Sucking the Marrow out of Life: An Unapologetically Carnivorous Manifesto on Food and Creation

Like the bone marrow of a perfectly roasted veal osso bucco, today congealed into a perfect, tender morsel of opportunity, flavor and experience.

All of this started this afternoon, when I found out that my own marrow recovered remarkably well from the first bit of rough chemo this round, and I knew I had the temporary immunity to go to a nice dinner.

This was convenient in timing as it comes two nights after Katie was a saint and stayed up all night to take care of me as I writhed in the pain and muscle convulsions brought on by steroid withdrawal (I couldn't even get out of bed to go to the bathroom and she patiently stayed up with me all night, taking care of me, then got up and went to work and a doctor's appointment of her own without complaint -- can you say an angel...)

It also fell on a day I reached a first last -- My first final dose of a chemo drug, doxorubicin, one I'm happy to cross off the list because it causes heart damage and some nasty GI Tract issues (Never again will I watch the red poison ooze into my vein; Goodbye and Good Riddance!!!).

And, finally, it falls a couple of weeks before Katie and I will have been dating for seven years and I know that when the date roles around I will lack the immunity to take her out, so I wanted to "Carpe the F-ing Diem" and take advantage of the opportunity.

So in short, I was in the mood to treat her to a really nice dinner and spend a couple of hours in her company around insanely decadent foods.

This was the context of my thoughts as I smeared the roasted bone marrow of a perfectly braised Veal Osso Bucco on bread as Katie and I enjoyed a long, slow, death-row quality meal at Otto's, a warm, inviting restaurant on the West Side of Madison on this cold, rainy Autumn evening.

Is it sacrilegious to eat bone marrow when your fighting a cancer of the bone marrow? I really don't think so.

I would argue that if anything the greatest value in the struggle of cancer is in the recognition that we are to strive to enjoy every morsel that the earth has so bountifully offered, that we are to suck the proverbial marrow out of life every moment we are given the chance.

That the greatest tragedy in life lies not in misfortune but in lost opportunity. That to injure oneself while trying a new flavor, to see what lies below an unturned leaf, to climb down a precipice and see a waterfall few others have laid eyes on, to dive in and swim around the next bend of a mountain icy stream is the context within which we should strive to live life; that to mar oneself in the pursuit of experience and adventure, is inexpressibly better than the risk that that a life wasted by the timidity of ensuring the safe passage of time brings.

Life is nothing if not an opportunity to find beauty, poetry, flavor and happiness in a forward-moving and entirely unexpected adventure into the unknown.

I have troubles believing that any creator that put so such a wonderful diversity and richness of flavors, colors, landscapes, experiences and contrasts on this planet would want us to waste it by forgoing decadence and enjoyment. Too me the greatest sin would be to be given the gifts endowed by life, the diverse palate that the creator has laid before us, and to let it pass by unexplored and inexperienced. Why would a creator give us such a wonderful world with so many brilliant things and then want us to deprive ourselves of them? I have never understood puritanism, and never will.

Simply stated I feel that the basest of pleasures -- Food, Love, Sex, Fermentation, Camaraderie and Travel -- are the greatest gifts any God above gave us, and that the greatest sin would be to die ignorant of the wonders of our planet, our universe, and our lives.

One might think that having a cancer of the bone marrow -- that having my own bone marrow systematically drilled into and sucked out through a needle six times now -- might dampen my appetite for eating it.

Quite the opposite, I found myself thinking that it would be such a waste to allow such a morsel to go to waste and that I only wish that my eventual death -- whenever that might be -- could produce something as wondrous as the flavor, texture, comfort and poetry that the calf's death had brought in the form of the roasted marrow tonight.

Tonight I sign off with the thought that the greatest worship of our creator is in the enjoyment of all he/she/it has given us.

Perhaps this philosophy makes me an existentialist, perhaps that's the influence of my grandfathers, or my parents. Perhaps it's Harrison and Hemingway and Camus. Perhaps its my time spent outdoors in introspection.

I like to think this philosophy is simply what makes me, who I am.

Tonight I am thankful for my life and for the time that has been given to me, for my loving family and kind friends, for the smiles of strangers, for sex and beef and scallops and creme brulee, for whiskey and for wine, for first snows and Fourth of July's, for forests and rivers and trout, for the company of good friends and nights filled with good cheer, for music and dancing, and for long naps taken in front of warm wood fires on cold winter days.

-Sam

At the risk of you all thinking I've lost my mind I've never hid the mind-expanding experiences associated with steroid withdrawal -- a euphemism for hallucinating. In this spirit and in a deeply abiding trust that you all won't have me committed I'll include as a post-script a poem inspired by last night's lack of cortico-steroid in my system:

Traveling to the Land of My Ancestors:

Last night between the hours of 4:00 and 5:00

My soul was wisped away to the land of

my ancestors.

I floated from this earth, and while

my body and brothers on this planet measured

a mere hour of time passing,

My soul spent months in the fields

as real as the flesh, blood, and bones

of those who came and left this known realm

before me.

Although I have never seen it with my physical eyes,

My mind’s eye explored this spirit world,

A land that I know that I have walked for millennia.

A land where I know the stories

and can trace every bend of the rivers

that flow with the blood of my great grandparents,

and those who came before them.

A land where the amber grains caress my skin

with the DNA that connect me to my first family

that came to this land, watching the life-giving herds

of Buffalo roam the endless expanse.

As I come back to my body lying in my bed,

I know that I am privileged to have been given this vision,

and to know that someday I will reunite

with both the family and friends I have known and lost

as well as with those that I have not yet met but know from blood

in this spirit land of my ancestors.