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For one who supposedly decries the evils of technology, I like to type on my computer an awful lot. A lot more, in fact, than I like to write the good ol’ fashioned way. My hands don’t get crampy and you can actually read the words without screwing up your eyes like it’s some cryptic tea-leaf message…it’s magical! And so here I am typing away like one of those birds who perpetually and idiotically dips its beak into a tray of water like some non-stop obsessive compulsion, without a thought or reason. And really, how am I any better? I am engaging in two, no, three compulsive activities right now- thinking and typing away as I eat my little animal crackers, mindlessly crushing skull and bones with my great, big white teeth, dissolving their distorted little two dimensional bodies with my saliva.

I have nothing pressing to write about, nothing to pressing to think about either, really. Should I invent a story? How would it go? Where would it start, and end? What would be the moral? Perhaps I should finish my children’s story of Betty the Butterfly and Ernest the Elephant. I’ll add the drawings later. And also- I have to draw my dream mushroom-tree house! Yes! Oh, the wonderful things you can do and still feel like you’re wasting time because you’re so deeply conditioned to be productive productive, busy busy, all the time to fill every second of your life with activities or thoughts on what you have to do next, or things to worry about, or creating events or thoughts just so you can worry some more. Anything to keep back that empty space, that frightening freedom, of doing nothing, of just existing, seemingly without purpose. So here I am, marinating in just that pickle jar, trying to stay crispy and not become too sour as the lid is fastened. And I sit, and wait.

The president of the cooperative calls me today, an hour before I’m supposed to leave, saying, “Sorry, could you hold off until Monday to come? We just can’t seem to find a room.” And after a few garbled attempts to ask him what the hell he was saying (in politer, though less grammatically correct terms), I finally understand and say, in my best well-meaning and enthusiastic yet foolish and ignorant American voice, “Well, sure, that’s just fine! In fact, it’s just peachy! Thanks!” I hang up, look down at my packed bags, my finished books, my aloneness; in other words, I look the empty space straight in the face. An impossibly heavy sigh escapes my, and the little girl in me says, “I have to wait again? Why? I thought you said we were almost there, and we’ve been waiting so long!” She stamps her foot with a huff. I don’t respond for a while, deciding there is something for me to learn here, some lesson or inner block to get past. And if not, well, I’ll make one up! And a dammed good one at that! I’ve got to convince that little girl somehow, or she’s gonna throw one hell of a fit. “Well, the reason we can’t go yet is because…is because…we’re being tested to make sure we can sit in that empty space for a bit longer because we haven’t been able to really enjoy it yet. We haven’t been able to get to know it enough. And besides, who knows what could happen in a couple of days! All sorts of adventures to be had here in Papantla…” She doesn’t quite seem satisfied.

Main sources of fun in Papantla: crossing and uncrossing my legs; blowing bubbles out the window; trying not to throw dirty looks at the men who yell “Guera guera!” at me as I walk down the street, sucking in fumes and burning like a chicharron under the boiling sun; sitting in the cramped, stuffy, hot staircase of my apartment trying to connect to the internet as people, annoyed, squeeze by me and the 5 apartment Chihuahuas (may their raggedy little hides burn in hell) do the best to revive some past killer instinct in me as they yap away as close to me as they dare in a pitch, frequency, and volume that shouldn’t have to be heard by any living creature on God’s good earth; jumping rope and working out in my room; listening to the family who lives below me; reading (though I’m now out of books, so it’s re-reading); writing whatever hare-brained thoughts come to mind; and finally, going out to eat.

Sadly, the last activity just doesn’t take enough time, though I do enjoy it; it’s just that when I try to engage in it more than I should my body just feels sick and blob-like. Even just eating one meal does that to me here- I have to order half plates, or I might as well kill a cow and eat it all every time my stomach grumbles. And today, as I visited my favorite restaurant for lunch, I watched one of the cooks make up a plate of enchiladas (which are different here than in the States, by the way); she started with a layer of tortillas and pipian (a type of seed ground up into a coarse powder) and on top of each layer poured a good amount of liquid from a saucepot. When I asked her what it was she was ladling on so generously, she simply said, “Fat.” “Mmmm!” I replied, in my usual overly-enthusiastic American voice. Good thing I haven’t ordered the enchiladas.

