bonus
Cracked Wide Open
About a month in, I'm starting to admit that this is actually my life. Also: my sister and nephew visited, we went to a cooking class, watched a mariachi band play an inappropriate song, argued about whether Spanish 6 is a real class, and I had a breakthrough in my second Spanish lesson. There's also a story about two Ukrainian sailors, a Bob Dylan cassette, and a shirt I still own but have never worn.
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Onefjef is produced, edited & hosted by Jef Taylor.
Transcript
Well, I think leaving times are a special time because it's a transition, and so
Speaker:you're closer to the scene, you know?
Speaker:And so it's a time You are closer to the scene.
Speaker:So it's a time that you have more truths apparent, more love apparent, more sadness
Speaker:apparent, more suffering, more joy.
Speaker:Opens you up.
Speaker:Yeah, so your heart is really open.
Speaker:Cracks you wide open.
Speaker:You see the life thing in a way.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, that's totally true.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's a very good way of putting it, actually.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It makes me feel seen.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yes, I am cracked wide open.
Speaker:I arrived in Mexico City about a month ago.
Speaker:Give or take a few days.
Speaker:And for much of that month I've been in the mindset of a tourist.
Speaker:Albeit one who has an apartment here.
Speaker:I've been existing from excitement to excitement.
Speaker:From dopamine hit to dopamine hit.
Speaker:Rarely allowing myself the time to stop and just breathe.
Speaker:To process the reality of this new life of mine.
Speaker:To actually take the time to create a life here, instead of just pretending.
Speaker:Because when you're a tourist, you can stand on the outside looking in.
Speaker:You're kind of expected to, really.
Speaker:The glimpses you do get of the inside are fleeting and often somewhat inauthentic.
Speaker:You don't have to figure out where to buy toilet paper, or spatulas, because
Speaker:your brief time staying wherever you are staying won't require that, and
Speaker:in fact it rejects the mundanity of day to day life wherever you are.
Speaker:That's part of the fun.
Speaker:The fun of travel, right?
Speaker:Escaping your day to day life.
Speaker:Escaping the mundane.
Speaker:And for the last month, in spite of the fact that I've had to buy
Speaker:toilet paper and a spatula, that's largely where my head has been.
Speaker:A feeling that this isn't my real life, when in reality
Speaker:this is precisely my real life.
Speaker:This right here sitting in my apartment in Roma, on a Sunday morning, drinking coffee
Speaker:in a living room, that has gradually started to feel more More and more
Speaker:like my own, in spite of the books and plants and unfortunate motorcycle decor.
Speaker:This is where I live now.
Speaker:This is my normal life, in spite of its present abnormality.
Speaker:And I need to start living as if it is.
Speaker:I need to stop living on the outside of Mexico City and
Speaker:start living on the inside.
Speaker:I need to stop avoiding interacting with this place.
Speaker:I need to stop drinking so much.
Speaker:I need to stop distracting myself so much, I need to find a routine, I
Speaker:need to stop ordering food from Uber Eats, and it feels appropriate on
Speaker:this Easter morning, almost a month into my time here, that I do a reset,
Speaker:because isn't that what Easter's about?
Speaker:Rebirth?
Speaker:Reset?
Speaker:They both have re in it, so.
Speaker:I'm running with it.
Speaker:And I think that this is what Jesus would want, really.
Speaker:When he did the best magic trick of all time, came out of that tomb, and
Speaker:scared the shit out of everybody.
Speaker:Why isn't that in the Bible?
Speaker:If a friend of mine got crucified, died, and was buried, and then
Speaker:a few days later was alive, I would be freaked the fuck out.
Speaker:Pardon my French, but I don't think there's any indication in the Bible that
Speaker:people were like, whoa, what the hell?
Speaker:Jesus, what?
Speaker:I thought you were, you think there'd at least be one line that
Speaker:says, I thought you were dead.
Speaker:Maybe there is.
Speaker:I thought thoust was dead, said Jimmy, who's the apostle
Speaker:nobody ever talked about.
Speaker:Little Jimmy.
Speaker:Yeah, he didn't get the credit he deserved.
Speaker:He cooked most of the food, except for the body of Christ.
