Chicken feet for the Soul

WE marveled at the high-tech, high-wire spectacle at the Bird’s Nest last week, but for yours truly nothing still beats the Olympic opening ceremony of the 1992 Games in

Barcelona

, where an archer shot a flaming arrow into the night sky to light up the towering cauldron.  So low-tech (actually no-tech at all), the whole act relied solely on sheer marksmanship yet makes you wonder why nobody had ever thought of doing it that way before. It also had an element of real danger which no mechanical contraption or computer program could override: what if the archer missed? A low, wayward shot would have impaled – and instantly barbecued – some unlucky hombre in the bleachers.  Either that, or the arrow would have gone over the stadium, probably torching somebody’s car in the parking lot.

My memory of watching Olympic inaugurals on TV could only go as far back as the 1984

Los Angeles

games. (Only much later, thanks to YouTube, did I get to see the 1980 Moscow ceremonies, which mainly involved thousands of cardboard-flipping Soviets.)  Expectedly, the LA cauldron lighting had some

Hollywood

thrown in: The flame first traveled a route tracing the Five Rings of the Olympic logo before igniting the cauldron. The timing, however, significantly diminished the intended ‘’wow’’ effect; they did it while it was still daytime, hence the flame was only faintly visible in the afternoon light.

The 1988

Seoul

opener was also a daytime affair and involved three torch bearers simultaneously elevated to the top of the cauldron tower. Accounts later told of several doves — which were released earlier in the ceremony but decided to hang around and found a good perch on the edges of the cauldron – being roasted on the spot by the sudden burst of flame.

As to the 1996 Games in

Atlanta

, the only memorable scene for me was that of Muhammad Ali as he took hold of the torch, his hand and body shaking because of Parkinson’s. At the 2000 Games,

Sydney

’s cauldron was initially concealed in a pool of water, and once set ablaze it slowly rose into final position atop a cascading waterfall. Things even got simpler in Athens 2004: a giant torch was made to bend over to draw the flame from the final runner, before slowly returning to upright position.

And then last ‘8-8-08,’ the Beijing Games tried to top them all with video wall technology rendered in jaw-dropping scale and suspension-cable acrobatics (a staple of kung fu movies) done in graceful slow motion.

But for the coolest, most elegant cauldron lighting ever, my vote would still go to the unerring archer of

Barcelona

.

Which finally brings us to the day’s obvious question: If we Pinoys are to host the Olympics someday, how are we going to light things up at opening night?

Here are some early suggestions:

- For maximum thrill and dramatic effect, shoot the flaming arrow from the bow of a Sulpicio Lines ship – seconds before the vessel sinks and disappears completely in the dark waters of

Manila

Bay

.  The identity of the archer, of course, is to remain a mystery since he’s not on the ship’s manifest.

- Another second-hand Chinese import wouldn’t hurt, anyway, so why not just buy the same cauldron used in

Beijing

? With the right broker and a few rounds of golf, maybe we could even secure soft loans and afford the used cauldron plus the flame, too.

- For good measure, give the torch bearer his (or her) ‘’cut’’ from the cauldron deal to make sure he would finish the job. If he turns it down and threatens to blow the whistle, initiate a smear job by, say, leaking to the press his secret, smelly case of athlete’s foot. If a replacement is in order, just take a pick among old, tested allies from the long roster of has-been torch bearers.

- Should the torch bearer still prove unreliable down the stretch, the President can always make an urgent phone call to somebody manning a ‘’Fire On / Fire Off’’ switch wired to the cauldron from an undisclosed location.

- But then, we can always aspire for a clean, graft-free lighting ceremony. Just set off a piece of watusi in the middle of the stadium, and with enough street rallies and pastoral letters to boost our collective will, hope that this watusi would somehow find its way and jump right into the cauldron.

The latest sea tragedy, or our daily coverage of its chilling aftermath, reminded yours truly of an out-of-town assignment in February 2006. For about a week our team – myself and two photographers — stayed in St. Bernard, Southern Leyte, at a house offered by the first man we met on the street as we asked around for lodgings. Such were the kindness of strangers in that part of town, at that particular time.

We got there a day after the neighboring hillside village of Barangay Guinsaugon, all six hectares of it, disappeared in an instant. Survivors remembered first feeling an earthquake, a crack on the ground, an explosion sending tons of loose earth down the slopes. As in all calamities, the cruelty was indiscriminate. An entire school was entombed while classes were underway, and with it some 200 children. A man on a bike, fortunately heading out on some errand, froze on the spot as he turned and saw his neighborhood for the last time before it all became rock and mud.

Still, in the next four days, rescuers with their sophisticated sensors reported hearing sounds of ‘’scratching’’ and ‘’knocking’’ coming from beneath. Late-night press briefings at the town hall offered hopes of a miracle and made the newspapers in Manila wait. On the fifth day the sounds were no more.

But then, there were things reported, remembered, and described for the benefit of those like us who merely parachuted into the scene. And then there were things I actually saw or heard: body bags and bulldozers, body bags on bulldozers; US relief choppers thundering in the sky at 3 a.m.; rescuers ultimately outnumbering the missing; cramped evacuation centers and the smell of canned sardines that won’t go away.

And then there were things I saw or heard but which never saw print: details that probably got buried deep in my notes, overlooked in the margins, or ‘’overtaken’’ by the next bulletin, the next quote, the next imagery. I once reported how a barangay multipurpose hall served as a makeshift morgue for bodies retrieved from the landslide. That evening, seemingly untouched for hours, about four or five of them lay covered in sheets on top of tables, while on one side of the dimly-lit room stood a stack of empty coffins. To this day, more than two years later, there remains something in my head from what I saw that night which, for some reason, never made it to my copy: Up there, hanging from the ceiling, catching the faint flicker of candlelight that illuminated and sanctified the dead below, was a disco mirror ball, probably last used during a Valentine or Christmas party.

