Gospel & Universe ⛱ Señor Locke
Under the Umbrellas
2000
Gone are the cold northern skies, the earth flogged with rain, where in the depth of winter I watched the floating world of dripping blonde tresses and thick wool skirts that covered the knees of the passing girls.
From that world of sleet and darkened streets I mounted high above the sacred mountains — Popocatépetl, Olympus, Kailash — seven thousand feet in the air, southward over the ruffling heat of the Mexican Altiplano, to find myself in a world of white canvas umbrellas, sombreros and Zapotec shawls, embroidered collars and lace-rimmed skirts, which have made their own journey westward from the taverns of Andalucía, over the salt-tinged waves with their glass lips singing, on the salty edges of a million margaritas.
Here in the heart of colonial Mexico, in Guanajuato’s Plazuela San Fernanda, in this land of Mixtec and Nahuatl, I hear the old Spanish songs, the flamenco and bass guitar drifting from inside the café. It’s a song by the Spanish band Oreja de Van Gogh, about the dream of love:
Despiértate, olvídalo (Wake up, forget it) / aquello nunca sucedió (that never happened) / todo fue una ilusión (everything was an illusion)
Under the umbrellas, which don’t look like the umbrellas in the market on Calle Jésus María, I watch the waitress and argue with John Locke, outside a café called La Oreja de Van Gogh.
I'm visited every half hour or so by a taciturn waitress with startling dark eyes, who turns my northern world on its ear on the whim of a perfunctory de nada. I don’t have a picture of her, so I’ll use the image of the girl I met in La Peñita. They have the same dark eyes, the same golden-brown skin, similar earrings, and the same thick dark hair:
The earrings of the waitress sparkle against her golden skin and dark hair. I’m pulled into the black orbit of her pupils, which swirl up into my brain on a million neuron strings, the marionette drama taking place behind the curtain of my skull.
The waitress is hardly Spanish (she's wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt, and probably couldn’t dance the flamenco for all the shots of tequila in the state of Jalisco), yet there's something Spanish about her. Some strand of South European, blended with Mixtec or Zapotec, who knows? Or is it Moorish blood?
Her moist black hair curls into Arabic, her slim fingers resting calmly on her tray, as she waits for me to decide, as I play for time, asking unnecessary questions to take in the languor of her narcotic smile and the music of her words.
I watch her as she walks away, swaying slightly, cocky and confident.
Yet at this point John Locke and his sense impressions get in the way. The way the waitress walks away reminds me of the way the ladrones walked away from me, that sunny afternoon in Mexico City nine years ago, the fruit and bright flowers piled high in the market. They didn't run. They just walked nonchalantly away. As if daring the sunlight and the dusty street to put chains around their ankles.
How, if we’re products of our senses, do we get around the impressions made by our most traumatic experiences?
I remember it quite distinctly. If I had said one wrong word to the one with the knife, if I had even vaguely suggested that this is the type of thing one could expect from a Mexican, he may have decided to nick me with it, just to remind me where I was, just to teach me a fundamental lesson in the logic of streets, just to help me understand that one street didn't equal the next, even though it might be called Calle Jésus María. He may even have jabbed me, in revenge for the cold looks some gringo gave him that morning in the zócalo. Or why not go for the full on, in and out? Who was he afraid of?
So how do you let go of that type of sense impression, that type of fear? Especially if you’re a gringo who was robbed, beaten up, and thrown into a small room in Istanbul?
That was two years earlier, in 1989. After wandering about Istanbul, my friend and I met a bunch of friendly local guys who took us to lunch. Then we went for a drink in a basement bar they suggested. We had a drink and then there was a moment when things were a bit blurry, but underneath the blur something didn’t seem right.
We said we should get going, after which the waiter presented us with a cheque for three thousand dollars. I got up, put thirty dollars on the bar, then we walked quickly to the door. They jumped on us, beat us up, and threw us into a little room. There, we spent the worst hour of our lives, trying to wheedle our way out of a grim ending somewhere near the bottom of the Bosphorus.
How, my dear John Locke, do you free yourself from that type of sense impression?
⛱
I signal for the waitress to come over, but I try not to make it too obvious, by the way I look at her, by the cut of her tight jeans. I try not to breathe in too deeply the warm scent of her body. As she hovers, her earrings swinging from side to side, I mutter something ungrammatical, but somehow she gets it and saunters off.
After several minutes she brings another basket of totopos: thick corn chips and spicy salsa in a black bowl. Although I didn't order it, she also brings me another coffee, which tends to make me think even harder about sense impressions, and about the memory of knives and a little room in Istanbul.
And about a campfire around which sly counsellors are telling boys about Jesus Christ. And about how the sly counsellors with their Kumbaya songs drove me to Led Zeppelin, pyramid LSD, and Queen. All of this drives me, inexorably, to the sense impressions of Locke, and to how he changed everything.
⛱
Next: Campfires
Table of Contents - Annotated Contents - Layout - Core Beliefs