I found a favorite café in Oaxaca. A chocolate place, only big enough to fit three small tables and the counter, squeezed into the one storey building opposite the Santo Domingo church and walls of the ethnobotanical garden. The floors had earth-red tiles and the cold cardamom chocolate that they served was divine. I don’t know how many I had over the course of my stay in Oaxaca.
The coolness of the small space, and the open doors giving a view of the calm street and massive, sundrenched walls of the church, made it a perfect place to sit and think. Read. Make notes. I had ideas. Felt a kind of excitement about writing stories that I haven’t felt for years – I’ve been too busy writing science to think about stories. But there was something about the old houses in this colorful town, walking around in sandals in a strange place, creating new, temporary routines. It triggered me. It always has. I never write as much as when I’m on the road. For the last decade, though, that has mostly meant blogging. Here, the fictions in me started stirring from their decade long slumber. Maybe, I can start writing prose again.
I felt filled up. But also, there was a note of melancholy behind the joy. This elatedness and inspiration that I feel when wandering around in a strange place, it has become so rare. I don’t travel as much as I used to. I don’t want to fly. The joy I get from writing can’t depend on me going far far away to get inspired. I need to develop my ability to get the same kind of inspiration closer to home. In people, maybe. Or art. Music. Challenging my senses in my own backyard. A new mission.
At the chocolate place in Oaxaca, though, this was just a fleeting thought. I was enjoying myself too much in my new-found state of inspiration.
Katja Malmborg 