Running with the Shadows of the Night

Originally written January 2011 • Uploaded to Facebook on Jan 10, 2011, 1:22 AM

I have decided to deliberately rediscover downtown Mexico City. It is not because I haven't been home in a year or so, but because the historical center is transforming so rapidly that I fear if I don't actively get to know its current state, I never truly will. A lot of people ask me what exactly I am doing when I vanish in the afternoons. The reality is that I go for exceptionally long walks through all corners of the city. I guess I wander, I gaze, and I explore. I navigate the sidewalks at a semi-swift pace that occasionally sets people at unease, particularly when I find myself walking directly behind them.

I used to think that defensive reaction was because I sported an intense mustache and a completely misshapen hairdo. But now that my haircut is even more misshapen and the mustache has been entirely removed, pedestrians still appear visibly uneasy when I cruise behind them at my signature clip. I have decided to stop giving it much analytical thought; instead, I blame it entirely on their own internal insecurities, paired with a few of my own.

Sometimes when I walk, I try to listen to music through headphones, but I find that the melodies distract me far too much from the ambient architecture. Occasionally, I just hum a few lines of my more memorable songs, whistle a stray tune, or wonder what the fuck "havering" actually means in that famous Proclaimers track. But for now, let's return to the pavement of downtown.

Lately, I find myself exploring the center four or five times a week—for leisure, for purchasing random hardware, and just for the simple act of being there. Mexico City's downtown is shifting, as I said, but it is evolving into an arena that is once again beautifully blending layer upon layer of history, myth, and diverse crowds into an enjoyable mass of everything. Commercial storefronts that have anchored these blocks forever are still standing, except now their shelves are loaded with cheap Chinese imports. The classic cafés, dive bars, and mid-century restaurants that have operated since the 1950s are right where they’ve always been—sporting peeling paint on the stucco walls, yellowing local artwork, and the distinct, nostalgic scents of Christmases past. I am fully aware that many of these hidden joints I will never actually see from the inside. Most of them I will barely glance at as I pace past. But the select few I do notice, gathering the courage to step through their doorways, leave me with permanent mental snapshots of what Mexico City once was, and what it will eventually become.

Why do I say *courage*? Because Mexico City overall is notoriously unsafe. We are structurally trained to fear our neighbor, our neighbor's dog, and his entire extended family. Most residents here have suffered the immense displeasure of being mugged, having their property vandalized, or being impacted by local crime in some measurable way. You learn to live with it and navigate around it by securing your assets with heavy steel chains, making obscene gestures at passing police cars in the vain hope that they might actually reform the country, and praying to the most obscure, forgotten saints to keep your material possessions and your physical life safe.

There is also a specific type of social courage involved in walking into a local establishment where you are absolutely not welcomed upfront—like the sketchy strip bar operating right beside the Senate building, or the neighborhood tavern reserved for the local drunks that smells heavily of stale beer and urine. Honestly, the two venues are practically interchangeable. Gathering up the nerve to step inside those rooms, pull up a chair, and make yourself at home requires getting used to being aggressively stared at, pushed away, or simply entirely ignored. For me, the ignored part rarely happens.

This year, I have forced myself to visit downtown during its witching hours: dusk and deep night. A few years ago, this specific behavior would have been widely considered an elaborate suicide attempt, or at least common behavior for the severely demented and local drug seekers. Today, however, it has transformed into a mostly enjoyable affair, offering a suspected blanket of safety and peacefulness that hadn't been seen on these streets for decades. There is far more high-intensity lighting illuminating the avenues, more police officers stationed on corners for aesthetic decoration, and more businesses extending their hours into the night. All of these factors ensure that an evening stroll is safe, and no longer exclusive to the unhinged.

During dusk—which used to be my most hated hour of the day because it signaled a definitive end—downtown offers all the dramatic shadows, high contrasts, and shady characters anyone could possibly desire. As twilight hits, the crowds seem to accelerate their pace. Much like the ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem rushing toward shelter in the final minutes before the Sabbath, people here walk with immense urgency toward the safety of their homes, the underground metro terminals, or their favorite local bars. We all speed up our strides, walking as if we must reach a secure threshold before total darkness sets in; otherwise, we might run right into desperate thugs, corrupt transit cops, or hostile drunkards.

But the long shadows track our heels, slowly bleeding the afternoon browns into deep, vivid pinks and industrial reds—a sky that glows in unnatural colors due mostly to the outrageous layers of urban pollution. The historic buildings cast immense geometric shadows onto one another and across our path. If I didn't appreciate dusk back during the winter months in Minnesota, it was because the sunset arrived at 3:30 PM, bringing total darkness by 4:00 PM, which is far too early for human sanity. But here in Mexico City, dusk settles around 5:00 PM and night takes over around 6:30 PM, balancing the scales perfectly between light and darkness.

Once the night fully sets in, the entire urban arena begins its descent into the dark. The presence of corporate chain stores and 24-hour 7-Elevens on every corner does absolutely nothing to deter the unique monsters of the night who swarm downtown the moment the sun vanishes. People who have spent the daylight hours hiding indoors emerge, mingling with one another and anyone else foolish enough to remain on the concrete. The characters I have encountered, chatted with, and occasionally feared all possess some hyper-specific trait that limits their exposure to conventional society, which is precisely why I find them so fascinating.

