Down the Rabbit Hole

Three Cities

Think of three cities you have visited. Imagine three things that are happening in each of those cities right now, and share them with us. Make them real for us.

I have been fortunate enough to have traveled a lot in the years before marriage and motherhood. I think the cities I remember most are the ones outside the borders of the US, excited as I was by the languages, the culture, the music of those exotic locations.

On the flat rooftops of Cuernavaca, a woman is hanging laundry as the sun begins to rise. The air is still cool and she can see the bougainvillea flowers all along her neighbors walls, the bright pink and violet blooms bouncing gently in the breeze. The neighborhood is waking up, the music and laughter traveling from the open air courtyards all around her. The smell of propane waifts upward carried on the currents, as women fire up their stoves to prepare breakfast. In the distance she can hear the chime of the tamale cart making its way up the rambling streets. This is her city and this is her favorite time of the day. In just a few short hours, the sun will be high. It will bake the clay streets and burn the backs of the stray dogs that roam them. The cool air will become super-heated and the horizon will be marred by the wide column of smog that hovers over Mexico City, the seething metropolis forever lurking in Cuernavaca's peripheral vision. The woman clips one last sheet to the line and bends to pick up her basket. Balancing it on her hip, she walks to the edge of her roof and gazing out at her city. Cuernavaca, the city of eternal spring.

The Zona Rosa is pulsing with life tonight. The open air restaurants and clubs that surround the center green on all sides, are spilling the music and sounds of the young, cosmopolitan crowds onto the busy streets and sidewalks. A young man walks alone to meet his friends, passing the courtyards of bustling bars and restaurants filled with beautiful people, the tiny tables they sit around littered with cell phones and the latest tech devices available. This is clearly the place to be in the beautiful, bountiful city of Bogota. He knows what the world thinks about his home and he wishes they could see this now, this modern, thriving heart of his city, devoid of devious lurking drug lords and camo-clad rebels. There is great energy here, great beauty too. High above this zone, winding roads crawl up into the hills where lovely stone houses sit perched above lush terrain, with their Spanish tiles roofs and rustic charms. Bogota’s hotels and municipal buildings gleam gold and impressive in the sun and preside over the clean, efficient streets of a city filled to the brim with a warm and candid people. The man spots his friends waving to him with wide smiles and raised glasses and he rushes to join them.

The skies have darkened outside her hotel room. Several stories below, the streets teem with activity. Great red double decker tour buses barrel down the narrow roadway, barely dogging the hapless tourists that stumble out of the casino. They cross to the waterfront park so that they might lament their losses before the rushing torrents. She watches them, stumbling and giddy, and for a brief moment, she wants to join them. Then, deciding against it, she pulls the curtains open exposing the floor to ceiling windows that afford her a view of the falls in all their glory. It is nighttime and they are lit with colors, vibrant reds, greens and blues. The raging waters are a violent, rushing rainbow and she is in awe of their beauty and power. She had seen the falls for the first time in daylight and they had taken her breath away but by night, they were beyond spectacular. She sat down before the expanse of the windows, reluctant to miss even a moment of the majestic view laid out before her, a true wonder of the natural world.