The Living Library
Discover new ways of seeing rooted in culture, and ancestral knowledge, through our selection of stories and essays.
Where the sea and vegetation scream of freshness, the variations of sinigang allude to the nourishing gifts of the landscape, and the playfulness that comes when one is surrounded by so much growth.
The mischievous monkey still munches on ripe bananas he does not know how to grow. At the rate of his activities, he brings humanity to a crossroads. It has manifested to such a degree that the farmer's lot must be a collective duty for all people.
Filipinos have composed the tale, time and again. In addition to illuminating the psychological fact, the larger cultural beliefs, and how they changed over time were reflected in the details.
Through the wonderful Lokalpediaph visual archive of heirloom and artisanal food, John Sherwin Felix walks us through unsung gisa ingredients, potentially expanding the horizons of flavor & aroma.
Those who do not forget the finiteness of nature's productions, sophisticatedly align themselves at the foot of the panya'en (spirits), as a friend to the forest.
When the Batak narrows his vision on the target, whether it be a boar, or a way back to the village, it is in the context of a world dancing in meaningful movements that he is part of.
Faring forth with their surroundings, humans observed the alchemical magic of growth and began to assist it. When seeds fall to the earth, new life springs forth. With this observation, the human farmer was born, and the world was his teacher.
As the rounded palayok holds the long chains of linked molecules that make up our food, so too does the belly of a mother housing the building blocks that make up a new human life. In Palawan, the Tagbanua tribe ascribes the forming of man out of the earth for "the earth could speak":
