Journal From The Road; Mexico City 2023
Hostel Casa Pancha in Mexico City was a place of beginnings and endings. Half the people I met there had just flown in the night before, super green and a backpack full of clean clothes and wildly excited for the wildness and rawness of the road ahead. The other half were on their way out, just leaving, with nostalgic faces and not-quite-sure if they’re ready yet tones to their voices. I had amazing chats to people while brushing my teeth or packing my bags or having just arrived myself and am tired and hungry but the call of the connection and the conversation kept me kneeling in awkward positions. The kind of “just-rummaging-for-something-in-my-backpack” positions that you stay in when you think it’s gonna be small talk but it suddenly turns to long talk, yet still feels socially awkward to commit your body language to.
I met ollie in the breakfast patio of Casa Pancha. He shared my table with an older Canadian woman named Pam. He’d just flown in the night before and already been out partying until 4am. Our small talk turned to big talk over coffees and free toast as the rest of the breakfast guests emptied out to pursue Mexican dreams. Originally from the Netherlands, He’d spent his 20’s travelling. 12 years on the road and then stood still during the pandemic in Copenhangen. This was his first day back into it, and the excitement was palpable. I can definitely relate to this dizzying sense of freedom and celebration of life after being locked down and locked in for so long. He had two weeks of his trip planned, then a rough idea of moving overland - maybe by motorbike - down through Guatamala and into Brazil with a goal to learn sailing on the way. He was on a one way ticket.
Ollie was a close talker and on this rare occasion, I found it really comforting. It felt like we shared a secret, the sort of secret that lit up our eyes and bent our heads together talking in hushed voices. We spent 3 days in each others company wandering around Mexico City, giggling and story telling. He had a dry wit to him that had me believing any explanation he gave for why something was. He’d swap between fact and fiction so effortlessly that everything he said felt like play. We’d finish a factual story off with a fictional quip and tell fictional stories like they were truths. Accordingly to Ollie, every artwork, every fountain or church or museum artefact had some mythological back story to it that had me engaged. He opened up a new way of seeing for me, and connected me to the moment in a tangible and deeply refreshing way. Life was meant to be playful, and curiosity ruled every experience.
The other thing that Ollie brought into my trip was food. He had a background in gastronomy and has worked in multiple Michelin star resturaunts, he’s a bar tender and couldn’t wait to sample all the mezcal and take a deep dive into Mexican food culture. He wanted to eat everything we walked passed, and México city is known for its street food. I’d been super scared, scared of gastro or worse and of my embarrassingly low chilli tolerance. I also had a massive language barrier that was better suited to gentrified cafes with English speaking waiters serving granola bowls and veggie burgers. None of the local food was in English, so I couldn’t read menus, understand what they were saying or knew how to say numbers for the money exchange. I’m a total novice. Ollies better-than-broken Spanish and sheer enthusiasm exposed me to a whole world of street food that I’m wildly grateful for. Without meeting him I would have gone home without building up my courage in this on my own. I ate anything he put in front of me, and I’m proud to say, I put chilli on everything.
So by my first night in Mexico City, I was on the journey! Sometimes crying, always sweating, blowing my nose on multiple surveyeta’s; I went silent through the meals cause the chilli felt hotter in my mouth when I spoke. I walked away from every meal with a delicate internal fear, silently tuned in for any early tummy gurgles or neck sweats, but I was fine. I was more than fine, I was loving it!
On my last full day in CDMX i met an Aussie woman at the dorm room bathroom sink and we chatted while cleaning our teeth together. She was one of the leavers, had been here for 5 weeks and was flying home to Darwin that night. Feeling nostalgic and not quite ready to go, she told me she’s a chef from Melbourne originally who moved to Darwin 5 years ago to open her own resturaunt. She said the climate in Mexico was so similar to Darwin that she travelled here on a culinary adventure, exploring flavour combinations and new ingredients!
We clicked straight away and lamented that we didn’t have more time together - swapped numbers and promised to keep in touch.
Thank the Mexican gods that when I arrived late and wiping toothpaste from my mouth to my Museum tour apologizing for being late, she was there!!
