one raspa theorist

I set out to write about raspas, semi-frozen treats, Mexican snow-cones. In South Texas, where I am from, they come in all sorts of flavors: natural — Banana, Strawberry, Grape — and unnatural — Godzilla on Ice, Tiger’s Blood, Wango Tango. Then I moved to New York City, away from the raspas I grew up with. I took a hiatus. Now I’m back, writing about raspas whether or not I’ve tried them, writing about my associations to their flavors and colors, writing about raspas that don’t exist. Because for all their differences, the seventy different raspas I would have tried are the same. This fundamental fact fits into what this project is really all about. 

one raspa theory

“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.” So sang The Beatles on I Am The Walrus. We are all together, we are one, we are the world and the world is us, I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

This theory goes by many names. Anthony Kronman, a Professor at Yale Law School, calls it Born-Again Paganism. Alice Walker described it but didn’t name it in The Color Purple. I call it Raspa Theory.

Take a Barney raspa, for example. Without giving too much away and detracting from the Barney raspa entry, I can tell you now that a Barney raspa is Silence of the Lambs, is Glenn Gould, is Bach, is Garth Greenwell, is a spider playing dead, is a man I never met, a man I knew, a man I might have loved, is change, is eternity, is death, is life; a Barney raspa is everything, just like any one thing is everything.

It sounds like hippie-dippie bullshit, I know. But I have faith that it — the opening line of I Am The Walrus, the philosophy of Born-Again Paganism, the philosophy behind The Color Purple, Raspa Theory — is true.

After reading some of my entries, I think you’ll agree.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: Infinite.”

— William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell