To crack open the year we call 2013, a third and final post from Rebecca Tantony, this time from Mexico:

mexico

We have landed amongst dead dogs strewn on the road side and into an orchestra of beeping cars. Amongst twenty million people fighting their way through twenty million people standing still. Into lost languages, lost cultures; the descending steps of moon temples and paths of death. Into Frida Kahlo’s home, breathing in the bed where she painted, slept, fucked, felt like her pain was so heavy it might suffocate her. We have landed into open hearts, into the family of a friend who are offering us advice and warm beds and unusual foods that make our tongues feel elated. Into warm people, who draw our uncertainties with their eyes. Who make us feel unique. Into colour and passion, into forgetting how much we relied on language. Into the dry, hot sun. We are in Mexico city. Travelling on boats through back canals, past clucking hens and palm trees. Past kingfishers and restaurants where loud, happy families spill out of the entrances. We are hopping across one deck to another, so we can dance to the sound of a Mexican band who sail besides us. We are clinging onto each other now. Laughing, throwing our heads back, swaying, spinning and thinking: THIS IS IT! We finally understand; plucking guitar strings, horns, the singer’s voice rattling with excitement when he reaches that high note.

We are lost with language in Mexico, Nicholas and I. Stumbling on words, forgetting ourselves, our names, our ages, we don’t have the capacity to tell anyone who we are and why we are here. We can no longer sell ourselves, add details, charm others with our words. We are simply polite and humble; aware that we will never again be defined by our jobs or names or ages. By an image of who we thought we once had to be. We have dined in caves here, lit up by a thousand candles, eating cheeses, beans, meats, fresh vegetables, drinking cinnamon rice and watching traditional dancers make the earth shake. Yet, we are leaving it all behind now. For Oaxaca and its traditional crafts. For its beautiful woman who sit in huddles on the pavements. Their long thick black hair and old hands weaving brightly coloured cloth together. For cobbled roads, cathedrals, ornate and golden standing proudly in market plazas. For wooden animals painted in ocean blues and neon pinks. Then for Palenque. For Tropical jungle, for slick black jaguars and spiders with the faces of children. For a festival in between the ancient Mayan ruins and the jungle. For dancing under silver pin pricks and watching the sun rise, thousands of patient people beside us. All waiting for a prophecy to emerge in front of them. Waiting for the chance to unite with everyone whose ever followed a dream, anyone whose childhood stories have left an indent on them, anyone who has ached for something to more to happen. Yes we are leaving it behind now, we are heading to Palenque. To stand on top of Mayan ruins, watching the sun rise. We are aware we don’t believe what many others here do. We are sure that this time next year we will both be breathing and the world will still be intact. Although perhaps, we hope, we might just see it a little differently. But for now we are here, waiting for the end of the world to come and find us.