Finally returning home on a weekday afternoon and with time to spare, there was a moment’s impulse to shake off all that and restore everything with a leisurely trip to the mall: perhaps score a new shirt or CD, or just slow things down browsing at Powerbooks. But no, it took about two days before I listened again to rock music or opened a book. Until then the hours just stretched in between snatches of small talk, quiet meals, and lingering thoughts of regional Math champions forever trapped in the rubble, a ‘’text’’ message for help sent from maybe 10 or 30 feet underground, and a motionless sphere of a thousand mirrors, barely aglow.

Yours truly once wrote in college (in a short story, I think) that having vivid dreams in your sleep can actually be planned. One way is to have a light dinner, so that technically you begin to ‘’starve’’ while still asleep, for dreams tend to occur when the digestive system is no longer busy.

Which brings me to today’s real topic: Dogs.

This is because I recently had a dream about a pet dog long departed. I can put her real name here, but for fear of slighting a former classmate who may be just a ‘’text’’ away from retaliating with blackmail, let’s just call her ‘’Tecla.’’

Tecla had a sister named ‘’Tutti,’’ the neighbor’s dog. In their beloved time, Tutti and Tecla offered a study in contrast: The former was a natural-born guardsman, showing no pity and expecting none, while the latter was a charmer, part of the household’s welcome party. Tutti sported a dark brown coat that had known no human touch but that of her master; while Tecla was almost beige, and when she would lift a friendly paw for attention you notice her fur sharply turning white at the feet. Compared to Tutti snarling in her stark, sentry’s uniform, Tecla skipped and sashayed like a papaya-bleached belle in low-cut gym socks.

Our backyard is, by now, an unmarked graveyard for long gone pets. And for some reason Tecla leaped back from the buried years of my memory circa 1980s and appeared, tail wagging, in that strangest of dreams.

Was she trying to tell me something? Have we just disturbed her bones? Do dogs have souls?

The last question I managed to answer satisfactorily when asked in class by a Philo 101 professor in UST. The absolute crap I said back then now escapes me, but years later my wife and I arrived at a much simpler theory: Everything that passes gas, dogs included, must have a soul. But that’s another story.

Only on two occasions has yours truly thrown a punch in rage or agony. First was in a street fight with a gradeschool classmate named Andy.

Second was when a carabao stepped on my right foot.

The first had Andy’s lip bleeding, the second proved to be a futile
engagement with the stubborn buffalo. It was sundown, and I had earlier tagged along with a cousin as he brought home his kalabaw
from pasture. We were capping the day’s task with the usual farm boy banter, cousin hitching the rope to a steel peg driven deep into the ground, me stroking the carabao’s thick sinews when suddenly, perhaps to shake off mosquitoes now swarming about, the normally stoic beast lifted an itchy leg and then planted the hoof right on my bony toes.

A girlish scream tore through the fading light. I remember punching the damn brute’s tough hide about three times and then hitting it with a rock before it stirred, finally, ending my few second’s foothold in hell.

Andy now runs his own bakery. Cousin is now a school teacher in Bulacan. The clearing where the carabao used to retire for the night is now just another empty lot holding a perpetual pool of ditch
water from neighborhood baths and kitchens. The pasture has since given way to a plant producing pre-mixed concrete, a Smart cell site tower, a Roman Catholic parish built using funds donated by a losing mayoral candidate, and three-storey houses with roof decks that echo with videoke song on weekends.

Never again was the hand lifted in anger. The foot, however, with the sore, sweet memory of rural childhood, never forgets.

Count yours truly among the valiant men of the kitchen, who believe recipes are meant to be shared, not trade secrets to be guarded, including dish ‘rescue’ stories like the one Marc had ably cited. Ordinary, everyday cooking — as opposed to preparing gourmet feasts — allows us a wide margin of error, so to speak, and an easy opportunity to experiment, improvise, substitute, conceal, and, as in most solitary pleasures, cheat.

How do you rescue your sinigang na tilapia, for example, when the bitter ‘’apdo’’ has spoiled the broth?

First, you blame the fishwife who sold you the fish without thoroughly gutting it, for having burst the delicate sac of bile in the course of plucking out the gills.

Then you face the problem at hand. You take a sip of the broth, then check if the bitter aftertaste has spread even to the veggies. Most of the time the veggies get spared, and so you just work on the soup base.

Slowly, preferably cup by cup, you get rid of the nasty broth and compensate with an equal pouring of plain water. From hereon it becomes a matter of regaining the lost flavors, and so you make up by tossing in extra bits of crushed garlic, chopped onions and tomatoes. The lost sourness of tamarind you can recover with calamansi, a weaker substitute, but enough to hide the mistake. But with the salt, be careful with the salt, for often an extra pinch would no longer be necessary since our remedies need not address all the taste buds here.

Finally, you bring everything to a new, restorative boil.

When the wife finally gets home looking forward to a hot bowl, you of course don’t say a word. Offer her green mango and bagoong as appetizer for further misdirection.

The next day you confront the fishwife.

In a recent Time magazine interview, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose daily routine includes dodging assassination plots while pursuing elusive peace in the MidEast, reveals what he felt to be his ultimate source of energy and will-power amid the grinding pressures of his job.

”The strength that I have comes from irrigating the citrus plantation, plowing the vineyard, and guarding the melon fields at night,” he said. The farmer’s son, now 77, a battle-hardened Army commander and one of the world’s most important figures, apparently longed for the simple pleasures of tending crops in his private farm miles away from his official residence.

It was just a tiny segment of the interview and was not never brought up again. But the whole thing struck me like a haiku, and I just thought of sharing this with you all as I make my blogging debut. #