Two years since my departure I resume almost exactly where I left off: Mexico City, same neighborhood, same hostelry. It’s like the reel is playing out in reverse, a reel slightly faded, slightly unfocused, yellowish, the reel I always thought optimal for this surrealist landscape, however much such visionaries as Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Luis Buñuel or even Juan Rulfo (whose book I feel I’ve never sufficiently grasped) held something different in view.
It’s much of the same around this bustling city: industry, industry and more industry, with the expected wear and tear and total lack of spiff and pretentiousness in trying to conceal the hazard. Auto shops, street vendors, congestion of the likes I’ve not elsewhere encountered (my shared van commute from the new airport into town consumed 2.25 hours of time), polluted grey sky which manages to spew beautiful sunlight all the same, the pervasive smell of tacos and grated meat and chile and spice in which I dare not indulge as much of the local gastronomical tradition: we’ll see how discipline holds up, if at all; the haphazard motley menaces the streets.
Mexico City is said to boast the largest population (and the fore or second most museums) and it certainly shows, contrary to that other megalopolis São Paulo whose overcrowding never quiet alarmed me nor even felt all that noticeable.
But you know what, I like it here and always have. This whole nation, in a manner most subtle, somehow left a greasy impermeable stamp atop my challenging to adequately represent geo-ethno identity. Though I’m never surprised to discover near indifference for neighbor countries among plenty of persons whom I engage on the topic. Then again, much of the neighbor country dynamic across the world consists of contempt, harassment, if not full-scale warfare.
Decades of interaction with all sorts of different social stations have instilled a certain fondness and sympathy for this friendly folk and its diverse and intriguing ways: that mishmash of Aztec and European and the older gaucho traditions and the modern contemporary, however one is to understand these coarse delineations, however unfriendly the local bacteria to my digestion, however rough around the edges.
Where am I going with this? You might say I ramble. Though, what’s wrong with rambling? I feel I’ve rambled a heavy majority of this website.
Anyway, I don’t perceive as much having altered in two years' time. Don’t feel any of the traditions fading, don’t feel the claws of modernity intensifying. The streets communicate roughly the same tale since my initial visits in 2012. It’s in this country that I began to speak Spanish in a ‘proper’ manner. Though I feel I’ve made acquaintance decades preceding.
If anything, immigration procedure appears to have slightly simplified in the elimination of that migratory form I recall always filling out on the plane. No trouble at the immigration post. Not much trouble with anything to this point.
Questions, comments? Connect.