About Love
The following is a collaborative work, developed over the phone and via email between London and Ashland, Oregon. We have taken our time with this – the recording of thoughts and ideas. Tomas begins the story.
TOMAS: I like the idea of using Discard and all that it stands for to me to talk about one of my Heroes. I have seen/heard in our industry, our culture, our community, our family -within hospitality- the word ‘legend’ used over and over again. The word has gone flat and flabby in its overuse. Words can have that fate.
Now take the word ‘Hero’. There is a word that has been spared from the vernacular. Heroes rise above the banal, above the trite and hackneyed easy/automatic catch terms of our popular culture. My heroes are Mohammed Ali, Malcolm X, John Lennon, Don Javier Delgado Corona.
What is it that heroes stand for? Where in does this term, this title gather its power? Is it that beyond inspiring us we feel they can save us? What is it then that Don Javier represents for me? The answer is simply and sublimely.... love. In Don Javier’s own words this means giving with nothing expected in return.
This idea, this definition of love is so refreshing so revitalizing, so different as to be somehow revolutionary. It is most likely that each of us knows this, understands this form yet how many of us actually express, use love in this way? What would happen if each of us practiced love in the way that Don Javier saw it, used it? Is it hyperbole to imagine that this could....save us, all of us?
It’s been more than thirty years that I have been becoming a disciple of Don Javier and what he stands for. I have written various things about Don Javier in the past. Some of these writings have been assembled here in this paean, this homage, this offering to the man and what he stood for. Nothing is expected in return.
Tequila ‘pilgrims’ come from literally all over the world to visit Don Javier at La Capilla. It is their tequila Mecca. In the Drinks International magazine poll of “The World’s 50 Best Bars” for 2012 La Capilla actually came 20th. This says something important – in a way it is a tribute to tequila in general since this is the essential tequila bar. Perhaps more importantly, it is a tribute to Don Javier because the bar and he are one and the same.
One particularly memorable time I was in La Capilla, in November of 2010, I was told something that I had never heard before in my 20 years of going there. José Luis Partida, a real regular and the one who first took me to the bar in 1990 when he found me in the streets of tequila looking for ‘my truth’, told me that strange things often happen in the bar. I asked him what he meant. I’d been drinking all day and while my spoken Spanish flowed easily, my comprehension needed checking. What did he mean, “strange things”?
He tells me that there are spirits in La Capilla, not just the distilled kind but souls of people from the past that come into and inhabit the space and the bar. Bar stools move, glasses fall off the table by the bar and do not break. In the kitchen there are cases of beer that have been seen with smoke coming from them as though they were on fire but no flames.
José Luis has told Don Javier about what he has seen and Don Javier says no problem, it’s only the spirits: the souls of persons gone who visit us. He admits to having seen the refrigerator and the drinking water container move on their own. He said this happened always in the night and there have been usually three or four persons present who witnessed it. I have since long sensed a ‘holiness’, an extra special power to Don Javier, and now I believe it even more.
Is it not said we make our own reality, especially after having been in La Capilla all day enjoying the ambience – and, of course, after the tequila?
Tomas Estes: The secret of life is? Don Javier: Is love that asks nothing and is interested in the well-being of the other – love that asks for nothing.
TE: Anything else for the people who’ll read this book?
DJ: Well, without knowing them, I esteem them all for being your friends, your friends are my friends. Even though I don’t know them physically at this moment, I know them spiritually because they’re friends of yours. In my humble way I greet everyone, all the world and if one day they come here and I’m still living, I am at their service whoever they may be. I have open doors for whoever may come.
TE: Open doors, open heart, both ways: in and out.
DJ: Yes.
TE: I’m going to put into the interview that you’re a Magi, a wiseman.
DJ: Ha, ha, I don’t deserve it but I am grateful with all of my heart. I don’t deserve the bond that you bring.
TE: I don’t know if you remember the time that Gaz Regan came here. He was happy and very funny but he also told you he had cancer and you said, no more. How did you know?
DJ: It’s that you have to ask God for the answers.
TE: Would you say that all in the universe is there for us, all that we might need if we but allow it?
DJ: Yes, God can and will dignify us with many things.
TE: Are you happy?
DJ: All my life. God has never left me with want. God is always accompanying you, you’ll never be left alone. What ever you might want, ask for it.
TE: What do you want for your future?
DJ: The tranquility that I have right now. I don’t wish for anything more at this point because it’s my time to turn in my ‘lassos’.
TE: I asked you once – very late at night in here – what was the essence of life and you said respect and applied that also as a manner of doing business. You also said that respect and love, spiritual love go hand and hand.
