Chapultepec.
On the Impossibility of coincidence
“As we all know, Mexico City is a small town of 14 million*.”
— Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives.
On our third or fourth day in Mexico City, (I can’t remember which because the days have already melted together in my mind) Tati and I decided to run to Parque Chapultapec. This was a working vacation for the both of us. We still had classwork and jobs to maintain while we were in Mexico. This meant that on most of the days our schedules we’re tight. So, running to the park allowed us to kill two Mexican birds with one gringo stone; we would get a lovely little tour of the city and get a workout in at the same time.
We followed the lush forests that serve as dividers for the major avenidas to the park, watching the city like a movie as we ran. We saw a mariachi band serenading lunchers in the street, a huge park with lakes and bridges, a statue of giant geometric blue hand the size of a stage with a homeless man sleeping on it, and a shit-ton of street art. As my blood was pumping I looked around and thought of stories for these strange, mystical, painted figures that decorated the city walls to live in. I saw one that looked like an angel of death with huge black wings, the neck of on ostrich (or a brontosaurus) with a human skull on top. That night I would put these characters into one of the best stories I’ve written in a while. I can’t wait to share it with you.
Sweaty and out of breath, we finally reached the infinite forest of Parque Chapultapec. For those of you who don’t know, the park is 686 hectares in size. Kit, one of the poets I met on our first night in Colonia Roma at the Japanese sandwich shop called Gohantin, told me that it was the size of Manhattan. I’ve double-checked, and the empire state island is actually 5,900 hectares, but all of Central Park is only 341 hectares, so that should give you some indication as to how fucking massive this place is.
(*The population of Mexico City today is somewhere closer to 22 Million people.)
We jogged through the park for a while before we decided to stop. We had already run four miles to get there and if we went any further then we wouldn’t have the energy to get home. Plus we wanted to find the castle and who knows how deep that was? So, Tati used her Tripadvisor powers and found a bike rental hut. We hoped we would be able to rent the bikes in the park and return them at some kiosk near the house but, as it turned out, this bike rental hut was quite literally a hut with a random assortment of bikes compiled by the owners, so that plan was donezo. But this is where things get interesting, because if we hadn’t gone to that strange hut with a big pile of rain-ruined books in front then what happens next would never have happened.
We kept walking from the hut, deeper into the park, and before long we found ourselves crossing a small stone wall that brought us to a miniature island in the middle of the park. At the center of the island lived a giant tree — like the Deku Tree in Ocarina of Time. There was a fence around the lower levels of its massive trunk (probably to protect it from vandals) but Tati and I poked our fingers in and touched that ancient being for a while. I tried to imagine that I could feel the energy coming from the sunlight, through the leaves and the branches, or from the soil through the roots to the trunk, right back to our fingers and coursing through our body before it returned to the dirt.
Tati walked North to look to the edge of the island and I walked South heading toward the other bank. Sitting at the water's edge, I found five chilango kids a little younger than me, passing around a pipe filled with mota. Earlier that day Tati had mentioned that she wanted to find somewhere to buy weed and I pointed down toward the riverbank. “I don’t really feel like smoking today,” she said, but within 30 seconds of saying that she had walked right up to them and introduced us and I found that we had joined their circle in no time. Tati’s good at that.
There were five of them in total, Raul, Santiago, the Blonde One, the one kid with pink glasses who I only referred to as La Vie en Rose for our entire relationship, and Anna. Raul was a music major, all of them played a little music actually. Santiago and Anna were twins, cuates. Santiago was studying acting. He and I got along quite well as we talked about different plays and playwrights. His sister was a Tatoo artist, which was a perfect little coincidence because Tati and I had already agreed that getting tattoos while in Mexico was a top priority task. I’m not sure what the Blonde One or La Vie en Rose studied, I’m sure they told me, but for the life of me I can’t remember.
It was fun talking that much in Spanish, something I’m still not 100% confident in. Tati and I stumbled and got in our heads and felt embarrassed for getting the genders or the conjugations wrong. But thinking back to it now, I don’t think there was a single instance in our entire conversation in which we had to switch to English, and that felt good. After all, we were in their country, and it felt gratifying to know that even when inebriated we could keep enough of a conversation going for there to be laughter, even if we didn’t always understand each other perfectly. But who the fuck ever understands each other perfectly? Even if you do speak the same language?
Speaking of “inebriated”, we learned a lot of new words from our bohemian friends, different words for “high” specifically. The first one: pacheco is a step up from a normal high. A step up from pacheco gets you to “frito.” This literally means “fried,” but it means the exact same thing as “baked.” Example: — Aye guey, ya estoy súper pacheco. Bien frito, guey. (Dear Mexicans: Perhaps this is an awful example. Dear Gringos: Don’t use me as a diccionario.)
