(Kind Of) On The Road Pt 6

1.

That was a bit of a
Mad 48 hours
Woke up in Mexico City
Metro to the airport
(Only 5 pesos!)
And then a flight to Merida
A bus to Chichen Itza
A bus to Valladolid
A bus to Playa del Carmen
A night there
A bus to Puerto Morelos
A bus to Cancun airport
A flight to Manchester
A train into the city
A train to Leeds
A couple of hours there
And then a train to London
And a tube to Balham
Which is where I am now

2.

So last thing I wrote
I was in Mexico City
Trying to work out what to do
Whether to
Fly to UK
Fly to Asia
Stay in Mexico
Or maybe something else
Having actually bought a ticket
From Cancun to Manchester
But feeling jolly rotten about it
And having learned I could cancel it
For just 30 euros
And maybe thinking about rolling a dice
So lost was I
With the indecision of it all but -
In the end...
I decided it was obviously right to cancel the ticket
Given my thoughts and feelings around it
And was about to hit send on the email
When I figured to do one more I Ching
And received a chapter that was kind of indifferent
But contained the poignant changing line:
"It furthers one to cross the great water"
I figure it don't get much clearer than that
And ignore my feelings
Ignore my desires
Ignore my fears
And stick with my ticket
Neither feeling good about it
Nor liking the idea of it
But -
If I've learned one thing in life
It's that the I Ching knows things I don't
And when I follow it
Life works out well
And when I go against it
Things go bad
(Is that one thing?
Or three things?)
Meanwhile
I'm still wishing I'd just bought the ticket to Asia
While also wishing I'd just let
That dream
Those words
Sit with me
And feel what comes
Rather than rushing to the comp
Investigating tickets and destinations
And thus solidifying the idea in my brain
And creating one more itch
I just know I'll have to scratch
Just
"A man who has ideas
And feels compelled to live them"
But -
Is it like hamburgers or beer?
Each idea
One step closer
To the last?
And -
What about the idea
To have no ideas
To go beyond them
To transcend?
Isn't that just an idea
Too?

3.

So I left Mexico City
Not really wanting to
And got a flight to Merida
A city I'd long heard was nice
And felt some attraction to
(Probably some long ago
Travel book I read
Talking about hammocks
Or something)
And found -
Not much, really
Just another typical
Tumbledown Mexico city
A plaza
The second oldest cathedral
In the Americas
(Completed 1598)
A bunch of shops
(Is the world really
Just people selling stuff?)
And also locals
Wearing weirdly offensive t-shirts
One kid's says
"Fuck off!"
On woman's says
"Bastardo!"
And another's says
"Get lost!"
And so I do
Hit the bus station
After about thirty minutes
(Long enough)
And jump on a 3-hour coach
To go dig the big pyramid
At Chichen Itza

4.

When my visiting English friends were here
They'd amusingly renamed Chichen Itza
"Chicken Itza"
Which is pretty hilarious
When you think about it
But when I got there
I instantly realised
The name should be
"Shitchen Itza"
(Or, if you want to be
Completely ludicrous:
"Shitchen Shitza")
In a nutshell:
It was shit
It had all the allure of a parking lot
A parking lot filled with tourists
And not just any old tourists
But
American tourists
The worst kind of tourists
Again:
It was akin to
The last hour of a car boot sale
Peddlars packing up their tat
While bored crowds meander aimlessly
Across a scraggly field
Which
Incidentally
Had a rather large pile of stones
In the middle of it
Ha hum
Big deal
So what
I was done within five minutes
But I figured I'd better stay at least an hour
Try to get something out of
My exorbitant entrance fee
(242 pesos!)
And
Eventually did
Here are the three best things about
Chicken Itza:
1. The toilets were really good
- Especially because I really wanted to go -
And at least they didn't charge for those
(They had wanted
100 pesos
For me to leave my wheely case
Which I instead
Took round with me)
2. Near the exit there was a mango tree
Which I climbed
Shook the branches of
Smiled heartily as mangoes fell
And ate about five
And bagged several more
And gave a bunch away
Meanwhile
A worker there hilariously shouted over
In a great voice all Americanized
As though coming through a megaphone
"Sir!
Step away from the mangoes!"
We laughed and waved
And then he later told me
"You're lucky the officials were somewhere else
It's a federal offence
To take those mangoes
You would have been in big trouble"
3. At the last moment
Before paying my entrance fee
I saw a sign talking about discount
And realised my
Temporary Resident card
Qualified me for
33% off
Those are the best three things
About
Shitchen Itza
(Problem is
Of course
I'd already been to Palenque)

