13.

I spend a lot of time sitting and thinking. It’s amazing how much time you can spend, with simple nicotine and caffeine addictions, doing nothing but thinking all day long. I do not work, and I am not signed up for any classes this semester. I hardly ever go out, even for a walk. I do not get bored. When my mother asks me what I have been doing with myself lately, I say, "Just reading and writing," but actually, I get very little reading done. I sit and think, and write down my thoughts. But back to my story.

We took the train from the city of Chihuahua out into the mountains toward Copper Canyon. At each of the stops, vendors would bring their wares onto the train and try to sell them to the passengers for as long as the train was stopped. I began to take an interest at all the folk art they were selling—multi-colored articles of clothing, different sorts of figurines and trinkets they had made by hand. They appeared alien to me, but not exactly threatening; only interesting. I didn’t buy any of them, however. At one stop, when I went to the door to await the vendors, none came onto the train. I said to the Mexicans standing next to me, "No vendors?" They didn’t understand. I had said this English question in my best Mexican accent. Somehow, I thought that "vendors" was a Spanish word, and I knew "no" was Spanish. I repeated my question when they said, "Eh?" again in my best Mexican accent. Finally they just said, "No." I don’t know if they knew what I meant or not.

But these vendors’ wares weren’t the only things that seemed alien to me. Mexico itself seemed alien to me. It wasn’t merely curious; it was frightening. All my perceptions were Mexico, wherever I looked, whomever or whatever I saw. There was no escaping it; I was in it, miles and miles into it. I still did not know I hadn’t been taking my antipsychotic. I thought all this strangeness I was experiencing was the strangeness of Mexico; Mexico was frightening, bizarre, nothing made sense there, everything was threatening there. And I was going farther into it. My father and the rest of my party seemed unconcerned, seemed not to see the threat of Mexico; I merely thought they were naively going forth into dangers they had no concept of. If they were willing to go through with it, so was I. But it was my duty to keep their overconfidence and relaxation from exposing them to the dangers only I sensed; and I would only help them if I went along, since they did not see the dangerous place we really were in.