Give Me Everything Salty / A Life Full of Spice
Who would have thought the types of foods we take are a reflection of how we live, good or bad? Let me show you how.
— From Dayo, as she experiences and learns. Welcome to The Mind Palace!
The terminal
I’m watching MKBHD and thinking about food. Then I remember I ate Banga soup recently, and I loved it but someone tasted it and disliked it. Why? Apparently, it was too salty.
Now, this is a discourse on why we love spice- not just in foods but in the sheer thrill of new experiences. All the sorts, all the spice.
Stop 1: How are spices and living life even related?
Hold your horse son, they are related.
You see, throughout that week, I’d felt my tastebuds were crying for life. They felt dead. Dead and dull. They needed life, they needed spice, they needed flavour. They needed salt! Or spice. Whichever you call it. So, I went for something new, something I’d never taken in this school before: Banga soup.
Just so you (dear reader) know:
- Among the many, Banga soup is one of the best soups ever made.
- It is extremely dangerous to try new food in a school setting. Your stomach may repay you.
But because excitements come from the new or the thrilling, I bought it either way, and I loved it. Not necessarily because it tasted like a thousand new flavours and mysteries were unfurling on my tastebuds, but because it gave me a very sharp high. Better still, it was such an acute concentration of taste (ChemE student here lmao) that my tastebuds loved it and wanted more, only that more would kill me. Well, not kill me, but harm me.
You get now?
If you still don’t, I got you.
Stop 2: The rush of excitement
Why did I crave such spice and why did I think it would solve my problem of dead tastebuds?
I’d become accustomed to routine flavours that they lost all the flavour. So, I needed something new, something that had not ‘lost all the flavour’, which is only true simply because my brain had not registered the taste and checked it in with the others.
And that’s the crux of the matter. The urge to eat something ‘new’, ‘exciting’ is the same urge to live always pursue the next thing, or if your salt bar is very high, to live life on the edge. Really, it’s thrilling. It’s why we can wake up one morning and suddenly need to live life to the fullest, and so, we decide to travel. It might not be travel, it might be relationships: ‘new people, new experiences’. I mean that’s why I decide to go to caf by 8:30 pm when I know fully well that I may not have a place to sleep in 30 minutes- high-pressure games I don’t need to live.
Stop 3: The burn of excitement
In a larger context though, it is one of the reasons I decided to do my internship all the way in Warri (I live in Ibadan). And boy did my salt level burn me. You know the feeling when hot water scalds your tongue, it hurts to take in spicy foods? Yeah that, precisely that. That place will not see me for the next two years.
Whatever living on the edge means to you, or whatever your salt is, will it scald you, or worse, kill you? Or will you get used to it and ask for more eventually creating a void so large nothing can ever satisfy it? There’s no end to more then, and it will kill you even if you don’t know it.
Lawrence Yeo describes the travel salt, or better still, travel drug more on his ‘Travel Is No Cure For The Mind’ article. At the end of the day sons, daughters, and everything in between, the novelty of every experience ends. You decide if you want to base your life always on the next source of excitement, always in need of spice.
Stop 4: The calm after the high
Fortunately, my stomach didn’t rigmarole. I loved the Starch and Banga, and I’m going to eat more but not so much I’m going to get sick of it. Maybe I will but I would have prolonged its period of novelty. This same scenario already happened with Yamarita. Sigh. Or maybe I won’t ever get sick of it because it’s been a 14-year-going-strong affair with Starch and Banga. Lmao, I don’t take it consistently; that’s probably why it’s been this long.
Yet, no one can promise a long-lasting high. My stay in Warri was a case of too much at once. Some say ‘curiosity killed the cat and satisfaction brought it back’. I’m not a cat. You are not a cat. Some experiences can scare and leave us wounded for all the thrill it promises to give.
Fact: Salt is addictive and you can die from it.
Back to the terminal
This was a train of thought. However, now I can’t go back to MKBHD. I have exams to read for. If you’re writing any now or in a similar state, success to you because we’ll be alright!
For clarity sake,
- Banga is delicious.
- Starch and Banga is the greatest combo ever.
- Caf = Cafeteria
- The caf innuendo is a reference to the 9 pm shutdown in Covenant University.
- Again, Banga is delicious. You should try it ;)
Song Recommendation!
Until next time,
Dayo :)
