last night a sandwich saved my life

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Now, where, exactly, they go, I have no idea. So after said tough champions-to-be leave, off on some epic mission to tame the wild chaos into fresh cut grass, the weak of heart, the hurt and the thin-skinned, the choked up and of trembling lip have but one choice. One option. Their only option.

It was right after le deluge at work - the entire department of puppets closing down a disappearing act while the hacking coughs of private equity cigar chomping still audible in echoes from above. The pelting rain seemed to have an endless source. It was freezing rain. A hard rain. I dropped my youngest at Pre K and was in the car, double parked, questioning the entire, endless universe of insecurity that soon would be rushing from my every pore. So I drove. 4th Avenue, Brooklyn. What to do. Think. Come up with something. Come on. Ah, I know, I'll go upstate. I'll get upstate and walk in the woods, figure it out from there, like I've done before. It doesn't matter that it's raining. It's still autumn. A walk in the rain. Poetic. It will be filled with meaning. Filled with - what is with this godDAMN traffic!? The car, jammed within thousands of tons of steel and pavement and glass was going nowhere. I sat there and saw the Fall turn into a bone damp Winter in just a few seconds. It had turned on me. I was about to be lost at sea. The traffic was ruining my life.

Ruining. My. Life.

Yet when I pictured a tired and confused man walking in circles in a barren forest being pounded by sharp sheets of rain with a mere hoodless windbreaker as his only source of protection, it looked even worse. It looked painful and stupid. I looked for parking. It was at this point when my mind stopped working on its own and a sense of the divine drove me forward. To the Q train. No book. No magazine. Staring at my feet, my hands in my lap. Can't meet eyes with others. Get out. Go.

Wait, why did I get out at Canal Street? Why? Walk. just walk, man, walk. There is no rain. There is only movement, forward. Hudson street. Why? Keep going. Where is it? Where am I going? My kids. My wife. My career. Me. My psyche? My psyche is wounded and the wound could be very, very serious. Walk further. Go. Wait. There.

There it is.

There was my destination, concocted within the deepest subterranean room in my soul. I had found my place. My Nazareth. The Corner Bistro.



And it is still the best burger in the city. Hands. Down. To hell with the new. Damn the cliche. It was perfect. Hear me on this one: it is not bad to comfort yourself with food. It is not sad. It is not pathetic. Not at all. On the contrary, to comfort oneself with food is beautiful. And to comfort oneself with a cheeseburger is, truly, a reach into the sublime.