5.

So I exited there
Jumped on a bus
Headed to Valladolid
And thought about staying the night there
For about sixty seconds
But instead jumped on another bus
Destined for Playa del Carmen
(Two more hours)
Which I'd remembered as a
Sedate sister
To crappy Cancun
But remembered wrongly
Discovering
Clubs and bars and
Pumping music and
Flashing lights
And
Simply got a hostel bed
Went looking for fish tacos
Found none
And ended up eating
Ritz crackers and Philadelphia
Bought at Wal-Mart
Which I thought was kind of fitting
Given that was pretty much how
The trip began
And also kind of fitting
That it should end in such a way
With everything falling
Everything breaking
No solid poos
In three solid days
Tired and worn
Sweating in dirty clothes
Shoes and jeans on last legs
Unable to be replaced
Dragging around
That desert-battered wheely case
But grateful, nonetheless, for
A non-awesome finale
Which makes the leaving
All the easier

6.

I slept wonderful in the hostel
A room all to myself
Some freshly-purchased earplugs
An extra doze in the morning
And then I figured
With a few hours to kill
I would take a bus half-way to the airport
And maybe check out somewhere
Smaller
Pleasanter
Somewhere I could
Dip my toes in the Caribbean
And feel chill and good
Before el aeropuerto
So I bused it to
Puerto Morelos
And found
The bus didn't go into town
It just stayed by the highway
Where the traffic roared
And everything stunk
Of sewers
But at least there was a Chedraui
Where I could waste my last pesos
On snacks for the plane
And a whole stash of
Canned chipotle
To deliver to the folks back home
And yet more
Fittingness

7.

So!
To the airport
Weirdly
For me
Two hours early
Loads of time
To sit on the floor and
Guzzle my
900 grams of yoghurt
That I'd forgotten
Wouldn't make it through security
And then
When I do go through security
They tell me I can't take the chipotle
(Goddamn!
I forgot about that too!)
(But, apparently
8 metal tent pegs
Perfectly adequate weapons
Are fine)
And so I go back to check-in
Find it closed
And then give it to some guy
Who's happy for the
Random chipotle gift
Then
Back through security
Back to the plane
Where I hear my name called
As people are boarding
And go find out what for
And they say
"You haven't been to immigration
You can't get on the flight"
I say
"I don't need to
I'm a resident"
But -
Apparently that don't make no difference
I still need my bit of paper
So
I say I'll go get it
And they say
"There's no time
You can't get on the flight"
Immediately, head whirls
And all the thoughts happen in an instant:
Why didn't they say something before?
What kind of system allowed me this far
Before the flag was raised?
Is this my ticket out
Of going to England?
Of going to Asia instead?
But -
All that money spent
All the effort in getting this far
I don't want to lose that
Then -
Action
These guys just want to talk
Just want to explain
Say there's no time
But we're taking time
Talking
And there's always time
Where planes are concerned
So I say:
"Lessgo! Stop talking! Give me
Five minutes!"
And leave my bags
- Ha! -
And sprint back past
All the gates
Back through
Duty-free
Back through
Security
- No waiting
No explaining -
And down the stairs
Back past where I
Ate and spilled my yoghurt
And into immigration
Filled out the form
Sweated something about
"Emergencia"
While the immigration lady
Sat laconic and bored
On her phone
Helping not
But
I got the stamp
Got the
Bit of paper
(No money spent)
(Which I didn't have)
And sprinted back to the plane
(What fun
Legitimately sprinting through an airport)
(Except for the belly full of yoghurt
On a three day squishy stomach)
And
Of course
The plane's still there
And I get on it
To a hero's welcome
Or perhaps
Glares at having been made to wait
Or
Perhaps
Total indifference
Sweating
And queasy
And
I guess
With a sign that
I did want to fly to England after all
Or
At least
That I really didn't want to have to
Lose all my
Money

8.

