23rd – 28th of March, 2024
I had grand plans for this post. To retether a narrative arc I cast in January. But I’m tired; my brain has reached full capacity, and it would seem my critical mind is now in recess.
Maybe I’ll come back to it again next time I’m in Mexico City (CDMX) because I have no doubt that I’ll be back here again soon.
New York, Sydney, Portland (Oregon), Berlin, Biarritz and CDMX. These are all cities I have had that wonderful feeling–the I could fucking live here–feeling. Like meeting someone who goes on to become a dear friend or a lover of real significance, there is an immediate sense of familiarity. It settles the vagus nerve, and, with hindsight, your world is now a markedly different place for the encounter.
That feeling that I’ve existed here before, with meaning. Possibly even lived (and loved) here, in many other universes. I feel like I know you already–like I was supposed to know you–and we’re only picking up a conversation we started a long time ago.
Why? Very simply, it’s a feeling. It’s calming and soothing. Grounding. There is an energy flowing through the earth that engages my parasympathetic system. I can potter about Roma and Condesa for days, achieve nothing, and care not a jot. I’m deeply relaxed, allowing myself time to reflect and laugh, often wryly at myself. Yet I am focused, too. Sure to take in the best the city has to offer in its coffee (obviously); history, art and design; food (humble vendors on street corners, to Quintonil in Polanco, for mole, and ant and grasshopper tacos) and the nightlife (mainly the mezcal). Forget New York or LA; this is North America’s coolest city.
I was going to talk about the beautiful people; the pulchritudinous bottoms that outstrip even Buenos Aires. I was going to review the world-class museums and galleries in depth. The latter, I have to thank my grandfather, who introduced me to the importance of art and the vital role it plays in our lives; and to my old girlfriend Venetia for re-awakening that passion in me. I have taken the piss out of art historians, but I’m starting to realise why the perspective through which they interpret the world can make for some of the most interesting of souls.
“The history of art is the record of people who couldn’t find anyone in the vicinity to talk to”
Alain de Botton
I was going to talk about Frida Kahlo. Whose art I’m conflicted on. The extraordinary vulnerability and galvanised strength of character in the face of horrific personal trauma; her bare-naked soul strewn so publicly for us to gawp at–to be made to feel uncomfortable by. It moves me deeply. But I don’t usually find her work aesthetically stimulating. There is reverence for her in me, but is it a memetic infection caused by mass media–films, motifs, a cameo from Tolstoy to pump up brand equity? Has she become another Che Guevara? Plastered across walls, globally, irrespective of who she–or her art–represents. Pop culture at its self-consuming, ravenous, worst.
I spend an afternoon in the Museo Nacional de Antropología; one of my favourite museums in the world. The Aztecs were one of the few people whose lives were compelling enough to keep an eight-year-old me sat on a chair for longer than ten minutes. I was fascinated, and the sense of calm I felt when I sat drawing maps of Tenochtitlan and Lake Texcoco, is the same one I feel today walking the streets of CDMX; a city built on the drained lake I was once so diligently colouring in.
The Sun Stone: a tool of Aztec ideology.
It’s here that I was planning to launch–two-footed, Keane-esque–into Hernán Cortés. But who am I? Colonialism is a deeply complex and entangled issue, and this isn’t my fight. And if it hadn’t been Cortés, it would probably have been someone from Britain, called Raleigh, or Cook.
Perhaps this is also what draws me to Mexico City. It’s not wallowing or overly questioning; nor drifting in self-doubt and neuroses, worried about where it came from; not paralysed by prelapsarian traumas. It knows itself and its youthful confidence is infectious.
I do want to live here, but I also know that’s an absurd notion. I know nobody and I don’t speak Spanish. I talked about authenticity in my post from Costa Rica–short of fluency in Spanish, an authentic decision from the heart would involve moving over here without too much practical consideration. All of that stuff is mere admin, a minor inconvenience. But that feeling…
I’m sitting in the lounge waiting for my flight to London (if you read my first post–a good old, jaded moan–you’ll know these are not my happy places). I’ll put my self to the side for a moment and be grateful for the peace it’s providing me. In my haste to be home and with my family and friends, I’m banging this post out as quickly as I can; like essays I used to furiously scribble in school corridors between lessons. ‘Why don’t you try and make life easy for yourself?’, my parents and teachers used to say. Well, it’s rarely very interesting if you do.
Latin America has humbled me. I have felt cynicism retreat and I’ve rediscovered some of the vulnerability–the open-heartedness–I knew I had in me. The child is happier. I’m better prepared to go towards that which is difficult. A nicer person, too, I hope (although we shall have to see). And I’m excited for what’s next.
This will be it for a while. I may go back out on the road again later in the year, but for now, I’m looking forward to time at home with family and friends. And at some point I should probably get a job.
A few thank yous. To many of you who have messaged me to say how much you’ve enjoyed keeping up with my rambles–I’m genuinely surprised and touched that anyone, beyond my nearest and dearest, would. My family and friends for keeping in touch and boosting spirits when they were low–especially John, Pete and Tom for the regular voice notes. The people I’ve met along the way, who formed the human connections that add the colour to the objective monochrome. Lucia, for her hospitality in Costa Rica and professional assistance; Flora, for her help with words; Jenna, for putting up with me for two weeks in Peru. And Jessica, for encouraging me to write.
Another Door In the Wall 