Missing Frida
The unexpected masterpiece that emerged when my plans fell apart
It was 5:25 PM on a Thursday evening in Mexico City’s Polanco neighborhood. I was surrounded by cars pointing in every direction. No one was moving. No one had been moving. There was simply nowhere to go. We were all stuck together in oppressive and suffocating gridlock.
When we did move, we barely inched forward. It was almost laughable. Only no one was laughing. After waiting nearly twenty minutes for my Uber to pick me up from Quintonil, I now found myself suspended in this time-sucking state of futility, which meant one thing. I wasn’t going to make my 6:00 PM reservation at La Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo’s old house, now a museum.
The journey from Polanco to the museum’s Coyoacán neighborhood took thirty minutes on a good day without traffic. No matter how many times I did the math, factoring in that this was certainly no good day, there was no miraculous scenario that got me there in time. I didn’t need to be a mathematician to know I wouldn’t be out of this neighborhood traffic circle in thirty minutes.
It was time to call it.
It wasn’t a long walk back to my hotel, but it was long enough for me to second-guess every decision I’d made that afternoon. I was desperate to know where and how this plan had gone so wrong. Before I ever stepped foot in Mexico City, I assumed La Casa Azul was always going to be one of the highlights of my trip.
I had figured on a three-hour tasting at Quintonil. I had estimated the journey in traffic to take twice as long as Google told me it would that time of day. I had intentionally selected the last reservation on the only day during my stay when reservations were actually available. And I had thought to make a reservation to begin with! That surely counted for something?
But one slight miscalculation bled into another. And what wasn’t meant to be never happened.
The self-critic in me tried to cast a crippling spell of self-loathing. Interestingly, it wouldn’t take. When I stepped back from it all, I wasn’t angry at myself or the circumstances. I was disappointed. I wasn’t looking to punish myself or swim in a choppy sea of regret. I was curious to see what came next.
In the context of my life’s calling, I even wondered if this once-unheard-of state of calm and self-acceptance could be as rewarding as seeing the Frida Kahlo house itself.
I marveled at the progress that traveling with intent and moving with faith that the universe was always guiding me must have inspired. When things fell apart, I didn’t choose to throw myself a pity party. I decided instead to search for opportunity and meaning where I wouldn’t have before – inside of mistakes and missed chances.
I knew in time I would understand why I was meant to miss Frida. And I was certain I would be grateful for what missing Frida opened up and left room for. I knew on my part, I just had to keep trusting the forces that had so evidently been at work behind the scenes, shaping and recasting me.
Several days later, when a wide-open Sunday rolled around, I seized the chance to ride out the consequences and see where the day took me. I deliberately started in Coyoacán at Coyoacán Market, a place I still would have missed entirely if Thursday evening had gone off without a hitch.
Within minutes of arriving, I realized I had grossly underestimated in my original research how much I would come to love it here. It was a perfect match for my taste and sensibilities. It was also a gift, a second chance, to see a place that wasn’t on my original agenda. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for missing Frida earlier in the week.
I spent hours exploring the art in the park, the market stalls, inside and around the perimeter, and the surrounding neighborhood’s texture and charm. I bought gifts, tasted chocolate and feasted on tostadas piled with heaps of octopus and carnitas. I met artists, shopkeepers and had lunch next to a sweet family who, despite our language barrier, made me feel seen and included.
While I wasn’t finagling my way into the nearby Casa Azul anytime soon, I had witnessed a colorful snapshot of Sunday living in a city that I had come in short order to absolutely adore. The trip to Coyoacán had me fully living the belief that Taste was my compass and that Travel truly was my life companion. I felt my favorite way to be – fed and lucky – as the Uber pulled away.
My long morningin Coyoacán had encouraged me to let go and feel versus plot out every journey. It not-so-subtly reminded me I had to trust where the flow of traveling with my heart and head in the right place would take me. I could never again let a set and stiff itinerary get the final word.
After all, how many times have things not gone according to script, but we have watched on in awe and wonder as Plan B or C have triumphed out ahead of our meticulously devised Plan A?
Just once is enough to show us that moving with intent transforms into something spectacularly more powerful when we embrace instead of resist the randomness, the interference and the disruption. And when we do, travel becomes something far more alive and abstract.
It becomes art.
Like any piece of art, a journey, too, comes together through a rhythm and creative process that is uniquely reflective of its taker – its maker. As the mechanics of a trip, its where, when, and how, lock into place alongside the soul of it, the why, imagination and longings of its architect, the two inputs come together to create a genuinely distinctive expression. A distinctive expression of place just as it was experienced by a single traveler’s vision. I would argue each one of these expressions is art.
I would further argue that when I missed my reservation to see Frida Kahlo’s house, the circumstances and, by default, the universe, took the brush out of my hand and fatefully painted their own strokes on my canvas.
If we are too strict in controlling and enforcing our own narrow-minded vision of travel, if we too arrogantly dismiss and forsake a co-author role with the world around us, we stifle momentum and meaning. We settle for experiences that are unreasonably unaffected and one-dimensional.
To reject collision, coincidence and connectivity is to settle on art assembled inside of transaction, instead of art inspired by transformation. For it is that disruption and interference, the challenge not only of our agendas, but of our perspectives and values, that provides the very fodder and creative tension that awakens and reinvigorates us. That compels us to create unabashedly and wholeheartedly.
What took form throughout my wide-open Sunday in Mexico City, a day I set out to make good for missing Frida, was the gift of flow. The kind of flow that if one allows it to, will make its own art. From Coyoacán to Museo del Templo Mayor to the soul-shifting, contemplative energy of the Museo Vivo del Muralismo, I moved through a day that stuck with me less for its smooth execution and more for its unwieldy synchronicity.
Through history: touring the extraordinary ruins discovered under Mexico City’s old town. Through art, standing in front of sun-drenched, dazzling Diego Rivera murals at the Museo Vivo del Muralismo. Through taste, partaking in tostadas Coyoacán and freshly plucked churros at iconic Churrería El Moro. Through connection, meeting tenderhearted people just once and momentarily, I felt my collaboration with travel assemble like a masterpiece in front of me.
Each spark, each encounter, each moment – a tessera in a mosaic only I was destined to create.
When I came back for Frida, I would – we would – get to make another.
