Feeling: bored
Listening to: Coldplay, "We Never Change"
Reading/Watching: SA. It's like a person.

The city I live in is said to be beautiful, old and cultured, smelling of spices and peppered with fascinating people. I see its underside, the not-so-picturesque, the place where students and wanderers and labor-wage families dwell.

The streets on most maps will be like woven cloth, across and down, with the occasional aberrant road running counter to the rest, like an upstream salmon.

My city�s streets are like hair that has not been combed, some of them going across and down but most slanting and tangling, a cobweb with ends that protrude and curl around only to end in midair. They shrug and hummock like an old woman�s shoulders, pocked and cracked with chipped, curbless edges.

The buildings downtown are scenic, ancient, red earth and sculpted edges, brightly painted murals with brilliant awnings. Brochures show laughing children with ribbons in their hair, old women weaving colorful blankets, men holding guitarrons and maracas. People are shown having romantic dinners, glass tables under thick umbrellas, clinking wine glasses and the river sparkling at their feet. Old crumbling missions seem wise, the worn statues guarding their stones, saints staring in clairvoyance across centuries.

I know the weathered missions and singers by the river to be the tourist traps that they are, that those are the only places where all the people speak in English. I know that away from the bright-light downtown with its theaters and restaurants is a gnarled, dirty city where little kids tumble into the streets and shout at the top of their lungs because no one made them afraid yet, and people walk slowly.

I know you can�t drive two blocks without finding a tiny Mexican restaurant, somebody�s sister or cousin working the cash register, while a smiling semi-bilingual waitress brings you enchiladas the size of house cats, and hissing fajitas with thick, irregular tortillas that could be their own meal, paired with the chips and salsa and maybe some guacamole and queso.

I know there are ten million clubs and bars where somebody�s brother�s best friend is the drummer for a band, and we go out en masse to cheer for them, even if the music is deafening. I know there are grocery stores where I can�t identify half the brand names (or read the labels) and I feel foolish for studying French in school. I know that I�ve lived here two years and still haven�t seen everything there is to see.

Someone put 50 reasons why her city was the best in the world. I don�t have 50; I don�t know mine well enough. But the four or five I have make more sense to me. And for all the crumbled streets and rapid Spanish, I still love it for the way the tap water tastes good. I love that the best restaurants in town don�t have high prices or chain names. I love the four-foot-tall abuelitas who don�t speak a word of English but smile broadly and nod hello when your gazes knock into each other. I love that the people who remember me as a buck-toothed, burr-haired fourth grader are nowhere to be found, that all this city knows of me is what I�ve chosen to show them.

I got lost driving home yesterday, wound up in a terrible neighborhood with streets like crowded teeth, and as I wandered through it I grinned and turned up my music and thought, �God, I love it here.�

Comments? 0 so far...
Not a Diaryland member? Sign the Guestbook.