January, 2022
I want to talk about Mexico and being there a second time around and what I learned and what was reaffirmed to me. Coming back to a place after an extended leave is a good way of finding out who it is that you really connected with.
Carolos Fuentes wrote that cycles are a fundamental characteristic of the Mexican universe in his book Tiempo Mexicano. The Aztec god Quetzalcoatl takes the form of a feathered serpent devouring itself ‘whose time and space denies a linear illusion.’ It only took reading this to realize what I knew the whole time. Everyone in Mexico appeared to me as if I had already known them all before. It didn’t feel like this in the moment, but in analysis, I now know that my story there was perfect and that the people I fell in with were exactly the folks I should have met the whole time. And it is such that it only could have happened this way because of the way it happened. I’m not talking about predeterminism or anything like that, but cycles occur everywhere, especially in nature where we try things over and over until something finally feels right. The process is work, but the product is fate.
It’s hard for me to write something about these few weeks, I think, because some of it felt unaccomplished. I went there with some friends with the goal of really just enjoying ourselves. I had friends to be with all the time, I never felt uncomfortable. That was such a theme of going there the first time because I was living there, making something of myself and for myself. I knew no one and was trying to find fulfilment, but that all changed this time around because I came back with a pompous air of already having completed Mexico City. At some points I even questioned why I had come back. I wasn’t creating anything. Walking through Chapultepec and Bellas Artes felt empty and time passed without a sense of being drawn to the moment. But there are also several pieces of this episode that I hold dear.
Paketa hosted a rowdy kickback with some of the best BMX riders and skateboarders Mexico City to share the project he had been working on for the last six months. I pooled some friends together and headed over, somewhere north of Polanco. We weren’t sure if we had arrived, but Miri recognized some friends of hers also waiting outside the apartments. Paketa was an hour and a half late, as I should have expected, but the owner of the apartment was cordial. I cracked open a bottle of tequila and put some music on with a little disco ball to fill the room. Folks filtered through the cramped living room, dancing cumbia, and smoking cigarettes and weed. A projector displayed Paketa’s video part and others shared projects as well. Cheers erupted when someone landed something sick nasty and ‘ooohs’ bellowed when they took a bad fall. The night was full of debauchery, but truly it was wholesome. The group was supportive and friendly and everyone felt welcome. And I wondered how I ended up in such a lovely situation. The party was still running as I left. From the street I could hear them chanting and singing and imagined the floor thumping with stomps from the cumbia.
On December 31’s Miri, Paketa, and I hopped on a bus to Veracruz hoping to arrive before midnight. Coming from the city, there was nothing outside the windows except for lights covering the cerros, the suburbs of the great metropolitan. Except that the suburbs of one of the biggest cities in the world are larger than my own home town, so what they resembled more were clusters of stars, or firework finales, or maybe just imagine taking a piece of paper and make 1 million dots and that’s what it looks like. And actually this is what it was like all night long, stars and lights and fireworks littering the sky. Inaki picked us up from the bus station a few minutes before midnight. Walking into their hosue I immediately knew that there were just another sweet, welcoming, and loving Mexican family (That is a vast oversimplification, but in my mind this fits into a larger identity and idea I have of Mexican families). The ceiling was low, just tall enough for me to stand upright, but there was a beam going through the center of the room that I had to duck to get under. I normally don’t feel like I’m too tall for Mexico, but I did feel a little out of place in that moment. In the end it just adds to that feeling of exciting discomfort, which I love so much.
After a couple of drinks, I was starting to become more settled. I ate beans and tortillas. There is something about the beans they make, which are so fucking delicious, so simply fucking delicious. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re made in a big ceramic pot and boiled over the fire for days before they get salted and seasoned to perfection from a granny that’s been making and eating beans her whole life. It’s like they’re not trying to be the star of the show, they are just so unoffending and comfortable that nobody in the world could complain about eating a big bowl of them every day of their lives. But enough about the beans. Then we started drinking and singing karaoke and Inaki’s uncle taught us folk dances. The most impressive thing was how such a short, stalky, older guy could move his feet so God damn fast. And imagine the places where dances like these came from and everyone has to learn how to move their feet moving a million miles an hour.
The group took turns singing karaoke and I realized that Paketa is one of those people who just doesn’t have an off button and actually he is brilliant and charismatic and I don’t know how he can just enjoy and entertain and be such a source of life. I know Miri had similar thoughts because we kept looking back and forth at each other and saying ’what the fuck? How does he do it?’ At around 4 in the morning Miri, Inaki, Paketa and I went out to smoke some weed. Inaki took us to a little hill a few blocks from his grandmother’s place and we sat around while Inaki rolled us a joint. Paketa was very drunk and we talked about some dumb shit probably. Nobody brought a lighter, so I went back to the house and knocked on the door. They decided it was best that I go because if someone asks what I’m doing then I can just pretend that I didn’t know what they were talking about and they’ll leave me alone. Someone put their head out the window to see who it was and I heard them say something like ‘Inaki’s friend is at the door, the gringo!’ and they let me in and I grabbed Miri’s bag and dipped before anyone could ask any questions. Inaki was paranoid about his family finding out that we’re all delinquent pot heads.
