It’s a very long flight day, leaving early today from Mexico and landing tomorrow morning in England. It marks the end of my trip through Mexico, and the last day I’ll be here until, honestly, I really don’t know. It’s felt too short, with virtually every place somewhere I’ve wanted an extra day or two.

Maybe that’s just instant nostalgia. The resort I was staying at was getting kind of pricey. I’ve continued to be annoyed with finding vegetarian food.¹ Sitting here in an airport lounge, I can’t deny it’s a relief not to be puzzling through Google Translate for a fifth week running. Maybe I’ve been moving on just before the inevitable exhaustion sets in.

I don’t think that’s the case. I’ve been enjoying myself, despite the language barrier, despite losing my wallet and dropping my computer. My next destination I’ve got friends I’m visiting and places I’m looking forward to seeing, but that’s usually true. I’m not usually so conflicted about leaving, though. That part is kind of new.

I finally managed to find an excellent hotel room just outside the Bosque de Chapultepec, a massive park² filled with museums, a zoo, Toltec ruins, lakes, a castle, etc, etc. It was close enough that I would drag my computer over there to work for a couple hours during the afternoon. Which made it easy to stop in to some of the museums for a short visit before they closed.³

And the neighborhood was nice as well, with a lot of small restaurants and cafés. I ended up at the Four Seasons for dinner and a cocktail on Monday.⁴ Otherwise I found places by wandering in the area, down Paseo de la Reforma or off some of the side streets. And then back to my hotel room, wrapping up my day before beginning another.

I found a weird concordance between the things I was reading during the trip and the things I was doing. I had started with These Truths, a retelling of American history from a broad perspective, which wasn’t principally interested in the history of Mexico but did spend a few choice pages on the Mexican-American war.⁵ I also read The Fire Next Time, which may be about the African-American experience in the ’60s but speaks powerfully and eloquently about the compromises and contradictions with being an oppressed minority overwhelmed by another culture, and I’m currently reading God Save Texas, which is a detailed look at the schizophrenic politics of the Lone Star State, and why it wields such outsized power in American politics. Which, surprise, is also inextricably tied to the history of Mexico.

Mexico is in many ways a mirror of the United States. Their monuments celebrating the founding of their country feature fashions instantly recognizable to anyone who’s seen paintings of the early United States government. The country is divided into states, and ruled by a President and a bicameral legislature. We share a brutal colonial past. The name of the country is officially “The United Mexican States,” for heaven’s sake.

Our countries share far more in common that we do with a lot of European countries. The differences aren’t really seriously cultural, or historical, or linguistic. They’re economic. And that economic disparity is certainly helped, encouraged, and supported by the United States. It’s hard not to find that dynamic at least a little unsettling.

Since I don’t have a place to live, every place I visit I’m constantly thinking Could I live here? And here, in Mexico, I’ve been sorely tempted just about every place I’ve been to look up what it might take to live there. What would it cost for a small pied-à-terre in Guadalajara? Could I renovate a building in Valladolid? Find a house on a small plot along the coast and turn it into a winter home?

But as pleasant as it is to think about, I know this isn’t a realistic plan for me. There’s the language barrier; I’d be committing to learning Spanish.⁶ Also, I know I’d really be looking for a place for some part of the year — a place to stay for three months over the winter, or a month here or there. So really I’d be looking for ways to rent out the place the rest of the year, and that involves a whole mess of bother that just doesn’t sound appealing to me.⁷

The biggest issue, though, is simple geography. My flight to get to Europe leaves at 7am and, after two transfers, lands 27 hours later. And the available flights are all pretty expensive, as well. I had trouble getting friends to visit while I was living in New York City, and that was ostensibly someplace people were interested in visiting. A cute bi-level home 20 minutes from the main drag in the Yucatan might be the most relaxing week you’ve ever spent, but I doubt I could get anybody to visit to find out.

And so that’s what it comes to. I need friends around occasionally, if not all the time. I do want to return to Mexico, see fewer places for longer times, spend more time relaxing. But when I come back, if I can manage it, I’d be far, far happier seeing it with friends.

Next: Birmingham (BHX) to Madrid (MAD)
Prev: Guadalajara (GDL) to Mexico City (MEX)

Footnotes

¹ Mexican food has always been kind of a go-to in the United States for me for vegetarian options, and I really find the menus here kind of baffling. I guess it’s the Tex Mex influence north of the border? Here you’ll find quesadillas (three choices: chicken, beef, or seasoned beef) and queso fundido with spicy sausage and six types of tacos (chicken, beef, pork, shrimp, squid, and fish) but nothing without meat. It’s not the lack of options — I’ve been in plenty of countries and plenty of restaurants without options —but the lack of options in a cuisine I’ve always thought of as being good that’s perplexing.

² Over twice the size of Central Park

³ I visited the Museum of Anthropology and both the Modern Art and Contemporary Art Museums. The Museum of Anthropology was stunning, and much too large to visit in an afternoon, or even a day. The art museums were both kind of small — you could make do with an hour for each, depending on the exhibits — but there were some treasures.

The Contemporary Art Museum in particular had an exhibition of works by Germán Venegas, titled Todo Lo Otro. It was a massive number of pieces, over 300, and while I appreciated most of it there was one work in particular that really resonated with me.

One of Titian’s most famous paintings is called Flaying of Marsyas, based on the myth of a satyr who bet Apollo that he could play better music, and forfeited his life upon losing. The painting is paradoxical: it’s stunningly beautiful, while depicting the horrific scene of someone being skinned alive.

Venegas became obsessed by this painting — which is a good choice for an obsession — and he painted it over and over and over again. He made 55 different versions of it, starting with a near copy of the work, and then slowly changing details, reversing the image, removing figures, changing the materials and the forms and the designs until in the final dozen or so canvases the work has collapsed into blurs and scribbles, finally traversing the 500 year distance between classical and modern art, between sanity and madness (although how sane could a work depicting a flaying ever really be?)

⁴ Monday turned out to be a holiday, and my first, second, and third choices were all closed. But if I’ve figured anything out, it’s that hotel restaurants cater to a captive audience, who generally can’t just cook something for themselves in their room, and so the in-house restaurants are reliably open.

And it turns out, as a kind of minor miracle, the Four Seasons in Mexico City charges local rates for dinner, not international rates. It was shockingly reasonable.

⁵ I do hope people are aware of some of the more unsettling parallels between the Russian annexation of the Crimea and the United States annexation of Texas. Texas declared its independence only after a significant influx of Americans into the territory, and war was declared after a few “provocations” that were, in retrospect, almost entirely trumped up.

As a result of the war, Mexico lost about half its territory. It is somewhat difficult to imagine how vastly different American history would have been had Mexico possessed an equivalent territory to the United States — and the economic power which would have accompanied it.

Further consider that the Republic of Texas was explicitly founded as a slave territory, and faced a choice to accept loans from British bankers — who would have required freeing the slaves — or to join the United States. The next time someone from Texas starts rattling on about their proud devotion to independence, just point out they literally threw it away rather than grant freedom to slaves.

⁶ I could do it, probably, slowly, but just learning the minimum German I’m trying is really killing me.

⁷ I still own an apartment in Chicago which I am still trying to sell and which, in six months, has yet to receive an offer. Hopefully the annual turnover at the University of Chicago will shake something loose.