Tapalpa: Loitering
Today I did something I haven’t done for a long time: I loitered.
Not in the legal sense of waiting where you are not supposed to wait. I wasn’t waiting for anything. More in the sense of being in public and doing, well, nothing. I had been sitting in my hotel room in Tapalpa, Mexico on a rainy Thursday when I noticed the sun had finally come out. I was possessed by a sudden desire to see it, just one time that day. So I stood up, slipped on my flip flops and walked outside. It was a perfectly ordinary corner in this town: Cobblestone streets, semi-dilapidated buildings, and parked cars. Across the street I saw a patch of warm light and I walked to it and gazed over the red clay roofs at the setting sun. And then I just stayed there. Nothing to do, nowhere to be. I had three coins in my pocket, cumulatively worth less than 5 pesos. No phone, no keys, nothing. I looked across where the sun was casting shadows on a nearby wall and thought to myself: “What if I just stayed here until the shadows rose above that wrought iron light set into the stucco.” I immediately thought that was a bad idea, since I like setting little challenges for myself, and hate when I can’t keep them. And after all, who knows how fast those shadows are moving anyways. But regardless, I set my feet out on the raised sidewalk so common in Mexico, leaned back against the wall, and loitered.
At first I worried that someone would call me out on it somehow, ask what I was doing, but of course that didn’t happen. Outside of my group there was probably not another white person in town. I was so out of place among the people coming and going that they had no choice but to look at the crazy gringo and be on their way. I played with the coins for a bit just to seem like I was doing something, then put them back in my pocket. My social anxiety faded as I held myself still, and I just watched the world move on by.
Here is what I saw:
- A family gathers around a pickup truck, a young girl tries the door impatiently before her mother unlocks it. An even younger boy sits in the bed of the truck and watches me.
- A teenage girl walks down the street with a guitar case over her shoulder, listening to something on earbuds.
- An old timey streetlight, with an even more old timey gas lantern bulb inside. From my angle right below I can see the shiny modern electric light hidden in the top.
- A staggering number of old cars of every description, all belching fumes. One chevy pickup can barely run without stalling and backs into the intersection from a side street before struggling up a steep hill. The next vehicle is a new-looking truck that climbs the incline with ease.
I noticed the shadow has moved halfway up, I guess I can stay after all.
- Cracks in the thick sidewalk host tiny succulent-like plants.
- A girl rides a quad bike through the intersection, it’s struts flexing as she goes over the speed bump. A young boy sits in the back, smiling.
- There are thin cobble stones in a ring around the manhole, or perhaps the same stones, just set on end for strength.
- A man sits on the back of a pickup, wearing a back brace. One of his shoes is separating from it’s sole.
The shadow had covered one lantern and was advancing on another. I cross my arms.
- There is a 6 ft white dome on top of the hotel, of unknown purpose.
- The two pesos coins were minted in 2017, the 50 cent one in 2003. Both have the eagle/snake/cactus combo I learned about in Latin American Civ class in high school. One is ringed by strange patterns look like a collection of villages, separated by hills.
- A man walks slowly up the street, wearing a cowboy hat and a child-size pastel colored backpack.
- A car passes with colorful stickers on the edge of the windshield, looking like it’s halfway to the junkyard. The passenger is using a smartphone.
The sun was gone, and I slowly get up from the wall and walk to the corner, which I realized would have been a better loitering spot, as I could see down a whole new street with a plethora of interesting sights. Such as an abandoned building, overgrown with vines now dead and brown. After a second I turned, waited for a truck to pass in what constitutes rush hour traffic here, and headed back into the hotel.
Turns out the best way to live in the moment, and appreciate surroundings is to simply stop.
Oh, and leave the phone.
