A Winding Stream of Cinco de Mayo Consciousness

Now we are inside the Barbershop.  I'm watching a young man getting his head buzzed.  I have a close, straight-on view of the back of his head.  As the Barber carefully edges with the clippers, an image of a face begins to emerge.  Is this a tattoo being revealed as the hair is shaved away?  Or is the image of the face being created by the barber with the hair and scalp of this kid?  At first I can't tell, but as more of the face is revealed, it becomes apparent that the Barber is the artist.  I'm very impressed, because the image he is shaving into the back of the young man's head has nearly the detail of a tattoo.  

The face that emerges is that of a scowling, middle-aged Hispanic man with an impressively thick mustache.  He has a thick head of combed-back black hair.  He is turned slightly to the viewer's right, although it is closer to a front-view than a side-profile.  I wonder if this is intended as a memorial for the man whose image is now on the back on this person's head.  If I decide to get a face shaved into the back of my head, whose face will it be?

Whose face would it be?

Sometimes it occurs to me that, for a man who has lived thirty-six years, I have been extremely fortunate in that very few people I love have died.  Of course we all die.  Most people I know just haven't done it yet.  Me neither.  At least not in this lifetime.

My Grandpa comes to mind right away.  I never knew my Grandparents on my Mom's side, but my Dad's parents played a significant role in my early life; and since my Grandpa died several years before my Grandma, and gave the impression of enjoying better health, you could probably say that his death was more unexpected and difficult for much of the family.

On the last day of last year, I moved into my Aunt's home in Santa Rosa, California.  My paternal Grandparents lived there with her for many years toward the end of their respective lives.  Staying in that home for a few months before heading off on this "adventure" has infused my travels with the sap of my family tree.  During those few months - most of the Winter just passed - I was surrounded by the relics and mementos of their lives, as well as the stories of their lives.  My Aunt is an expert storyteller who recounted so many detailed experiences, travels, conversations, myths, heartbreaks, jokes, and puns of this amazing pair who had lived through so many stages of the most rapidly-changing time in mankind's history .  Many were familiar to me.  Many others were brand new.

Having attuned my inner ears to the sound of these bloodlines, my Aunt saw me off her porch and onto the road by which I'd venture.  Up to this point, this has consisted of a week of the transient travels I'd planned on, followed by more than a month in Sacramento, sleeping on the couch of a friend (except for a few scattered nights on park benches or a motel bed).  There are so many reasons I'm glad I've stuck around here for so long and so many reasons I probably should have left by now; but I'm trying to keep from interrupting a very serious conversation that I've observed taking place between various levels of my consciousness.  I say "observed" because my waking consciousness has been largely excluded from the actual discussion.  I'm just aware that it is happening.  There are hints.  I get the sense that whatever it is, it's almost resolved.  And it feels like what was needed from me, from my conscious mind, was just to instruct my body to stop moving so much for a little while.  Something needed adjusting in order to keep moving with the proper purpose and resolve.

At times I've felt stalled here; but I remind myself that - within the context of a nine-month journey, five or six weeks in Sacramento is nothing.  I mean, our entire lifetimes barely register as a blip on the radar of the deep expanse of time.  Shit, if the existence of the Earth - to use the estimates of Geologists rather than those of religious fundamentalists - were a football field, the entire existence of mankind would be, what, much less than a yard.  Maybe an inch?  I don't know, I'm just rambling.  And besides, just because I haven't been traveling during most of my early travels doesn't mean I'm off-course.

But what about this face on the back of the head?

I do have one tattoo, and one tattoo only; proof that it is possible to get one and then stop.  Not that I'll never get another, but a full cycle of Chinese Zodiac-years has passed since I got the last one.  What I'm getting at, though, is that it was a memorial-tattoo.  It's for the only close friend I've ever known who isn't here on this plane with us anymore.

There is a Barbershop not far from where I'm staying, across J Street from the South side of Cesar Chavez Park.  Cesar Chavez...

That's right, today is Cinco de Mayo.  I remember that Cinco de Mayo is not the same as Mexican Independence Day... that is another day.  I think Cinco de Mayo is the anniversary of the day on which Mexico defeated their French occupiers?

Funny that the last image in my mind before waking up on the morning of Cinco de Mayo is the distinctive face of a Hispanic man.  He kind of looked like a revolutionary.  You know?  I'll bet if I do an image search of the phrase "Mexican Revolutionary" I will find the face from my dream, and it will be some well-known historical figure.  In Santa Rosa, I had a dream of finding a bust of an Egyptian queen while out on a run and when I searched it online I found that my subconscious mind had vividly recreated the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti for me.  The illumination of this fact turned out to be the key that unlocked the meaning of the dream for me. 

