Act 2 Scent 4: Spicy, Not Stirred
Updated: Aug 18
When what you want only defines a single chapter ~
Exploration into unknown parts of the world is very much like our own discovery of love. These journeys are filled with coincidence, luck, and serendipitous moments that overtake an entire chapter, while subtle parentheses of readiness and intention is sprinkled throughout. Whether it happens once or many times in my life, love seems to follow this recipe—an intricate concoction of emotions.
The fundamental ingredients are simple, yet their infinite combinations shape how love is uniquely received and reciprocated. Love may appear romantic, impulsive, friendly, or familiar, each revealing its own spirit-forward alchemy of emotions. Every experience presents varying levels of intoxication with hangover effects on how we remember the past, live in the present, and imagine the future.
“I love how she makes me feel, like anything’s possible, or like life is worth it.”
— Tom, 500 Days of Summer (2009)
I find myself falling for this euphoric potion time and time again, flooding and overflowing a deep well of emotions with the belief that nothing is impossible—a blind addiction for certainty and uncertainty. Peaks and valleys of love unfold like the story arcs of my favorite film, “500 Days of Summer”, where the protagonist goes through the joys of falling for someone, the sadness of breakup, and the resiliency of healing. Love that starts as a delicate stem of promise, can also spread, directionless, like wildfire through its hypnotic vines—a summer entanglement spun from the fragrant tale of the tomato leaf.
Seasons whisper the breath of love through the herbaceous chapters of the vine. From the dusk of spring into the dawn of summer, the tender stem awakens, leaves intertwining with ripened tomatoes. Variations of unique shapes, shades of color, and a rheportoire of flavors traverse the spectrum of our palette, each blend capable of confusing the senses to converge and diverge, presenting a complex distinction than what initially appears.
Often mistaken in our savory subconsciousness as a vegetable, the tomato actually belongs to the family of berry fruits. Even the early arrival of tomatoes in Europe were once thought of as the “poison apple”—echoing the folklore of the forbidden fruit engraved into the Garden of Eden and Snow White. Doesn’t the heart mirror the same sentimental deception as the tomato—where we so often mistake falling in love for love itself?
As if destined to eclipse the yearning heart, vines wander with quiet intention while its leaves unfurl an earthy, tantalizing bittersweetness. A brush of its foliage tickles curiosity and invites the mind to curtsy with eager enthusiasm towards the naive accord—an anticipation closely resembling the first bloom of love. The heart labyrinths upward, then blindly slides down the spirals of the stalk.
What is the antidote for this captivating feeling? Once mesmerized, the inner compass no longer functions properly. Words are lost, as if we run out of adjectives, and default to superlatives. Held in its snug yet unescapable embrace, the glistening rays of sunlight, and the glowing chemistry fosters the inner landscape of this unrelenting fruit.
If I stack these thoughts as chronicles, the overwhelming weight of love becomes too much to withstand, too vast to appreciate for what it’s truly for. If I confront every wave of chapters before me all at one, it merges into an epic tale of what last and what does not. And if I just remain anchored to the page where the speckles of sand my feet are sinked in, tickles of curiosity begin to sing an ode to a season.
Whether it’s one chapter or one of many, hope, faith, renewal, and oneness nourishes every paragraph. A full spectrum of words adorns the leaves of the promising fruit, and yet not every harvest ripens with a full stop of forever. Some are gathered too early, while others drift gently into the soft landing of a comma. Listening closely to the heart, open-ended beats leave a trail of breadcrumbs,
…inviting another season of love.
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