MEXICO CITY: Casa de las Flores
Each day in Mexico City was a revelation for me. I learned something new about the culture, about myself, or about alternative ways to live. I eagerly look forward to […]
Each day in Mexico City was a revelation for me. I learned something new about the culture, about myself, or about alternative ways to live. I eagerly look forward to […]
And that really resonated profoundly for me. This is a topic that is rather hard to write about in our culture because there is no grey area or middle ground for patriotism. Either you love America or you’re likened to a terrorist. This isn’t fair because the more you grow to love something, the more cognizant you become of the flaws. Travel has allowed me to see my home nation with a different perspective, from afar and from the eyes of others around the world. When we let ourselves escape our comfort zone and throw ourselves into something new and out of the ordinary, we are capable of incredible realizations.
I walked up and down the street where he allegedly lived. I lingered in the bookstore that he launched to sell books of his images. I found lists of shops he liked and visited them. I went to exhibitions that he put on. And when I was lucky enough to be in Paris during a Chanel show, you would know exactly where to find me, lurking around the Grand Palais. Let me tell you, reader, for a young fashion lover, there is nothing so intoxicating as an obstructed glimpse of the Chanel runway. I waited in the rain, longing for Karl to come out, but I never saw him.
I’ve never been able to eat pea soup without thinking of demonic possession. Do you know anybody who has ever been possessed by an unholy spirit? It happens so often in the movies and television that you’d think we’d all know of at least somebody. I’m in a coffeeshop right now back home, watching the rain fall — like in Mexico City, it won’t stop — and this idea has quite suddenly enraged me. Every week there’s some new show on the Travel Channel about some possessed child.
For reasons that should now be clear and obvious, Jessica wanted to see ancient ruins so that we could shout in unison, “THAT TRAIL THAT WE BLAZE” and then chortle like infants and run (read: walk slowly) through crumbling Mesoamerican pyramids.
Since I left the airport last year, my soul has been aching to return. And finally I’m back and I can’t even begin to tell you how wonderful it is. Nothing has changed, if anything, Mexico is better. But I’m jumping ahead. I need to start at the very beginning. Hopefully — and I just learned in one of my university courses that that’s not an acceptable word but I don’t give a hoot — you’ve missed my lengthy reminisces of travel. As one of my long-dead heroines, Lady Lucie Duff-Gordon, an Englishwomen who gave herself completely to Egypt and died in Luxor, once said, “I long to bore you with traveler’s tales.” Let’s get started.
One life is hardly enough. I have no fear of death, but I really am irked that I only have a century here. And that is if I’m lucky. For a lot of people, more than I ever expected, a hundred years is plenty. People are tired and worn down and disinterested in life. I think there’s nothing more thrilling than being alive, seeing what’s around and learning about what has happened in the recent and distant past, so I will never understand this attitude. If I could live forever, I would pay whatever price. I’d make a deal with the Devil if that were a real thing.
Monday: Why don’t you pick something up at the grocery store that frightens you? All my long life, I have disliked peppers. Nothing could convince me that they were worth […]
The point of travel is to learn about the world, not perpetuate your provincial and ethnocentric point of view around the world. You can do yourself no greater disservice than fail to attempt to appreciate the glorious world around us.
Anyway, I learned how to say ‘sack.’
LOVE: Something Rotten: I love the theatre. Whenever I’m in New York City, I see as many plays as I can. If I lived there, I would blow all my […]