I feel strange in this strange land, but the magical moments keep coming…
I feel strange in this strange land, but the magical moments keep coming…
I’m standing on the corner of an ancient street, waiting. The foot traffic around me is heavy on the narrow sidewalk when suddenly an abuela comes cruising around the corner.
She’s beautiful in her indigenous dress, carrying two full shopping bags with bow-legged determination. She’s at least 75 and at most 4’8”.
I’m 6’4”, and her face shoots upward as she sees me and our eyes meet. We both burst out laughing at the shocking contrast, her lined face lighting up like the sun.
She slows down a bit to extend the moment, both of us with big toothy smiles, and then she’s gone — back into the blur of people and vendors and vehicles. It’s a moment of pure joy.
The warmth here is starting to melt me. The weather, the people, the food. I feel slow and disoriented. And happy. My therapist says over the phone, “this is a cliche but you sound like you’re in the chrysalis state between caterpillar and butterfly.” “Yes,” I reply, “I feel like a big bag of mush.”
I like taking pictures of the things I see and posting them every day in my Instagram stories. Some days the input gets so intense I just go home and stare at the wall. I keep writing melodies and putting them in my phone.
I have hundreds of melodies in my phone. I feel the creative beast in me hungry to carve them into songs and start eating.
But for now I’m a bag of mush. And I intend to stay that way until it’s time to crack open a new set of wings.
#oaxaca #oaxacamexico #bagofmush photo by June.
