obsessions

I am trying to pry myself away from the news stories about New Orleans. How depressing to think that everything we saw only a month ago is now under water, and how fucked up it is that the only plan New Orleans had was to "get in your cars and leave" when 100,000 residents don't have cars. Ugh.

I finished two books this week - Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain and Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. You wouldn't think these books had anything in common, but they do. Both are memoirs of obsessive passions.

I've been slightly obsessed with Bourdain and his travel shows. He does everything I want to do - travel, write, eat, cook for a living. His writing style is engaging, show-offish, and compassionate. I like his rough humor, his obsession with gangster and samurai movies, and he finally got me to understand why some people are willing to pay a month's rent for a meal cooked by Thomas Keller. It also made me understand the chefs are like engineers - they are food geeks, with the same single-mindedness, the same passion, and the same inability to deal with normal people except with anal sex jokes.

Reading Lolita in Tehran is heartbreaking, not least for the oppressive atmosphere, but also because all the talk about revolution reminds me of the Cultural Revolution in China. It's so depressing. The Chinese also prosecuted their teachers for "insubordination", for "corrupting the youth", and also got the revolution they asked for, without realizing exactly what "revolution" entailed.

I had this all eloquently written in my head, but it's late, and I really need to sleep. I guess what these books reinforced for me was the value of the imagination, and my frustration that most people seem to waste it here.

All right, sleep.