Eight weeks have passed since my last post. I have been in four cities. Christmas and New Year’s Day have been and gone. And, as ever, the New Year is a time for new beginnings; I will be returning to a regular schedule for At Large, publishing posts on the Thursday of each week. They will look back, ahead, and at the time at hand. But first, allow me to bring you up to speed.
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Oaxaca de Juárez
Master’s applications have gone to seven universities. Though the most significant event of these past two months for myself, it is the least interesting to you. Instead of indulging in the details, I will share a photograph of the view I had from my Airbnb while I was writing my portfolio and pulling seemingly infinite other application materials together.
I also visited the newly built home of Ximena Labra, an artist behind large public exhibitions set in Canadian airports, Icelandic bus stops and the ruins of libraries in El Salvador. The house itself was also a work of art. Constructed around her family’s water supply in the mountains, an hour or so outside of Oaxaca, it featured an onsen bath whose water was filtered through a tiered system of Japanese-style ponds. A mosaic adorned the lower section of the house, with hand-fired blue and white tiling intended to resemble Tlaloc, the Aztec deity of the rain – though to the uninitiated, a space invader might seem a closer analogy.
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San Cristóbal de las Casas
“Food poisoning.” The statement came from the beleaguered man smoking a cigarette from the balcony above the garden where I sat. His name was Craig – or “Creg”, as his Canadian accent insisted – and he owned a excitable butch bulldog called Delilah “from Honduras”, whose bulldog predecessor had “travelled to 27 countries” before she had died and he was forced to replace her. A designer for the Toronto Star in his younger years, today he seemed to dedicate his life to travelling and looking after some iteration of this specific breed of dog. He groomed Delilah constantly and was eager to show me how, using only your index finger, you could clear the dirt from the cavity where her tail used to be.
Leaving this image aside, Craig’s two words and pallid features served as a premonition. Of my fourteen days in the beautiful terrain of Chiapas, ten were spent admiring the interior of the toilet bowl. I did not see the spectacular Cañon de Sumidero, an hour’s drive away. I did not meet with the remnants of the Zapatistas, a pro-indigenous revolutionary movement who claimed the territory surrounding San Cristóbal for their own in the 1990s. I did not witness in its full majesty the parade of masked dancers, banging drums, fireworks and thousands of brightly coloured flowers attached to floats that moved through the town centre, in honour of Our Lady of Guadalupe. A concoction of antibiotics and painkillers were my only friends.
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Puerto Escondido
In search of sunshine and familiar faces, I returned to the beach. I learned that illness was all but guaranteed in Chiapas, something to do with the water supply. But now was the time for recreation. I casually began to “Learn Spanish in paradise”, as the flyer for Puerto School advertised. And, though getting off to a rocky start with my volleyball career, my immaculate physique and unwavering hand-eye coordination eventually led my team to three consecutive wins during my final stint on the pitch.
Puerto Escondido had visibly filled out since I’d last visited in September. Rooms were scarce and mobs of tanned tourists from across the Americas and Europe reclined along Playa Zicatela come 6PM to watch the sunset, consistently among the most beautiful you could ever witness. Everybody there was young, good-looking, carefree. But is there something cheapening in this – perfection like a swimwear commercial, stuck on loop? And like the sunset, the people disappear so fast, rarely staying longer than a week before being replaced with another fresh batch of bronzed, well-proportioned faces.
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Ciudad de México
Back to the big city in the New Year. It feels familiar somehow – more so than other cities where I’ve stayed, though I was here for less than a fortnight on my last occasion. Perhaps it is the similarities that it has with London as an international hub. There are gallery openings to look forward to, bookshops to browse, people to see and new avenues to explore. I have made a start on reporting stories and generating fresh ideas. As I write this, I see a red double-decker tourist bus making its way down the streets of Colonia Juárez where I stay. Welcome home.