🇺🇸🇲🇽 Coyoacán>
There are two places, currently, that I ache for when I leave. The Pacific Ocean on the coast of the continental U.S. Like it has called me home and my heart doesn’t understand why I would possibly want to leave. And next, Coyoacan/CDMX… this is the 3rd time I removed myself and I spent my last days in an emotionally pensive pre-withdrawal haze. Like… I’m leaving things behind… leaving things I’m profoundly connected to… things I care deeply for. Like… particulate tendons that have entered my DNA… by osmosis. And I won’t entirely be complete unless I return.
I was set up to be in Mexico for 3 months… but there’s one too many reasons I need to pull out early. One being, sorting out some work things… and finding a studio space. I have some anxiousness to get back to LA… I’m not exactly unhappy about it. I’ll be near the ocean again… and I’ll have my car. And I plan to return to Coyoacan in late October, before Dia de Muertos. So really, no complaints… we can only be in one place at one given time… but it still requires a process….
I spent most of my time just digging into the nuances of everyday existence in the city of 22 million people. There’s much to figure out and it’s annoying, frustrating, exciting and rewarding, all at the same time. A new born babe of sorts.
My gym is Planet Fitness, and there are a few locations across the city. Unfortunately, the one closest to me is still under construction and won’t open until Nov. So… I go to the one wayyyyyy the fk in Tltelolco in the North. First, try saying ‘Tlatelolco’ with an American English mouthpiece, it’s mildly comical. “Donde vas?”
“I’m going to Ta-ta-loco”😁
“😳” “it’s Tlllla - and don’t say loco…”
Second, guess how many gringos get off at the Tlatelolco station on the metro green line? One to none, plus me, is the correct answer. It’s a 3-4 hour round trip with lunch… but I made a commitment to my physical health. So… I do the thing and whine little about it.
The food and markets around town tip the scales. The scales of a quality place to live. It’s not that the grocery stores suck in the U.S. but the amount of fresh, quality, choice, enormous produce makes me next level happy. So… the U.S. totally sucks by comparison.
I was happy to return to Coyoacan to see my friends. I managed to wrangle a few new peeps… the artsy types and a couple of intelectuales.
I hang out with a young-ish historia student working on a PHD. She has one side of her head shaved, a black leather jacket, and tattoos. PunkRock Gilda. A pseudo-anarchist from the mountain town of Toluca.
She comes down to the big city for university stuff and fun… and to see me. She has slap-tag stickers that she hacks from a church. When I showed her my ZenBird sticks she became excited and impressed. Instant BFFs. We then would hover around San Angel/Coyo slapping stickers about. She’d climb on rails and buildings insisting they get located at the highest possible spot. We’ve also worked on some poetry together and she’s an inspiration to my own expressions revolving around the written word.
Gilda (that’s HEE-l-da and not Jill-da like she thinks Americans would pronounce her name, so she told me) has an OCD thing where she has to arrange items in a certain way and has to touch objects as she walks by. In a natural curiosity… I wanted to ask her about it… then decided not to. It strangely comforts me… so I left well enough alone. I guess it releases me from a particular necessary attentiveness. Touch this… touch that… arrange these books like so… while I mindfully daydream.
She does seem bored half the time… but continues to request my company. There was some slight pouting going on when I told her I was going back… and she was attempting to skip work to make the hour plus drive from Toluca to say aloha before my flight left. And I’m flattered and quite blessed to have friends such as this…
…as we are orbiting around the sun, on this lonely planet, hurling through the universe… all we have is each other.
In a ‘the world is a small place’ moment… or just nutty serendipity, I came across a person I met a year and half ago in Ecuador… a Bolivian belly dancer that was working in Agua de Baños. Apparently, she left Ecuador because of some violence. A hold up on a bus and the shooting death of a friend.
She landed in Puerto Escondido in the State of Oaxaca but she happened to be in CDMX getting her Mexico residency card. It’s craziness… and there we were… two people from far off places… seeing each other in the middle of another far off place… walking the streets of La Condesa, having a conversation in Spanish, eating popsicles, in the bizzaro bubble that is México City.
to be continued….
