I've never understood any of the women I've dated.
However, after gorging on sublime pastor tacos from a cutty street corner in Zapopan, Jalisco, I can, if not exactly comprehend then at least empathize . I imagine that settling on American pastor places so soon after taxing Zapopan street corner pastor is analogous to dating someone else after sampling the Chittlins platter*.
To carry this analogy further: I am a complex layering of flavors - just like street pastor; I am deceptively simple - just like street pastor; and you can pick me up at Jalisco street corners for seven pesos - yep, just like street pastor.
From Yucatan to Sonora, the Gulf of Mexico to the Sea of Cortez, the regional variety in culinary styles within Mexico is matched only by India's. Let's suppose I took a "Motorcycle Diaries"-type journey through Mexico. Instead of becoming a communist guerrilla as result of my interaction with impoverished indigenous people, most likely my reflection would not progress beyond, "oh wow, these poor people make some really amazing food! I need to photograph them and their cute children in tattered clothes from my patronizing, semi-colonial perspective."
Back in the cobblestone streets of Zapopan, several incongruous elements combined to heighten my gastro-experience: looping trance/house music with no lyrics other than a distant, robotic male voice chanting, "Barbara Streisand" emanating from blown-out speakers; my cousin's husband shouting "SPRING BREAKERRRR!!", in English, at the pocho cousin; police helicopters circling overhead in reaction to the recent spate of narcobloqueos and narcomantas that had occurred in the greater Guadalajara metro area. Conventional American food safety regulations were maybe less than punctiliously observed, which perhaps is for the best. We cannot hope to sanitize these experiences, preserving the exotic in ether, to be admired from a safe distance. I'm not sure love is worth risking it all, but for transcendent pastor, ¿what's a few tapeworms?
*Was that vain? I mean, can you say, "wow, what a vain asshole. Chittlins thinks he's so amazing that he is comparing himself to Mexican street corner pastor"?
Posts
