All posts tagged: San Miguel de Allende

A Story of Syncronicity: The Horrors of Solo-Travel

“Aren’t you afraid to travel alone?” I often get asked this question for traversing Latin America. A woman in bandit-land that is Mexico.  I must be out of my mind. Rather than a land of delicious food, great museums and beautiful towns filled with the kindest of people, in most people’s imagination Mexico conjures horror stories of kidnappings and drug-gang murders. “It’s quite safe as long as you don’t go around doing stupid shit,” I reply with a shrug. But I must confess. This is no off-hand reply. It’s crafted with precision to mask my luck in having managed to stay safe, despite doing stupid shit. Like wondering the streets of Mexico City alone at 2 AM with five shots of mescal in your belly. Don’t do that. After all, it would be naïve to say that Mexico is Denmark. The story I’d like to tell today begins in San Miguel de Allende, my beloved town of crazies and artists. But I will start this tale toward its tail end, which happened in Tel Aviv: my …

“Fever to the Form”: Can Art help make sense of life?

I frequently find myself mulling over a song for hours and days, playing it on repeat until I can no longer hear it anymore. In most cases, the compulsion ends within a day or two and I can go back to my life again. But other times, madness takes over.Not too long ago, my obsession with Marcia’s song “A PELE QUE HÁ EM MIM” made me translate the entire song from Portuguese. (No, I don’t speak Portuguese). The song in question today happens to be in English so I didn’t embark on adventures in translation of languages unknown to me. Instead, Nick Mulvey’s “Fever to the Form” made me think about too many questions I could handle in 3 minutes 44 seconds. The obvious one was: What does “Fever to the Form” even mean? But let’s leave that aside for a moment and go back to Mexico. How art can help make sense of life One of my fondest memories of San Miguel de Allende, the Mexican town of artists, is from an Italian potluck dinner around …

Living with symbols: Frida’s things against all things Fridamania

These days Frida Kahlo’s face is on many a “things.” Her stern mien is plastered on store windows, embroidered into colorful pillows, stamped on fridge magnets. Mexico City is the epicenter of “Fridamania” that invaded museum gift shops since the artist’s revival in the 80s. Resolved to squeeze the artist’s legacy to the last peso, Mexico’s tourist industry parades her on books, mugs, sneakers, and baby bottles. From luxury stores to street markets, one can buy Frida earrings to match Frida shirts and take pictures next to an amateur copy of a Frida self-portrait. In the city reputed to house more museums than any city in the world La Casa Azul (the Blue House), boasts the longest lines. The museum is the house where she was born and where she lived with her husband Diego Rivera until her death in 1954. Even though Kahlo’s paintings were well received during her lifetime, the most she charged for a painting was $4,000 pesos (about $1,000 USD) in 1947 for The Two Fridas, one of her masterpieces. Soon after …

Who is this creature called the “backpacker”?

Yesterday a Frenchman accused me of being a fake backpacker at a Cuban bar in Lisbon. His allegation came after I revealed that I was staying at an AirBnB rather than a hostel. We had a lot to chat about–he had recently returned back to his nine to five IT job in Paris after a seven-month “backpacking” trip in Australia and Asia. “I bet you don’t even have a backpack,” he said with a smirk. “I’m not a backpacker!” I said in protest. “And I certainly don’t carry a backpack on my sensitive shoulders.” Our discussion made me realize once again why I decided not to stay in hostels and why I defied the categorical “backpacker” label. Though I indeed was once a “fake backpacker” and it was while I slept in hostels in Colombia. Thankfully my fraudulence only lasted five weeks. Before arriving in Colombia I read various blogs on traveling alone—all posts instructed staying in dorms for a fulfilling social life on the move. So who was I, a novice solo-traveler, to stray from the path? While staying …

The Secrets of San Miguel de Allende

“En San Miguel cada uno y su vecino es un artista,” Louis said–in San Miguel everyone and his neighbor is an artist. It was my third day in this colonial town and I had already grasped the San Miguelean spirit: drink mezcal, party hard, and make art. Hung-over from the wedding I had crashed the night before, I managed to drag my cruda self from my bed to attend my Airbnb host Crystal’s birthday BBQ in the garden. Herself a jewelry maker, among Crystal’s guests were a painter, a pianist, a graphic designer, and a gallery owner. I felt as if I had found myself in the 21st-century version of Paris in the 1920s. As Gerardo the painter poured me another shot of mezcal, the group began to speak about secrets: how they were different than lies and why we loved our secrets so much… I wondered whether a secret had to involve two or more parties; was a secret an interactive concept by its very nature or could it also be internal? “Everybody has …

Adventures with Portuguese: “A PELE QUE HÁ EM MIM”

“I did nothing yesterday,” I said to Kris, emphasizing “nothing.” Kris was my new friend in San Miguel de Allende and we were lounging on the grass at La Gruta hot springs. It was the second week of my writing workshop and I was feeling anxious for not having written five novels already in 14 days. “Me neither,” Kris said dipping her chips in the guacamole. Our beers were barely chilled but I couldn’t care less. Sunbathing with good company in Mexico not writing was better than staring cross-eyed at my facebook newsfeed not writing. The truth is I was lying—I had done something the day before. “Well, I did translate a song from Portuguese to English,” I said. Kris laughed: “Of course, you did!” “I don’t speak Portuguese.” “Of course, you don’t.” She laughed some more. After listening “A PELE QUE HÁ EM MIM” on repeat for two days, I copy pasted the lyrics into Google translate. It was awful; made no sense whatsoever. But I was obsessed and no matter what, I had to understand …

So you quit your job to travel the world?

Quitting my job to become a traveling writer was not easy. While determining my premeditated roaming as yearlong provided some sort of framework, truth be told I was freaking the hell out until I finally bought that first ticket and left Israel. At this point my neurosis didn’t necessarily subside but just looked better under a tropical sun. Looking back, I think my psychological trajectory from the day I resigned until I finally became a real-life traveling bum had various clearly defined stages. The Four Stages in the Psyche of the Unemployed Traveler The state of ecstasy. That’s the moment right after you hand in your resignation letter and sit at your office desk looking at Google images of the beaches you will be lounging at and mountains you will be climbing. That is after 1-2 months, during which you must continue coming to the office and pretend to care about the job you just quit. When that sinks in begins the second stage: impatient annoyance. Things that never bothered you before like the lady that tells you …