markets and wanting

Feet are tripping over centuries-old cobblestones.  Mind is tripping on centuries-deep forest humus, 1500 miles away in New Mexico, under wind-kissed pines by a whitewater snowmelt river. Here, head floats caught in clouds of five hundred years of chaos and conflict and deep (often tragic) history.  There, heart remembers empty mesas, miles-wide empty skies, bluegrass at sundown and everybody dressed in muddy Carharts and workboots. But here, now, it's Converse and skinny jeans and serious, street-level stares. And no stopping the flow of motion in Mexico, D.F., ombligo del universo.  Bellybutton of the universe, I love how they call this crazy city.

Senses, here, for now, are beseiged at every level. Exhaust. Open sewers. Sweaty feet that have walked many miles today. Tacos al pastor, uncovered food within reach of the sidewalk.  Rain on soot, with more soot sifting down at every moment.

Taxi horns.  Eternal traffic.  Market vendor music.  Probably banda or cumbia.  Somebody's voice on a loudspeaker, climbing above the other noise, stretching for one more sale today.  Grey-stone-brown. Red and green. Ficus emerald. Studded with raindrops.  Tiny bluesky patches sometimes seen overhead between the passing clouds, if you look quick enough.

These streets are so hard.  But the air is so very soft.  And the sidewalks will trip you, every chance they get, every time you let the soft sky distract you.  And that's to say nothing of what the beautiful people on the sidewalks will do to you.  Lovely long-haired gypsy man five years ago who snared me for 10 minutes with a very sincere, "Buenas tardes señorita.  What beautiful eyes you have..."  and yes, I bought a pair of handmade earrings from him.  That's the clever way business is done there.

Do we ever just want to be where we already are? Quiet and content, at home?

I've been at home, as much as I ever am at home, by that mountain river for a month now. How is it then, that a sentence like this one zaps me immediately back there...
"Their great city of Tenochtitlan is still here beneath our shoes, and history was always just like today, full of markets and wanting."

Markets and wanting.  If that doesn't sum it up. Travel alone, a soul on the search, in Mexico.

What's wanting's object?  What am I in the market for, still, yet?

Maybe next time, my fifth trip there, I'll find an answer for that question.