Part of the draw of travelling is not-belonging. I’ve stepped away from the warm embrace of Salt Spring – a place so familiar it’s mapped like the lines in my own hand. This morning put the ‘travail’ in travel; feeling lost myself, lonely, acutely strange in the roaring tumult of Mexico City, taking it all in but inner antenna tuned to my own estrangement. Under the din of hawkers and zanate bird cries, sorrows run through my fingers like beads on a rosary.
Later, at the Museum of Anthropology: I spy a dapper man sporting a crimson suit and Panama hat. He is stopped to take a photo in front of an enormous, placidly frowning Olmec head. His whole figure is expressive, arresting, in full colour beside the hulking grayscale monument. I’m tempted to snatch a photo. The second time I encounter him, in the same suave pose, I blurt; ‘you seem like you are an exhibit yourself.’ He laughs, I move on.
But later, in Chapultepec gardens, there he is, sharp as a feather, and we recognize one another as fellow fish out of water, gesture broadly, and pass. And just in this moment of recognition, I feel a flash of belonging. Destranged. Finally, we see each other one last time in a cafe and fall to chatting like friends. In one suite of moments I am threaded back ‘home’, in the sense that I am again abiding peacefully in my own skin. Boat goes out, boat comes in.
What a fool circle!