Mexico City Human Connections

A very large celebration was going on near the Zocalo on Sunday evening when I lost a shoe in the crowd and kept walking, hoping it would never be discussed. A man ran twenty meters after me holding it over his head like a trophy, shouting, senor, senor. I put it back on in front of about four hundred people. Somebody clapped. I have never been so seen, or so well returned. I would like to thank the man with the shoe. I tie them twice now.

Notes from my first week in Roma Norte. Altitude: I climbed a flight of stairs and had to stop on the landing. Nobody warns you. It passed. Water: filtered jug in the flat, bottled for everything else. I stopped asking questions about it. Alert: a loud siren went off from phones and a street speaker. I stood in the kitchen reading my screen. Neighbours walked down to the street without hurrying. It turned out to be a drill. I learned my exit route that afternoon. Lunch: comida is mid afternoon here. Sitting down at noon marked me as new. Verdict: slower than planned. Fine.

I grew up here, left for years, and came back. I remember the noise, the traffic and the paperwork for everything, and I remember that the plate rule keeps your car off the road on some days. Now I live in Narvarte and I keep being told to buy a used car. The Metro is crowded but it works, and I am not sure the car is worth the trouble. How do people who own one here manage the days it cannot be driven?

You sat on the Metro early on Monday with a trumpet case across your knees and a sandwich the length of your forearm, and you ate it slowly, with total focus, like a person at a concert. I was standing beside you holding a plant. We looked at each other once. It was a look of deep mutual respect. You got off at Insurgentes still chewing. I would like to know what was in the sandwich. I would also like to know how you play the trumpet with a mouth that full.

The storm came in so fast at Chapultepec Park that I just stood under a tree and gave up. A woman holding a folded newspaper over her head said, come, and we walked together to the exit, both soaked on one side, neither of us talking. At the gate we started laughing at exactly the same moment. She went one way and I went the other. I do not know her name. I think I took her laugh home. It was in my coat. It was wet.

For three months I crossed the Zocalo at 8.30 every morning and heard the same accordion tune from the same man, always slightly wrong in the same place. I started to time my walk to it. By the end I was humming the wrong note on purpose. Last week I came by and there was only an empty corner. If you moved or found a better spot, that one wrong note is the one I miss most. I would like to hear it again. I would not tell you it was wrong.

I was in the plaza in Coyoacan at 9.40am, twenty minutes before a job interview, when a pigeon took aim at me and I was wearing a white shirt. A woman on a nearby bench took a pack of tissues and a small bottle of water out of her bag and cleaned me up in ninety seconds without a single comment. I arrived five minutes early and calm. I got the job. I would like her to know the bird did not win. I would also like her to know I now wear grey.

My dog slipped her lead at Parque Mexico one Tuesday morning and I spent twenty minutes running around the fountain, calling her name in a voice I did not recognise. A man on a bench stood up, whistled once, and she came straight to him. He handed me the lead and said, she is a good one, keep her close. I almost cried into the fountain. I carry a shorter lead now. I wave to him every Tuesday and he waves back. The dog does not look at me.

We were both going the wrong way down the same pavement in Roma Norte on Saturday, you with a canvas tote full of oranges and me carrying a very large plant I had just bought. We met in the middle and did the thing where both people go left, then both go right, three times. You said, good luck with the monster. I said, good luck with the oranges. It was the best conversation of my week. The monster is fine. I ate an orange in your honour.

A dog walker came down the street in Roma Norte at 8am with a dozen dogs of different sizes on one rope, and everyone on the pavement stepped aside without being asked. The smallest dog was in front. A man outside a bakery saluted. The walker nodded back like a general. A delivery driver stopped his truck and waited with the engine off. It took about forty seconds. A whole pack of dogs, one rope, no incidents. I have been trying to arrange my own life like that ever since.