The plane ride's nice
I've got two seats to myself
There are a couple of good movies
The hostesses are lovely
(I swear they're always
Especially lovely
To me)
And not even any crying babies
I sleep not
I sit in that tube
And nine hours later
I get out at Manchester

9.

Flying somewhere, I feel
Is the best way to get a taste
For a country
And for where you've just been
I remember flying to Spain
Two years ago
After two years in North America
And finding it so
Incredibly sophisticated
Intellectual
And cultured
And I remember flying back to England
After a couple of months in China
And thinking everyone looked so
Stressed out
Miserable
And had incredibly large noses
(If you don't know this
That's the Chinese nickname for us:
"Big-nose")
This time...
This time I think
Gargh
English people are so
Gormless
So ugly
So apparently determined
To dress horribly
Paint their faces
And do their hair
In uglyfying ways
And so pasty looking
With skin so white
It's almost grey
And I realise
Just how much I'm going to miss
All those
Lovely brown cleavages
All that lovely Mexican hair
But, then again -
I have to remember
This is an airport
This is a tourist flight
For people who wanted to go to Cancun
So, I shouldn't be so quick to judge
I mean
They're probably mostly
Working class
(Ha!)
And
Above all
It's the north of England
It's Lancashire
Things'll get better
Once I get to Leeds
And
In any case
More than any of that
Things are surprisingly good
I'm not aching for Mexico
I'm not weirded out by anything
Mostly just happy
To see all the green and the trees
And marvelling at how clean everything looks
How smooth
The tarmac on the roads
All the shining new cars
And in what an orderly fashion
Everything
Moves

10.

A train into town
Where I think about going to the Arena
And saying a prayer
But can't quite face the city
So instead go straight to Leeds
And enjoy the Pennine scenery
Lovely hills and fields
Stone walls
And everything so vibrantly green
And pretty
And once more back in Leeds station
Where I've been
Ten thousand times
From right back thirty years ago
And everything's completely normal
Not jarring
Mexico faded like a dream
All those months and experiences
Only twelve hours behind me
I walk the familiar streets
Go to my dad's shop
Which is now a bar
And my dad's sold up
And retired
And hang out with his
Now ex-business partner for a few hours
And chat this and that
Looking on at my former promised inheritance
And happy to see how much it's improved
Then -
The lovely fast train to London
Where I finally sleep
For about twenty-five minutes
As we pass through
Wakefield and South Elmsall
The places where I grew up
And went to school
And past a million more
Lovely fields and trees
And emerge once again into
King's Cross sunshine
Get on a tube
And have it reinforced again
That pretty much all the pretty women in England
Are down in London
And probably most of them
Aren't English

11.

And so
There you have it
Journey over
A weirdly quick denouement
To what might have been
Many more months of gadding
And felt like it could have been
When I was standing alone in the Mexican desert
All those thousands of miles away
Barely a week ago
And yet -
I'm sure there's more to come
Perhaps in the
Very near future
All these adventures
"Only just begun"
And
Certainly not the end for
"The Man Who Follows His Dreams"
(As they sang in the grocery store
While I sadly contemplated
Not having bought that ticket to Asia:
"Hey now
Hey now
Don't dream
It's over")
(And
As I dreamed in Mexico City
After not cancelling the Manchester ticket
Where I was on a train in England
And missed my stop
(Some people were blocking the doors)
But at the next station
The driver stopped a train going the other way
And allowed me to cross over
And get on that one
So I could go back
On track)

12.

The I Ching knows;
You'll see ;)