On Hunger

The best sauce in the world.

For Bianca, it was warm baguettes filled with ham and butter cut thick as cheese, on a shoestring backpacking trip through the Dordogne. For me, it was plain salted rice balls, patted into shape by two robust aunties at the summit of Mt. Takao in Japan.

The magic ingredient that seared these simple meals in our memories as the most delicious food we’ve tasted? Hunger.

The subject came up as a tangent during a weekly Zoom with my far-flung poetry besties, and lingered with me long after the call: If hunger heightens our sensory experiences, what does constant overconsumption—whether of food, content, or even connections—deprive us of? How can we cultivate hunger to enhance our enjoyment of food, entertainment, human connection, and intimacy?

As an omnivert—or ambivert?—I never know which, I fluctuate between craving connection and enjoying centre stage and craving solitude to excavate my brain in silence. But unlike others who feed off the energy of crowds, inspiration only comes to me in moments of quiet. Recently, I’ve leaned towards introversion, relishing quiet activities such as DIY and gardening to help stimulate ideas. I've also noticed that my most active creative periods occur when my heart is hungriest, the in-between moments when it's breaking or mending; when sweet and sour taste most intense.

If you'll allow me to meander with the metaphor a little further—it is Sunday night, after all—the idea of hunger heightening sensation brings to mind an extraordinary experience I had some years back. I had been starved of deep connection for so long that meeting a kindred spirit induced a visceral reaction I’d never felt before—and haven’t felt since. In the person’s presence, I felt currents of electricity flashing from my throat down through my arm. I can still feel it now—those blue pulses of energy travelling through my body, making me tremble. My brain felt like it was on fire. It wasn’t lust, nor any feeling I could name, and though he also sensed a kindred connection, he was oblivious to the seismic activity taking place inches away from him. It was so unsettling that I told him everything, hoping he could offer an answer. His response? "I think you just need to feel something."

That response left me wondering, are we so desensitized by constant input that we miss the potential for such heightened connections? Could this be what the ancients meant when describing contact with the divine? My efforts to research the phenomenon only threw up a few anecdotes on Reddit that seemed to match what I had felt. If you have any insights or have felt something similar—please comment below!

So, if hunger, in all its forms, has the power to heighten experiences—from the warmth of a buttered baguette to the high-voltage buzz of a deep connection—how can we cultivate it in our daily lives? Though the idea of being more intentional in our consumption is hardly new, it’s challenging to create space for true emptiness in a world so packed with input. Mindfulness practices too easily become yet another item on an overcrowded to-do list. But rather than fasting or meditating for ascetic reasons, eschewing attachment, might we fast to intentionally build longing and anticipation—to heighten our sensual experiences? Spiritual edging, if you will?

Perhaps one day, I will have enough poise and wisdom to answer my own inquiries. For now, I have poetry, the writing of which demands deliberation; it is a word-by-word, sound-by-sound, dot-by-dash process. Reading it compels me to muse and mull over each word, savouring the anticipation of the final payoff. In the daily information deluge, for me, poetry is a riceball savoured on a mountaintop, bite by bite.