Just recently, in December 2020, the Cafe Pamplona closed its doors after more than fifty years of continuous service. The Spanish-style coffeehouse and small restaurant was a venerable relic of the old coffeehouse culture of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was close to most Harvard features especially Widener Library which was across the street. I ate and drank there many times and discussed music, religion, art, and other things I don't get to discuss nowadays.
I have a mildly funny story about "performance art" which I did when I was visiting Pamplona one day. In those days I was studying the life of Saint Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits, who believed in symbolic prayer-performance actions. At the cafe they had prickly holly bushes out on the patio. I got the idea that I would do a mini-action at Cafe Pamplona. Saint Ignatius started his career as a soldier until he was wounded and unable to continue fighting. While convalescing from his wound he found a prayerbook of the "Lives of the Saints" and it changed his life. He was wounded...in Pamplona. At that point I was also reading the life of a saint so I decided to do an Ignatius memory action. I took one of the prickly holly leaves off the bush and poked my hand with the leaf spine, just enough to show a tiny droplet of blood. In this I was imitating the life of the saint, since I had now been wounded at Pamplona.
Now the site of my battle was closed, no more room for performance art under the Mediterranean canopy. It wasn't war that brought the Cafe down, it was plague. People were afraid to go in the restaurant. And so one of the last relics of historical Cambridge, Mass. leaves us with the memory of the saints who sipped there, saints not counting me.
Black tech pen, 5 1/2" x 8", November 1, 1984.
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