Mexican Food
janine canan
Do you know that Mexican food -- tacos, tostados, enchiladas colorados y verdes -- can heal all our wounds? In the smog and glamour-filled deserts of Los Angeles, Mexican food was my mother. As I rode the bus to Lindy’s Delicatessen in Beverly Hills for relief as needed, mooned over Oscar Levant’s outpatient appearances on television, where his leaden fingers stumbled wittily over the keys of the twentieth century, and heeded the tender angry lyrics of Kenneth Patchen wept to jazz in the Venice coffee-house-dark of the crinoline-skirted fifties -- it was Mexican food that taught me enduring goodness.
And so I believe that even today Mexican food can heal the wounds of the world, but reserve this knowledge for eccentric moral explorers -- or Mexican food will become as expensive as French; Mexican restaurant owners will require liability insurance to protect themselves from litigious consumers whose white-washed shirts are stained by dribbling salsa; and when the personal injury profiteers discover burning tongue, and the gullible California jurors return to the courtroom with their verdict Guilty, insurance for Mexican restaurants will triple, driving their owners back to Mejico bankrupt, you can con on that, America!
But I know that Mexican food can heal all the wounds of the world, the soul of the world lies in a Casa de Eva flauta, and all happiness in the perfect Margarita with foam, La Tertulia’s bread pudding with cheese, and creamy natillas! Do not pass it on, do not print up flyers, do not run ads in magazines, on television, or to millions of over-burdened liberals in the mail. Do not ask for donations to save poor downtrodden Mexican cooks. Mexican restaurants do not need loans to expand, computerized cash registers, Macs to reformat their menus; more business, more income, more taxes, more bombs, more hate and more greed!
For I know there is a smile in Baja California on the face of a Mexican family drinking tequila and eating tortillas y frijoles -- as Steinbeck wrote in Tortilla Flat, “What more you want?” -- or boiling lobsters by the sea. And that everywhere in Mexico -- midst corruption, killing, exploitation and thievery -- there is something good to eat. Even in New Mexico are varieties of chiles sufficient to fill a thesaurus -- jalapeños, serranos, anjos -- colors of red that will sear your heart with a happiness that spreads like the wide open sky: clear air, scent of sage, warm tortillas, and chile, chile, chile!
Yes, I know that Mexican food can save the world but do not tell, or I would be held responsible for America’s suffering -- for giving this advice free. Insure me, and I might tell you about some of my deepest experiences with Mexican food -- if it weren’t that tying me up in a lawsuit for ten years with chess-playing lawyers, blood-red nail-polished private investigators and debauched inquisitors obsessed with sex, interferes with eating enough of that Goddess-given Mexican food, olé! Chiles rellenos, quesadillas, huevos rancheros, menudo, chicken mole, chocolate mejicano, sopapillas with honey!
And still I know that Mexican food is the road to salvation. Any crisis, any stab in the heart or even the back can be ameliorated by real hot fresh salsa, chicken rolled in corn tortillas, refried beans, Dos Equis dark (don’t sue me, Carta Blanca!), or a pitcher of Margaritas unfrozen! Oh, guacamole with tostaditas! In California, in New Mexico, in the Yucatan, there lies the treasure of youth, of joy, the seed of an ecstasy that grows out over the direst conditions, the dreariest human boredom, the most abysmal human stupidity, and I know, I know that Mexican food can cure all the wounds of the world.
And so when I die, I would like to be buried in Mexican food served in a family restaurant unincorporated, or mulched at the foot of a gigantic chile plant leafy and green, giving vitamin C-rich chiles to feed our children of the future. Fed in the eternally youthful be here now, make love not war, permissive and nutritional Doctor Spock-Adele Davis-Linus Pauling Sixties manner even in Amerika -- a smile will return to their innocent faces, hope to their eyes gleaming once again with pleasure, a red chile to their mouths, a white and a blue corn tortilla to their hands! For I know Mexican food can cure the agony of our times.
Though many will cry, All Mexican food tastes alike! -- if there is one thing I can absolutely promise, it is that Mexican food is never the same: Now exquisitely scalloped tortillas flapping from hand to hand over a child at play on the sand -- now micro-waved taco-pasted processed American cheese at Nevada gambling casino where desperados use nuclear bombs for dice. Tonight at my table a happy surprise: Enchiladas Chihuahueñas with shredded beef bathed in crimson sauce with a dollop of radiant cream! To this I drink with my cheery California red wine -- for once we were Mejico and will be again. Amigos, Mexican food’s tangible living delight will resurrect the crucified body of our times.