Speaker:Course only Jesus cooked the body of Christ.
Speaker:Usually they ate it raw.
Speaker:So anyway, that's what I've been thinking about this morning and this weekend.
Speaker:And um, I just got back from a yoga class and that feels like a good start.
Speaker:So here we go.
Speaker:Month two.
Speaker:I also made some new music.
Speaker:What's your overall opinion of Mexico City after what, five days here?
Speaker:I think it's all right.
Speaker:I wouldn't want to stay here.
Speaker:Oh, well.
Speaker:It's a little big.
Speaker:It is large.
Speaker:Yeah, it's a little crowded.
Speaker:Parts of it are very crowded, yeah, but parts of it aren't.
Speaker:Most of it's pretty crowded.
Speaker:You even think that the neighborhood you're staying
Speaker:in, Condesa, is, feels crowded?
Speaker:Just the way that, like, the, the traffic flows.
Speaker:Oh, there's a lot of traffic, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, and that, that, to me, symbolizes crowded.
Speaker:Yeah, I wouldn't want to drive.
Speaker:No, not at all.
Speaker:No, we didn't try the subway.
Speaker:So that's true.
Speaker:It changed a lot of things actually because the subway I think in the middle
Speaker:of the day would have been just fine.
Speaker:Yeah, and that would have, um, but it's still a lot more crowded, you know,
Speaker:oh, yeah, it can be yeah, but I've never actually ridden the subway once.
Speaker:I think rather than the super long uber rides I think it
Speaker:might have actually been faster.
Speaker:That was fine.
Speaker:Yeah, I don't mind uber rides.
Speaker:But what was your favorite thing about your trip?
Speaker:I need to think you go first.
Speaker:That's the knife guy, by the way, you hear the whistle?
Speaker:He's riding a bike and he's got a knife sharpener.
Speaker:I saw, we saw a knife guy over by the tree.
Speaker:The museum the other day.
Speaker:It's the most random thing ever.
Speaker:Was that your favorite part of the trip?
Speaker:The knife guy?
Speaker:Uh huh.
Speaker:No, it really wasn't.
Speaker:Probably the cooking class.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker:I think that was probably my favorite.
Speaker:And, and the mariachi bands was fun, but it might not be my favorite.
Speaker:What was the mariachi band like?
Speaker:They were right up close, and it was very loud.
Speaker:We were at a restaurant.
Speaker:Yeah, we didn't get that much food, but.
Speaker:Well, you said you weren't hungry.
Speaker:Well, that's true.
Speaker:But then you ate lettuce one piece at a time for the entire time.
Speaker:Yeah, but the lettuce tasted really good though.
Speaker:Oh, he was?
Speaker:I didn't even see that.
Speaker:I ate all the lettuce.
Speaker:That's where it went.
Speaker:Thursday evening, and I'm feeling good.
Speaker:I just had my second Spanish lesson.
Speaker:And, after the first one that I had last week, I will be honest, I felt stupid.
Speaker:But this one, this second one, you know, I'd spent a lot of
Speaker:time studying over the week.
Speaker:And it went really well.
Speaker:It went really well, and I feel good.
Speaker:I feel like confident, and I feel like I'm gonna be able to learn this language.
Speaker:I mean, obviously not perfectly or at an incredibly high level right away,
Speaker:but yeah, and I really had a good week.
Speaker:My sister and my nephew were in town, and yeah, we had a really good time.
Speaker:Too much to really go into, to be honest, but one of the highlights I'll say
Speaker:was last night, when There's a square here, I think it's Girobaldi Square.
Speaker:There's all these mariachi bands in the square, and you can just
Speaker:go and rent one, if you want.
Speaker:Like, rent one for a weekend, take them home with you.
Speaker:I'm not entirely sure how that transaction works, because obviously
Speaker:I've never done it, but it's really quite something to see.
Speaker:And then there's a restaurant there.
Speaker:It's just an experience.
Speaker:There's just like four or five mariachi bands playing all the time, and I don't
Speaker:know, I feel like a lot of people, at least in the United States, who haven't
Speaker:been exposed to a lot of mariachi music, have a negative feeling about it.
Speaker:And maybe I had that feeling at a time as well, but I do not anymore.