So what if I go to that Barbershop, and tell them about my dream, and ask them to do it.  I'll bet it would be expensive.  And what if the barbers are Hispanic?  It sounds like the set-up to a joke:

"So this white guy walks into a Barbershop on Cinco de Mayo and says 'Can you shave (insert name of famous Mexican revolutionary leader) into the back of my head?'"

As one of my favorite lines from the ridiculously clever MC Paul Barman goes:

"Was I making a mockery of a culture like a Choco Taco? Was I to rap as France was to Morocco? Was I colon rap colon colon France colon Morocco?"

At this point I must interrupt myself, because that conversation that I didn't want to interrupt between different levels of my consciousness has just interrupted me from this post to let me into the conversation.  I'm going to let you know what it just did:

As I was writing just there, rather free-associatively, about daydreams of walking into a Barbershop to ask some barber if he'd mind sculpting an image from my culturally co-optive nightdreams into my scalp; and then thought of the MC Paul Barman quote; and then decided to type it into google, so that I could accurately reproduce it; and then typed the following words into the google-search box:

"'was I making a mockery of a culture like a Choco' Paul"

This appeared:




Now, if you click on that link (http://www.realitysandwich.com/i_am_rock_and_roll), you will be taken to a very well-written article on the topic of cultural appropriation in music from my favorite website, Reality Sandwich.  Far down in the comments-section, you will find this:

Evocations

Submitted by Gene Ohm on Mon, 08/31/2009 - 13:10.

Reminds me of a lyric from MC Paul Barman:
 
"Was I making a mockery of a culture like a Choco Taco? Was I to rap as France was to Morocco? Was I colon rap colon colon France colon Morocco?"
 
Also, one strain of this discussion evokes the scene in David LaChapelle's "Rize" where shots of young angelinos "crumping" are interspersed with shots of African shamanic/ritual dance.

This is a great article in that it elicits questions that are expansive and often go silent for lack of an open forum.  

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Reader, I ask you to wager a guess as to the identity of Reality Sandwich commenter Gene Ohm.  Have you guessed?  Did you guess that he is me?  That Gene Ohm is Barefoot Beirdo is Marcus Jeffries?  If so, you would be right.  Either way, I've probably confused the hell out of you.  Let me try to explain this better.  In summary:

1. I wake up from a dream in which I see the face of a Hispanic Man shaved into the head of a young man at a Barbershop.

2. Upon waking, the pondering of the dream causes me to ponder death, methods of memorializing the dead, Cinco de Mayo, Cesar Chavez, the plight of tomato pickers (which I haven't yet gotten around to), and cultural appropriation.

3. I begin to compose a rambling blog-post about all of this.

4.  Recalling an incredibly witty quote about cultural appropriation from a hip hop artist who has achieved a respectable level of fame - if not "mainstream" success - I search the quote on google; and find it odd when, instead of some lyric-finder site, the only thing google provides me with is a link to an article from my favorite website.

5.  Skimming through the article, I can not find the quote but am struck by the familiarity of the material.  I must have read this article back when it was posted to this site.

6. Unable to find the quote within the article that Google directed me to for the quote, I read through dozens of comments before arriving at the one above, written by myself, quoting a song-lyric that I felt resonated with the meaning of the article and - unbeknownst to me - answering a question that my future-self would shout into the ether of the internet almost three years later.


Is it just me, or is this a clear instance of what Carl Jung termed "Synchronicity?"  This isn't a rhetorical question: It is worth asking because the concept of Synchronicity is a very complex and fascinating one; and one which is often thrown around with little discernment on sites such as Reality Sandwich, and really anywhere where the catch-phrases of Esoterica are typed or spoken.


Are you familiar with Synchronicity?  Is a dream that leads you to the Internet that leads you to a response to your present query from a version of yourself from nearly 3-years prior (when the answer could have been provided by any # of lyric search sites that contain the quote, and yet were strangely absent from the search-results) an example of the concept?


Please, if you are still reading this, give me your opinion in the comment-section of this post.  If you aren't familiar with Synchronicity, I'm going to guess that wikipedia will provide as good an introduction as any, so here it is in case you are interested http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity


Also, should I find the Revolutionary leader from my dream and get his face shaved into the back of my head?  Or would that just be making a mockery of a culture like a Choco-Taco on Cinco de Mayo?  I'm thinking that this dream leading me to consider a Barbershop across the street from a Park named after a famous Hispanic farmer's-rights activist and thoughts of cultural appropriation may be less about literally showing my support for a culture through a hairstyle than perhaps finally telling the story - alluded to in an earlier post - about my interviews with a group of tomato-picker/activists at the State Capital about a week (or more? Time is flying) ago.  I do feel a duty to report a little something about their cause since the video I shot took up too much memory for my tablet to handle playing it and thus had to be deleted.  And I will do that soon.


But right now I am hungry and am craving a burrito.  Is that racist?