It seemed impossible that my feet would be as swollen as they were after only five hours of flying.  All ten toenails felt like they were ingrown, gouging into my toes, as I shuffled from my seat in the last row towards the front of the plane. 

As soon as I stepped into the terminal, I was greeted by a large ofrenda for Day of the Dead, yellow marigolds in pots, leading to a stairway adorned with baskets of fruit and white skulls.  Inside a ring of the same flowers, a skeleton dancer held out her red and blue hoop dress with bony fingers.  Alongside her, another skeleton with jewels around her eye sockets, clutched the empty spot in her chest where a heart had once beaten.

The walk down to immigration seemed eternal and I cursed with every step.  Then I went to change some money and got ripped off from the get go, sixteen pesos to the dollar instead of twenty.  That is always to be expected the first day of any trip. 

The girl at the first taxi stand I went to claimed that the address that I gave her was incomplete.  The one at the second stand Googled it and said it would be two hundred and seventy-five pesos to get to the Hotel Marti in the Escandon neighborhood.  It was south of the center of town, but within walking distance of the Metro, and with the price of hotels that week, I’d been lucky to find it.

Among the most memorable experiences of my life, have been those driving into strange, foreign cities for the first time.  This was hardly my first time in Mexico City, but all of the suspense was still there.  You need to be careful not to react too suddenly.  A very shabby, downtrodden neighborhood can quicky give way to a more upscale one, and vise-versa.  The neighborhood I was staying in appeared to be safe and clean, with restaurants and a few, small theaters.  The room was certainly acceptable, with TV, wifi, and a large, oscillating fan to block out the noise from the street.

There was an ofrenda in the lobby, three tables with pictures of the proprietor’s relatives, alongside ceramic skulls, plates of food, and a few bottles of alcohol.  Marigolds stood at the side and colorful banners hung above it.  It was not my first time at Day of the Dead in Mexico City.  I’d been down in 2016, but had missed the parade by one day, something I’d never gotten over. 

Funny story about the Day of the Dead parade.  The idea for having one came from the James Bond film Spectre, where a fictional parade is featured in the opening sequence, one of the rare cases of life imitating art.  By now it was a big deal, but the year before it had been cancelled because of COVID.  As long as that didn’t happen and my feet held up, it looked like I’d have plenty of time to walk down to Avenida de la Reforma before it began and pick out some perch to watch it from.

One of the first things I needed to do after checking into my room was draw a rune from the bag of runes I’d brought along.  I’d been introduced to the runes by a woman at a Halloween beach party the year before who’d been dressed as a fortune teller.  Ruth had invited me into her tent and told me to draw one stone.  The stone I’d picked had been Wyrd, or the blank one.  She’d told me it signified destiny or the working of God, and was the best one I could’ve drawn. 

Now the stone I drew, the first of the trip, was Inguz, or the rune of potential.  I set it on the dresser, among some pesos, and took its picture.  That was the plan for the trip, to learn about the runes by drawing and photographing a new one every day.  After Day of the Dead, my idea was to visit a series of Aztec and Mayan ruins, so in essence I would be taking the runes to the ruins.

By the time I headed out to find something to eat, all that was open was a convenience store.  I got a sandwich and some cookies and took them back to the room.  There was a telenovela playing in the background as I doublechecked the parade route for the next day.  After a while, I shut the TV off and laid back in the darkness.  It was already some kind of party.  My feet were pounding like drums.