Speaker:There's a real joy in mariachi music that you don't get in a lot of other music.
Speaker:A palpable feeling of joy.
Speaker:And I am all in for that.
Speaker:I don't understand a lot of what they're saying, of course.
Speaker:Not yet.
Speaker:But This restaurant, you know, they sat us at this table that was
Speaker:right in the middle of the action.
Speaker:So there's like a band playing right in front of us, like a eight
Speaker:to 10 person mariachi band playing right in front of our table for
Speaker:the entire time we were there.
Speaker:Like we had dinner and drinks and it was so much fun.
Speaker:Everybody loved it.
Speaker:And, uh, yeah, they played one song that was Somewhat inappropriate.
Speaker:And you learn the fuck your mother song at the, that I did.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:we're gonna sing it on the 4th of July.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And eat, uh, on the 250th anniversary.
Speaker:And only us and Rachel, Yvonne will know what we're talking about.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We're going to, we're gonna eat Mexican food and sing.
Speaker:We'll give, we'll say we're gonna on mariachi.
Speaker:We'll, we're mariachi Yvonne.
Speaker:We need a song sheet for this one.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Can you give us a song sheet for Chinga two?
Speaker:He will be like, no, no, I cannot do that.
Speaker:. Rachel will be like, I'll get you one.
Speaker:. You know, Mia's in Spanish three or four or five already.
Speaker:I something I think.
Speaker:I think she wouldn't know yet.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I don't, that's, I don't think she's in Spanish five.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Think Spanish five is a class.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:What are you talking about?
Speaker:Somewhere?
Speaker:There's a class called Spanish five.
Speaker:Well, yeah, but it normally only goes up to like four.
Speaker:What are you talking about?
Speaker:Normally I can find many, many textbooks that are Spanish five.
Speaker:There's six and seven as well.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:Yeah, it doesn't just stop at four.
Speaker:Yeah, but it's just like different levels.
Speaker:It's like one, two, three, four, and then one, two, three,
Speaker:four again, but just more.
Speaker:Why would you start go back to one again?
Speaker:Why wouldn't you just continue to go upwards?
Speaker:This is like Go on, Owen.
Speaker:Let's hear that.
Speaker:I need to gather my thoughts.
Speaker:Talk about something else.
Speaker:I get concerned about What about your schooling and your education
Speaker:when you say things like this?
Speaker:Don't distract him.
Speaker:I want to understand what the logic is here with 1, 2, 3, 4, and then
Speaker:back to 1 again if you pass 4.
Speaker:But no, but it's like a higher level of 1.
Speaker:Well number 2 is the higher level of 1.
Speaker:No, no, but it's like, it is 5, but it's just not called 5.
Speaker:There is Spanish 5, I promise.
Speaker:And 6 and 7 I would imagine as well.
Speaker:I'll show you pictures of the book.
Speaker:Huh, okay.
Speaker:Spanish level six.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, but it's level six.
Speaker:This is a class called Spanish six.
Speaker:I'm We'll look it up on the phone immediately when we stop this
Speaker:So that was great and then we went to this tower it's this very tall
Speaker:building by the Palais de Belle Arts It's one of the taller buildings
Speaker:in the city and you can go to the very top and there's like an outdoor
Speaker:observation deck and And It was amazing.
Speaker:It was beautiful.
Speaker:I'll put some photos and videos in the Patreon.
Speaker:But anyway, it felt like a really great way to end their trip and just
Speaker:a great day for me because earlier in that day we went to a Mexican
Speaker:cooking class that, it was incredible.
Speaker:What was so great about the cooking class?
Speaker:We cooked a lot and the food was really good.
Speaker:It was fun to learn about the food because we got, it was more than
Speaker:just the cooking, it was like the history and, and the, the history.
Speaker:Yeah, I forgot the chiles.
Speaker:Oh yeah, that was really good.
Speaker:That was really spicy though.
Speaker:Uh huh, some of it.
Speaker:Some of it was.
Speaker:It wasn't too spicy though.
Speaker:Well, some of them were pretty spicy.
Speaker:Some of them were pretty spicy.
Speaker:The habanero ones.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I liked making the tortillas.
