Painting in Mexico City

Mexico City paints you back. You arrive with a palette in mind and the light spends a month editing it — warming the reds at noon, pulling everything blue by six.

The street below the scaffold was its own studio: the tamal cart at eight, the schoolchildren at one, the same three dogs asleep in the same three doorways. They became the clock I worked to.

By the last week the wall belonged to the block more than to me. That is usually how you know a travel mural is finished — not when the paint dries, but when the neighbours stop asking what it will be and start telling visitors what it is.