So I took a hiatus. On accident. And then I felt the need to catch y’all up week by week and that was daunting so I did nothing. And then I realized. This is my blog. I do what I want. There are no rules. And here we are.
Do you ever watch your own psyche battle it out? One part being like “I do what I want!” another part being like “But you created an expectation, please the people” and another part mimimizing in the background being like “Do you actually think anyone you don’t regularly talk to reads this?” Then you watch and are just “Wow we kinda got a lot going on in there, don’t we? This is an interesting thing to call healthier”
It’s been a weird week of random blasts from the past. From an hour long convo with Peter from just after high school to multiple long convos with my high school boyfriend Jamie who is likely going through a divorce, to an invite to brunch with Yves who I met here on a trip with Mike, Kathryn and Eli in either 2018 or 2019 and Jeff Taisch friending me on Instagram (ok, if you’d asked me, I would’ve just assumed we were already IG friends). Which keeps making me wonder if I am just really lovely and kind or if I really suck at boundaries and can just be counted upon to still be at least quasi available.
I can’t really decide the extent to which I want to cover the past 2 months. But a sorta highlights reel feels about right.
THE WORLD CUP WAS IN MEXICO!
And oh my did Mexico show up for it! And I have to say what an immense gift it was to be here for this World Cup. Eventually though, one did get slightly terrified that Mexico would win and the city would eat itself. Mexico regularly qualifies for the World Cup. Really briefly, the World Cup starts with teams divided into 12 groups of 4 who all play each other, the top 2 teams who carry the most points out of the group advance (3 for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss), along with the top 8 teams who finished 3rd to create the round of 32. This is the knock out stage, one game and if you lose you’re out. Creating 16 teams and that is basically how it goes till the final. Mexico almost always advances out of group, just to lose the first knock out game. This time, we did not. We won.
But even before that the city was ready to party. I’m trying to think of anything I’ve experienced that is comparable and drawing a blank. Maybe a happy WTO protest? The first thing to understand is that suddenly there are more TVs and every TV everywhere is playing the World Cup all day. Not just Mexico games. Not just gamesi n Mexico. All of them. Everywhere. All the time. I mean the small pharmacies shove a TV halfway in the entry, the nail salon has a small one of rolley cart, the coffee shop down the way has a massive one on a stand about half outside and they have to move it inside rapidly when the rain starts. It’s inescapable.
Messi & Ronaldo got a lot of press for it being their 6th world cup appearance. This is first time in World Cup history anyone’s gotten to 6. But Mexico has also has a player who has been on the national team roster for 6 World Cups, Guillermo Ochoa- Memo. And I have been a Memo fan for awhile. Based entirely on his being on the Mexico team and his looks. Here’s this cutie.
He played for Club America here in the city for different stints of his career and was the highest paid player in La Liga. He’s also played a fair amount for European teams. He’s not on the list of greatest goalkeeps, he didn’t play for the top teams in Europe, and he wasn’t a starter for several of those World Cups, this one included. He was the first Mexican to be on the shortlist for the Ballon d’Or, he frequently served as the Mexican team captain. This was not just his last World Cup, but his retirement party.
He came on at the 78th minute in Mexico’s final group stage game against Czechia. And really he just babysat the game to its conclusion. And at the end, the 80,824 seats of Estadio Azteca exploded in chants of “Memo, Memo”. He was visbily tearing up as he walked to each goal post at Azteca and gave it a goodbye kiss. He knelt down on the pitch, covering his tears with a gloved hand. This was the stadium he first played in it was unbelievably touching to see him say goodbye. His teammates came running out to toss him in the air as the crowd continued to yell. It was really a fairy tale close to a two decade career.
The energy here was wild! Below is from the second match Mexico played against South Korea. At the bar, one of many bars all doing about the same thing.
After watching at a bar, lively enough, we headed down to the Ángel of Independence which is a landmark and a gathering point of sorts, for celebration, for protest, for rallies, for parties. In such a big city, this is a heartbeat.
Scenes from the bar before:
I now own 2 Mexican National team shirts, a Mexico shirt, a crayon to paint red, green and white on one’s face, 2 Mexico painted matracas (terrifyingly loud wooden noisemaking devices) and a national team dog jersey.