Speaker:Yeah, that was fun.
Speaker:Yeah, even though I never made a perfect one.
Speaker:No, me neither.
Speaker:No, your first one, your first one was a disaster.
Speaker:Oh, well, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah, your first one.
Speaker:No, but you, you made some perfect ones because you had the better press than me.
Speaker:That's not why.
Speaker:That's very much why.
Speaker:It's not why.
Speaker:I made, every one I made was perfect even though my press was terrible.
Speaker:That's false.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I thought making the salsa was interesting because every time I've made salsa it's
Speaker:been like just chopping up fresh tomatoes and fresh jalapenos and stuff and mixing
Speaker:it up in a bowl with a bunch of stuff.
Speaker:Yeah, that's not fair.
Speaker:That's not what happens at all.
Speaker:No, you're supposed to roast the tomatoes and then just squish it up.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Which is, yeah, we're gonna do that a lot easier than cutting it up too, frankly.
Speaker:Yeah, I bet you could do with some other things too, like with kiwi salsa.
Speaker:Oh, you guys, can you go ahead.
Speaker:Go crazy.
Speaker:That might be good.
Speaker:Be sweet.
Speaker:A sweet salsa.
Speaker:The toma Tomatillo.
Speaker:There's mango salsa, you know?
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:I've had mango salsa.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Good.
Speaker:That's very good.
Speaker:It's a mango.
Speaker:We get.
Speaker:It.
Speaker:Doesn't really taste like mango though.
Speaker:When we all go home for the 4th of July, we're going to make, for
Speaker:America's 250th anniversary, we're going to make a lot of Mexican food.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:it seems appropriate, right?
Speaker:Considering the political environment.
Speaker:And perhaps we'll hire a mariachi band as well.
Speaker:I don't know how much that costs in the Cleveland area, but if it's
Speaker:reasonably priced, if they can play patriotic music, I'm all in.
Speaker:We did a food tour where we just, one of these tacos we had was just like, they
Speaker:Roast it like cook it all day in this oil and then they like marinate the tortillas
Speaker:in the fat from the the meat And then you get the tortilla with the juice and
Speaker:the fat from the meat and then you get the meat and oh That was a good taco.
Speaker:Got me sick though Yeah, well, we don't know what got you
Speaker:sick something got you sick.
Speaker:Oh, yeah, and you couldn't poop for days died Yeah, tell us about the
Speaker:time you pooped It was magnificent.
Speaker:Was it?
Speaker:Even with the bidet, I clogged the toilet.
Speaker:It was Did you really?
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:Was there a plunger?
Speaker:Yeah, it took me like three, three sessions.
Speaker:Oh, thank God I wasn't there.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That was the night I left him at home.
Speaker:I had a feeling.
Speaker:I was, I was a little worried.
Speaker:It was, it was bad.
Speaker:I thought it was never gonna go down.
Speaker:We're so similar.
Speaker:Um, I clogged the toilet this morning as a matter of fact.
Speaker:Uh, yeah, I've clogged toilets all over the world.
Speaker:I could do a whole episode just about that.
Speaker:I've gotten a bit better at not clogging toilets.
Speaker:How do you clog it with the bidet?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Have you pooped since?
Speaker:Uh, no.
Speaker:I'm not a very frequent pooper.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:Actually, not at all.
Speaker:Huh.
Speaker:But when I need to poop, it happens.
Speaker:Well, I mean, that's Not when I, like, need to poop, but like,
Speaker:if there's a time where I should poop, it just sort of happens.
Speaker:What's the longest you think you've gone without pooping?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I want to say there was a time, maybe January last year or the year
Speaker:before, I might have gone maybe two weeks, and that was pretty rough.
Speaker:One time I was in Korea, I had to put my hand in a garbage bag, stick it
Speaker:in there, because I had no plunger.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I just had to take it and start to take it on out of there.
Speaker:And we all, as well, got to watch the Orion spacecraft take take off in my
Speaker:apartment here in Mexico City, which felt like one of those memories that I'll
Speaker:kind of have with me forever, because it was a significant moment, you know?
Speaker:Space exploration moments are always pretty big, and we haven't
Speaker:gone to the moon in more than 50 years, so, I don't know.
