Night falls over the city

July 27th, 2008

-$.10 2 mangos

-$3.10 coffee and 2 tacos for breakfast

-$.5 newspaper

-$.3X4 bus fares

-$14 lancha fare

-$14 lunch on lancha. Oh such a rip off.



Things to remind myself of at nine pm. When I am feeling slightly bereft, and a bit too entrenched in my head, and habits of being constantly entertained. It was a good decision to go up on the roof, to perch on the ledge and watch my neighbors wander home, walk the dog; to appreciate the vague lightning and the flowing light coming from the apartments across the way, which pulses in lavender, cobalt, angry orange from televisions, but which reminds me of other people’s domesticity. Like the fire escape at home, or how I used to climb the tree in front of my house and perch silently, I like the sense of anonymous observation. I need to take that moment to snap myself out of my head, or at least into a more appreciative and creative corner. Good also, to listen to my landlord’s frenchy spanish echo around this caverny old house. I am safe here- a bit like a princess up in my tower, which I laugh at myself for. So far the only threat has been the kids accidentally locking me in my room. I really hope it was on accident and doesn’t become a past-time. Having to holler out my window to an eight year old Oskar who has better spanish than me makes me feel like an eight year old myself.

For my mom’s 60th birthday I made her a book and a promise to write her sixty postcards, one for each of her years, while I am gone; one or two a week. This serves many purposes: we both get correspondence, which we love and will need when we are lonely. Also, she enjoys journaling, and I should do more of it, and the “assignments” I gave us will hopefully keep both of us intentional, social, and grateful. Today’s was to “feel the news” (which I resented as stodgy even though I had made it up myself), and it felt like a good place to start the day after a night of roiling pesadillas, or nightmares in espanol. Nothing more routine than seeking down a newspaper stand, breakfast and coffee, even if that breakfast is tacos al pastor and the coffee a cup of capuccino foam.

I also made three friends today. A couple came to look at the downstairs room, which I covet. It costs more and is unnecessary, but has poetic deep blue tiling and the most perfect claw foot bathtub. They are Chilean, and we met as Virginie was showing them the roof, which I was lounging on with my Lonely Planet and paper, attempting to hydrate and feel chipper. Turns out, the Vagina Monologues are being performed in two days… Is this why I can’t get ahold of the producer? Or is it a different performance? So it was a really good thing I read the paper, and noticed the headline, “Espectaculo femenino”.

I felt stifled by Sunday in a Catholic country, and perceived everything to be closed, so instead opted to take the couple up on their sympathetic offer to join them on their adventure to Xochimin, which I have yet to pronounce correctly, and which I keep saying like Hochimin, which I believe is in China. He was raised in the U.S. and they met while in Patagonia, perhaps one of the most beautiful places in the world. This is as good a time as any to mention that apparently everyone in Mexico is part of a lustful lovership. Though I am entertained to find a Catholic country winning the “most PDA award” I do feel slightly forlorn and like a creeper as I take photographs of enamored lovers lounging in the park, or sneak peripheral glances at the massive saliva swappage constantly taking place on the metro, in the street, everywhere.

Anyways, they are delightful, he is a photographer, and she is very kind. I wish I could help falling in crush with nearly every truly good and interesting man I talk to for more than an hour, but. Asi es. I felt her getting chilly towards the end, maybe because we were speaking in english, or maybe because my eagerness to hang out with people near my own age looked more like infatuation than it really was. We talked about feeling as though we have slightly different personalities in our non-native languages. How even our limited vocabularies lead us to express ourselves differently, and therefor be perceived as different people. This frustrates me, and I try to overcompensate for sounding a bit like an ass by being abnormally friendly, smiling, and listening more than speaking. I feel like I am less edgy in spanish and far more polite. Wit is cumbersome. Perhaps this is why Sonia, my Ecuadorian host mom, loved me and felt she could talk to me about such personal things, also why I befriended Ana, another old lady, for the long commute home. She, like Sonia, is a beautiful person, with a love of sharing her country and a propensity to talk about food, the ocean, and being alone. I opened the front gate successfully for the first two times today, which is a good thing, as the family is leaving for two weeks sometime in the darkness between tonight and tomorrow.

I am glad I took my new friends up on their offer. Like when Virginie offered for me to eat with them, I had to squash my initial overly polite, or self conscious, or something, response, of “oh, don’t bother” to a “well… sure. Why not?” Honestly I’d love to accompany complete strangers on an adventure that would be grisly lonely on my own. I spent perhaps six or seven hours with them, know a lot about their history, asked many overly personal questions, but still only know that one of them is named Gabriel. I think its him, but I’m not sure, and this reminds me of the funny kind of friendships you make while travelling. Whether of short or long duration, these are rapidly forged friendships, born of spontaneity, an open –mind, someone’s generosity and someone’s loneliness. Though this apartment isn’t their style, it is most definitely mine, and I enjoy the long walk back from the metro, the shrine I find along the way with fresh flowers, looking for the kitten I saw once and probably won’t see again by some decrepit carts, opening the ancient wooden door, and finding the kid’s plastic swords as a roadblock and careless reminder that I am in fact far from alone, and am capable of being the kind of person I want to be and writing on the roof with Mexico City breathing, honking, and pulsing around me.