Spring, 2021
The paradox of traveling in solitary is that in order to find comfort you must first insist upon discomfort.
My goal for this city was to live here. Living somewhere, to me, is to make myself feel at home and for the flow of everyday life to be fulfilling. The most proper way to find fulfilment in everyday life, especially in an urban environment, is to make some friends. It’s hard, maybe even impossible to enjoy a city on your own.
There is no metropolitan area that has inherent beauty because everything natural has been destroyed and recreated by human. In the city, everything of value must be produced, it will never come naturally. The earth is covered in concrete, the stars are overshadowed by the street lights, the birds are scared off by the honking and revving and the rivers are too dirty to swim in. It smells of shit, gasoline, burning meat and sounds like a factory with the engines, echoes, and bustling sounds of commerce. A pristine piece of nature is a beautiful thing, untouched and inspiring. The city doesn’t provide anything that touches the soul quite like a walk in the woods, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful in its own way. It just takes some looking. Experiences and beauty must be taken from others or produced by yourself. If you want to enjoy a city, you have to learn to give yourself to the production, to let the greater entity utilize you. You are only a drop in the river.
Pacing down the avenue in the city is helping develop something. Contributing yourself to the greater being that is the urban conjunction. The city is not the buildings, nor the metros, it is the time that passes in between these things. The objects of the city facilitate the dream of the individual and the greater collective. I want to be part of that collective, but everything moves so fast it’s hard to catch up.
***
Henry flew down to Mexico City with me and stayed for the first two months. We met another American, a girl named Cass. She lived with us in an apartment in Escandon for a month. The apartment was lovely and I felt comfortable there with my American family, but that soon ended and I wasn’t ready to leave the city quite yet. Henry flew home, so I went apartment hunting. Like everything in Mexico City, my living situation fell into place exactly as it should. I met a Canadian who was looking for someone to rent his room for a month, conveniently starting the same day I had to move out of the old place. The new apartment was right in the center of Candesa, a block from my friend Mariana’s restaurant.
Although I love Henry dearly, there is nothing like discovering a place on your own. Most of my significant moments developed in the tail end of my stay here, when I was left to my own discretion, for my own good.
Most of the time I’m okay being alone, but Friday nights are hard and this was my first Friday in the new apartment. No Henry, no Cass. I sat around waiting for a party invitation to fly through my window. I messaged Mariana to see what she was up to. She invited me over to the restaurant for drinks. She had some friends over. They ordered me a beer and some Mezcal with orange slices. We talked for a long time about Mariana’s new restaurant ideas. She wanted me to play the role of an alien for her commercial. My long, skinny arms are extraterrestrial.
Mariana invited me to cook with her the next day in Xochimilco, so we went home in order to get some sleep for an early morning.
I left my bike outside my neighbor’s apartment. I saw that they were having a party, maybe I saw one or two people in drag.
“Can I come inside?” I yelled.
“Who are you?”
“I’m your neighbor!”
I went to a drag party. I walked with them to the club, but left early.
***
Photography is one of my contributions to this city. It is the net I use to catch others in their wake, to break down the barriers that divide us. A camera is a tool not only for capturing a moment, but for creating one as well. The question: may I take your photo? This is obviously not the only way to start a conversation with a stranger, but it sure is a good one. It also gives you good reason to talk to the more interesting looking people on the street. And, of course, you can ask for their number so that you can send them the photos. It’s a rather ideal situation.
The point is to be an active and social photographer. Words come long before the click of the shutter. The photograph doesn’t matter at the end of the day. The camera is a tool for creating moments, not capturing them. You are there to take a photograph and you wouldn’t be there if you didn’t have a camera. The end goal is for the camera to be removed from the situation and for the relationship to continue.
I hopped on my bike one Saturday with the goal of capturing a picture series. My idea was to photograph people all over the city holding the same balloon. I bought a shiny unicorn at Parque Mexico and fastened it to the seat post of my bike. I spent hours with this unicorn following me as I spun through traffic down Avenida Reforma and through La Roma. I guess I was working myself up to some interaction, I don’t know why I spent so long guiding my unicorn around the city. I feel comfortable on my bike.
Eventually I made my way over to a pot farm on Avenida Insurgentes that I passed every day on the way into the city. I saw a group of guys smoking a blunt who looked friendly enough. I’ve never been punched in the face by a guy with dreads, so I felt comfortable. One of them offered to be in my photo, but a Polish guy walks over and asks if I want to be in a music video.
A small, small, caucasian, bald man, maybe late 20’s, rapped about his favorite pastime, smoking weed, while we sat under a tent with his crew of tattooed, hazy-eyed cronies.
***
On a more personal note, I think it helps to be excited about everything. It shows.