Speaker:It was really, it was special to have my sister and my nephew
Speaker:here in my Mexico City apartment watching this momentous event.
Speaker:Oh, you went on the balloon ride, too.
Speaker:Oh, yeah, that was fun.
Speaker:It wasn't like As fun as I thought it was going to be.
Speaker:How, why did you think, how much fun did you think it was going to be?
Speaker:I mean, I thought it was gonna be cool, like you're way up in the sky.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Excitement.
Speaker:And what.
Speaker:It's just sort of like you're sitting there, you know.
Speaker:In your mind, what did you expect to be, expected to be?
Speaker:I thought it'd be more like, I guess, exhilarating would be the word.
Speaker:Oh, all right.
Speaker:Like, more like a, you know, like on a big zip line.
Speaker:We did that in Guatemala.
Speaker:Well, you've seen a balloon.
Speaker:When's the last time you, like, saw a balloon that was
Speaker:like, looked exhilarating?
Speaker:Never, but I don't really see hot air I don't really look at
Speaker:hot air balloons very often.
Speaker:I've never really seen one in person.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:I mean, we were high above the ground on those zip lines.
Speaker:It's interesting that you're comparing an air balloon ride to a zip line.
Speaker:Well, I thought it'd be similar in excitement level to like a zip line.
Speaker:That's confusing.
Speaker:Because you're like way high in the air and you're like, Flying around.
Speaker:Right, I mean in that sense, why, is an airplane ride as exciting as a zipline?
Speaker:The similarity between a hot air balloon and a zipline is that you can sort
Speaker:of look around and see everything.
Speaker:You can look down and see everything.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:But in an airplane, you only got that one window.
Speaker:Like, in a zipline, you know you're sort of just hanging
Speaker:out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker:Next time you're here, we'll go do a zipline.
Speaker:They're the longest one in the world here somewhere in Mexico.
Speaker:Is it very long?
Speaker:It's four and a half hours long in one line.
Speaker:Well, yeah, all right.
Speaker:You have to bring lunch.
Speaker:You have to bring lunch and eat it while you're going.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Well, I'm glad you came to Mexico City.
Speaker:You should come by yourself, Owen, because then we could have some real fun.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, go to all the What?
Speaker:Go to all the where?
Speaker:Gambling halls, of course.
Speaker:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Gotta bet on the ponies again.
Speaker:He's not even old enough to rent a bike here.
Speaker:You can, you can gamble here at any age.
Speaker:Oh, okay.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, anybody.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Maybe jet skis?
Speaker:You can rent the bikes.
Speaker:Jet skis.
Speaker:I don't know if there's anywhere to jet ski in Mexico City because the lake that
Speaker:it was built on is pretty much gone.
Speaker:Well, we could just like dig up part of the city.
Speaker:Okay, we'll do that.
Speaker:Any last things to say?
Speaker:Uh, God bless America.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:You have to Viva Mexico.
Speaker:Okay, that's better than what he was going to say.
Speaker:What were you going to say?
Speaker:I didn't say anything.
Speaker:What was I going to say?
Speaker:No, no, no, you have to say it now.
Speaker:Yeah, what did you think he was going to say?
Speaker:Yeah, you have to say it.
Speaker:Yeah, just the lyrics.
Speaker:Oh, oh, yeah.
Speaker:Yo chinga tu madre.
Speaker:Perfecto.
Speaker:Patricia invited me over a few weeks ago to her house to meet her sisters
Speaker:and her brother in law and their kids.
Speaker:And so, yeah, I went over and I had a great time.
Speaker:They're wonderful people.
Speaker:And, uh, at one point I was talking to the, her brother in law, um,
Speaker:whose name escapes me, but he is apparently a very big football fan.
Speaker:And when I mentioned to him that I'm from Cleveland, he was like, Oh, I'm so sorry.
Speaker:And I thought like, even in Mexico city, the Cleveland Browns reputation,
Speaker:It's, it's, it's still there.
Speaker:I, who knew how far that the reputation of the Browns went, but
Speaker:apparently it goes quite a ways.
Speaker:Oh!
Speaker:I finally threw my garbage away.
Speaker:I heard the bell.
