In the grip of curiosity, your mind is always going somewhere. Whether scurrying forward, leaping back or meandering along, your curious mind negotiates existing terrain and refashions it all in one trek. To ask then how it is how you think, is also, and just as importantly, to ask how that you walk.
~ Chapter 6, Curious Minds: The Power of Connection
My friends are ones who are willing to endure my walks- day or night, exhausted or not, whatever the duration. Not metaphorically, though that certainly applies, but with physical grit. Whether it’s heckling roosters at 5am on the way back from Space or strolling casually until eventually hitchhiking to return to Sant Jordi de ses Salines, these friends qualify because they never say no to “can we walk?”.
Chapultepec Castle wasn’t really on my “must do” list for Mexico City- it seemed too touristy, too curated as a historical location. An in-between for me – on the way from Auditorio Nacional to Comal Oculto- this palace is likely a destination for most, sitting on top of a hill with a beautiful 360 view of Mexico City. Well, turns out that I’m full of crap and everyone should make a stop into this place but for a very specific unusual (or not so unusual if you know me at all) reason…
… the floors.
Walking being a measure of how we think then there can be nothing more electric than putting one foot in front of another where the sole (soul) of our bodies touches to the ground. And that surface matters- dirt, grass, gravel, asphalt, wood, stone- these materials all have properties of which we subliminally absorb their energy. The floors at the Chapultepec Castle are even more exceptional than at Hamburger Kunsthalle because they are on the exterior- the sheer expense of them is staggering. So many people here are taking selfies with the view of the city and no doubt I myself admired the view (especially of Torre Reforma)- but the plane in which we travel along in this world is the dimension that shines in this space.
Another call out at this building is this Escher like staircase. Like a cross section of medieval and modern- this stair case stopped me in my tracks. Like full stop. The arch below the intersection of these stairs is someplace I’d like to sit and mediate for a while. There is quite a detailed history (see link in post later) on the phases of construction and what makes this staircase so confusing/ interesting is the lack of ornateness in it’s superficiality like the rest of the building and instead a conspicuous demonstration of engineering prowess.
But before all of that, I insist that if you visit this place, that you must skip everything, like I did and fast forward to the top. A garden in the sky, meticulously manicured, I swear it is one of the most photogenic places I have ever been. Who knows what conversations happened here, what decisions were made but whatever the good or bad – the earth was raised.
These nodes of which edges connect, where the process of curiosity is like the process of walking, we stop along the way to reflect. There’s another beautiful garden in a quiet corner of this place where the tourists seem not to explore and I took this chance to exercise a new skill in that “in peak performance, sometimes you have to go slow to go fast”*. How I think must be often as I often must be walking. I feel so grateful to have people who are willing to share thoughts (aka walking) with me as “on the road to impossible, we need all the help we can get”*.
“There is no silence in the living nervous system. An electrical symphony of communication streams through our neurons every moment we exist. We are built for communication.
Only death brings silence.”
~ quote from the character Dr. Ha Nguyen from Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea
Address: Bosque de Chapultepec I Secc, Miguel Hidalgo, 11580 Mexico City, Mexico
Website: Museo Nacional de Historia architectural phased 3D model
* quotes from The Art of Impossible
ofallthespaces 