LILET AND BALATONG

I think sometimes I've become fastidious, finicky, even when it comes to food. I would be the last person to restrict good eating to fine dining. As long as I'm eating good, clean, cheap food in a clean, nice smelling place, I'm set. Sometimes, I can forgive the occasional funky odor if the food is worth it. The siopao in Ma Mon Luk, for instance, is worth the sticky floors and pungent air. (Tip: if you're worried about utensils being less than clean, douse them with alcohol, wipe, then air dry for just a few seconds. I'm not sure if it really works, but the psychological duping effect is A-rated bliss).

Like everyone else, though, I have set tastes. And although my gastronomic standards are relatively broader, I still have preconceived images of good eats in my mind. I must confess, eating at a poorly-funded sanctuary for victims of military atrocities was not my idea of gastronomic heaven.

I was wrong. Last thursday's merienda and yesterday's lunch at the said sanctuary deserve a moment in posterity through this humble blog. Thursday's merienda was a bowl of gooey sweet rice pudding with roasted mung beans. I was searching my memory for the name, asking my companions, but no one knew. They didn't seem to care, in fact. They just kept eating. Thank God for my professor's assistant who supplied the lost moniker: lilet balatong. Lilet Balatong! I hadn't eaten lilet balatong since I was a kid, I think. The lilet b. at the sanctuary wasn't all that great. But as I've said before, I like to eat memories, and I enjoyed the feeling of remembrance, of enjoying a bowl of warm lilet b. as a kid.

Yesterday's lunch also featured the versatile mung bean. Munggo is one of my all-time favorites. I can eat munggo every day. In fact, I just had munggo for lunch today. But yesterday's munggo was possibly the best munggo I've tasted. The beans were crushed into a smooth and silky stew with dried fish, ampalaya leaves, and chicharong hibe (dried and fried baby shrimps: infanticide never tasted better) adding layers of salty/bitter flavor.

But balatong, or any food for that matter, also only tastes as good as the company you keep while eating. And the people at the sanctuary made for some of the finest company I've been blessed to dine with. They weren't particularly articulate, and conversations weren't punctuated by middle-class, intelligentia wit. It was more the feeling that I was surrounded by good, decent people who, despite being villified and violated by those in power, and forced to leave their homes and family and go into hiding, are still able to smile and say, with conviction, that things will get better.

I guess mush can sometimes be good for the soul.

Excuse Me While I B.A.R.F.

Was praying with my family, ie my dad, 2 sisters, and our kasambahay Daya, last Saturday (Mama was out making money, which can be a form of prayer, I suppose, if you do it religiously and ritualistically. Ahem.). While it was not an unusual occurence for mi familia to pray together, it had been a long time since the last group thanksgiving-slash-supplication. We (and by we, I really mean my eldest sister and my dad) just felt like saying thank you to God because we've been feeling especially blessed the past few days. So in a fit of Protestant gratitude, we prayed.

When it was my turn to pray, I felt fake because I hadn't prayed in a long time. A long time. Possibly years. The kind of prayer that requires sincerity, heartfelt gratitude, and more importantly, the acknowledgement of God's control over one's life. I've become too William Ernest Henley, too "Master of My Fate", for that. Nevertheless, I prayed. It was sincere enough but I knew too that I was just regurgitating many of the words. And then... out of nowhere, the words came out of my mouth, "Lord, help each one of us carve our own paths."

That sounded so foreign to me, and a little bit jarring. Not because I've never said or thought about carving one's own path (in fact, that's all I think about) but because I had never ever prayed it. I was brought up to believe that a Christian could never be a Humanist and vice versa because to be humanist is to assert man's inferiority to no one (much less to someone who remains unseen).

And yet there I was praying what can only be called a humanist's prayer. And while I was jarred for a microsecond, I felt good afterwards. Imagine that. One can be a Humanist Christian, I suppose, or a religious academic, one who prays in a scholarly (seemingly secular) manner. Sometimes, I wonder at my Westernized academic orientation with its inordinate fondness for creating artificial dichotomies. As if we don't live our lives in a fairly integrated (and unconscious) manner. (Don't you just love the mind? It's a lean, mean, rationalizing machine. Hehe.)

What does prayer have to do with FOOD? Uh... it's food for the soul?

What are the chances?

I was googling Viggo Mortensen. Heh. I was googling Viggo Mortensen. That sounds funny. Pervy and funny. Actually, I was googling a poem that he wrote. So I typed the words "Communion by Viggo Mortensen" on google.com.

One of the links read "From federation to Communion: The History of the Lutheran World Federation." It was a link to an Amazon page selling a theology book. By Aragorn! How dorky hot is that?! Not only does the guy write wonderful poetry ("You ordered me off my knees. Wasn't to beg that I knelt: only to see you once from below." Say it with me. Aww.), steal scenes in movies, play the best Lucifer ever!, take brilliant photos, and take off his clothes in his movies, he also writes about God and organized religion?! What in heaven's name?!

Say it with me. AWW.

A scene flashed before my eyes. Me and Viggo. Excuse me, I mean, Viggo and I. The two of us, loungingly artfully artlessly in a cozy study. Books, papers, pens, portraits, art and literature all around us. A glass of wine in his right hand. And his left stroking my hair. We talk about art, religion, and science as we feed each other melon balls wrapped in prosciutto. We talk randomly. Yet we make sense.

He says things like, "Sola scriptura. Scripture alone. But whose scripture?"

I put forth my theory of the biopsychosocioeconomic dimensions of the construct we call Love. To which, my God, he is able to contribute insights from evolutionary science. Insights that fit nicely within his Lutheran framework!

We reach our own integration of art, science, and religion, a syncresis of seemingly contradictory ways of knowing and being...

End scene.

I clicked on comments to see if Viggo's book is any good and apparently, it is a lucid treatise on the Lutheran World Federation. Apparently too, some Viggo fans bought the book, thinking much the same as me, that they were buying a book on Lutheranism that Aragorn wrote.

Except it wasn't Viggo Mortensen who wrote it. Well, it was Viggo Mortensen, but another Viggo Mortensen. The Viggo Mortensen who wrote that theology book is not Viggo Mortensen, actor/poet/artist/hottie. It's Viggo Mortensen, theologian and religious historian, who may or may not be a hottie. We don't know.

End scene indeed. End fantasy.

Oh well. Viggo Mortensen, actor/poet/artist/hottie, still is pretty cool. I never would have thought there'd be 2 Viggo Mortensens, though. It's not like Viggo's a common name.

What does Viggo Mortensen, or 2 Viggo Mortensens, have to do with food? Nothing much. Except that a) they're both Danish (like the pastry) and b) I could eat Viggo Mortensen, actor/poet/artist/hottie, with a spoon. Yum!