From the introduction to a borrowed book, an anthology of writings about daily life in Mexico City, a couple quotes that left me feeling I got it right so far (since walking the streets here is what I spend about half of every day doing):
"Strolling through the streets remains the best strategy for understanding the cultural complexities of Mexico City: its delirious nature, its endless contradictions (it is a place of extreme poverty and extreme wealth), its surreal images (André Breton famously called it the most surreal place on earth), and its jumbling of historical periods (modernist high-rises next to eighteenth-century palaces are a common sight)...Aside from lively downtown streets, relentless crowds, and anarchic energy, there is one aspect of life in Mexico City that sets it apart from generic cities: the strange penchant its inhabitants show for weaving elaborate narratives out of everything that happens to them..."
"Strolling through the streets remains the best strategy for understanding the cultural complexities of Mexico City: its delirious nature, its endless contradictions (it is a place of extreme poverty and extreme wealth), its surreal images (André Breton famously called it the most surreal place on earth), and its jumbling of historical periods (modernist high-rises next to eighteenth-century palaces are a common sight)...Aside from lively downtown streets, relentless crowds, and anarchic energy, there is one aspect of life in Mexico City that sets it apart from generic cities: the strange penchant its inhabitants show for weaving elaborate narratives out of everything that happens to them..."
"We'll never know exactly how many we are, for this city is, in the strict sense, incalculable...The landscape overwhelms us, and the only way to make it cohere, to give it meaning, is to travel through it. The city works because it can be traversed.
...The megalopolis is built for internal navigation, like a sea without a port.
...The megalopolis is built for internal navigation, like a sea without a port.
...Large cities lack a structured language; they can only aspire to a broken language, a mosaic fragmented by limitless growth and exuberant chaos.
...Postmodern cities - oceans, infinite zones of passage - signal a shift from verticality to horizontality...less an edifiable space than a setting for movement."
...Postmodern cities - oceans, infinite zones of passage - signal a shift from verticality to horizontality...less an edifiable space than a setting for movement."
ed. Rubén Gallo, _The Mexico City Reader_
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