Her name was Minole, and she was was magnificentaly gentle. Her passion for food was palpable, and while wandering the halls of the Museum of Anthropology I finally understood that food is life. At least three times a day I was shovelling food into my body for every other reason than to savour and enjoy it. I marvelled once again at so many different cultures’ connection to food. My white/Canadian British ancestry generally taught me that food was something to be dieted on, deeply un-sensual, practical, hearty and formal. Family dinners as a child were to sit up straight at, mind my manners at, clear up after and endure the social nuances of family conversation that said anything other than their true feelings.
Later in life I experienced food through fire cooked dinner parties that my mum threw each year, and home-cooked potlucks with different friendship groups over the years. Punks, skaters, artists, musicians - we celebrated living outside the system with dumpster dived cheese wheels and lentil stews. Food and music often went hand in hand, and I have a few albums in mind that we’re always playing while we cooked. In my mid twenties I returned from years of travel with my curiosity for slow living sparked, and a deep interest to learn my mothers ways of traditional off grid cooking through hand made (and hand grown) preserves, jams, stews and soups.
From my own veggie patch adventures now I laugh and roll my eyes at my own memories in recent years, having way too many zucchini’s or beans to know what to do with. For two months I’d make anything from one ingredient / sweet, savoury, stew, pickled. It’s cooking by necessity and a kitchen ruled by the seasons. I idolise the veggie garden kitchen, and wish I had more time for sowing and harvesting in my daily life. The most connected I felt to it was through the pandemic lockdowns when anxiety and a fear for our uncertain future had me preparing for a completely self sustained existence. There I dipped deeply into DIY culture and spent long days on our family property without connection to any external source.
It was through this time I engaged a well-being coach and developed a new relationship with cooking and mindful eating that had me enjoying my kitchen for the first time in my life. Here memories of long Sunday afternoons cooking sweet and savoury at once, muffins in the oven then a whole chook for stock during the week. I’d prepare salads and tabouli’s, beetroot dips and pesto - whatever vegetable I had on hand.
I learnt how to make time for eating; nestled in the sun, fork down between bites, gratitude for the energy and work that went into the soil, knowing the rain and the sunshine that produced it and tasting the freshness in a way no organic market in the city had provided for me..
My relationship with food extended to a relationship with my body. I experienced nourishing and nurturing in ways that my home culture had never allowed. Food was to be eaten and then regretted in my home. Each piece of desert or second helping of a main came with an embarrassed glance or judgement, a sensuality and enjoyment that must be hidden under the table or apologised for profusely. My mother in particular, being the deeply sensual and artistic green thumb that she is - walks the fine tightrope between living for love and for passion and the white female conditioning that forbids such a thing. She exists within art, within music, within food, as a woman who is proper, yet in every teaspoon of honey in her tea she relishes licking the spoon and smacks her lips with pleasure as it sits back on the counter top.
It seems the more we try to hide our pleasures the more the shadow world finds ways to poke through. Shame has been the biggest theme in my life so far and I still sit with it through moments of each day. I envy women who developed immunity to it it and marvel at men who were never taught it. How free they must feel and how rich their lives. I wonder often at what my art would feel like without shame, what it would look like. I wonder at how my body would feel, as my performance suit that i don every day. Surely it would feel well oiled, cared for and nourished in a way I am just learning the skills for now - at 35 years old.
I loved the childlike sense of scale in Mexico City - the gods with their immensity and larger than life animalística. Thick, strong women curled up with mere humans barely reaching foot high, they took up space. They walked naked and unafraid. Part stone, part temple, worshipped and enamoured. Respected. Why would a woman apologize for who she is? Why would she starve herself or starve her satiation? Why would she smother her sensuality? Or subdue her sexuality? These are her magic powers. She is immense.
Women with faggots of sticks on their backs, women with scarves on their heads, women with baskets of food, dancing around the fire. Women with animal hoods and warrior spears. Women with strength and power.
There is a deep familiarity in this image and yet how disconnected it is from my modernist upper class colonial roots. My task is to bridge the divide, to challenge the narrative and connect the dots. Could the path be through food? Through allowing myself to enjoy it, enjoy growing it, cooking and sharing it? It seems heartily and nourishingly to sit as one of the core pillars human connection, both to each other and to the natural world. Indeed we cannot survive without it, physically or culturally.
Bless Minoli, and the wild women that guide my path.