Inauspicious Beginnings

An often overlooked dimension of the travel experience is profound sickness, be it food poisoning from Guatemalan goat meat, flu caught on a Shanghai barge, or dysentery caught in the open latrines of Ghana, nobody wants to write about such events and no one wants to read them and nobody wants to video themselves in such a condition. But it remains a travel staple, the ghastly delay between stomach spasms and that moment when MUST be on a toilet or have spare sheets nearby. 

These are dark times, full of potential literary material, the closest one feels to death without being very close. My recent experience involved fever dreams that make no sense...intrusive thoughts about the Spanish word for property...someone wants to buy my property but I could not confirm in my mind what the word was...for several hours this mental exercise occupied me. No, there was no reason to be contemplating that word or any real estate exchange. I don't know why that was something my brain latched onto. My brain is not to be trusted most of the time. It is spoiled by media and may also be diseased from concussions sustained when I was younger. I crashed my bicycle several times without a helmet. I once attempted an acrobatic maneuver on a tire swing that resulted in a concussion and nearly fractured spine. I was hit squarely on the forehead with a missile of a line drive during batting practice once. There was a car crash in Canada that not only gave me a concussion but separated both shoulders. My brain is suspect. My brain when feverish and lacking sleep and at the height of protracted abuse from the interminable sound of traffic and ambulances and dogs barking and car alarms is best disregarded. Many topics came to me during my feverish state but few made sense. The closer to death I edged the more delirious I became, the more my thoughts became foreign fantasy animals who flitted in on five legs made of spotted tentacles and flew away on leaf wings. 

But I want to announce my intentions to embrace all the aspects of travel. To show the highs and the lows. The video below does not represent Mexico City, but it is a moment in Mexico City's history that had never been recorded before. Yes, countless had been stricken by Montezuma's Revenge, but not I, not Oggy Bleacher, not today. Is it noteworthy? No, it is not. It's definitely not glamorous. It's not even ugly enough to be worth a sideshow appearance in a circus. It just exists and I share it with you to demonstrate my commitment to the bare, unromantic details. Somerset Maugham wrote countless pages about travel through roach infested penal colonies and long steamship journeys to rubber plantations where dysentery had to be a way of life, yet he never invites his readers to suffer with him. Maybe he was immune to travel plagues and stomach viruses and rampant flu fevers. Maybe he was of stronger stock than Oggy in his waning years after several years of self-imposed exile in the desert. But Maugham surely met someone who was sick and could tell that story. No. Everyone Maugham meets is healthy, although dying in their own manner. Scandal and drama and passion alight every page, but no word of vomiting and bad guts. Maugham's my hero but I do not have his fortune. I was sick immediately upon arrival in Mexico City. I am sick as I write this. My colon was so inflamed and spastic I imagined a river of fire running from my mouth to my asshole. My feeble frog legs barely held my body weight as I shuffled in a daze to the bathroom and back to the seat-soaked mattress. My joints, including my fingers and ribs, ached like aged drive belts with cracks and patches made of hope and fantasy. The flower of youth has never faded more than when staring at one's grey hair in a broken mirror in a badly lit Mexican City bathroom, waiting to make sure the hourly deposit actually flushes into the sewer. I have interesting ambitions here in Mexico City, but lately my only ambition has been to creep 1 block to buy a big bottle of Mango Tropical Powerade to try to replenish my Sodio, Patasio, Calcio, Magnesio, and Tightbuttholio. I accomplished that mission on a rainy Sunday when pedestrian flower sellers wait in traffic to sell bouquets of pristine white and red roses. A dog walker is surrounded by at least 9 large dogs on leashes attached to her waist. The streets are quieter than normal because it's not a work day, but they are still louder than anything conducive to sleep or rest. I have no normal routine yet so I dare to begin my adventure into humanity with this descent into illness and a mumbling confession. Is it a warning? Perhaps. Outside any door there is an unknown variety of dangers waiting. And there is also poetry and music and discoveries so the risk/reward equation leans in favor of the trip as long as it is done in the spirit of honesty. We all can't have coffee in a Venice plaza and coincidentally be seated near a long forgotten acquaintances who remind us of a romantic scandal. No. Sometimes we eat goat tacos alone near a military monument and wake up in a hospital with "Gringo" as our name on the patient chart.