Viva la Vida: The end of the journey

Mexico City. Our adventures in the largest city on earth were of the minor/safe/tourist kind. We went to the Museum of Anthropology and enjoyed the exhibit that our friend Asaf recommended on Teotihuacan. We also sat in front of the mural of "An afternoon in the Alameda," by Diego Rivera, and enjoyed the comfortable seats and low lighting as an opportunity to take a nap as much as to admire the fine mural.

Altogether from the time we left Oaxaca by night bus, we felt the growing realization that our trip was almost over and that we were going to have to head home. Two weeks, the paltry amount of time we budgeted for our trip through Mexico, was not sufficient to explore the country, or even to do justice to a single city. We both want to return, hopefully to spend more time and explore in greater detail this country of stark contrasts between an incredible passion for life, and the ever-present threat of death.

Now back in the United States we are in our own separate worlds, Cat rediscovering New York and getting her apartment in order after a month's absence, while I am in Minnesota, helping my dad make apple butter from our tree and getting ready to go canoe-camping for a week in Canada.

And so this story ends, and others are yet to begin. We are on a threshold between places, awaiting the future yet unable to predict its path. Like the blind woman in Mexico City whom we helped to cross the street, our last day in the country: We are feeling forward tenuously towards what tomorrow may bring, standing together in our separate worlds, in the doorway between going and staying.

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.
-Octavio Paz

Thanks all for reading our blog, and if, as is the case, there are any errors or ommissions from this narrative, chalk it up to the fallibility of memory because life is like that.

Love,
Brian Blakely and Catherine Nolet