Speaker:I looked out the window.
Speaker:I saw the garbage truck sitting about a block away.
Speaker:I grabbed my garbage.
Speaker:I walked down my stairs and I took that garbage right to that garbage
Speaker:truck Gave the guy ten pesos and he took my garbage and I felt like a
Speaker:king for about an hour Talked to an old friend of mine John tonight And
Speaker:I mean it was great to talk to him.
Speaker:It's always great to talk to him.
Speaker:He's a great guy One of the more wonderful humans I've had the
Speaker:pleasure of knowing in my 52 years.
Speaker:But, you know, I don't usually bring up the podcast to anybody because
Speaker:I feel like I don't want to be the guy with the podcast who talks
Speaker:about his podcast all the time.
Speaker:But he brought it up.
Speaker:So we talked about the podcast and, you know, we talked about
Speaker:episodes, different episodes.
Speaker:And I can't tell you how much I enjoyed that because I get so
Speaker:little feedback on this anymore.
Speaker:So When I first started the podcast, a lot of people were like giving me
Speaker:feedback because it was new and everybody was like, oh, yeah, I'd love that.
Speaker:But now that's died off.
Speaker:That died off months ago.
Speaker:And now it's just me continuing to pump out these episodes every week.
Speaker:And I just don't get a lot of email or, you know, I get some
Speaker:voicemails, which I really appreciate.
Speaker:And the emails that I do get, I really appreciate, but very few.
Speaker:So this is just to say that, like, if you are listening to this podcast
Speaker:consistently, or even now and again, or right now, this is the first time
Speaker:you've listened, it would mean a lot if you would just throw me an email
Speaker:at onefjefpod at gmail, just say, you can even just write, I'm listening.
Speaker:That'd be great.
Speaker:Because sometimes it feels like I am talking into the void here, you
Speaker:know, like I'm just talking to myself.
Speaker:And in a sense, I am talking to myself.
Speaker:And that's okay, because You know, we all talk to ourselves, whether it's in
Speaker:our head or out of our head, but my inner voice has always needed something to,
Speaker:has always wanted to be heard, I guess.
Speaker:My inner voice has always wanted to be heard.
Speaker:And this gives me a place to make it heard.
Speaker:But my inner voice is also one that is critical, self critical and full of
Speaker:doubt and full of insecurities and all the things that we all suffer from.
Speaker:And so it's hard for my inner voice to maintain a level of confidence.
Speaker:To continue to express myself, be earnest and so forth on this medium
Speaker:without any kind of feedback.
Speaker:So, John, thank you for that.
Speaker:And just for the conversation.
Speaker:When you do a move like this, it's really isolating.
Speaker:You know, it's isolating.
Speaker:Especially when you don't know the language.
Speaker:It's really isolating.
Speaker:And I took a walk tonight and I was thinking that maybe that's why
Speaker:I like Living in a foreign country where I'm a stranger, like, because
Speaker:like I've always been an outsider.
Speaker:I've talked about this on the podcast
Speaker:and maybe this living in a foreign country where I don't speak the
Speaker:language very well yet, um, allows me to continue to be an outsider.
Speaker:It's like my comfort zone, right?
Speaker:Which is weirdly ironic, considering all the talk I've released about
Speaker:getting out of one's comfort zone.
Speaker:Maybe this has been my.
Speaker:Maybe this whole move has been getting into my comfort zone.
Speaker:But it turns out my comfort zone is not all that comfortable.
Speaker:So, uh, maybe comfort zone isn't the right term for it.
Speaker:Perhaps happy place.
Speaker:Yeah, I like that better.
Speaker:Happy place.
Speaker:But I think there's some truth to it because, you know, I went and
Speaker:had dinner by myself at a, uh, at the movie theater down the street.
Speaker:And it was very crowded tonight.
Speaker:It's a Friday night.
Speaker:It was crowded.
Speaker:So I was sitting by myself at this table eating a pizza, and I couldn't understand
Speaker:anything, really, that anybody was saying.
Speaker:And I thought to myself, I thought, even if I wanted to be, like, friendly
Speaker:and interact with other people, like, it would go only so far.
Speaker:I mean, they probably speak English.
