Gregory O'Brien
Sombrereria
Men come to me with a
headful of this
and that. A hat goes a
long way
to making up the mind.
I am often asked what a
hat
contains: a lost train
of thought, patch of
displaced sky. A well-situated hat can be
many things: ice
bucket, dormitory, a nesting place
for the tropic bird or
rocky outcrop of some
distant geography. The
hat is
a commentary on all
that is wrong
with the world. It
knows
the true shape of
the head beneath it.
Among the racks and boxes
I go a long way
out of my way.
Necessarily, the hat completes
the
man, the man
the hat. Wind-resistant
yet weather dependent,
a Panama, Fedora, Porkpie or
Sombrero is not an
approximate thing—
it is an island, as a
man
is not. With a minute
adjustment of the rim
a man becomes a priest
or cowboy or hired
killer. Yet there are
certain things a hat
refuses to be. A hat is
not a helmet—and,
despite being man’s
crowning achievement,
it is
never a crown. A hat of
mine would not stoop
that low. In this
windless
hat-friendly town, the
world goes past
my window: a pram, a
flamenco troupe,
a coup d’état. A hat
maketh
the man. There is
enough inconclusiveness
in the world as it is.
Snow-like
my hats fall upon the
heads of
the citizens of
Santiago. In warm weather
they make themselves
scarce. The moment a
stranger
enters my shop, the
tilt of his head
tells me where he is
from; his hair speaks to me
of wind-flow, humidity,
proximity to coast.
Dents, scars and
undulations
I note, on forehead or
temple
or crown. Only this
afternoon,
one customer had been
struck
by the boom of a yacht,
the next scratched
by a low-flying bird—
my guess, a giant owl.
Another
had recently
encountered
a cupboard door or
chandelier, and this last
knocked out by the
wooden leg
of a double bed,
crossing
a windswept field. It
is these events
that propel men towards
my store—the felt hat
offering shelter,
protection or, at least
an early warning
system.
Homberg or Poor Boy—a
hat
consolidates the
thinking beneath it.
The innermost lining of
a hat
is a man's life. By the
time
a customer departs
he has grown to the
height of
his hat. Or such is the
thinking and so
one day, will be the
forgetting.
A thin man is a stem
upon which
flowers a tempestuous
hat.
My role is that of a
baker—a hat
properly fitted, must
rise up above
itself. And bear its
wearer skywards.
A hat should bring a
man to
fullness, fecundity, as
the hat itself is
a well-upholstered bird
flightless, except in a
Valparaiso southerly.
The shop-window a
well-fed
multitude. Less
contented the Coquito palm wine
which rampaged through
my youth—
the opposite of a hat,
it does not clear the head.
Each evening, my hats
extend towards
the edges of the city,
like taxis or library fines.
Or they reach skywards
above the Santiago
Underground
where the hatless dead
make what little progress
is allowed them.
Broom-like, my gaze
sweeps a man out from
under
an ill-suited hat.
In this regard, I am a
janitor
a doorman also,
or more correctly a
keeper or custodian
of the space within
each hat.
The body is a creaking
stairwell spiralling
upwards
to this hilltop
observatory.
A hat is also an ear
listening in on
the head’s business,
with the same exactitude
I record the sound of a
hat lifting off
and then landing
again—I think of myself also
as Air Traffic Control.
A
hat is an underlining
of certain things. A hat thrown high
the
monkey puzzle tree casts its cool light
upon our feverish
brows. Longshoreman
as well as harbourmaster, I am a wearer
of
many hats, a man of influence
beyond the polished floors
and
racks, these grey banded hats
which lie in wait like
battleships
of the Chilean navy—the tall, leaning vessels
of
Valparaiso—becalmed yet
hungry for the tumultuous future
as
a window full of hats is
for the light of each new day.
