My First Proper Mexican Tasted Something Like This

We collected the car keys in Tarzana
on the third day of the new millennium
and drove West on the 101 towards the Pacific Coastal Highway.
It was a Bank Holiday. The first Monday of a still fresh decade.
My whole life had been spent waiting for this moment.
And the open road didn’t disappoint.
We parked the two-door electric-blue
Chevy Cavalier beside the Santa Barbara Wharf,
crossed the railway tracks, and followed
an ancient Chumash Indian trail towards
the foothills of the Santa Ynez mountains.
The early afternoon sun, hot on our necks,
we made it as far as the taquería on North Milpas Street.
It’s there, that my most Divine Visitation occurred.
I broke tortilla with The Tonsured Maize God that day.
It’s there that I first heard the howler monkeys,
calling to me from far away in The Valley Of Oaxaca.
My tastebuds awoke from their coma. My stomach was reborn.
On that day, the avocado tree became my personal lotus plant.
And I knew then what had to be done.
For the next 36 hours I drove blind on the blacktop.
Past the hot springs of San Luis Obispo.
Across the span of the Bixby Bridge at Big Sur.
All the way to the golden switchbacks of San Fransisco.