These have been a hard couple weeks and I’m not fully clear on why. This grief business is slow going with every step forward bringing a new way to slide back into sadness. I have been so spoiled for so long with my friendships meaning deep intimacy. These are my people, the ones I can call sobbing, the ones who deal with irritable me, hungry me, and self involved me. The ones who’ve seen me mad at myself, insecure, who’ve helped me through feeling like a failure, being down on myself, and who not just tell, but show me, I’m enough. And I miss him and I hate myself for missing him, but that doesn’t help or stop anything. But here in Mexico, I’ve put myself in this place where what I call friends would’ve been acquaintances back in Oregon and I’ve done this in what is hopefully one of the worst years of my life, which was an interesting move on my part.
Albert Brooks articles keep clogging my instagram feed. Last week’s had an especially provocative title ‘Success Addicts choose being special over being happy’. For those of you unfamiliar, Albert Brooks ia an Atlantic columnist and a Harvard professor in public leadership who studies happiness. Now, of course, I don’t have an Atlantic subscription so I can’t read the stupid article, but the title haunts me. It’s probably a little much, and I’m not sure I’m that good of a success addict, but I recognize some piece of it. Perhaps, because I inaccurately think of success as more in one’s control. Ticking in my head for whatever reason is this narrative that one works towards a career, towards goals and achievements and it feels like a different bucket than the one in which you would put ‘build community’ or ‘have close friendships’. And it’s so silly, as I’m very much seeing now, friendships are things you work for and seek out and think about how to grow and nurture. You practice for them. You learn to be a better listener, more supportive, and you work on being a better friend. It doesn’t generally fall in your lap. And while I’ve always believed you work at and cultivate relationships and if asked “What do you want your life to look like?” I would certainly have responded with “Close friends and community”; it has never before occurred to me to set a goal around it, the same way a career change or education might, to think of it as an achievement.
After a hell of a runaround with Kaiser, that has ultimately resulted in me having a new care team and greivance being filed, I managed to get my wellbutrin prescription. And then in a sign that I am either very fucking lucky or am starting to figure out something about Mexico, had my most productive day ever in Mexico, during which I accomplished multiple activities!
Fran and I met up for tacos at Castacan, possibly a new go to, and conveniently located round the corner from my nearest Petco. I then beat the rain, just barely to the pharmacy where I quite easily obtained welbutrin 150mg in extended release (so much internal applause). In general activities that involve this many unspoken norms in the US are multi day adventures here. For example, in the US, anyone who can write a prescription can write it for an anti depressant. I’d already had uncertainties about whether that was the case here and my cousin informed that it was definitely not the case in Chile and that you have to go to a mental health provider (which honestly makes a whole lot more sense). As it turns out, I was ahead of myself, because step 1 was determine that prescription requirements are consistent across the big pharmacies. Spoiler: they are not. And after needing a prescription online at Farmacia Guadalajara and no such thing online at Farmacia Similares, I hit the jackpot at Farmacia San Pablo, but I was still trepidatious as online most definitely did not guarantee presence in a store and I could not figure out how to make an online account with a Mexican phone number that you had to actually confirmed via WhatsApp. But voila. I got it. Next, but definitely not least, I bought a printer. Ok, so I feel somewhat guilty about this one, but I just cannot do dense material online.
Saturday, I hiked! It had been a long time! A small group, just Liz, Isabelle & I headed out to Los Dinamos to go to Puerta del Cielo. You may remember my blog on Los Dinamos from my first time there, so I won’t expound on the details of the park. Suffice to say it’s a large park and protected natural area on the southeastern edge of Mexico City. I’m realizing hikes that start up give me grief, I need just a little mini warm up prior to up. But Los Dinamos hikes don’t seem to offer that and this was no exception. It was a crowded morning at the 4th dinamo where our adventure began, with everyone trudging up the stone roadway, but we cut off fairly early on as though going to Ayla, a restaurant we visited last hike. A crucial understanding about these establishments is that they do not really boast walls. There is a designated cooking area that make or may not be inside, but the whole of the spaces is at most contained in a sorta brick half wall zone and in many cases, not at all. Ayla is a big space with multi level outdoor seating, some sections with makeshift “roofs” and a few buildings that I assume hold a kitchen, maybe also a family. The restaurant was closed, so Liz hollered through a gate until a 10 year old came and let us cut through part of the restaurant property to reach our hike.
We walked, just the three of us, for a ways on a narrow and lovely path up and behind the restaurant. Especially now in the wet season, I’m reminded a bit of home in this area. Big green trees, moss, and ferns decorate the landscape and the rains have kept the trails dust free. So one kinda weird thing about Mexico is that just because you’ve paid a park entry fee, and then paid for parking, doesn’t mean you won’t hit another point where you pay for entry onto a specific trail. So after a nice flat stretch, we came upon another points in tandem with a large guided group who were heading up for the rock climbing route up cerro Tarumba to Puerta del Cielo. We paid our additonal fee and began up. It was very up, ropes strung between trees to help along the way kinda up. I rather enjoyed this part as there’s a bit more intellectual stimulation figuring out where to place your feet, how to manage your poles and in this terrain going up feels a lot safer than going down. Not dissimilar to falling upstairs vs down. It was an absolutely perfect morning too with crisp air and blue skies, not cold, but definitely not warm.
