Standing Still In The Storm

Good evening, friends and neighbors.

When I was 13, my family would spend the evenings watching the original Iron Chef on TV. I was mesmerized watching the cooks and chefs fling food, whip, and wheel around each other- a ballet of orchestrated chaos that I’d learn to call “the dance” 15 years later.

In the center, like a stationary whirlwind, would sometimes stand my favorite Iron Chef- Masaharu Morimoto. Barely looking up, but barking instructions in Japanese to his cooks- and simply KNOWING they would be done. He called the dance, and controlled the storm from its eye.
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“I’m not a fighter, but in my mind I’m fighting every day. ‘What’s new? What am I doing?’ I’m fighting myself. My soul is samurai. My roots aren’t samurai, but my soul is.”

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Flashbacks and Cookies

Good morning, friends and neighbors!

Fall, 1994. I’m eight years old, and my mother takes me grocery shopping.

We live in Margate, a small town in Southern New Jersey, about two miles down the beach from the lights and excitement of Atlantic City. It’s September, and Margate feels like a ghost town. The tourists who mob the streets all summer to enjoy the beach, or as a staging point to hit America’s Favorite Playground (as Atlantic City’s slogan still proudly proclaimed before it was “Always Turned On,” and then the even kinkiest suggestion of “Do AC.”)
It’s a locals-only town again. The beaches are empty and windy- just the way I would love them twelve years later.

Right now, I’m 8 years old and fussy, and my mom is dragging me through Casel’s.

 

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