DJ: If you want to conserve your relationships, your friendships you need respect and that is a kind of spiritual love, not love with interest. With a person you esteem and respect and they respond in the same way we can find that this is the basis on which to live in harmony with a content and happy life. This is pure love, I think that way but who knows?
BY REBEKKAH - This is a story about two men and the impact they’ve had on the people around them – an account of a relationship to which I have only been party to twice, but will always remember.
In 2018 I took my first trip to Mexico. I know, what took me so long?! It was paradise. I flew in to Guadalajara, and drove with Tomas to Tequila. I’ve been back twice since, and my boyfriend says he’s never seen me so happy as when I’m there. It’s sunny and the streets are bright, and even when it rains (which it does!) the streets are still bright. There are some parts of that trip that are blurry, but there’s one day I will remember for the rest of my life.
I had been dreaming about going to La Capilla since I saw a photo of the Batanga in Tomas’s book. I’d heard about it from Jake Burger and Julio Bermejo and read about it in books and magazines and I loved how it countered every idea we have about cocktail bars needing to be luxurious and aspirational with marble bar tops and custom-made booths and staff in jackets. Admittedly... it would be nice if the toilet flushed a bit better, but you don’t go there to wee.
La Capilla is made from stone and wood. It has cracks in the floor and an old water trough for horses to drink from. I didn’t see that happen, but it seems popular with the local dogs.
In 2018 Don Javier was ninety-three and working in La Capilla once a week. Our days didn’t correspond, and I didn’t mind that I wouldn’t see him because I understood his need to be at home. Tomas and I drank Batangas - me more than him - I smoked, and we ordered tortillas from a local cantina. The plastic chairs were broken and wonky but comfortable. The TV was playing Mexican pop music and we looked out on to the bright street. It was everything I’d imagined it would be and so much more. I loved it, I still do.
On one of our walks Tomas brought me in to a hair salon to see an old friend of his. They spoke in Spanish together and afterwards Tom told me that she’d asked him to visit Don Javier at home. He was sad, she said, because a friend of his had died. She said many of his friends had died. We stopped at a fruit stall and bought mangoes, papayas, melons and pomegranate, and we went to Don Javier’s home.
When we entered, Don Javier was praying with some rosary beads. He had beside him a bible. His eyes were closed. His sister greeted us and we sat down on a soft sofa, next to a small Chihuahua who enjoyed the attention I gave her. There was a fan that cooled us, and we were silent and still, listening to the quiet Spanish prayer from across the room. When Don Javier opened his eyes they were watery and light and he looked at Tomas with a smile. He was not surprised to see us. Tomas went to Don Javier and they touched foreheads with closed eyes and they stayed that way for what felt like minutes but must have been thirty seconds or less. I heard the word ‘hermano’ which I knew meant ‘brother’ and although the language was alien to me, I understood that their bond was strong and in that moment – impenetrable. ‘Don Javier is a spiritual man, a leader’ Tomas said to me when we left.
A year later Tomas and I went back to Tequila with some friends - old and new. We visited La Capilla and Don Javier’s nephew walked us to his house where he lived with his uncle - the same house, and the six of us piled in. Don Javier was still smiling. He looked as though he hadn’t moved, still in a bright white shirt with a hanky in the pocket and light, watery eyes. His sister was there, and the chihuahua still yapping. Tomas told me afterwards that he found the experience peaceful. Two hermanos, clear as day.
We talked about it months later, in writing this piece. We spoke to our friends who were there too.
‘I tried to write down what it was, but it’s impossible. To say it in a sober way, we saw two friends saying hello and goodbye to each other with the the knowledge that it could be their last time, with a smile and recognition for each other’s memories. It was special.’ – Chris, Oscar and Thomas.
‘When we walked into the house not only were we openly and warmly welcomed, I remember feeling we had stepped into the inner sanctum. It was solemn and loving at the same moment. I recall the emotion and energy in the room was so thick it was hard to breathe.’ – Jacqueline.
‘I experienced the meeting of two old friends as if there had been a sort of “psychological transfer” that made me live it personally. An exchange of love, an exchange of “lived life”, mutual respect, esteem, affection. I never thought of being transported in a single moment. I lived that moment in silence, listening, closing my eyes for a moment to savor it to the fullest.’ – Francesco.
Don Javier ran La Capilla for over sixty years. He served some families for four generations. Tomas says “It’s about love, and all that entails. We are benefactors of this love, the family that gathers at La Capilla.” He said the same thing to me about Café Pacifico – that it wasn’t about Tequila or Fajitas or Mariachi – just love and family - the rest will follow.