I wandered on back to the hill that we were hanging out at and we smoked the fucking joint and it was great. And the best single moment was when we saw a shooting star and I had already wanted to see one so bad. And I felt a connection to my friends at that moment and I felt welcomed and humbled by how awesome the place I was in and wondered how you got there and I might have shed a tear because the moment was so beautiful. And the shooting star and the hill we sat on which overlooked Atzalan which sparkled with a million dots just like the rest of the country I had seen that night.
The next morning the bed was empty, Miri was gone and Paketa wasn’t even able to make it up the stairs to our room the night before. But right out the window above the bed, Miri could be seen lying on a hill in the sun. A Beautiful image. The coffee was hard to find, but the work was necessary. The whole house felt unfinished, but actually it’s true that it was already in the end of its life. Inaki’s uncle had just gone through a divorce, the family moved to Puebla, and everything that made a home a home was removed and the house was left as a template. There were no doors on any of the bedrooms, but Inaki says this was just one of those things that was forgotten when they moved in, one of those pieces of normality that seems so vital, but actually just try to get used to it and you’ll see that it’s all going to be okay. But maybe there is more to it, maybe, they’re like the monks who lived with no doors because living in transparency brings you closer to God. Where did I hear that? I think it was in a Herman Hesse book. Maybe Camus.
We stayed in Atzalan all weekend, spending time with Inaki and his family. Inaki’s father looked at his son with adoration, pushing through the seriousness of his temperament. He knew that his son was lost, but carrying so much potential and was proud that he had brought with him some friends. His father showered us with nice lunches, pastries, coffee, and toured us through the small town which raised him. But he showed us around as if he too were just trampling through the favorite spots of his youth. The Spanish church that looked over the town and he could point out every house and building along the horizon. A waterfall buried in the hills of banana and coffee farms, bigger than I had ever seen, but so perfectly comfortable sitting on the river. Paketa said something like ‘People keep trying to destroy Mexico, but there’s always something like this left standing.’ Inkaki’s father marched onwards, leading the way.
We had made plans to hike a volcano after we got back from Veracruz, but I woke up feeling quite sick the day of departure. I didn’t know yet that it was Covid, but Paketa tested positive the next day.
Parque Mexico was the perfect place to test out Miri’s new tattoo machine and think about whether we would have a place to sleep the next day knowing we all probably had Covid. In my case I was concerned about whether the test I was about to get would come back negative, permitting me entrance into the United States. Miri’s case was actually a little more grim because she wouldn’t have anywhere to stay if she tested positive. But we were in high hopes. And Miri was excited about her new tattoo machine and we were happy we could help buy it for her. She wrote the word ‘oink’ on my leg and I drew a stick person dancing cumbia on her arm and sometimes people would stop and look at what we were doing. There’s no other place in the world this could have happened. It’s where Miri and I met, it’s where I spent my time with nowhere to go, its where you go with nowhere to go, it’s where lost people go. Parque Mexico.
We spent a long time talking that night and crashed in a cheap hostel near Bellas Artes. I didn’t sleep very well and when I woke up Miri was in the lobby reading Aldous Huxley and I gave her a note and I said good bye. I was off to the airport with a few hours to spare so I could take my test. I paid $40 and waited in line for an hour to have a swab shoved down my nose. Surely it would come back negative, they always do (They don’t (But I was hopeful)). And of course it was positive. Fuck. I walked down to the other side of the terminal and took another test. I told Noah to go without me, I’d be fine in Mexico alone. The second test came back positive.Something told me to give it a shot anyways so I went through security and hopped on my first of three flights to get back to Chapel Hill. That night I would find out if, for a miracle, they were going to let me on the flight or if I would be stuck in Cancun. The completely absurd part of this whole situation is that Miri had called me that morning and told me that she had nowhere to go, that her mother was moving to Cancun and wasn’t going to buy her a ticket. She would have to get a job and make her way there by herself. Now I was taking her place, and Miri being the gracious person that she is, told me that she would ask her mother if I could stay at her house in the event I get stuck in Mexico. She is a fairy. That same day she let me know that some distant friends of hers had offered to let her stay at their house for the time being. She’ll be okay. She slept on a roof in a tent, but she enjoyed it, she said.
***
People would sometimes ask me if I would ever live in Mexico. It’s a hard question to answer, but usually I say no. I will be coming back for the rest of my time here on earth, but nothing will change the fact that I’m not Mexican. I’m a tourist, that’s all. I’ll never know what it’s like to live in Mexico, make Mexican wages, and really fit into the space. And that’s okay, but being in Mexico, or many other places, is not the same as living there, no matter how long I stay. Maybe my thoughts on that will change some day.