Zarela Act 7 Redux

“If life begins with dreams and ends with memories, perhaps there comes a point in the middle where the two impulses are somehow balanced and neutralized, where the past is a manageable parade, and the future has been fed enough of our daylight to be sated for a while. One is confronted, faced, nailed, by the urgency of the present. These are the moments when we are doing what we dreamed of, or what we know we’ll remember always, yet they are moments with no time for looking forward or back. ”
Glym Maxwell from his essay An Englishman’s Dream of a City.

If one is lucky one has a passion, or many. A good drive, unflagging determination, strict discipline and a healthy dose of ambition are  essential.   You also need to develop your talents to the fullest  if you want to get to the point in life  where you can do and say anything you want.  I am at  that place   in my life now.

On Tuesday, I debuted  an act at Casa Mezcal, that I have been doing informally and not as an act all the time since I moved to New York  it seems–telling the story of my  life. As I look back, I almost can’t believe that I  picked up and left El Paso, Texas with my seven-year old twins , ten thousand dollars in my pocket,and drove cross-country in a beat up catering van with  a Louis XV settee to complement the one seat it was equipped with.  I put nine thousand dollars down to rent an apartment and turned down a deal that had been agreed on by Glen Rosengarten of the Food Emporium but changed when I arrived.  I was originally going to own 33% of a company that would  produce Mexican products for their stores but when I got here my ownership had shrunk to 12% and I backed out.  It didn’t augur well for a business relationship.  My estranged husband made fun of me and told me I was going o have to go back to El Paso in disgrace. My response:”I’ll sell burritos in Central Park but I won’t go back.”

I never did sell a burrito then or now.

I’ve stuck to my mission to make my culture known and understood and have preached the gospel of Mexican regional food since I moved here. After a stint as consulting chef and later executive chef at Cafe Marimba where I really learned the restaurant business, I opened my own restaurant, Zarela, with 20,000.working capital. I told all the purveyors who I had worked with at Cafe Marimba that, if they believed in me and wanted to do business with me, they would stock my first order free,  and, if they did not, I would never buy from them again.  I never sold one Corona beer at Zarela in 23 years!

Of course, a lot happened on my way to a successful  life in New York and since but that is what the show is about. Now I have to figure out what to do with it.  I decided to do it because it was a challenge and because I love to perform and wanted to sing in public but I have an ulterior motive. I want people to know that Parkinson’s disease, which I have had for quite some time now, does not have to stop you from doing anything you want. I hope to get on the speaking circuit and need an agent. At the urging of some good and smart friends who attended the show, I am also going to try to make a record of soulful Mexican songs.

I’m hot again now: Radcliffe and the Schlesinger Library just bought my archive and the James Beard Foundation is inducting me into their Who’s Who.  It’s a good time in my life.

Let’s toast with a special margarita made with Tequila 1921 or a glass of a Mezcal from Oaxaca, my sponsors.