It was a beautiful morning.  Light filled the room.  I got out of bed and looked at the blue ocean below.  Only in Mexico can a man of moderate means still live like a man.  Twenty-five dollars a night.  I’d spend my life in that room if I could.  There were still a few hours before I needed to take a taxi to the bus station.  I drew the rune for the day, Algiz, the rune of self-interest and took it down to the seawall with me.  On the way, I picked up a muffin and a coffee, then took a few pictures of the rune in the bright light of day once I got there.

At ten o’clock I asked for a taxi to the bus station.  It was fifty pesos, only three dollars.  You can also get anywhere you need to go in Mexico without a car.  I got to the station early and bought a newspaper.  There it was, right on the front page, all the accidents and death that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, in bloody, gory detail. 

A motorcyclist had been wiped out by a truck.  It had been a record year for suicides.  Two brothers had gotten into a fight.  They showed one with a bleeding gash on his head.  A taxi was shown crumpled and tossed onto its roof.  The rumba queen was still at it, a thousand plastic surgeries later. 

It was six hours to Palenque.  My seat was up front.  No one rode beside me the whole way.  The movies might’ve been more interesting if the sound had been turned up.  At least I could’ve practiced my Spanish.  But the screen was silent.  I watched a movie where Mel Gibson has a beaver puppet on his hand throughout.  The next one was Beauty and the Beast.

When we arrived in Palenque, I went in search of my hotel.  This was my third time in the city and I had a good impression of it, but leaving the station I felt disoriented.  Perhaps, I’d stayed on the other side of town on my last visits.  Then, as I was approaching the center, I saw a sign on the tallest building, The Kashlan Hotel.  That was easy. 

It was an old hotel, dimly lit.  They didn’t accept credit cards, only cash.  I paid for two nights and ascended to room 123.  It was perfectly acceptable, a large double bed, ceiling fan, and working television and wifi.

After putting my bags away and using the bathroom, I set out to find the central park.  The last time I’d been in Palenque I’d had such a good time I’d thought it might serve as a good base in the future.  Now, however, the pandemic had seemed to zap much of the joy from the city.  The park was closed, the small stage where I’d seen children dancing in cowboy hats, shut down for the immediate future. 

There was a mural I took a picture of, a composite of the ruins, a Mayan god, a quetzal, a toucan, two parrots, a spider monkey, a deer, the jungle, a setting sun.  That seemed to capture my memories of Palenque.  What I was witnessing now was a city just emerging from lockdown, like any other city around the globe.  It was a new world now, one where people watched the same news, followed the same orders, and ate and dressed the same.  There were still pockets of resistance all over, but the pandemic had proven that no one was immune from the new world order.  Was it a good thing or a bad thing?  It was an unprecedented thing.  That was all we knew for now.