It was five AM when we stumbled off the bus and out into the city. The air was a dark, deep blue and it tasted like a tea, infused with alfalfa and moist earth. Somewhere in the night fields were being watered.

All was quiet as we stood on the sidewalk beside a boulevard lined with trees and concrete buildings wondering what to do. This place was still asleep. The only sound was that of a swishing, scraping sound somewhere in the distance that slowly repeated itself. And the throbbing in my head. 

There was a white, concrete hotel next to the bus station called Hotel California. 

“Let’s get a room and sleep awhile,” I said to Mike. We’d been on the bus for nearly 12 hours and the last 6 had been endless curves and the clacking and swinging of the bathroom door. Our seats, the last two on the bus, were right next to it. The latch was broken. When people used it, they’d hold it closed from the inside. I felt nauseous from the ride and weary from lack of sleep. All I wanted to do was to ball up in the comfort of a hotel room and put a pillow over my head. 

Mike walked with his shoulders ahead of his feet and his head forward of his shoulders, as if he couldn’t wait to fall into the next moment of life. He had been good to travel with because he simply strode into the midst of it all, whereas I tended to stand back and watch. It can be exhilarating to be pushed beyond your pace.  Like me, he had also gotten into the Oaxacan Program, and the two of us had been traveling by bus from Tijuana for the last three days. Now we stood on the sidewalk looking at Hotel California. 

“Nah,” he said, “come on! Let’s go find the town square, I don’t think it’s far from here. I think they call it zakahlow in Spanish.”  And he headed up the boulevard. With some reluctance I let go of my hotel dream, hoisted my backpack, and followed.

The boulevard was illuminated in warm circles cast by street lights and the surroundings were slowly being revealed by the new day seeping in. There was only one other soul on the whole big street, lit by one of the circles of light cutting through the blue night.  From a distance, he looked to be doing some kind of Tai Chi dance.  He would rotate his whole upper body from right to left and then back to the starting position in a slow, even motion. Then he’d take a step sideways, and repeat. He was the source of the swishing, scraping sound we were hearing. 

As we walked closer to him we could see that he had something large in his hands.  It was made of sticks and branches, the coolest witches broom I’d ever seen. This man was sweeping the street. Just beyond him a stoplight cycled through its colors to ghost traffic and the glass windows of offices and stores were still dark with night.  He looked like a medieval witch-sweeper, whisking up fallen leaves and tortilla chip bags in a strange and modern land where he didn’t belong.

We asked how we could find our way to the zakahlow but he did not understand our Spanish. We had been practicing this new vocabulary word and were both disappointed with the results. When he didn’t understand one of us, the other spoke up and the poor man, used to working in the silent hours of blue mornings, was suddenly being assaulted by a chorus of bad accents. But somehow it worked. 

“Ah, you mean the zócalo.  Go up two blocks,” He pointed with a calloused and soiled hand, “and take a left, then walk... you will find it.”  

Just before we turned off the boulevard I looked back. He was there, moving at that slow and even pace along the road, using his broom like a hundred fingers to pluck leavings from among the cracks and gritty surface of the asphalt.

And then before us the asphalt faded away and cobbles emerged, and the concrete walls became stone. Suddenly everything felt different. The buildings that walled in the street on either side seemed immensely solid, even muscular. They were of rough cut beige and faded green stone and they hugged the ground. They had tall doors and windows with a touch of elegance, with cornices, and metal bars shielding the openings. Each one felt like a fortress, protecting the occupants from marauding bands and the hot sun. 

I’d never seen or felt anything like this before. They spoke to me in silent words, these ancient stone creatures, in whispered emotion and memory. The way a concrete sidewalk emanates the heat of the sun long after it has set in the evening, these buildings emanated the energy of all they had seen over the centuries; the brightness of the sun, the rumblings of the earth, uprisings, celebrations, courtships and serenades, street markets, death, candles transitioning into lightbulbs, the first automobile, bare feet, drenching rains and the passage of long, slow time. These walls  and the air around them was alive and their energy filled me with something immensely placid. The tiredness and nausea simply went away, replaced by awe. 

Then a massive church with two tile-covered bell towers covered and gigantic wooden doors with wrought iron studs appeared. And then another one. The further down the street we went, the more elegant the stone buildings became, until we walked into a grand plaza, with yet another large church along one side, a band stand, cast iron benches all over and the entire square under a canopy of tall, lush trees. 

The moment we turned off the boulevard and lost sight of the sweeper we had passed through a portal. Everything felt different on the other side. The air felt more dense, slower and alive with the depth of time. I could sense the whispers of all the humanity that had walked through the sheaves of years between now and then. It was as if we’d wandered into the sweeper’s languid, ancient world while he was out there sweeping up ours. 

This grand square, we assumed, must be the zakahlow, aka zócalo. We set our packs down and settled, with a sigh, onto a cast iron bench directly facing the church façade and the eastern sky, where the coming sun could now be seen warming the horizon. The stillness settled around us and we settled into it. We had come a long way in a short period of time.  I closed my eyes and could still see the world passing by beyond the bus window. The towns and fields and cities. The strange trees, the horse-drawn cart, the Volkswagen bugs zooming around. I could feel the thrill of Mexico City, where we’d spent the previous night, with the ruins of Aztec temples nestled between the presidential palace and an enormous cathedral that was said to have been built from the stones of the Aztec buildings that once stood where the cathedral now was. Someone said the bells were made from smelted Spanish canons.

 I heard footsteps and opened my eyes, coming back into the fascinating present. A person came walking into the plaza from one of the corners, traversed it and exited on the other side. Then another person came through, then a few more. Birds roosting in the tall trees began to sing and call. Shop doors clattered as they were rolled open. A man with a push cart appeared selling fresh-squeezed orange juice.  And then the sun came up over the building tops, washing us in fresh, warm light. The city of Oaxaca was waking up. 

In a few hours we would meet with 22 other classmates, each having made their own way here from California, and our professor, Andres Diaz. And thus would officially begin the four month long Humboldt State University Oaxaca Program. We’d each be assigned to a Mexican family to live with and we would study Spanish from 9 until 1:30 pm five days a week for three months.  Our last month we’d be set free to do a project that related to Oaxaca and our major. We’d be encouraged not to speak English. Our heads would feel like they were going to burst. 

Those four coming months would impact the course of my life as much as anything that has ever happened to me. 

But of course I hadn’t the slightest notion of that as the sun warmed my face that first morning in Oaxaca. What I did know is that for three days we’d travelled south on south, heading deeper into Mexico and further and further from the US and I could feel it throughout my being. This was a different reality. 

And I knew, from rainy afternoon studies at the university library, that somewhere out there, perhaps in those endless winding mountains we’d just traveled through, at least once upon a time there had been villages where pottery was made in old ways. Perhaps there was something left of that. Perhaps I’d get a chance to go explore some of that in these coming four months. Perhaps I’d learn something worth knowing.

But at that moment I was just a 21-year-old kid sitting on a park bench watching the sunrise. And feeling the buildings whisper and reveling in all the humanity that was bringing the heart of this city to life. And in that moment, like all moments, the future was unknowable. 

...Though if our future is built of fervent day dreams, well then in that moment I was hard at work building my life. 

See you next Thursday...