From the desk of:
Scott Christopher Aiken, who is presently located in Marin County, SF Bay Area, Nor Cal, USA, Earth, BUT only 523.26 miles from the CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, a.k.a. The Big Kitchen, door-to-door, according to a popular online MAP application. That is SUPER-convenient for me, as Lord knows, I’ve been known to journey to the place!
I call myself Judy’s cousin, but that relation is, technically, brought about by marriage. Our “cousin-kinship” is rendered by virtue of Judy’s former marriage to a gentleman whose maternal uncle (my stepfather) was formerly married to my mother, a detail which should help explain the fudge room sufficient to allow for Judy and I to be cousins when she is merely turning 29 and I have already reached 40 this last Friday, June 12th, 2009! *Wink-wink Having said that, it should also follow well enough that as a jobless young man in 1989 (as well as a Sonoma State University - Music Major Drop-Out, although equipped with some cooking experience albeit) I was generously accommodated by The Beauty herself, as a Big Kitchen employee, for nearly a year. I turned 21 @ The Big Kitchen, during that year of employment, so, my BK story basically revolves around my GROWING UP!
When Judy e-mailed me the information the other day about this virtual SCRAPBOOK, and invited me to join the BK mailing list, of course I was eager to accept. As I sit and craft my note to you now, I honor the opportunity to share my Big Kitchen story almost as manna (defined as “divinely provided sustenance” ) because I came to find myself a bit snarled in a wilderness of sorts just mere moons subsequent to my bidding adieu, July 1990, to the adventure I’d had while a “cook” at The Big Kitchen. With my radio “broken,” and scant much, at points, beyond inborn grit to light my way, I have wended along within a veritable “psychiatric” wilderness which has been just treacherous and expansive enough, enchanted though it may always remain, that such divinely provided sustenance is precious to he who has found need to tighten his belt against hunger of the heart, so to speak, while pursuing liberty from delusion of the mind. My first “5150” arrest occurred on October 21, 1990.
If you did not realize it, let me explain that a “Fifty-one-fifty” is a shortcut term utilized by all law enforcement in California originating from California Code: California Welfare and Institutions Code: Section 5150-5157, the initial section of which designates that any individual who is believed to satisfy one or more of three specific criteria be arrested and held for mandatory psychiatric observation for 72-hours. The three criteria which regulate that you be hand-cuffed and transported to an evaluation facility designated by the County and approved by the State Department of Mental Health, if you meet one or more of them, are, that you be: 1) a danger to others, 2) a danger to yourself, and/or 3) gravely disabled (which means that you're deemed unfit to take care of yourself properly, re: food, clothing, shelter.) Subsequently, in my case, and apparently quite frequently, if the psychiatric evaluation “technicians” (psych-techs) find that the individual can probably USE it, they can “certify” involuntary detention for up to 14-days, which is known as a “Fifty-two-fifty,” (5250), to allow for intensive treatment of the mental disorder.
[TO BE CONTINUED...]
June 19, 2009
One week since the last entry having passed, I feel I cannot live up to completing what I've introduced, with any linearity and congruency in tone. Suffice it to say, during that year of employment at the BK, and being at that age at which I was, so poised to fall in love, it should follow that I fell head-over-heels *ga-gah! in an unrequited love, to a fellow cook, a female cutie, and grieved sorrowfully for a life-changing-duration, subsequent to her relayed expression of lacking interest in maintaining contact with me, upon her departure from her BK post. I eventually found some peace, although the pitch of my feelings diminished at an almost imperceptible rate. The relief came to my wounded heart more slowly than Sun descending into the Pacific at twilight. I'd like to think I'm FINALLY FINISHED with that meaningful, misguided sadness, and I am presently on a major "TOTAL" upswing in my life, preparing to return to school in the Fall, locally, to complete college, after 6 successful years employed as an in-home-care-provider, and 3 years, 4 months drug-free. All my love goes out to the crew of the Big Kitchen, circa 1989-90, and all the BK family around the world, for eternity. I left my heart at the Big Kitchen, where it was "love at first bite," and spiritually, invisibly, I don flowers in my hair, which I am "sure to wear," if I journey back to the CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE CAFE, and I might surprise you, sooner than you think! Please find below one of a few poems I composed about the flirtatious French female aforementioned, who was, if the truth be told, NOT INTERESTED in pairing with me, or males in general, as a matter of fact, although that knowledge was no deterrent to MY attachment at the time. Thanks, I will always remember you. Love, Scotty
A version of this entry was posted to:
http://bigkitchen.posterous.com/
