and yet...

Further evidence that Querétaro is increasingly my second home: upon visiting Mexico City this weekend, three weeks into my time here, it dawned on me: I’m in Mexico for the summer. I was at the National Anthropology Museum, far from the home-away-from-home of my mundane, routine pursuits, watching it rain when this obvious realization finally clunked into place.

It occurs to me the word “home” has been cropping up with startling frequency in my writings lately.

Mexico City is a megalopolis, which essentially means two things to the casual traveler: 1.) everything that’s cheap elsewhere is exorbitantly priced because of the massive, war-zone-like distribution problems, and 2.) a lifetime wouldn’t be enough to see and do everything you can think up to see and do over the course of two days, so you have to save something for next time and resign yourself to sensory overload and exhaustion. For example, day one: ruins at Tenochtitlán in the morning, anthropology museum in the afternoon, followed by a night of mariachis, lasso tricks, folkloric dancing and cock fights, all enjoyed over a supper of roasted goat. Day two: Chapultepec (Mexico City’s question, if Central Park is New York’s answer to it), palace and home of Mexico’s six-year emperor, palace of fine arts, lunch at a café after which one of your favorite bands has named itself, and the National Museum of Art.

Here’s a fun game to play when you’re in Mexico: find the one weird thing wherever you are. No matter where you are and what you’re doing there’s always at least one thing in your environment that’s completely incongruous. You’re in the art museum looking at painting after 17th century painting of martyrs and Marys and suddenly there’s a kid in a wrestling mask. You’re in a shi-shi restaurant eating a buffet lunch Mexicans have prepared thinking it will appeal to Americans (featuring, for example, a substance almost but not quite entirely unlike mashed potatoes) when out of nowhere a man in a feathered headdress and loincloth barges in and starts blowing into a conch and whooping and whirling about. Times like these you don’t have to look too far for incongruities. Other times you have to dig a little deeper, but don’t worry, they’re there.

Another thing about Mexico: it’s baroque by nature. Baroque everywhere else went out of style a couple hundred years ago. Here, baroque is like energy: it doesn’t disappear, it merely changes form. The Palacio de Bellas Artes, a triumph my friends and companions had to drag me from kicking and screaming because I didn’t ever want to leave EVER, has all the grace and harmony and whimsy of my beloved art deco while still remaining summarily, consummately Mexican. If you visit the post office you’ll need to sit down after mailing your letter; the post office is breathtaking, and I am not even exaggerating.

I used to be ambivalent to Mexico City. After this weekend I really like it. Someone gave me a book of poetry. I took a picture of a fireman with his dog in the Zócalo. I got stalked by some strolling minstrels. I scratched the surface, and I will go back.