T.S. Eliot wrote my all-time favorite poem, The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. (In fact, it’s one of a handful of poems I Iike; I’m just not into poetry.)

Returning from Mexico, it was another Eliot piece on my mind, though: “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” It’s from Little Giddings, and the quote gets lifted all the time from its context. Eliot was kinda wrapping up his career at this point; he’d been sick, World War II was raging, and he was simultaneously taking stock of himself and humanity.

Which is what the Wayfaring Writers trip to Mexico did for me. I reconnected, plugged back in, found some words, found some ways forward, sold a book (out in 2025, more forthcoming once we’ve finished the work), and took stock.

Mexico is a good place to do stock-taking. The pace is slower, the connections to its roots longer. It reminded me a little of Appalachia, except the whole country is more connected to itself. It’s an old, old country; they hold onto things, complex simultaneous concepts, and the examination of said complexities doesn’t seem to be rocking their foundations quite the way it is here in the States.

We were sitting in the courtyard of a private house in a small village not far from Oaxaca City, learning to cook a traditional meal from scratch. We roasted cocoa beans, pounded avocado and grasshoppers together, rolled tortillas, went to the community mill. And as we sat in the courtyard, enjoying our communal lunch, one of the hosts said, “this is the real Mexico. Who needs Cancun when you can have this?” He gestured at the expansive blue sky, the distant green mountains, the gold-green-grey near fields, now fallow for winter and parched in the dry season, an occasional cactus flower dotting bright yellow or blue into the scene.

I was telling a friend about washing dishes in the open sink in the courtyard, and my awareness of the difference between “charming” the first few times and “hard work” that would likely come after a thousand or so of such washings. Water is rationed in Mexico, although Oaxaca has a good water table and most private homes, like this one, have wells. Still, the washers were careful with water: clean without waste.

My friend said “it would take so much longer that way,” and I thought, not longer, more different value on time use. That’s kind of the way Mexico does things. They’re not trying to stuff so much in that they need to shortcut some of the simple stuff, the zen moments. When the women who had taught us to cook did the dishes, it took two of them about fifteen minutes and they rattled non-stop conversation in Zapotec punctuated with laughter.

Doing dishes is about having clean dishes, sure; but it’s also about the fifteen minutes you spend laughing with a friend. It’s not taking longer; it’s a different set of things than we value in the States.

Since coming home, I’ve found myself on the Mexican mindset. There’s time, this can happen later, this can happen sooner, everything doesn’t have to happen all at once. Enjoy the moment; it’s not just about finishing, it’s about the doing.

I like having a dishwasher. But I also like having friends to laugh with. When it’s all “faster, harder, more” to accomplish something lasting here in the US ethos, fifteen minutes might seem like a waste of time that could be spent answering emails, sending texts, editing a chapter’s punctuation. But it sure didn’t look like anything was getting wasted, watching those two women get it done, laughing all the way.