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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Saturday, July 26, 2025

entry arrow3:53 PM | Mo’s Literary Lunch of Second Acts

There is a peculiar myth we like to tell ourselves about life, and the way it unfolds to us in a single, linear trajectory: birth, education, work, success, retirement, death. But real life, like good fiction, rarely obeys the tyranny of the straight line. Life spirals, life collapses, life restarts. And somewhere in that unexpected loop lies the second act, or even a third one—something that is redemptive, often frightening, always exhilarating. They are new chapters where everything changes.

Second acts are the province of reinvention. They are what we choose when the first act either fails us or fulfills us too quickly. Let’s say, a woman who once defined herself through motherhood, making a return to painting. Let’s say, a corporate man who abandons his cushy privileges to open a small café by the sea. Let’s say, a writer, silenced for years, finds her voice again after heartbreak. These are stories not just of crisis, but also of courage. They are narratives of listening to the quiet hunger inside all of us that the world tells us to ignore.

In literature, the second act is often the richest. It is where the protagonist is undone and then remade. Think of Elizabeth Gilbert shedding her life in Eat, Pray, Love, or Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, stepping into the unknown. In second acts, we lose certainty, but we also gain character. We discover not who we were told to be, but who we are willing to become.

We speak of literature in this particular case because we were invited not too long ago to a literary lunch that had as its theme the subject of “second acts.” The instigator for that special meal last June 28 was a friend, Mohammad Malik, a Pakistani who has, since the pandemic, found a home in Dumaguete—a young retiree from the hustle of corporate life who has since become a sometime poet and a full-time farmer [and slow food enthusiast] whose stead is found in the foothills of Valencia.

The small gathering was of friends as well. There was Esther Windler and son Ramon. There was the visual artist Hersley-Ven Casero and filmmaker wife Toulla Mavromati, who came with another visual artist Paul Benzi Florendo. There were the both of us, Ian and Renz, joined in by Mo’s significant other Finola Uy, and Mo’s righthand woman and all-around genius, Ana Maria Danid, whose hands prepared the luncheon. When we arrived at Mo’s farm, we found Ana at the dirty kitchen in front of the house, busy tending the burning firewood as well as the calderos, bubbling with steam, above the fires’ tongues.

Mo greeted us at the door with platters of appetizers and pitchers of drinks—and we opted for a cup of hot coffee [for Renz], and a glass of iced kamote tops juice [for Ian]. On a plate on the kitchen counter, we found pan de bisaya with kesong puti and garlic honey—and over these overflowing appetizers, everyone was abuzz with greetings and conversation. But soon we settled for the luncheon itself, Mo calling us over to the dining table, where we sat at our designated spots with placeholders drawn with each of our names.

And then the literary lunch began with Mo reading from an essay he has written for the occasion, titled “Second Act”: “In the realm of storytelling,” he read, “the second act plays an important role in the development of the plot. Whereas the first act normally involves world-building—introducing us to the protagonist, understanding her motivations, and setting up the conflict or challenge that must be overcome, the second act is where things really start to unfold: the plot thickens, tension builds, and through a series of obstacles and challenges thrown our way, we see the main character step up and advance closer to her goals.”

Mo told us about leaving his corporate job in Manila in 2019, and arriving in Dumaguete with no plan, “just dreams.” “My first act was centered around the universal question, what is the meaning of My Life? … I experienced boom and bust relationships. I tested the boundaries of authority. There was joy and grief, experiments in living that ended in success and in failure… It usually takes a dramatic turn of events for a story to enter into a second act… When I left my job and the big city [for Dumaguete], I didn’t know with certainty what I wanted to do, but I had a general vision of what was important: I wanted to have a control of my own time; I wanted to live a creative life, to do creative things; I wanted to spend time in and around a natural setting; I wanted to prioritize physical and emotional well-being.”

He also said he had an intuition that food would play an important role in that second act. He learned how to grow and cook local produce for their health benefits, and soon food became a medium for him to explore other parts in his life. He learned more about the differences and similarities of his home [Pakistani] culture and Filipino culture. He found that home-cooked Filipino food can be lean and delicious and chockful of vegetables. He learned to befriend other enthusiasts for local cuisine. Food sparked his passion for this new life. Which was why he wanted to solidify that intuition with this luncheon with friends—and he did so with full assist from Ana Maria Danid, who left a life in Bulacan to join Mo in his new chapter in Dumaguete. This is also her second act.

Mo and Ana’s main entrée for our noontime meal was a delightful surprise: fried inun-unan, or pritong paksiw na isda. “I can’t think of a better way to introduce myself than through a recipe that I learned from my mother,” Ana revealed. “Pritong paksiw is a clever way to use your leftover paksiw na isda. The flavor is deeper because it was cooked one day earlier, and when you fry it, it somehow becomes fresh again. So, with one dish, you have now enjoyed two different meals!”

This was the concept of “second acts” personified in a dish!

Ana first simmered a whole tamarong in a stew spiced with ginger, black peppercorn, laurel, and siling espada. Then she added sukang paombong—vinegar from the sap of the nipa palm—which gave the inun-unan a distinct sweet tang. After the fish absorbed the sharp vinegar flavor, it was battered with cassava starch and then fried until crispy.

The crispy batter and skin contrasted with the tender flesh inside, a mellow sourness prodding our mouths to salivate. Served beside the dish was a sawsawan with the sukang paombong as the base, mixed with minced onion, garlic, and siling labuyo to liven up the vinegar, and muscovado and diced cucumber to tame it. Sautéed mustard greens and pechay freshened up the table, with crispy fried garlic chips offering a punch of bitter sweetness.

We ended the meal with a white chocolate strawberry mousse cake topped with crushed Oreos. The rich creamy mousse paired well with a warm brew of mint and butterfly pea flower tea. A roll of pili nut turon was passed around the table for a clean nutty bite.













We closed the luncheon with Mo handing over to us a zine to commemorate the lunch, which contained the essay he read at the beginning, as well as Ana’s recipe for the fried inun-unan.

Second acts are invigorating circumstances, we realized. There is, of course, fear when we confront it, but to begin again is really to risk. It is to admit that we are still unfinished. But perhaps that is the most human thing of all — this refusal to be fixed in place, this insistence that even at 40, or 60, or 80, a new story is still possible. For Mo, it was possible. For Ana, it was possible.

In a culture obsessed with youth and early success, second acts remind us that time is not our enemy but our canvas. That sometimes, it is only after the intermission—after the job ends, after the separation, after the silence—that we can finally begin to speak in our own voice.

Mo’s lunch taught us to honor the second act, to see it not as failure, but as freedom. Mo’s lunch made us understand that the self is a draft, constantly revised, and that the truest stories, like the truest lives, do not end at the first plot twist, but bloom in the pages, or in the next meals, that come after.


[Written with Renz Torres for Culinary Cuts]

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