By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

AFTER a very long day of errands, my sister Emma and I had inihaw na tuna panga (grilled tuna jaw) at Davao Tuna Grill. Here was a simple dish served with soup, pickled cucumber and tomatoes, and a dipping sauce made from the mixture of vinegar and soy sauce sprinkled with thin slices of red siling labuyo (wild chili), a tiny chili pepper cultivar that may have been developed after the widespread transfer of plants during the Manila Galleon Trade (1565-1815).

Siling labuyo may have developed after the period known as the Columbian Exchange, named after Christopher Columbus after his earlier voyage (1492), to further European colonization and global trade. During this period, “plants, animals, precious metals, commodities, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas “ were exchanged, intentionally and accidentally. It is acknowledged as the smallest chili, and was once listed as the hottest chili by the Guinness Book of World Records. That is what internet says. However, it is only found in the Philippines and did not develop elsewhere, so its existence may be indigenous, and could have antedated the historic exchange.

To neutralize the taste of the chili in the sauce and the aftertaste of fish in or mouths, we decided to take brewed coffee and apple pie at McDonald’s fronting the huge, circular space at Landmark, where people, especially children converge. Observing the crowd, my sister remarked:

“There are fewer people in the malls these days, I could see less than fifty on the ground, all of them, inevitably, going to die.”

“Yes, death is a wild card, it comes with or without warning. In South Korea, for example, at least 151 persons met their deaths in a crowd surge during a Halloween festival in Seoul. Korea seems to orbit on a death belt this last quarter of 2022. At least, the 173 passengers on board Korean Air Lines (KE631) were lucky to cheat death caused by a damaged aircraft.”

“The pandemic also claimed so many lives, as natural calamities also claimed lives. So fast, in the blink of an eye.”

A person, with whom you have just spoken to, may be gone so quickly, by death or by an affliction similar to it, while still alive. Indeed, so many things can happen so quickly before one can chew food, or taste the hotness of chili, or drown its aftertaste, with a brew. Is this it? A question posed by dear friend Mildred Manzano Yamzon, during her entire life, whose answer may have drifted away as she battled the sickness of forgetting, up to her death. The reality is, we all die, put succinctly into the song “Lahat Tayo” (All of Us) by composer Danny Javier of the APO Hiking Society, before he passed away. There is a very thin line between life and death, sanity and madness, confusion and clarity. All these can happen, in an instant. Life is pungent, as it is sweet.

 

In between thin lines

in the border between

sanity and madness

is the possibility

to distill

to draw

meanings from the knots

in the thread

sections of the weave

that cohabit with the senses

the spiritual, the mundane

a clarity born

from the storms in the brain

from the stirring in the loins

becoming indivisible

One

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