Dispatches from Mexico, Part One (or, “Jonahs and Whales”)
We’re all running from something. Looking for some kind of absolution. You board a plane, you wrap yourself in a lap belt and fuselage metal. Then you fly, awash in filtered blue heaven.
Oaxaca, Mexico; October 2021
As you rise, the people below shrink. They freeze, then disappear. You find you can’t be sure they weren’t just dreams you danced around when you were down there. Trucks and cars condense down into little shapes and then into mere pinpricks of color. They decelerate, then suddenly blink out of existence, crushed by sheer bigness as the world outside expands in rhythm with the pulsing plane engines taking you higher and higher. Proud cities fade from dynamic to catatonic, until they’re just lines and sepia tones resting in some little fold of the earth’s old, mottled skin.
Those vast, curving horizons out there arcing beyond elliptical airplane windows, they atone for things somehow. Trash and smog, violence and deceit, ego and ambition, littleness of soul. I look around the plane at the the little boy nestled against his dad’s neck, the 40-something couple whispering and laughing and clutching one another’s hands. Each sin is a Jonah, the endless sky a whale that swallows it all.
Santa Catarina Ixtepeji, Mexico; November 2021
Now our plane circles above a giant city. White wedding dress clouds dance below us, billowing pretty and pure. We fall through them. It feels like we’re starting to spiral. We’re not, but I can’t help but feel like I’m fumbling forgiveness a little somehow. Out the little airplane window the city grows, it smells like noise, like graceless bedlam.
By and by, the plane hits the ground. The whale spit us out. I’m Jonah again, a little unredeemed again. I look around the plane at groggy faces, at anxious, tight temples, at a mother half-heartedly clutching a whimpering child. We’re all running from something.
There is a woman a row in front of me, her middle aged head jostles lightly as the plane taxis. I remember when her hair was pure dusk, a soft collision of midnight and moonlight. Now it’s shot through with thousands of strands of silver and grey. I’m pretty sure I caused them. One for every thoughtless remark, every weak effort, every broken down piece of me she’s had to hold in place. We’re all running from something.
On a whim I reach out between the seats. Her holding hand is empty so I fill it up with mine. She turns, my Shannon. Her eyes smile, her skin crinkles. I think of sun rays. We’re all running toward something.
