On this morning I recall the young mother who sat behind a taco cart. She had her hair pulled back tight and always wore a blue hand-stitched apron, tight jeans with rayos of bleach. In Mexico, the heat is nothing like a normal hot day. The sun rises off of pavement; rays blister through windows. Everything is melted into a powerful smell, a human community unrestrained by air-tight buildings and quite turbines of air-cooled transportation.
My walk to work was a collage. It is impossible to distance oneself from the surroundings. By going outside, a person immediately becomes swept up in the reality, all senses assaulted. The most interesting avenues contained car repair shops, fabricators, cement vendors and a night club that operated all day. Near work, I watched a building go up without the benefit of machines. A sand pile dwindled as bricks were laid. Across the street was La Parilla Brown, our favorite lunch spot until it closed. They had leather seats, which were fancy, and chicken legs piled up in a clay pot.
I think of the deaf woman, the plastic tablecloths, the gas and water and ice vendors, each with a peculiar howl. I remember my afternoons, I would take the bridge home, and once a torrid rain, and ducking beneath a tarp – too sweet smell of rotting pineapple, a hunkered group with me between in my tennis shoes and jeans. So far from home. And now I think of that place, and I am certain that everyone is still there, in bloom between several mountains and a forest too deep for knowing.