To give you all an idea of this place and its people (if you’ve managed to get this far), I’ll call my next segment “The Personalities of Papantla.” Since I am currently living in Papantla, I am also technically of Papantla, so I’ll give you an idea of a normal day. My morning might start with me waking up from the incessant honking of a car at 6 o’clock in the morning or perhaps because it’s simply too hot to sleep (even at 5 am), finishing off my jug of water (I drink a gallon a day), and doing a bit of yoga. Next, I wander down the stairs to check my email and wait until 9 o’clock, when anything opens. During this time, I may encounter: the nice but shy woman who I washed clothes with one day the rooftop (will post pics shortly); or the grumpy, grizzled old bastard who gives me the dirtiest looks as he scootches past me without a nod at my cheerful, “Buenos dias!”; or the kid who joins me every now and again in my office to use his computer, too; or the mentally off kid who just seems to hang around, talking and laughing to himself all day; or any one of the other tenants who I recognize but have no connection to whatsoever.

My landlords are a constant, as they live at the base of the stairs I call my office. The father, Polo, is a hairy-backed, beefy man with quite a presence, and the son, also Polo, is a slightly pudgy, effeminate young man with a baby face and a flaccid handshake. Both are nice and friendly enough, though I feel I’m wearing on their patience with my presence, which is understandable; I’m an ever-present disturber of the peace in my little office on the stairs. There’s also the frizzy haired bleach blond mom who I swear is German and her granddaughter, an adorable bright-eyed little girl that I plan on abducting when the time is right. And don’t forget the Chihuahuas! They are either running around free or kept in a locked room on the roof with a smell that leaks from every tiniest crack and invades your olfactory senses even when the wind daren’t whisper. There’s also 3 squawking parrots that live in impossibly small cages in the garage; like the Chihuahuas, I feel a combination of pity and annoyance, though unlike the Chihuahuas, I have no desire to break their scrawny little necks and make their bulging little eyes pop right out of their sockets.
When the clock strikes 9, I walk into town to forage for my first meal of the day and to retrieve my water; usually I head over to the café right next to the cathedral, where they never play music, talk to you, or even smile, but have edible bread and good strong coffee and remember how I like it (with just a little milk). If I’m still hungry I may go to a market and get some yogurt, or go to the square to get a cup of fruit from the dark, leathery, little old man with the tired eyes and cowboy hat who says no more than necessary (until today, when he recognized me and asked some polite questions.) Before I enter the square, though, I make a careful scan with my eyes to make sure there’s no one I know lurking around on one of the benches, on the fringes, under the shade of a tree. It’s a vulnerable place for me, and I feel rather like Peter Rabbit dashing into Mr. MacGregor’s garden to steal some carrots before getting caught.

The reason: because I am probably the only white person (and young woman at that) in town, I’m a better catch than any coney could be to Mr. MacGregor (no pun intended, Dallion!). So far a few men have taken to accosting me or yelling out to me from afar to talk talk talk or invite me to go places and I absolutely despise the thought of seemingly friendly conversation having its roots in hidden intentions; its just plain annoying. I feel awful about it sometime, my suspicion; one man, a friendly, seemingly innocent older chap named Enrique who I’d hung out with when Azalia was here (he’s the one who helped me find the apartment), keeps asking me when I want to go to this nature trail about an hour away and in my mind I’m thinking “STRANGER DANGER!” over and over while outwardly I kindly thank him and say I don’t know when I’ll be here or have time (“NO, I DON’T WANT ANY CANDY!”) So he says, “Ok, I’ll just see you at your apartment some time then!” Is that culture, or just creepy?

