Les Zambal

 

Essay 17. LES ZAMBAL

By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol

Les Zambal was the name of a restaurant in Sta. Cruz, Zambales. Its specialty was mami, specifically sibut mami. What made sibot mami different from the mami served at Ma Mon Luk and Masuki are the ingredients used in it, which are a combination of star anise and other herbs. The owner of Les Zambal was Salvador 'Jun' Diaz, my closest buddy at the UST College of Architecture and Fine Arts (USTCAFA).

One time, I and Jun ate at Ma Mon Luk. He frowned after tasting the mami. He must have found it bland compared to the mami he used to serve in his restaurant. Which is true because the Ma Mon Luk mami recipe was much simpler, using only garlic and spring onions as its flavoring herbs.

Cooking is one of Jun's enduring passion. He excelled at it. I always look forward to attending parties at their house because I know I'll get to savor again the dishes he himself cooked.

Jun's other passion is art. I first met Jun at USTCAFA, where we both majored in Painting. We were not close at first. My very first friend there is Antonio Tejado. My friendship with Jun started during our Physical Education class, where we were always opponents in basketball 3-on-3 games. Both of us played rough, very physical, the kind of play called 'balyahan' hereabouts. But ironically, we grew fond of each other because of that. Some sort of mutual respect developed between us, that we became inseparable as months passed everytime we were at the UST campus.

We both didn't finish our fine arts course and left UST at around the same time in 1975. No one heard from the other for many years. But serendipity made us crossed paths again in 1981.

Jun used to say that I was the one who influenced him to like books, especially those about art. I plead 'guilty' to that, because I began building up my book collection when I was in college at UST and I used to lend Jun my art books.

Therefore, where do you think would we bumped again into each other after so many years? Where else but at the National Bookstore. At its art books section where we almost bump into each other literally.

One afternoon, without any of us being aware of it, we were both on the same floor of National Bookstore at the same moment, checking each individual art book from the opposite ends of the low long shelf and were both moving sideways to the center. Just imagine our surprise when we raised our eyes to look at the familiar fellow barring us from moving on to the other end of the shelf.

Our connection was never broken from that time on. He chose me to be one of the secondary sponsors at his wedding in Olongapo, and later on a godfather of his second daughter Ellen.

Jun started out as a surrealist. He joined the surrealist art group being organized by professor Glory Crumb-Rogers when we were sophomores. Jun was part of the group's first exhibit, titled "Message of a Surrealist", held at the UST Main Building. He was an active member of the group, joining one or two exhibitions more before he left college.

Although we boy Painting majors were a tight bunch being only very few, it was only Jun who joined the original batch of UST surrealists. But in other activities, like attending art exhibits, playing basketball, holding our own 'extra-curricular' nude sketching session, and plain gallivanting, we almost always went together.

I learned after we've resume contact, that Jun worked for Ajinomoto, from where he retired after around twenty years. Jun shelved his palette, brushes, and paints during those years when he was busy with his job and with raising a family. I assumed that because of that long hiatus his painting hand must have rusted, so to speak.

I was pleasantly surprised therefore when I learned and saw what he had been up to during the past two years. Jun began painting again. It's a pity that Jun hasn't saved pictures of his surrealist works so that I can compare the quality of his past works to what he had produced these days.

Jun is now a classical realist. His surrealist days were over. While he used before to turn out paintings that leaned on the fantastic and improbable side, today what he paints are landscapes, views of his beloved hometown Sta. Cruz, Zambales.

Jun's landscapes are serene and silent. Very much different from the works of another landscape master, Fernando Amorsolo, whose rustic scenes almost always include people engaged in activities filled with sounds, like dancing and playing a guitar among others. The impression one gets of Jun's paintings is that they are of the twilight, dawn, or even siesta hours in the rural areas when people are all in their homes. Thus, the mood evoked in us by the palpable silence of those outdoors emptied of people is that of contemplation and calm ---a serenity that's almost zen-like.

- 2020