This morning before getting up I finished the novel The Friend, by Sigrid Nunez. It's part elegy and part a writer's life in the city (New York) adopting a great dog (a gentle giant Dane) at the last year of its life. On a rented beach house in Long Island was the final summer they would spend together, and in the end, Apollo (its name), couldn't leave his friend's side, his head on her feet solemnly as they both watched the crashing of the waves on the shoreline sand. They both couldn't eat that morning, though they tried, she handing him a piece of bread from the table, he accepted and bowing his head, but that was it. It was time to go.
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I was surprised about the graveyard I was pointed to by a forest dweller at Iao while I was hiking out from the spring as he suddenly appeared in hiding from a hamlet of taro plants (beautiful edible plants with elephantine ears leaves and rhubarb red stems): I buried her there. I wondered if it was my imagination that he was actually there and talking to me about the ancient story of the island where once upon a time the sky and the valley were demigods and had made love and sprung the taros as their perpetual children. He looked as though a character from Kipling's Jungle Book, a man-cub raised by wolves; he was wild-looking, yes, but his eyes' expression was from out of this world, deep like an unknown sea. He dug around the patch and handed me a root-fruit of this endemic vegetable. The myth is living. And he came close to my face and said, inhale this breath, (I did closing my eyes), so I know you will protect her story.
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As a cook, a culinary mentor moons ago had admonished me that food you prepare no matter how good your kitchen skills are without history it's not going to taste ever good. And that's why I think it's worth my longtime commitment and love to write my blog for food's sake, going more than a decade now. So finally, my taro soup is a fairy tale. And it's wonderful to have.
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