my mother cooked up a big casserole to take up there; they could eat off it for says, she said. 'The poor young couple, with her sick I guess they must have to make do with canned pork and beans. Take this on over there,' she told me.'She can't cook anyways,' I said. 'I told you that.''Nonsense. Every woman can cook, now go on.'I went on up there, carrying the heavy casserole. Even cold it smelled good and if it hand't been for Roger I would have sat down and eaten it on the ways. Waste of good food to take it to 'her', I thought; she'd probably preferred canned beans.I got up to the farm and found the door locked. That was strange, let me tell you. Around here nobody locks the door, even at night or when they're out. You just never know, a farmer or a kid like me might have to come in and use the phone in a hurry, or the bathroom, and everybody knows everybody anyway. But the door was locked. I put the casserole dish down on the front step and sat there on the steps awhile, to see if Roger or Linda came along.Nobody came and the June sun was hot. Roger doesn't have a brook up there, like we do, so I couldn't get wading. I looked around for a hose or something. I walked to the back of the house and decided to climb the apple tree there; that was something to do at least. Up in the apple tree I could see into the windows of the house; they were too high for me to see in from the ground. I was looking into the bedroom. There was Linda, sleeping. In the day! But she was supposed to be sick, so it was all right. Except that then I saw that she wasn't lying in that bed alone. There was another head there, on the pillow beside her. Roger has dark hair and this person didn't. This person was a man with blond hair. I didn't get a good look at his face. I was seeing the side of his head, then the head went over LInda's face and she was covered up by him. "
17
" Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.
To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.
Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It's healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold.
Oh, I'll accomodate them, I'll rummage around for something to feed them, for a 'vegetarian plate', if called on to do so. Fourteen dollars for a few slices of grilled eggplant and zucchini suits my food cost fine. "
― Anthony Bourdain
