Hoping for a Tail Wind

Just a few weeks ago, I checked another box off the old bucket list, visiting Oaxaca Mexico for the first time. Oaxaca is actually a “free and sovereign state” in the nation that is formally the United States of Mexico. Look it up. Oaxaca de Juárez would be the formal name of the city and while Travel and Leisure Magazine named it number one city in the world for 2022, it comes up number two on my list, for what might be considered a technicality. That’s called foreshadowing.

Forty something Mexicans are shaking and moving to the beat. Decked out in Santa hats, the salsa-fied Zumba class in the park vibrates the concrete the same way my pounding head does. Five knocks to the head to be specific. Butt (more, yet different foreshadowing). All of that is materially irrelevant.

The mezcal tasting surely is the root cause of the aforementioned pain in mi cabeza. Otherwise, I might be up in this group dance exercise right now. Why not. Shit is good. It’s 8am, 75° and India, Carmen and I are strolling to the US Consular Agency in Oaxaca. Also materially irrelevant, other than ain’t nobody got time for… Zumba. What I do have time for is MOLE. Holy mole. And good. And great. Oaxaca does it big. I should take a cooking class. The flavors are deep and rich and complex. And unique. The region had held on to much of it indigenous culture. Not all. But I’m comparison to elsewhere, it’s considerable. Which is a goddamn miracle considering US historical aggression on its own continent. Nonetheless, I’m digging into some mole right now. Rojo. In the market. Watching the World Cup final with two gorgeous women and a cerveza. Mole is basically sauce. The best food on earth is a sauce. This is why I consider Mexican cuisine number one in the world — at worst it’s tied for first with Vietnam depending on nation I’ve most recently eaten in. My mole has a chicken leg in it. It doesn’t matter what’s in it though, it’s the mole that matters. All of the mole, por favor.

One day we go with ceviche and cocktails. Then street tacos. Then mezcal tastings. Eating and drinking our way through this city. Eventually, I muster up the discipline to get out of the urbanized areas. Petrified waterfalls, small batch 3rd generation maestro mezcalero shit. For real, Jeronimo truly blesses us with the proper experience, I likely will be moving away from anything but sipping mezcal neat. No mix. No salt. No orange. Nada. Solo mezcal.

Hierve el Agua literally is Spanish for “the water boils”. Yet the warm springs are a bit cold and the petrified “waterfall” is unlike anything I’ve seen before. Beautiful landscape. Guided by locals that legitimately transfer stewardship at the border between towns, 7-10 kilometers hike later and its a secret actual spring fed water. Moms nature is in her happy gushy place. Give it to me. So am I. Well worth the walk, this low key spot is serene and tranquil and invigorating and just wonderful in a multitude of ways. Fuck what you heard, I chase waterfalls and its dope.

The sacred yet culturally significant side of this city and its traditions and practices shines through in the art scene. Notably the street art. It’s unbelievably omnipresent. Gawd like.

The manifestation scales to the more indoor, when we are handed a card by a woman on the street and book tickets to an “immersive theatre performance”, dubbed Microenormous. Pictures will do the talking. It was a lot, sort of.

Oaxaca Mexico leaves a lasting impression. It’s ease of access and geographic proximity definitely make it a spot worth a repeat visit or ten, even if it’s number two…

2022 (Den)marks the third time I’ve actually been to the Danish capitol of Copenhagen. The first time was for a couple days and nights on business for a concert and video shoot and the second was simply in transit to Malmo Sweden. With four days and three nights in this trip, I intended to make the rounds, renting a bike in the number on bicyclist city on this planet.

Watch closely and you might catch 2014 me cheers-ing with a bottle of red wine while directing a music video in the May Day/Worker’s Day/Labor Day Parade.

A nearly-month long, three years coming country hop jumps off (after a one night stopover in Amsterdam) here in this 10th century-established Viking fishing Village. Copenhagen. Shit even sounds cool. I’ve splurged on an apartment in Indre By — the “inner city”. My bike is a modest cruiser. The infrastructure is bonkers. 40% of residents utilize the bicycle to commute to and from work or school. Countless others use it for fun or exercise or off-work transit. Cyclists are everywhere. At every red light we all ignore each other, but we know we’re on the same team. We’re like a moving energy field between the vehicular and pedestrians traffics, both of which have measurable numbers. But like KRS-One, we’re still number one. Like Queen we’re the Champions. Bicyclists that is. In case somehow neither musical analogy landed. In case I’m not be clear.

It’s like riding kilometers and kilometers for days around a Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock joint-comedy show (plus Ali Wong and Donnell Rawlings) isn’t enough, because I am now — like right now, here in the happiest of spaces in a city that hates hipsters and yet likely created them — eyeballing this gorgeous Italian bartender slash DJ slash fetish model slash student slash slash or slaj or something. Let’s call this particularly muse Lucia. It’s down a flight of stairs. This cantina that is, not the PYT working here. Yeah, I’m pretty sure Lucia doesn’t identify as “it”. Anyhoo… I’m in the space between the space and it’s a space that’s happily spacey. For real. I got the smokiest mezcal on the menu. Soundtrack is enacted through an old turntable behind the bar and a crate of 12” vinyl records, curated by the aforementioned hostess with the mostest. She’s in her early twenties and is rocking Pink Floyd. The Police. Silk Sonic comes in out of the static filled needle noise – she flexing on knowing some good contemporary tunes as well. Then she puts on Thriller. The gawd dong girl is mine, Paul McCartney. This year Halloween fell a month early, like Oktoberfest. Or didn’t it? Copenhagen is the truth if one could afford it. I meet all sorts of folks who work here. From Italia. Turkey. Pakistan. And — as it’s given to me from the businesswoman sort of on holiday — “Korea, south”. I try my hardest not to LOL, but the truth is that the agave plus bicicleta concoction has me tuned the fuck in and turned the fuck up like MJ in those 80s contacts lenses breaking it the fuck down. Actual fact. To snack on and chew. I chat with Lucia about tips. Just the tips. Gratuity, ahem. She tells me she’d rather get a good salary rather than rely on tips. And she gets one here. I say “well, why not both!” And tip 20% — enormous in Europe, where a tip is usually 0%. Ultimately, I get my Pharcyde on and pass on by the 20 year old muse and the 30 something couple from Boston and cruise off into the night with my two wheel motion. Bikes and cacti bitch.