Even the severe alcoholics staggering blindly across the asphalt will occasionally mumble profound remarks about long-forgotten eras, or lay out detailed plans for their immediate futures. The drunkard hanging heavily onto a woman who barely knows his name, or the woman drinking aggressively with her friends while shouting loud obscenities at the bartender for failing to flirt back—these are the exact human portraits I seek out, and consistently find. But it is far from a drunkard's paradise. With rogue delivery vehicles flying past, massive unlit potholes, and completely open sewers, navigating the streets becomes incredibly dodgy, even for the most sober among us. That is why you spot so many other varieties of nocturnal survival on the block.

You see the blind walking with their thin canes, rhythmically swinging metal cups containing a few loose coins, hoping some passing soul will give in to the clinking sound and provide them with their fare. You pass nomadic street musicians slinging accordions, acoustic guitars, and violins over their shoulders, walking endlessly in search of a mythical group of wealthy tourists to entice—inevitably failing to locate them, and instead slipping into a local dive to drink alongside other helpless dreamers. You spot the midnight poets flooding the old, dusty bookstores, hunting down an obscure out-of-print edition, chatting intensely with the employees, and asking about books that were never written and authors who once were.

And then there are the many—the hungry, the freezing, and the forgotten. Spotting me, a distinct white person, they occasionally flock toward my path in the hope of extracting the final alms of the day, or at least some basic sign of human acknowledgment. They stand huddled beside the commercial dumpsters, rustling through the garbage to salvage plastic, aluminum, and the occasional discarded cigarette butt, adding a frantic soundtrack to the music filtering out of the local bars. Every single one of them forms a vital instrument in the unison that creates the downtown I know—a place that lives and breathes a desperate hope for a coming tomorrow, but an even greater hunger for whatever may happen tonight. And as such, I willingly choose to walk right among them, around them, and sometimes, over them.

The human vignettes you witness down here are incredible. Just tonight, I was caught in the orbit of a group of three deaf men, roughly twenty-five, thirty-five, and forty-five years of age. Riding the subway train downtown, I ended up inside the exact same transit car. At first glance, I assumed they were simply incredibly intoxicated, given that they were barely able to articulate spoken words. But as I watched their hands move, I realized they were completely deaf, utilizing lightning-fast sign language punctuated by guttural grunts to communicate. Through my imagination and some basic observation, I could clearly trace their conversation: they were intensely debating who was going to pay for the next round of drinks, who was going to successfully get laid tonight, and who was going to be stuck navigating the group safely back home. One dramatically gestured toward his crotch, another tapped his leather wallet, and the third mimed throwing back an imaginary beer. Which one actually got lucky tonight, who knows? But if they are out there right now, too drunk to make conventional sense, then their immediate destiny has been fulfilled. As they filed off the train, my mind flashed back to a man I had watched earlier on the street.

He was a local drunk, and I spotted him while I was casually browsing the makeshift stalls selling knit goods right outside the Palacio de Bellas Artes. He would stumble forward a few paces, freeze in his tracks, clutch his shirt tightly over his chest, babble a few incoherent words, and shed genuine tears. As he lurched along, he kept uttering words begging for someone's forgiveness, casting sour, bitter glances at the young couples walking past, yet somehow miraculously managing to maintain his physical balance. He would pace a few more steps, purse his lips in sharp internal agony, let out a small shout of physical pain, mutter a string of obscenities, and then walk away into the shadows—as if actively bracing himself for the entire emotional reel to loop all over again. Maybe he was actively reliving his worst memory on a loop. I thought to myself that the day I find myself weeping and feeling that exact brand of raw, public agony on a sidewalk, I will know with absolute certainty that I have lost someone very, very special.

Finally, on that exact same metro ride home, as I stepped onto the platform to exit, I passed a man slumped heavily against the concrete wall. His forehead was badly gashed and bleeding; he was clutching a crimson hand and barely drawing breath. He looked entirely intoxicated, but because not a single commuter stopped to offer assistance, we would never truly know his status. As the crowd shuffled past without granting him a single backward glance, I decided to flag down the transit police at the station kiosk to help him out—fully aware that, in reality, no one was truly going to nurse his wounds, and absolutely no one was going to listen to his pain.

Yet, it isn't all blood, trauma, and narcotics down here. I get to witness beautiful things that make people genuinely happy. I see young couples holding each other tightly inside the deep shadows of historic arches; I see street magicians and master storytellers conversing on benches, smiling and sharing the passage of the days; and I see the unique people who only venture out into the dark because that is the only environment where they feel comfortable enough to exist around other human beings. The people I see sharing cigarettes, cheap local beers, and sharp jokes on the corner are the exact anchor that brings me back downtown night after night.

The colonial buildings containing these hidden urban myths house all of these happy-sad, melancholic, ecstatic, magic, obscure, and lighthearted people. No other territory on earth can be as profoundly welcoming to the entire spectrum of human drift as downtown Mexico City is. As I walk into and away from the historic center, I cannot help but notice how much of their collective identity is stitched directly into my own code, and how much I am a part of theirs. I pull my camera out, snapping a few quick exposures when they aren't looking. I sketch their features into my mind to carry them with me wherever my travels take me next. I memorize their exact phrasing, their boisterous laughs, and their sudden smiles. When I contemplate the sheer volume of humanity surrounding me, and how deeply I can see into their daily battles, I sometimes feel an icy panic that there will simply never be enough time on earth to see it all, to feel it all, or to taste it all. And yet, I keep coming back for more.