After pulling ourselves up for a ways we hit a plateau, again reminding me of the northwest, with big trees and lush greenery. I think also that this park is home to the last living river in Mexico and that water running through a forest definitely feels northwesty. As the park used to be a functional space for electricity production, there are a lot of random discarded buildings about adding a sorta of mysterious eerieness to the landscape.
The woods are young, unlike a lot of Oregon, but they are enough to make you realize how loud this city is. And granted, even here, the second we hit that plateau we found others. Initially a troup of uniformed teenages (some local scouts equivalent?, maybe a school outing?) looking at surly at the clearing by the building on the right. There’s no demonstrable road up here and I was left pondering exactly how this all got built.
We continued our ascent, I no longer felt slow, cause the groups ahead of us did my work for me.
And then turning a corner we reached Puerta del Cielo, which is like gateway to heaven or door to the sky or something along those lines depending on exactly how you want to translate that, though I think it has a tendency toward the divine. As I suspect is often the case at Los Dinamos the main viewpoint was too crowded, so trudged a bit further to a secondary viewpoint. The view is close to identical and the main differentiation is that at the Puerta itself the rock is situated a bit over the valley so you have your snack comfortably seated at the edge, unlike the second view point. Now we’re in a park in the city, so while at the top, we were still just barely over 11,000ft up.
We had some snacks. I watched a woman whip out her compact and make up herself for a selfie (this was committed, not like brush on some powder, there were two shades of lipstick and lip liner involved) and then we set back off on our way back down. It hadn’t been very far and was still quite early, so we descended by a different route. At the abandoned building, we hung a right. This was very peaceful and beautiful hiking with an abundance of green, smooth trail and relative quiet. Again, the mossy dampness reminded me of the northwest.
And since we had extra time, we though maybe we’d find a new route down and then ran into a few hiccups in that attempt. We found a cliff face with a terrifying ladder and no clear path below. We found a small waterfall. We found a trail that simply deadended. And about there we gave up, retreated once again and took the path more traveled.
This was still a different than that by which we had ascended and I think overall an easier route, certainly we saw a lot more people coming up and down. There were sections that were a bit more of a scramble or a jump. There was water beneath our feet at times with Liz ahead cautioning us about slippery spots. Suffice to say, I have not yet encountered a slippery spot here that comes anywhere near rivalling the expectations of slippery one might have coming from Oregon. But it was very green.
We popped out at a totally different location than we had started from, La Bodega, so we did have to walk up the main road for maybe half a mile to get back to the cars. And of course, stop for tacos. There were some lovely views on the way, the combo of rock formation and trees always gets me.
It was really nice getting to know Isabelle a little. She’s French, but has been in Mexico City for over 20 years. We talked about Spanish, learning second languages, on the way down the pair decided to only speak in Spanish, which I appreciated. Liz asked how much I understand and I tried to explain that actually I understood the two of them quite well, but the TotalPlay repairman I didn’t understand a word of. Isabelle said she can’t understand Cuban Spanish and offered to bring me some kids books that she has from when her boys were little. Liz brought me a Tornelli shirt that is apparently the same color as my sheets.
The drive back into the city was actually relatively traffic free. I did however get caught in a mini downpour on my way home. Fortunately, I had brought my rain jacket with me. Unfortunately it was a substantial enough walk and a substantial enough rain that my legs got pretty soaked. But yet another water test passed by the boots!
On Sunday, I worked on school stuff. It’s been a slog. I am no longer easily good at school. I haven’t yet ascertained if the school is harder or I’m simply out of practice, although that I’m loathing paper writing suggests the latter. It’s a bit demoralizing really, and I get it, I haven’t been in an academic environment in a long time and it’s a different mindset, a different skillset than those I’ve been practicing. But given how fundamentally fragile I’ve been feeling, it’s been a drain rather than a boost.
So in the early afternoon (aka before the rains!) Leo and I trekked down to one of my favorite coffee shops, Almanegra, to pick up some more coffee for at home and just move a bit, get some air. As per usual, he attracted pets from a minimum of 5 people. I also think the crew that works at the coffee shop has gotten to know who is and they all came to give pets.
Despite the espresso tonic, I found myself having a lot of trouble with motivation, which has maybe been the theme of this class for me. I can’t tell if it’s depression driven, a lack of interest in the subject (sports & society not being anything I would’ve picked of my own volition), or if it’s just a dread of not being good at something, of feeling like I don’t know where to start and therefore just procrastinating. Particularly annoying as this was once something I was quite good at and actually rather enjoyed. Granted, I always procrastinated, but it never cost me this amount of energy to get it done.
But we have coffee.
Tacos of the week:
Honestly, it probably should be Castacan, but we might save that for another entry when I’ve taken better photos. So instead, we bring you a taco campechano from the random place we ate it in Los Dinamos. Campechano is a combo of meat and sausage, probably most traditionally chorizo & bistec, though I believe this one was longaniza and cecina. These tacos are enormous with an oblong tortilla and a mess of meats, nopales, and avocado. You genuinely spend a few contemplating whether to fold short way or long way. They had the classic green and red salsas, both quite pica, Liz laughed at herself for asking the gringa (me) to try them first as I am more pro spicy than Liz by a stretch. But both had delicious flavor. There are some salsas that just taste made of peppers and these were definitely of that persuasion.
Year One Project 
Leave a comment