Istanbul. It is a bit of an X. An intersection. Absolutely variable. East meeting West, west meeting east; the middle of Eurasia so to speak. People meeting people. Cats meeting cats. Dogs meeting dogs. Everything in between. Out on the corners.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mnKNr2Tiq8&w=560&h=315]

The Last Poets have so eloquently posited:
“The corner was our magic, our music, our politics
Fires raised as tribal dances and war cries
Broke out on different corners”

I’m on the tail end of a pedestrian 15 mile day, so I’m moving quickly back to my hostel bed. Room. I copped the private room to allow for a snore and stank free experience. Still walking another one mile of those 15. I catch a strange interaction between what appears to be a club girl and a garbage picker. Or a hoe and a bottle deposit redeemer. Or a pro and a pro. Unintelligible yet unmistakable. They looked like cindi lauper and Oscar the grouch yet that could be all the food I just scarfed with Ahmet. Ahmed. Depends on whether we’re speaking Turkish or Arab. Yo no se, pero si se puede. Um… either way it was so loving. This interaction between two randoms on a late night street. It was so open and so real in the moment for them, and by extension for me. The Turkish calories are in an intoxicatingely wonderful feeling intersecting this moment. Perpendicularly in fact.

I am where Asia meets Europe. Or Europe meets Asia. Turkiye. I’m stuffed like a turkey in late November USA, all thanks to this food tour I just hooked up. Istanbul has a vibe. I’ve been all over Europe and all over Asia, and the food and the city and the people of FKA Constantinople FKA Byzantium got a bit of both at every turn. Gatekeeper status too, considering how large the Ottoman Empire was and how hardcore they went to break it up. Literal First World War. Everything reminds me a little of each. Architectures swap styles, block by block. The whole thing is a visionary experience. An experientially channeled incident. I cringe at incident… it sounds like work. Sirens don’t do that but words do. Call up Rufus and get me in a phone booth and back to this holiday I’m on right now, like two weeks deep right now, right now. I’ve got a sleep cycle. It has patterns. My eyes have ditched their baggage. I’m walking 7-15 miles a day. The food is local and fresh and delicious. Pretty much everything. Every other responsibility that I have in life should thank your goddamn lucky stars that I can’t firefight remotely.

Foreign travel manifests in the nuanced differences between country-nation-states. Your typical thoroughbred Jesus-loving kid from Iowa wants to hear that America is special because of our freedoms on his first trip outside of the colonial white world. The reality around the globe is much more rooted in a cultural component. Space starts it all off. Some days, Barcelona gives all the space one could want, whether walking, bicycling, or in a motor vehicle. Some days, Fez Medina has us cramped into the tightest of mazes in search of a leather tannery. Sometimes, space changes quickly – like how know one bumps into on the streets of Tokyo all day and then I step on the train at rush hour and end up crowd surfing in a subway for the next 12 minutes. Probably the easiest to comprehend and concrete example of this is: How pedestrian traffic is conducted; aka how to cross the street. Nuances in style. Nuances in sustenance. Nuances in sex.

Every musician or busker in Istanbul is punk rock as fuck. Fiddlers and bucket drummers collaborate on a tirade against what appears to be the most conservative of the Allah fearing vacationers. In my mind it’s probably the Saudi. But I don’t know shit really. These dudes are going hard in their face as they walk. It’s seems so obvious to me what’s going on simply by the two different fashion senses each side has. Costume department tells me the whole story on this one. These mother fuckers can jam. I love it. I’ve been told by my yacht experience host (a half Turk from Cleveland yo!) that Turkey is secular. Cmon tho. The goddamn crescent moon and star is on a red flag, it’s ok for them to be a Muslim nation. Yet still, I feel like the Europeans feel like they won wars to call this Europe. Or at least Eurasia. So a lotta shit made it here that contradicts the entire idea of theocratic government. Then again though, who’s won what war, this place ain’t called Constantinople is it?

I take a trip to the intersections of my own life. My mind and personalities and behaviors. Sitting alone quietly in a cocktail bar. In a city full of 10 cent bottles of water and $1 beer I find a $12 mezcal cocktail with hostel-made friend Chris. She’s a a tall gorgeous blond from Miami. And super cool as fuck, my kinda humor and attitude. 220 lira. The cocktail, not the blond. But it’s bomb. Not the bombero. Im two deep in, doing a left hand search of my soul. Thinking about the man that I am and the coming years ahead of me. More than half way to retirement. And more than halfway between 40 and 50. As an extroverted introvert, I’m happily not engaged in conversation. Quiet contemplation suits me. I’m getting thoughts down, channeling the experience. As an introverted extrovert, I’m dying to chat it up in fluent American English. Social revelry is a skill I have mastered. I could be making acquaintances, taking a cultural dip in the pool. Two competing continents of myself, warring it out. In the end, I feel as if a third party candidate known as a mild-longing-for-a-familiar-friend wins out. On the corners.

Istanbul is truly dope. Where my well tested sense of direction meets my insane love of getting lost. Probably already one of my fave cities in the world, and this is just a brief 4 day visit.