My “Not To Do” List

I stepped into a friend’s antique store to hang Hall event posters, and she called to me, hidden behind shelves of curiosities, “Hey, how are you? How’ve you been?” I called back, “Tired.” And she said, “Uh huh. I don’t remember when I got tired, but I got tired one day and I’ve never gotten untired.” I nodded. “That doesn’t bode well considering you’re younger than me.”

In this tired state of mind, I went to Mexico City for my birthday. There were many cogent reasons for going: a psychic had told me to go, I had felt “alive” the last time I was there, and I had purchased a pendant from Sweet Bird that said on the back: Go Where You Feel Most Alive, and so I did.

Mexico City is not a logical choice for me – it is 7,350 feet above sea level, and I am prone to altitude sickness. I already have intermittent asthma and shallow breathing, and was already fatigued before I climbed above sea level for this trip. The altitude there cost me a lot in terms of needing to rest often and drink copious amounts of fluids of which magically never seemed to leave my body or quench my thirst.

The ambience is what called me back. In Mexico City, the ambience is in Spanish and that’s what endears me. The people in the streets are shouting and speaking in Spanish. The traffic sounds like Spanish – the staccato honk honk, beep beep, ay ay ay, whoosh whoosh. The music from boomboxes is Spanish-inflected English covers of American pop songs. The pace of Mexico City moves so fast on first blush, but it’s a false positive, because speed is not reflected on the faces of Mexicans, who all seem to smile warmly while they move lackadaisically through the streets or behind the wheel of an Uber in maddening traffic.

I had gone on this trip to get away and to write. I discovered after a couple of days that I had no desire to write. I couldn’t come up with one good reason why I should be writing. Every day, I woke slowly, had my coffee near, not on, the balcony that overlooked the Palacio de Bellas Artes. I’m not a balcony person, or any high iffy architectural surface that has the potential to fall hundreds of feet because a structural engineer was not on their A-game when it was built. So I sat balcony adjacent and safely sipped my Nespresso.

Here’s what I did not do: I did not stand on the balcony either. I did not listen to a meditation. I did not read. I did not write. I did not text anybody. I did not death scroll social media. I did not wish to be anywhere else.

Here’s what I did do: I stared at the Palacio de Bellas Artes and fondly remembered the Tiffany glass curtain I had seen last time I was there. I watched the endless parade of people gathering in the square in front and on the sidewalks below. I looked at the sky. I thought about what outfit I would wear that day.

I had no agenda but a loose idea of some places I had not seen before and wanted to see. I had other places I wanted to discover like a great coffee shop for people watching. I wanted to maybe hear live music at a club.

Each day, I would wake with the same ambition, to sip my coffee and look at the Palacio and think of what I would wear and which one of the places I might decide to go that day. I felt free. I can’t remember when the last time or if ever that I have lived on my own terms – my own agenda – with no judgment about productivity or decisions I made. When you have one goal and that is to go out into the city looking cute, everything else pales in comparison.

Each day greeted me back with tremendous joy, I found myself curiously sporting a wide Mexican smile and whether we blame the altitude or my lack of productivity, I was tired enough every day to move lackadaisically. One of my Uber drivers pontificated on the Decline of the Imperialist United States, and he told me “Mexicans have the same problems as Americans, the same economic issues, the same cultural problems, the same political disappointments, but we are happy. We live our life every day. Everyone asks me why are Mexicans so happy? We just are.”