The beast of absence

29 April 2013

Hunger is a human-altering phenomenon. What would drive otherwise moral people into filching bread if not extreme hunger? In what instance would people resort to cannibalism as was reported in real life stories from plane crash survivors? What but hunger proves the carnality of the cultured and sophisticated human being regardless of age? (Fine, the anorexic and the clinically impaired from sensing hunger are granted as special exceptions.)

Only when I was experiencing extreme hunger did I know what being impoverished meant. Objections from other nationalities would not be much for my generalization that abundance of food has, for ages, been an indicator of wealth.  The control on food, the type and the amounts of it that we consume, has become more and more a lucrative profession and business for many. It is food that makes me want to live amidst my sullen petulant state. Before, I said I lived waiting for death, longing for it actually with the dawning of a new day. The tug from the need for nourishment told me, “Hey, don’t disregard me. I’m pesky and you have to drive me away every time I come back.” I had another to think about other than waiting for death, finding something to feed on.

I was content with living my life, subsisting on small shop meals and spending, Php 18 per meal thrice a day, so that would be Php 54. Or, on weekends, consuming three packs of instant noodles for every single cup serving of rice was all well and good. With Sam around, it just wouldn’t do. I knew I had to be rich. I have to earn more money instead of using my brain’s juices on mulling over and over on how I could make a single output, the only one that’s expected of me from work, right. When I was so in the sad zone, I was irrational and was blinded from practicality; thinking nothing of saving and investing but spending on whims and fancies, desperately buying what I thought was happiness. Now, when I feel that churning and get to hear the growling of that empty covetous monster that hunger is, it was a message. I really have to get rich. Hunger is a motivator that fuels me to dream. Hunger is a force that develops in me a craving. I am scared. Is this not greed? Is this not an itty-bitty symptom of avarice? I am more afraid of sin, or at least my hazy perceptions of them.

Our teacher in Mito and Alamat, Ms. Odal-Devora, implanted somehow in my consciousness, through the stories she obliged us to read, how the requirement of sustenance from food was bondage. In one of the folk stories which I cannot recall the title or the main character, the male protagonist, out of an illogical reason or some unbelievable deus ex machina, became a god and in the process was disemboweled. He became free and god-like in the sense that he did not need food to live. He could eat if he wanted to but food was not vital for his existence.

I fear hunger more than death. Death to me is a shadow, something that comes after you or before you, intangible but familiar. Hunger proves itself different. It is persistent and it cannot be silenced until you give in to its demands.

 It is alright for me to be hungry as long as I would have the means to satiate the demand. The scenario that your dwindling reserves of nourishment are not enough to fuel your brain for an inspired idea to obtain food or rouse some hormones to procure provision is what I never want to have to go through in a consistent basis again.