This city is so big, but also this city is so big. There is so much I’ll miss, but at the same time it’s impossible not to find connections. I’ve only been here a few months so far and in some ways I’ve understood that I’ll never see even the smallest fraction of Mexico City, but in other ways, I feel like it's shrinking. I’m starting to see people I’ve seen before while out on the street and also I’m realizing that I’m really not that far from home. I had a beer with a girl who had spent half a year living in Chapel Hill, my small university town. That kid I met at the park, his sister goes to Duke University, a 5 minute walk from my childhood home. My favorite thing is when I meet someone who knows someone else I have met independently. When this happened, I would really feel like a part of the community and like I had broken through the barrier. I was shocked the few times this happened, but nobody else seemed to appreciate the coincidence. It seemed as if the enormity of the city had ceased to phase them and that the nature of our space was operating exactly as it should be.
It’s also easy to be frustrated with this city. A fundamental part of Mexican culture is never going through with plans you make (Or maybe it's just me. I don’t fuckin’ know). Don’t get discouraged! Just learn to act quickly, things are still happening, maybe just not how you expected. Walk outside, that’s where it’s going down.
Another thing to consider about this city is that I am quite tall, white and Spanish is my second language. The only places people won’t stare me down are neighborhoods like La Candesa, La Roma, and Polanco, where foreigners tend to populate. But that’s okay, I’m used to this by now. Call me a tourist, a gringo, I don’t care. My experience is unique to myself.
From an American’s perspective, this city truly has an exotic charm, even though it’s really just as far from New York as is Los Angeles. Maybe it’s just political, maybe it's more deep seeded, but Americans are generally quite averse to traveling south of our border. When I told my friends and family I was moving to Mexico for the semester I was met with grave warning. The overall fear of Mexico allows it to maintain some of its classic charm and uniqueness. This seems to be changing, however. For an American this can be seen as an asset, but some of the Mexicans I have met see it as a failure. Over the past decade, according to the accounts of a few small business owners I’ve met, there has been a tremendous increase in Mexico’s foreign appeal. As the manager of a high end fashion boutique recalled, first people came for the food, then they came for the art, and now people come for the design. People who go to Mexico want to bring something back with them that they can use in their American life, they want to become a part of the culture. Whereas before people would prefer to experience this place from behind a pane of glass, never getting too close, never letting it penetrate their own existence.
I see myself coming back to this city for the rest of my life. Shit, I’ll be back here over winter break if I can short the cash. Call me naive, but I’m yet to meet anyone that doesn’t find themselves enamored with this place, foreigners and Mexicans alike. A while ago I remember reading something about how the local government was trying to get people to move out of the city because it was getting too crowded, the economy is pretty good compared to other parts of the country and it's just a good time all around.
***
Now I realize after being here so long that I have no idea what’s going on. Paketa brought me up to a lookout point where I could see the entire city from top to bottom and all of Ixtapaluca and part of El Estado de Mexico and the houses went for miles and I could see into everyone’s lives from my perch above the metropolitan. My little nook in La Condesa is really quite a protected and limited space to observe my surroundings from.
***
“Hoy estamos mejor que ayer.”
this man’s got the words. I’m glad I can even understand. Argentine naturopath. I couldn’t understand why he is here, something to do with some papers. Some bureaucratic shit. I don’t even know his name to be honest. Sometimes it's like that, they just throw some knowledge at you and then you part ways. He is exactly who I wanted to meet today, honestly. I didn’t even have to try. He said `remember this word: empathy. The world is getting better, I know it will’, he said. He’s sitting 10 feet from me as I write this. Talking on the phone. Something about some shit.
This trip has been very broken up. A lot of different chapters. Chapters that can’t be placed in order because in real life, chapters overlap. Things don’t happen one after another, they happen all at once. To think that life is linear is to see the world from your own perspective, never looking outside your own vessel to see where others are pointed. Here in Mexico it is no different. People come and go and there is no way to ever predict when it will happen. The human will cannot be predicted, only observed. There is neither predestination, nor free will. Everything is just random.
***
I got home two weeks ago and here is essentially what I’m left with. One of the most regretful things I feel is a mild sense of guilt due the astronomic wealth gap between myself and my friends in Mexico. Not for any fault of ours, but with the fault of the fact that ‘there is no money here’, a phrase that I heard all too often. A frequent conversation I had was about how difficult it is for Mexicans to enter the United States, even just with a tourist visa (A tourist visas is the most common method of entry for undocumented immigrants living permanently in the United States). Some things that are just relatively easy here in the US are travel, independence, and career development. Just look at how many Mexicans my age are living at home with their parents. (I couldn’t find any stats on this, so you’ll just have to trust me). And then compare that to the culture in the US where people tend to go live at their university as soon as they turn 18. Some might point to culture, but everyone I spoke to was quite determined to move out of their parents house as soon as possible, yet finances were the primary constraint. I noticed that many Mexicans my age were also doubtful about the value that a college degree would offer, which led them to postpone or skip further education altogether. And even though higher education is very cheap, almost free for public universities, external costs such as transportation and housing add up, especially if you could be working instead.
Anyways, fuck borders. Let ‘em all in. That’s what I think. They’re good people - all of ‘em.
***
One day I’ll tell you about all the other things that happened in Mexico City, or you could go check it out on your own. If you have the desire, you can insist your own self into this metropolis.