Colin Marshall

I´d write at greater length, but this Mexican keyboard slows me down. This strikes me as a challenge basically identical to the guy in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly who has to write by repeatedly telling a nurse when to stop cycling through the alphabet. I´m a regular Jean-Do in Mexico.

(Except Jean-Do didn’t have to endure Windows mistakenly underlining his every word as misspelled.)

Note to those considering Aeroméxico for their civil aviation needs: they don’t have self-check-in machines for you, nor do they have a shorter line if you aren’t checking luggage. And believe you me, Aeroméxico passengers check themselves a lot of luggage.

Met a late-middle-aged couple on the flight. They live in Newport Beach most of the year, but come down to the house they own in Acapulco to ride Harleys the rest of the year. ¨We ask and ask our friends to join us,¨ the wife lamented, ¨but they’re too afraid of getting their heads cut off. I say, if you’re going to think that way, why bother living at all?¨ Tell it, sister.

(¨Heads cut off¨?)

We’re staying right across the street from the Centro Cultural Bella Época, a combination of cafe, theater, and the largest book store in Latin America — in other words, the ideal place for me to stay across the street from. Half of its shelves offer Haruki Murakami novels or books related to Haruki Murakami in some way. 1Q84 recently came out here, so maybe that has something to do with it, but I’ve long felt a resonance with the Spanish-language literary world in Murakami that I can’t properly describe. (Not with this Mexi-keyboard, anyway.) Sam Anderson’s New York Times Magazine profile of Murakami reinforces a notion I’ve harbored: I so often return to Murakami not for his Japaneseness, but for his internationalist Japaneseness. (Recall his trip to Stockholm to dig crates for classic American jazz records, watching Godard DVDs along the way.) This may well hold for every Japanese thing I follow, except maybe Ozu.

Every Mexico City business I’ve thus far patronized has about thrice as many employees as its U.S. equivalent would. It sounds irritating to have a lot of extras hanging around, but I enjoy the attentive service experience. (I do wish waiters wouldn’t stand there staring at me while I count out my cash, but hey.) Highly beneficial side effect: this is one of the cleanest cities I’ve ever visited, except Vancouver. (No city’s as clean as Vancouver.)

In line with the waiters and street-sweepers, there are cops and security guards everywhere. That bookstore I mentioned has the same level of security as a small-town prison — wait, a medium-town prison.

I see more dogs  and a greater variety of them in Condesa, the neighborhood I’m staying in, than anywhere else I’ve recently visited. These people love their pups, however oddly shaped or scabby. The dogs stay clean, though, through creative business ideas like ¨Condesa’s Fluffy Shower¨, a truck containing a shower for dogs. I saw a line of panting clients chained to various trees next to the Fluffy Shower’s parking space.

Much of my Spanish listening practice over the last few months has come from Cinemanet, a podcast seemingly associated with Mexico City’s Cineteca Nacional. What’s screening at the Cineteca while I’m in town? Oh nothing, JUST A BELA TARR RETROSPECTIVE. (And a Naomi Kawase series, speaking of los Japoneses.) It really is my birthday. In like a week, anyway.