Dogs are dogs everywhere

I am walking through Mexico City. “It’s very walkable,” everyone said when I told them I was coming here. Technically, I think, everywhere is walkable, unless you’re climbing a mountain, in which case, the degree of access is measured in mounting steps and not flat ones. Climbable.

I think what they may mean when they say it’s walkable is that it is seeable - there are many things to look at and maintain an upright curiosity over, things that sprout in a way that isn’t like my life but is also not jarring or previously unseen. They are familiar, comprehensible things: gigantic tropical plants that grow here naturally, crowding the city corners; graffiti, Spanish graffiti, about gringos (me); puddling little dogs; elegant windows; morning vendors; elders; smokers; kids.

Meanwhile, at home, the spider plant on my desk is appropriately desk-sized and dying, (my husband is trying to bring it back to life). Street art is a stain to wash away or otherwise, commission. Dogs are dogs everywhere, and thank goodness for that. Kids and elders, too. But last month I tried smoking a cigarette outside an event and never felt more like a millennial in my life. Everyone wants to vape, but no one wants to admit that smoking is still really fucking cool.

Subscribe

I came to Mexico City to breathe. I only have four days, so I figured that was good enough amount of time for a reasonable amount of breathing. But in this city that is walkable, seeable, I can’t see. Everything becomes anxiety: not plane travel, or foreignness—those are fine with me. Happy good things become filtered into anxious things. The seen things become what won’t be seen later: sidewalk mangoes for 50 pesos in particular. The walk becomes a climb.

I recently read another writer express that they are insufferable when they are not writing. I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that sometimes needing to write feels like a curse, because even your dental hygienist will say that they dabble in writing when you tell them you’re a writer and you can’t say back “yeah, I dabble in dental hygiene, too.”

The truth, I guess, is that this is my life, this is it, and it’s good and walkable and I am still walking. I am eating the mangoes and texting my friends about them. I just had to stop to write to keep moving forward.

Comment