🇲🇽 Tianguis Del Chopo - 01.31.2025

“No matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it’s all in my mind. There’s no need for solitude. So love life for what it is, and form no preconceptions whatever in your mind.”

― Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler

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Listen to the stars… and when you hear them… the perfect moment appears. And there’s no need for solitude. The planets align just so. Visceral light begins to glow in the lungs. Breath in… the air is heavy… it tastes sweet. The peripheral becomes a blur… it’s slow motion inside the bubble of perception … and it will slow even further. The second hand of the clock takes one step back. You are one with everything and everyone around you. Then all makes sense because nothing needs to make sense. All thoughts disappear. Pause—reluctantly exhale. And now it’s a memory. A perfect moment. And the stars will always have much to say.

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I had spent about 4-5 weeks recovering from some bug… or likely multiple bugs… and now I’m finally feeling 100%… or as good as one can feel with 57 winters under his belt.

I was in a rough state in my first week in Mexico… which happened to be on the birthday of my lovely friend GildaMonster. We had been talking about plans… but I had to cancel. There was light pouting… but that’s just life in the big germy world.

So… it was time to make up some time. GilaMonster, GildaMonster, PunkRockGildaMonster… is a punky academic that I met when I was in Axotla. She’s from Toluca, working on a PHD, curses often and with enthusiasm… and was born into a later generation than myself. She has an OCD tick… she has to arrange everything just so, and has to touch certain objects as she walks by. She seems bored half the time in my presence but continues to request my company… and pouts when I’m not around, and pouts even more when I go back to the States. But we carry on… I enjoy her company and she has an easy vibration… and when you’re the stunt double for the poster boy for the ‘lonesome traveler’—what’s not to like about nice company?

“…there’s no need for solitude”

Anyways, she was down from Toluca for classes in Santa Fe, that’s on the edge of CDMX… so we get some time to hover around Mexico City together. We went to the Tianguis Cultural Del Chopo… which is a Saturday market and gathering for the Goth/PunkRock/Metal lifestyle. It suited us both. Next to that, the Biblioteca Vasconcelos. It’s a colossal library… Ms Gilda wrote the majority of her Master’s thesis there. Lots of books, lots of cool architecture. Lots of platforms and stairs. It’s ten types of cool.

We are all a paradox of emotions, ideals, and personality traits. My compañera has all kinds of smarts, she’s hip, tattooed, a Chigóna (badass) from a rough barrio, and quite persistent… but… she doesn’t know how to ride a bike, or know how to swim… and is nervous to learn. She is nervous to be on stairs, nervous to be on a platform, nervous to be in an elevator, nervous to ride the teleférico, nervous to walk on the grating covering holes on the sidewalk, nervous to cross the street… she taps her foot and/or hand on everything before committing a step… and humans aren’t we all?

"I wonder why our life must quiver between beauty and guilt, consummation and sadness, desire and regret, immortality and tattered moments unknowable, truth and beautiful meaningful lies.”

― Jack Kerouac, Windblown World

We can’t have one without the other… and sometimes it’s both… at the same time. Paradox.

More patrols of Roma Norte. Coffee and a perfect moment at Insomnia Cafe. Beers and UNO at Malafama. Late night tacos with the Chilean colleges, Museo Nacional de Antropología, and this and that and the other… and the weather is perfect… and now I don’t want to leave.

I fly back to San Francisco in a week or so… then I have a one day trip to Denver because I have to show up in person for a refund for medical BS and I’m annoyed and completely not going to, “let that shit go” anytime soon. Then back to SF for a few days before I make the long drive to Whidbey Island in the glorious PNW… to spend a month in non-voluntary solitude.

And one more time… because it’s all in my mind.

“No matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it’s all in my mind. There’s no need for solitude. So love life for what it is, and form no preconceptions whatever in your mind.”

― Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler

#CDMXlife 🇲🇽🥰🙏I