Food for Thought

I find that several of the most lucid, lingering pieces of contemporary literature and film have some form of food attached to them. Take Eat Pray Love. Like Water for Chocolate. Kitchen. All three feature life and the human experience as a main dish to a major selling point of each book, which is food. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. The worst things in this world are being alone, and being hungry. Perhaps it’s because of the need to feed ourselves that we’re so intoxicated over the idea of eating well. Or maybe I only think this way because I love to eat?

True to my resolution to reach out to people more, I haphazardly hailed an old acquaintance that I had bumped into at a local UP haunt today. I go to Mashitta often because it serves interesting food, and she said she was craving for Ramyun, that’s why she was there. About two years older than me, four months into her present job, she might have found me imprudent for compelling her to share my table. But I was determined to become more extroverted, and she happened to be the first friend I had shared a 1 meter radius with, the day after I had decided on that.

We talked about Nickolodeon’s Avatar, her friends from college, her Makati job, and the pretty girl in the booth next to ours. I had always known, through the short conversations we had when she was still in our org, that we shared the same interests, the same dislikes. We both don’t understand why our peers like 500 Days of Summer and One More Chance so much. We both think Zuko’s great. We both watched Sherlock Holmes, and found Season1’s ending irritating. But tonight, though it had been undeniably fun, I felt I had not really gotten to know her better. Why is it that I keep talking about what I think, when I only want to get to know someone more?

She said someone from her office has offered to share copies of Game of Thrones. I told her it was a heavy series, and she said yes, she saw the first two episodes on HBO last summer. I’m not sure if we’ll ever get past the point in our relationship where we can only talk about entertainment and mutual friends. But if that will ever happen, it would be nice. It might have been great, watching Inception for the first time with her somewhere along the line.

Dull Sparkles

Today I lost an earring. Half of the pair my parents had given me on my eighteenth birthday, it had been almost as crisp as a diamond, and rimmed with a band of gold. I had been on my way to work as per usual, seated on the edge of the front seat just the way I enjoyed it, when I accidentally brushed my hand against my ear. I think I even felt the hook unclasp. Minutes of twisting and searching later, however, I had to conclude that it had fallen onto the road. It can’t have fallen into the hole on my blouse, or slipped through the crack on the seat I was on. I guess I’m just not very good at holding precious things for long. I always, always end up losing things that matter to me, but strangely this particular loss stung more than most.

A couple of nights ago, I had thought it had gone missing as well. I had scoured the whole boarding house, retracing my steps on the year-stained stairs in the middle of a school night, when I finally found it hiding in the crook of my bra. How it had gotten there I have no idea, and I don’t even understand how I never managed to feel it pricking my skin. But I remember, quite distinctly, the feeling that had swallowed me, inexplicably, when I thought I’d have to tell my mother I had lost her gift. Had I found the earring pretty, or did I feel guilty that I had not cared for such a treasured present properly enough to have deserved wearing it? It was as if I had broken up with a boyfriend, as though I had witnessed a cat die, and the pain, the sting, or whatever that taste of heartbreak had been was real enough to unsettle me. I don’t usually pine over things I’ve lost because I know I’ll be able to buy them again. Twenty years on and I am still unacquainted with loss. It confuses me.

The impression rubbed deeper this afternoon, the last for this year’s September. I had been sneaking into Facebook during work, reading something wonderful an old friend had written, when I realized how so much, too much had changed. I never even sensed the shifting, and that was what bothered me above all. He had become a better person, just as most of the people I keep close to me now have, after going through the rituals of love, loss, and confusion all within five short years. Walking among the crowds of Makati, ditching the office early on a Friday, I felt strangely hollow. I felt I had been deprived of so much because I had been saved from pain. And it took me five years to realize it. Five years to realize that too many days had gone by without me noticing, and a part of me had stopped by without bothering to say hello. I felt like I had been denied from meeting an old friend I had wanted to see for so long.

And when I thought about it really, or maybe Banana Yoshimoto had more lingering imprints in me than I dare acknowledge, the root of my life being seemingly unlived is my inability to connect with people. Because people, though they amuse me and interest me the same way fiction and politics do, are complicated to understand. And because I know I’ll never understand them, and I know they’ll never try to understand me, I don’t bother. I guess that’s what the problem is – my lack of a desire to socialize. I have never really needed people, and I know I never will. That’s precisely why I want to need someone, anyone, though the connection may be fleeting and short. I want to know I have truly lived, even if the only way is to live through the lives of others. Or to have at least a peek of the lives of others, glimpsed through the cracks on people’s walls, hammered and hewn by years.
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Today I lost an earring. And I woke up from a five-year dream.