I close my eyes to the grit of mexico city because the wonderful parts have always seemed so amazing, mesmerizing, and enchanted. For the first time tonight, I'm curious about the grit, and the daily life of the 20 million people who live in the peeling, concrete, muscley parts. A kid pops a wheely at night, prostitutes walk back and forth, a rock band of old men practices in a meat garage, a bald man in a tank peers over a bare concrete rooftop as his mom does the wash behind thin ripped cloth curtains below. For a minute, I allow myself to be swallowed by the seas of stained concrete which I am usually blind to.
We drive up on a hill and I see hundreds of thousands of lights that go thirty miles in any direction.
Scale is so difficult for us to grasp in our mortality. My bubble is infinitesimally small, by my parks and sashimi and dates with perfect German military hair and handkerchiefs, hanging gardens, hardwood and careers related to innovation. There is a lot of mysterious music that rolls through the streets on a hot friday night. Old romance ballads warm the yellow insides of those concrete homes. We arrive in the airport. "To serve you," says my driver. I thank him and take out my baby suitcase and walk away alone.
It's wild to be young and independent and capable of so quickly cutting yourself clean from anything you know. I suppose you never really move away in the digital age. But there are so many layers here I never got to see.
In a week I'll cut myself from this place and go to the other side of the world.
And I'm off again, independent and foreign, to a conference on a tropical beach, with a view, an audience, a cause.
