When I was in my twenties I used to ride the metro there with a good friend who was French, and she always was annoyed (“Why do you care?”) with my habit of choosing which car of the train to board so I’d be lined up with where I was going. I still do it, and I’d say honestly that it’s probably a marker of a certain type of obsessive personality which I now understand and confess to.
Like my friend, Mexico too is the opposite of that personality. A few nights ago I rode the metro back to our rental and across from me was a family, three generations riding together. A couple with what looked like the woman’s mother, and her two children. Her husband held an oversized girl (probably about five) in his arms as she slept and the mother read her other younger daughter from a paperback book. I almost stayed on the train past Tacuba (where I needed to transfer) just because I was enjoying watching them. If I really knew how to live slow I probably would have stayed on the train.
A couple of days ago I received a screed from a good friend asking “Why should it be more difficult to turn on a TV today than it was 50 years ago?” I think that’s a good question. I’ve spent several days trying to craft a workaround so I can import captions into the picture galleries on this blog, almost a complete waste of time since I never got it working. I still position myself on trains, and am still hyper-aware of timings that most people hardly pay attention to.
Sometimes it’s good to be in a place that’s just the opposite of who you are. I’d like to think I share some characteristics with the people in Mexico City – and that’s true – but there’s certainly a lot of foreign territory.
Sadly, I’m not still friends with the woman from my twenties. Her email address hides behind multiple layers of verification codes, and I’ve never been willing to jump through the hoops. But I actually would like to compare notes and see where she ended up too.
The perfect contrast with the whiteness outside my window! I can see why you and Beth enjoy Mexico so much. I was commenting in our bookgroup how your photographs and Beth’s paintings balance the grey hopelessness and desert bleakness in the two books set in Mexico which we’ve been reading – Pedro Paramo and The Power and the Glory. Could I put one of your photographs of the Women’s Day March in the Cathedral newsletter? If you agree, I would need you to send me a link I can use to the picture of your choice.