For the game against England, we all met up at Paige & Diego’s. At this point Mexico City had collectively lost its mind and in a desperate attempt to impose some kind of order, the govenment had restricted access to anywhere near the Ángel wtih checkpoints, and the neighboring hoods were all banned from selling liquor that day (you could order in a restaurant/bar, but not to go). I had to lie and say I lived there to get through to the apartment. My house sits about 1.5 miles away from the landmark. Paige is just a few blocks. I left and walked up Chapultepec HOURS before the game. This is probably 1 mile away from the Ángel and about 3 hours before the match. This is not the street the Angel sits on. This is the significant thoroughfare it appears to be.
We pre partied at their house before going to an extremely vertical restaurant where we’d reserved a 15 top table on the 4th floor and crammed 20 people into. We shared the relatively small room with another big group. And left to heartbreak on the street. Although at Estadio Azteca in the south of the city Mexicans congratulated, danced with, and poured mezcal down the throats of the English fans. Mexico won this World Cup in terms of hospitality.
In other news, I went to the Leonora Carrington interactive space? exhibit? something at the Centro de las Artes Immersivas. It was really cool. She was a British surrealist painter, sculptor and novelist who spent most of her life in Mexico. A close friend and contemporary of Remedios Varo, who I am very partial to.
Before I left, I’d found a new and tiny bookstore off Foster and the owner there recommended her novel “The Hearing Trumpet”, which was bizarre and amazing. It’s interesting to see feminism in the surrealist movement. Even just how this space was crafted, it makes me think of some of the differences noted in Frida’s work in being personal and emotional in contrast with the heavy political murals of her time.
The exhibit starts normally, pictures of her in her youth, an explanation of her life, some of her work (I think largely lithographs?) and then it morphs into more of an experience.
You start through thick, folded and pin tucked golden curtains probably 20 feet high, to form an almost womblike passage, lit by single bulbs hanging from the ceiling compelled in perpetual motion like a pendulum. There is new agey/surrealy music. I don’t think there was dry ice, but it feels like there was a mist. As you emerge from a few twists and turns into a low lit space, the first sculpture is obscured behind a barrier that reads “Pierdete para Encontrarte” – lose yourself to find yourself. You know how I’ve mentioned sometimes these pieces of my time here feel like they were meant for me?
Each piece has it’s own room constructed of curtain, mesh wall, nothing solid, but intimate and fluid. The floor beneath your feet changed from flat to stone to sand.
And then I went to DC to celebrate my aunt’s or maybe everybody’s? 80th birthday. So first I decided to miss my flight. And then finagled my way into a different from Houston to DC getting into National. Net win. And I got to see this epic lightning storm from a plane. At first I thought it was a light on the wing, then I was entranced, then I was a little scared. Once you’ve accepted that you’re in the plane and have literally no control and that probably the pilot is trained for this, you can just relax into it being amazing.
Washington DC in July is gross. But my kinda gross. I have a love/hate relationship with humidity in that my hair gets beautifully curly and my body feels more limber and I don’t want to be outside very long and cannot do my normal trekking about.
It was so lovely and heart warming to see everyone. Perhaps an added piece of living somewhere near without anyone close to me around is that it feels so special and so good to be in the presence of those who do. And actually got to spend some time with Nancy and Mindy and will from now claim the Newfarmer cousins as my own.
Margaret had her hands full with activities and cooking and company and essentially just event management.
Scenes from DC.
There’s something so easy about my family for me. One, I am absolved of all responsibility. The general lack of reproduction in my generation and that our parent class is highly independent means that while we’ve gained autonomy and respectability, we’re still kinda the kids. So I can completely avoid the “herding cats” frustration of trying to organize things within the fam and just roll along. Also, since I’ve never lived there, I can get away taking control of nothing and simply completing tasks. It’s oddly relaxing. I don’t think I’d want it as a life style, but it does feel like vacation, just being told what to do.
Since I got back from DC has been a bit chaotic.
Leo had an injury to his paw that was long and dramatic in seeking various vets and in healing. Work has been activated for wildfire since late July. And I feel like I’ve been burning candles at both ends trying to give myself a reprieve from work- this is where working from home bites one in the proverbial ass.
A few scenes from Mexico
And also there were tacos:
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