Gaudencio, the Totonac guy I’ve written about before, followed me within the first 15 minutes after I met him to the supermarket where I went to buy water and then, against my better judgment and promises that I didn’t need his help, carried it to my apartment where luckily the landlords gave him a cold look and blank stare when he greeted them and I didn’t have to worry about how to escape up the stairs without him following me. Could’ve been a close call, and perhaps I should just be ruder, but that doesn’t even work sometimes and I don’t want to leave a bad impression for the sake of other white people. He has since caught me twice more in town and luckily situations have arrived to relieve me of him, but I avoid the possibility of contact as much as possible. So that’s why I don’t usually go to the square.

Since restaurants near the square are out of the question, I have adopted this little restaurant called Antonjeria El Pinguin that’s a few blocks down. It’s a nice, clean little place with wooden tables and a fan and big windows and the kitchen is dinky and right there when you walk in. The cooks, two women who barely say a word but smile kindly at me, hand make tortillas and everything on the spot. The host of the place, Rodolfo- an older, hefty, dark man with darker eyes, a thin silvery beard, and a serious face- struck me at once as someone I could trust; he didn’t treat me different than any of the other customers, was just as honestly serious, straightforward, and respectful while still being friendly and kind and businesslike. He reminds me a bit of a mafia man. The walls of the restaurant are painted a wholesome green color and decorated with some highly racist cartoon-caricatures of a black guy, the likes of which were banned in the US in the 1970s. I like the food and the place, it’s delicious, cheap, I only have to order half to be stuffed, and they’ll give me salad like the kind I lived off in Ecuador- shredded iceburg lettuce, a few slices of tomato, lemon juice and salt. It’s a lifesaver for a vegetable lover in a place where it’s hard to find any vegetables to order and even harder to find anything fresh. Rodolfo and the cooks are always cordial, and when I told them today I was leaving to go live in the country he warned me to be really careful and gave me both some tips for dealing with men and his card to call if I ever needed anything. “If anything happens,” he said, “you can just come right back to Papantla, eh?” I smiled and nodded, and he smiled back in a most uncreepy, fatherly way.

For the rest of my day, I workout in my room for an hour or so before or after my lunch at Rodolfo’s, then spend the rest of the day engaging in the activities I listed above, occasionally going out for a snack or to run some errand. I wear the same purple dress just about everyday, so I’m pretty sure people recognize me more than I recognize them. There are more personalities everywhere; the kids playing barefoot with a ball in the streets; the old women perched on the curb near the corner bakery who I rarely see talking; the woman I see everyday through the window in her house across the way spending the day doing domestic chores; the vendors walking with baskets on their heads of all sorts of goodies, including one fruit that I at first thought to be a flower and it turned out delicious! If I’m feeling brave, I’ll sneak to the little market near the plaza to get a tamal or some enchiladas for dinner; the women always squint at me in frustration as I try to describe what I want, “You know, that tamal that’s a little spicy and has beans and squash?” “Oh! You mean the tuna one.” “No, no! with beans and squash!” “Oh, you mean _____?” “Yes, that one!” We’re shouting trying to comprehend each other over the din of the crowd, and the other girls vending food nearby giggle at my perpetual inability to remember the name of the thing I always order and my apparently incomprehensible attempts to describe it.

I watch the sunset from my bedroom windows or perhaps from the church steps, then sit at home and read with my headlamp (the lightbulbs don’t work in my room) or use the computer until I finally make my untired body go to sleep on my bed that sinks about a foot in the middle, placed right next to the growing, guilty tower of plastic water jugs that I can’t recycle, listening to the sounds of the night and trying my best to attract the breeze from the fan that I can never get to point at my body. I don’t remember my dreams here, but I have a hard time sleeping well anyway and the constant questions when? why? what? play in the back of my mind like CD with a scratch. That woman I see in the window, doing the same chores everyday; does her life have any less or more meaning than mine? Does that of the crumpled old fruit man? What the hell are we all doing here, anyway? I look the empty space straight in the face each morning as I get up to start it all over again.

Such is a day in the life of a gringa loca in Papantla, Veracruz, Mexico. And all I can say is- I’m glad someone finally dumped the huge, rancid, oozing box of trash that has greeted me at my door until this morning, and that last night, for the first time in two weeks of just spitting rain, there was a thunderstorm.