window

The first one I remember as a child was looking over the top of a mountain, clearly I could see the dividing borderline between Mexico and the United States, a big gap of unpopulated land for all the immigrants to run scared of getting caught by the border patrol looking for the American dream. Then came summers in California of the early eighties when I would see my grandmother walk in through that door with diamond shaped colored glass, after coming back from the supermarket under the Los Angeles heat. When she sold her house there and bought one in San Diego I would be fondly attached to the backroom den, doing homework, vacuuming the pool -which was my morning duty on top of finishing it off by dropping a gallon of chlorine in it-. Hanging out or planning to spend my day either swimming or killing time across the street at the Mall. And then came High School where I spent most of my time sneaking out of it, rather than looking through it. My neighbor use to jump in through the living room window and we watched TV together drinking kool-aid. In college someone broke into my window. After that I decided to back up the heavy closet against it to prevent future entries. Graduating from the University pushed me to buy a ticket to the city of Guadalajara to participate in the International Book Fair, I lived on a third floor in front of the main metro station, my window was big and lead directly into the hallway and stairs and I could look down into the dentist´s office below and the accountants office on the first floor as well. Sometime after I got a job offer in Los Cabos, my apartment there had a glass door and many windows that I covered all with magazine cut outs to prevent the scorching sun from coming in during the day, but if I walked to the rooftop the coolest sunsets came down over the estuary. Bought another plane ticket that led me to Japan, my host in the suburbs of Tokyo lived right next to a cemetery. I could literally reach out from the window and touch the wooden graves that are as tall as a person. Coming back to Mexico was a very uncertain time for me because I did not know where my next window would be… but then it hit me! The Caribbean! Moving down to Cancun was probably the best decision I ever made, my studio there had a window with no glass, it came out from the bathroom wall, a hippie sarong covered my showers from the neighbors backyards. At nights I could hear all the geckos coming in through there, one day I get this call from a job in playa del Carmen, I took it and moved to a studio in a complex where a bunch of foreigners and hippies lived, through my window I could hear people playing instruments, singing, making love, and having get-togethers. I lived two blocks from the beach, sometimes just waking up walking barefoot over for a jog and some yoga in front of the sunrise would be my morning routine. Leaving the Caribbean was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. At the time I had to, I felt like I needed to grow on my path, the windows turned into doors I opened along the way, backpacking through Mexico: San Cristobal de las Casas, Oaxaca, Mexico city and stopping again in Guadalajara for about nine months, my gypsy spirit made me grab all my stuff and bus it down to the beach in the pacific towards Puerto Vallarta, tanned there for a bit, but I followed the signs, and the signs told me to follow the window that would lead me back home. So I moved back to the northern part of Mexico, here I await for the roads that will guide me back to where my heart is: the Caribbean Dec 21st 2012. Next stop the pyramids in Tulúm.