Another interesting linguistical note: Chilangos have this tendency to interrupt their descriptions of something they're excited about with the onomatopoeia “oof”. Example:“ — Esta comida esta riciiiiisima. Esta super -ooof!” followed by a chef's kiss to the fingers.
We grabbed Anas information, made a date for our tattoos, and said our goodbyes. We left that little island excited and bien pacheco as we stumbled through the botanical garden and the “garden of sensations,” with five sections divided up by sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste. We decided to walk back but we stopped at a beer garden for dinner where we met a table full of Ex-pats from around the world, speaking English and drinking at the table next to us.
Tati’s appointment was on the 15th, Mexico’s independence day. We ended up having to break our appointments up into two days because I had work and class for most of the 15th. We made our way to Santiago’s apartment, where Anna has a studio set up, and when I saw it, I immediately fell in love.
On one side of the living room was Ana’s little studio, with a tattoo bed, a chair, a rolling rack filled with her gun and ink, and some samples of her art hung up on the wall. The other half of the room was a circle of couches and musical instruments. Multiple keyboards and synths, congas, a keyboard with Garageband open to a drum machine, an electric guitar, and a bass. I melted a little with happiness inside.
While Tati got her Tatoo (The Pilades constellation above a hand that held the full moon on her left ribcage) I sat and smoked with Raul and Santiago as we played some music. We traded instruments back and forth between guitars and teclados and I’m not sure if I sounded any good but It just felt cool to be in that space, surrounded by art and making art.
Tati loved her Tattoo and kept returning to the mirror to look at it vez y otra vez until we had to go so I could begin my work for the day. Ana recommended that we go to El Pendulo (the pendulum) to work and I fucking love her for that. It was a two-story coffee shop/bookstore, filled with gorgeous art and good vibes. We sat out on the terrace where I completed my first conferences of the semester with my students. By the end of it, I found myself laughing because I was so afraid of how it might go, but I’m pretty sure that all of my students left our meetings feeling at least a little more confident.
The next night, it was my turn to get yatted and so we returned to Santiago’s Apartment. I had to confess to Santiago that since I was so high when we met, I thought his name was “San Diego,” and since he was so high every time we hung out, whenever I called him “San Diego” he probably heard “Santiago” and never corrected me. I only found out the truth the night before when I kept calling him San Diego like a dumbass in front of Tati and she finally had to ask me: “who the fuck are you talking about?”
The tattoo hurt like a bitch. I had only ever gotten one tattoo before this. It wasn’t as big and it definitely wasn’t in red. I didn’t know this until halfway through the tattoo but apparently, red ink hurts a lot more than black ink as it enters the skin because it's so much heavier. “Aye, lo siento! Yo se que pesa mucho ;(” Ana said with the voice of a loving mother tending to a crying child as I winced and tried to breathe through the pain. Tati came over and touched my leg on some of the most painful parts (the inner fatty section of the bicep specifically), and that felt really nice. Raul, San Diego, and the Blonde One continued to make their spacey synthesizer music in the background. Tati sang along every once and a while too, but she decided that the soundtrack to “Interstellar” was pretty hard to sing to. I loved the tattoo, for only 21 Ana was amazing, professional, affordable, and kind. She did most of it freehand, too!
We danced and smoked and listened to music for the rest of the night. Raul, San Diego, and I got into a conversation about the Mexican Identity Crisis. Raul told me how conflicted he feels sometimes because he doesn’t have many opportunities to connect to his Aztec roots. We talked about how the old temple was buried directly below the cathedral, a physical symbol that echoes in the mind of all Mexicans, dealing with the weight of the conquest, of their languages which are dying, of identifying so strongly with Spanish even though it is the language of their conquerors, and that damned cathedral keeps pressing down on the temple all the while.
I told Raul that I felt similar, having both Mexican and European blood, I felt the confusion, and how I often doubted if I even had the right to call myself Latino. They both shook their head in deep philosophical and existential sympathy for me and we continued down that conversational rabbit hole for another hour. I felt like I was in a dream; hanging around a bunch of artists, high, talking about life and art and history.
Before we left, Tati convinced me to get one more tattoo with her, a spiral. I’ll tell you the reason for that specific shape another time, it’s too long a story. Tati got a concha on her lower elbow and I got a blue spiral on my back and we left the apartment feeling content and bien pachecho.
I can’t help but think about how so much of those wonderful moments hinged on coincidence though. Because none of that would have happened if we hadn’t decided to run to the park. If we took an Uber we might have arrived too late or too early to meet them, and who knows where in the giant park the Uber driver might have left us. We only met these amazing friends because we were looking for bikes. But instead, the universe made us stumble across that little Island with the big tree in the middle, and it’s leaves shooting straight up into the sky.
To read more about my time in Mexico, click here.