Speaker:Let's, you know, let's assume that they don't speak English,
Speaker:but it would only go so far.
Speaker:Although I did once have a extended conversation with two Ukrainian men on a
Speaker:park bench in Kiev years and years ago.
Speaker:Yeah, I was sitting on this park bench in Kiev, right on the Dnieper River,
Speaker:and, uh, There were these two Ukrainian guys sitting there, and I just tried
Speaker:to ask them what time the subway closed, because the subway closed at,
Speaker:I don't know, what time it was, 10 12.
Speaker:And I wanted to make sure that I got on it before I can get back, before I
Speaker:went to get a taxi back to the hotel.
Speaker:And we just struck up a conversation, but it was so broken English.
Speaker:Like, it was like drawing pictures, and we, you know, one of them kind of
Speaker:spoke English, the other one barely did.
Speaker:But like they invited me on their boat.
Speaker:They were sailors.
Speaker:I think they may have been gay, but there were sailors and
Speaker:they invited me on the boat.
Speaker:They gave me a tour of the boat.
Speaker:And we sat in the, um, unlike the bar slash dining hall or whatever of the boat.
Speaker:And I gave them a cassette of Bob Dylan that a friend had made for me
Speaker:and they put it into the sound system.
Speaker:And we sat there and drank vodka.
Speaker:For, I don't know, a couple of hours, like just shots of vodka
Speaker:and tried to talk to each other.
Speaker:And then at the end of the, you know, we got off the boat and the one dude
Speaker:gives me the shirt off his back.
Speaker:Gave me the shirt off his back.
Speaker:And I still have it.
Speaker:And when I was moving this recent time and I was like trying to get
Speaker:rid of things, like, that was one of the things I was like, I don't
Speaker:know if I can get rid of this.
Speaker:I've never worn it.
Speaker:It just wouldn't fit me.
Speaker:It was, you know, built like a sailor, this guy.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:But I still have the shirt that the guy gave me off his back.
Speaker:It's called, it says like, Telavia Games on it.
Speaker:It's not a nice shirt.
Speaker:I mean, he probably didn't even want it.
Speaker:He was probably going to throw it away.
Speaker:But he's like, oh, I'll give it to this American guy.
Speaker:Anyway, I think that's all for this week.
Speaker:If I think of anything else to say, I will record it and add it.
Speaker:But yeah, I'm hungry now, so I have to get something to eat.
Speaker:But As always, thank you for listening.
Speaker:If you have any questions about Mexico City, about my experience, about, uh, any
Speaker:element of anything, you know, you can ask me about astrophysics if you want.
Speaker:I won't be able to answer you, but I will try.
Speaker:You can email the podcast at onefjefpod@gmail.com.
Speaker:If you would like to call the podcast You can call and leave a
Speaker:voicemail at 1 6 6 9 2 4 1 5 8 8 2.
Speaker:That's 1 6 6 9 2 4 1 5 8 8 2.
Speaker:Patron subscribers.
Speaker:I hope you were enjoying getting to listen to this early before the proletariat.
Speaker:Nothing personal against the rest of you and to the proletariat, and that's
Speaker:not, I don't feel like that's offensive.
Speaker:It's a, it's a termin of endearment.
Speaker:From me to you.
Speaker:If you would like to join the elite, the proud, the Patreon
Speaker:village of onefjef, please do go to patreon.com/onefjef and sign up.
Speaker:You'll get access to all these, uh, CDMX Dispatch episodes early.
Speaker:You'll get access to a lot of photos and videos that I'll be posting on
Speaker:there, and a bunch of extra content yet to come, and that has already come.
Speaker:So, you.
Speaker:It's a smorgasbord.
Speaker:Smorgasbord.
Speaker:How do you is it smorgasbord?
Speaker:God, I struggle with that word.
Speaker:It's a variety.
Speaker:It's a whole magical world of whatever.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:God, I'm hungry.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Thank you to all of you.
Speaker:I love you all.
Speaker:Sending my love from Mexico City to all of you all over the world.
Speaker:Whoever you are, wherever you are, I hope your life is going as well.
Speaker:And if it isn't, you can fix that shit.
Speaker:I'll see you soon.
