Water Between the Ice in Mexico

 

So today was pretty eventful. A black, female lawyer from Yale living in Paris told me who I am. Well. Sort of.

I have been in Mexico City for a week now and it’s not exactly been what I have expected. I had been eagerly awaiting the intense heat of a Mexican desert in summer. Instead I have landed into the dreary puddles of dirty, lukewarm puddles in cracked asphalt that reflect the grey sky overhead, filled to bursting with a blanket of clouds. It has rained every single day. Like winter. But the thing is, it’s June. Anyways, this morning has finally been relatively clear and warm so I decide to head out to El Bosque de Chapultepec, the enormous forest park nearby where I am to meet up with a group of expats for a picnic and a day in the sun. It certainly seems promising, however there was a slight snag in the clean, pressed sheets that are my plans for the day.

I got lost. Terribly, terribly lost.

As per usual. I just seem to get lost everywhere I go. Back in high school I took great pride in my knowledge of the streets of Northern California that I earned of countless excursions that ended several hours longer than they should have. In Japan I managed to get lost on group tours due to wandering off to follow some enchanting sound, some subtle hint of curious noise. I have even been so successful as to get lost a different way each day this past week on my way to work even though it is the exact same route.

So now I am wandering the small walkways of this enormous park in the middle of the most populated city on earth looking for a group of foreigners I have never met. And then it hits me, like the way a large stone drops into a lake with a deep thunk. I was listening to a podcast of NPR’s This American Life while wandering, happy as a clam. The particular episode was on Americans in Paris. In classic TAL fashion, Ira Glass was weaving wit, with honesty, authenticity and light humor while dabbing all the strands in the fantastic dyes of the storyteller to produce a textile of lives that one cannot help but smile as you hold it in your hands. He was interviewing Janet McDonald, a black woman from Brooklyn who graduated from Yale and was working as a lawyer in Paris, about her experiences. Janet said the following,

“I was always an outsider. And I feel most inside where I am now. Outside. Go figure”

Boom. Pause. Rewind. Listen again. Pause. Look up. Close eyes. Yes. Finally, someone had done the impossible; Janet had articulated to me a significant aspect of my identity I was never able to articulate to myself, like walking through a completely dark room looking for a small object when suddenly someone turns on the light for you and you see the object was directly by your foot the whole time. Well I picked it up. And it felt good.

Too white for the brown kids, too brown for the white kids. Too alternative for the smart kids, too smart for the alternative kids. I had spent 20 years being told that I was more Mexican than American because my skin embraces sunlight like an old friend. I finally arrived to the place where I was told I was supposed to belong, the promised land where I would fit it in. Yesterday I met a young woman who asked me if I was from Saudi Arabia.

Why is it I love to travel? Why do I relish being in places where I am undisputedly an outsider? Oh yeah. Because that is who I am, who I have always been and who I will always be.

Go figure.

About the Author: Tomas is a student at Brown University who constantly wonders why he ever left the warm caress of his native northern California. When he is not observing the world around him, he is listening to it.

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