More Writing in the Dark

A Mexico Travel Journal - Part 2

Author’s note: I’ve been traveling the last couple of weeks, so dug up and attempted to to give form to some travel notes from a trip to Mexico in December, 2022. This post continues where my last post left off.

Traveling, in my first thought of it, is about learning. About seeing the world. Seeing, for example, how other cultures celebrate Christmas: with giant nativities (sans baby Jesus before December 25), and lots of rapidly blinking Christmas lights. Tasting, for example, tequila añejo at the distillery in Tequila: turns out it’s not all just the gross stuff we mixed with jello in college. Smelling, for example, the fresh bread and sausage and oranges of a different culture’s breakfast: molletes con chorizo, y jugo de naranja muy rico. 

Yes, these new experiences are certainly part of it. I mean, to some extent, any journey illuminates things previously unknown. Reflecting now, I may have lied about not being a travel writer. As an astronomer, I write about stars and galaxies, black holes and supernovae, islands in the dark of the night. But in a sense, all my writing is travel writing. What is astronomy, but travel to the heavenly realm? When I put my eye to a well focused telescope my heart rate still elevates with a sense of adventure not unlike what I feel in this minivan, no matter how numb my freezing hands or sleeping butt cheek might be. 

But there’s an aspect of traveling that is less about seeing the world, and more about seeing myself. One thing I see is the murk of my cultural biases. Now, don’t get me wrong - I’m not claiming to see a lot. I’ve read, and think it’s likely true, that when people travel they only see what they expect to see: that cultural tourism often just enhances, rather than shifts stereotypes. I’d like to think this is a trap I would never fall into. After all, thinking you know everything is a pretty silly idea. Described, maybe by that phrase I was pleased to find in our spanish-english dictionary: ¿En qué cabeza cabe? Who would believe that? Or more literally - in what head would that fit? I thought it was a pretty smooth phrase, that I was on to something. Of course, it was later Diego told me that this was essentially calling someone an idiot - a very strong insult. My bad. 

But caveats aside, this trip did motivate at least a little internal digging. Much of it muddy and confused: is this place more or less dangerous than home in Chicago? Do I want it to be? Does it matter? I’m going to notice the barbed wire and airport militia here, the juxtaposition of beautiful river with trash piled next to it, and brightly painted, palm-treed resorts with rusting trucks and begging children. (But then again, I might also notice the holiday decorated downtown Chicago Macy’s, all diamonds and tinsel, fronted with the pile of rags and smell in the corner that is a living, breathing human being. Certainly my judgmental suburban neighbor (from where I lived before moving to the city) would notice. At least they’re not dying not of gunfire, they’d be sure to point out. But they’re dying nonetheless, under the suffocating weeds of stereotypes and burdensome stones of maintaining ones image. The same weeds, you see, that encircle me. Personal superiority creeping in: me just as judgmental of Macys and the neighbor and Mexico and all of it. What a murky mess.)

But occasionally the internal digging finds a more solid nugget, a clear seed of racial or cultural bias ripe for removal – root it out. On our return flight to Chicago we flew Volaris, a Mexican budget airline. We didn’t look like most people on the flight, and only caught some of what was going on in the spanish announcements. “el tiempo es muy mal en Chicago.” Yeah, we’d heard about the major snowstorms. Some little voice deep down starts asking questions. Are these Mexican pilots good at landing in the snow - less comfortable, less capable? A little cultural superiority starts creeping in. 

You’ll be glad to know that the pilots aced the landing - best blizzard landing I’ve ever experienced (and as a Michigander, Upstate New Yorker, and Chicagoian, I’ve experience my fair share). Everyone applauded. It was me, later, that would get stuck in the snow, tires spinning just yards away from my end destination. 

Indeed, I had a window seat for our late night flight. A while into our flight we passed over a bright city, miles below, radiant in contrast with the surrounding dark. The plane didn’t have wifi or a map to show our progress, so I was left to guessing. Were we still in Mexico? Or could we be over Texas now? I realized that, at least to the untrained eye, Mexican cities and US cities look pretty much the same from 37,000 feet. From that high, we’re all just twinkling dots of light. 

So traveling, I hope, gives a little perspective on the world, and my worldview. But there’s at least one more way I found this trip helpful in understanding the unlit recesses of myself. I started wondering: why do we travel to vacation? Why do we move when we seek rest? 

Before a trip I’m always looking forward to it, thinking about how it will be so great to be in warmth and color and sunshine and shining newness and generally anywhere not here. But during a trip it’s never quite like I imagined it. About four days in Katelyn said to me, “I forget how exhausting international travel is, it’s all so different.” What can I eat or trust? This bed - are there bugs? 10 pesos to pee, did I bring a laxative to poop? It sure will be nice to be home again.

I think some of the exhaustion comes from my desire to ring every drop from this vacation. I want to take in all of it, drink each destination like a rich mango smoothie to the last loudly slurped drops. The tighter I hold the more the days disappear like water from a carelessly held glass. On vacation, where does the time go? We haphazardly splash from activity to activity, swirling from this thing to the next. Turning and turning, like our van stuck in traffic trying to follow a confused and rerouted GPS. Gotta get there, or we might miss stuff. Which, of course, is an attitude that misses it all. We get to the end and the glass seems half empty and we wonder where the time went. Evaporation, after all, is an invisible process. Who ever thought vacations could be about rest? 

And yet, I have a specific memory of Amie spinning with her Disney princess doll, twirling so her Toy Story dress whirls out like a pirouetting dancer. She spins and spins until she tumbles to the ground, grinning, her toy flying across the room, clanging on a chair leg or cracking on the tile. My first instinct was to criticize - “Amie, don’t do that!” But I’m glad I paused. Why not spin and twirl and grin and let your toy go sailing across the room? I have some unlearning to do. Vacations, I think, are a time for dancing. 

I think what I’m trying to say is, that vacations teach me something about letting go. Letting go of my fussy preferences, my anthropological assumptions, my need to see and do everything, to travel perfectly, to rest well. Letting go of the splashing last drops, and instead watching the flowers spring up where they land. 

Perhaps I’m collecting time, rather than spilling it. Drinking in moments of beauty and laughter. Any bugs just serve to make the laughter even deeper, a little gray to make the color pop even more. Ha, my time is not a cup that empties: no, my time splashes because my cup overflows. 

Each time we travel, indeed, each time we pull back the sheets and brave the morning air, we journey to a realm uncharted. To a future that is dark to us. And yet, that darkness is a place of possibility, a contrast to make visible the glorious heavenly lights. To be human, I think, is to write in the dark: to light stories that burn away the fear of the night.