Dispatch No. 3

I left Guanajuato yesterday, returning by bus to Mexico City. The bus was a kind of luxury motorcoach, double-decker, with 2x1 seating on the upper level. And it was the most comfortable I’ve ever been while traveling (except private sleeper train cabins). My seat, which was more like a Lay-Z-Boy than anything, cushioned the bumps of the highway, reclined enough for me to sleep soundly, and gave my 195-centimeter-long body enough room to completely stretch out. And since I had the aisle to the right of me and a window to the left, I felt like I had plenty of personal space, even though there were twenty-five other passengers on the bus.

Having spent the few weeks mostly alone in my Guanajuato chicken-sit, I’m glad I had that personal-space buffer. As I’m transitioning into a less-solitary phase of travel, I’m once again feeling self-conscious about sticking out.

This feeling is something that I’ve been writing about and thinking about for a long time. It’s a topic worthy of more space and time than this Dispatch can give it, but I lived my first eighteen years in a community and a family that rewarded sticking out (that is, variation from the norm) with judgement and ridicule. The baggage of that still travels with me, and it’s more noticeable here in Mexico, where merely my physical appearance (tall, white) is enough to make me a noticeable variation from the norm.

My hostel for this time in Mexico City, even though it’s communal lodging, has some nice personal-space buffers too. I’m staying in an eight-person dorm room, but each bunk is fully enclosed, including a mini wardrobe, three shelves, a mattress I can stretch fully out on, and a little platform where I can sit to put my shoes on. A ventilated sliding door shuts me in to my own personal mini-room.

There’s a “co-working area” as well, a section of the hostel containing two tables and two desks, partitioned off from each other and the rest of the floor with glass panels and doors. I’m drafting this on one of the desks, in my own individual cubicle, and I’m using my journal instead of my typewriter.

One of the reasons is out of a concern for disturbing others with the noise, although these partitions are nowhere near soundproof. At the moment, I can hear the traffic noise from the street below, as well as the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Big Poppa” blaring from a tinny speaker. Biggie’s currently drowning out a conference call that another American man is on in another cubicle. (I can’t make out many individual words, but I’m getting the impression as I overhear that he’s engaged in some activity more inline with the mainstream economy than what I’m doing here.)

More than that, though, I’m feeling too self-conscious to use a typewriter in public. It’s related to that self-consciousness around sticking out. I don’t want to use my typewriter because I’m afraid that it will draw unwanted attention to me, and I’m in turn afraid that the attention will be negative. Why is that guy using a typewriter? How ridiculous, what’s wrong with him? That sort of thing.

I think this awareness of self-consciousness, while it’s always been there, is coming to the fore because of where I am, and also because of what I wrote in last week’s Dispatch: my past selves are coming out of their crypts, and I’m staying open to them in order to compost them (if you missed that, it’s here - the composting thing hopefully makes sense once you’ve read it).

Maybe I’ll feel differently as I settle in here - I’ve got nine more days, so I’ll have some time to sit with it. And in the meantime I’ll be exploring Mexico City, as well as seeking out some camera repair (one of my 35mm cameras is acting up). I shot some film when I was in the city a few weeks ago, and in addition to the black-and-white at the top, I have some color film highlights below.

This week on the blog I posted a bunch of photos as well, as a photo essay from a cross-USA road trip earlier this summer. I’m quite pleased with how it all turned out, especially as related to the theme of interstate travel “without seeing anything,” so check it out if you haven’t already:

Without Seeing Anything

A Photo Essay - Crossing the United States on Interstate 80 The US television journalist Charles Kuralt hosted a travel segment on CBS News that ran for twenty-five years in the second half of the 20th century. Called “On The Road,” he and his crew cris-crossed the nation in

The Analog NomadThe Analog Nomad

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Enjoy these glimpses of Mexico City! I’m off to scope out camera shops.

Hasta pronto,
J. Mark Tebben
The Analog Nomad
500 Westover Dr.
Box 33124
Sanford, NC 27330, USA