17.10.24

A monstrous monstera tucked into the boulevard resembling a houseplant.

16.10.24

We stood in awe looking up at this relation of the corner store variety rubber plant that when left to explore a subtropical habitat can provide enough shade to shelter many.

15.10.24

PRO TAS PRO

14.10.24

Cede el paso al peaton, y un perro.

13.10.24

A scientology niche en Español. Torqued as in an etch-a-sketch production. In place of window light is an illusion of freedom with mushroom cloud suggestion.

12.10.24

The heat in the shade on the outside of Casa Luis Barrigan was formidable at even this morning hour, yet once inside the climate was much to our liking in each of the rooms we visited.
 

11.10.24

El tigre cantina.

 

10.10.24

Cien perros durmiendo tranquilamente.

09.10.24

Y aqui, el puerto, askew.
 

08.10.24

Números.

 

 07.10.24

An oblique map, a wall arrangement, a tapestry, a verdant field, a landscape, a meadow lacking ungulates, a humid glen exuding dew drops that garnished the festive plates of diners. The exotic pricing hindered yet drew us in if only for a moment.

06.10.24

Vistas confound. This Paris Metro art nouveau arch beckons us downward into the underbelly of the lake. The Aztec visionaries were not privy to this uncanny portal.

05.10.24

At times such as this it must be accepted that memory can be less than satisfactory. 

04.10.24

Café Plaza en La Concepcion. Una mas café con leche por favor. 
 

03.10.24

Diego in the park as a curious child alongside death and the aristocracy of his day.

02.10.24

Aquí se filmó Roma.

01.10.24

A glimmer of layering featured in situ.

30.09.24

The gilded chapel of La Conchita en Coyoacan lies on the prostrate skeletal remains of the Nuevo Spaniards which in turn are layered atop a Toltec altar inlaid with Indigenous bone shards. The provenance of the gold compels us to keep searching.

29.09.24

You are prohibited from entering the park with pets, bicycles, skateboards and balls. In Frida's childhood park it is expected you will arrive tranquilo y lento.

28.09.24

The alleged site of Cortez's villa in Coyoacan where he lived with his Aztec mistress. Cortez the killer, the sailor, the builder of palaces on the graves of the conquered.
 

27.09.24

Comí churros todos las dias.

26.09.24

The librerio off the Alameda, perhaps the one where Bolaño 

stole many books:

"The first book to fall into my hands was a small volume by [the nineteenth

century erotic poet] Pierre Louÿs, with pages as thin as Bible paper, I can’t

remember now whether it was Aphrodite or Songs of Bilitis. I know that I

was sixteen and that for a while Louÿs became my guide. Then I stole books by

Max Beerbohm (The Happy Hypocrite), Champfleury, Samuel Pepys, the

Goncourt brothers, Alphonse Daudet, and Rulfo and Areola, Mexican writers

who at the time were still more or less practicing, and whom I might therefore

meet some morning on Avenida Niño Perdido, a teeming street that my maps

of Mexico City hide from me today, as if Niño Perdido could only have existed

in my imagination, or as if the street, with its underground stores and street

performers had really been lost, just as I got lost at the age of sixteen."

-     from Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches (1998-2003) 

 

25.09.24

Café La Habana, est. 1952. A crossroads where many of Mexico's finest thinkers and activistas met to drink café con leche and shots of brandy. Decades of poetry readings, shared meals, argument and the plotting of experimental and sometimes fanciful narratives, echoed in the mostly empty room. An optimum space to delve into a world of dead souls.

 

 24.09.24

An evening when chaos and kairos fused into elemental bedlam. 

23.09.24

Representations of an Aztec zocalo in miniature. The time and effort to position this intricate past is exceptional. Encased and eternal.

22.09.24

On occasion we bear witness to heroic architectural events such as this, the umbrellic awning of the Museo Nacional de Antropologio. 
 

21.09.24

Art deco - el mercado michoacan en la condesa. Parabolic bourgeoisie complete with hustlers and hopped up hipsters.

20.09.24

Ruins in contrast. The former city of Tenochtitlan is a short walk towards the Torre Latinoamerica which is noted for its ability to withstand severe seismic events such as the earthquake that devastated much of el ciudad on September 19th, 1985. The building defies gravitas yet has a tarnished and neglected outlook due in part to its status as heritage.

 

19.09.24

It is difficult to register. Gravity persists. The city centre of Ciudad de México is sinking as much as 50 cms per year in parts. Here the Aztecs built islands in the middle of Lake Texcoco by reinforcing mounds of soil and rubble with plants such as rushes and aquatic grasses. These islands afforded farmers growing space, and the rulers land to fabricate a stone universe. The Spanish, as is there practice, dismantled these temples and pyramids to construct their elaborate cathedrals nearby where photography continues to be prohibited. 

18.09.24

The centre of the Aztec Empire, in the centre of the Post-Colonial Empire of Late Capitalism. The fate of human endeavour lies in gravity, an attraction for the horizontal plane where all dreams linger like dank fog.

17.09.24

An impossible contortion in full anguish. Note the orbicular lens in the corner. Even in suffering such as this there is surveillance. 

16.09.24

Roberto Bolaño: "Reading is always more important that writing." A curious dualism. Difficult to parse, and yet one does require more courage, more thrust. 

The art nouveau glass ceiling of the Gran Hotel Ciudad De Mexico. 

 

15.09.24

To continue reading, Lispector's cronicas as a daily dérive into the ever-lucid mind and heart of a written life.

14.09.24

Roberto Bolaño, has been read and recommended repeatedly.
 

13.09.24

Pedro Páramo, to be read repeatedly.
 

12.09.24

Fernanda Melchor, to be read again.

 

11.09.24

Tilt-up walls resting on concrete footings, in situ. Assemblage appears precarious in these parts and yet proves consistently stable when seismically challenged. 

 

10.09.24

This bougainvillea, a favourite among psychogeography circles we travel in, erupts to provide shade and shelter from us argonauts. We are privileged to have it all to ourselves.