Mrs. Bryan taught me to memorize paintings when I was ten. I didn’t know the map she was giving me that year would lead me, decades later, to the Rijksmuseum—and to a part of myself I had misplaced.

We thought we were just making roof tiles. What we found was stillness, kindness, and a lump of clay that became a guardian—and a memory.

This isn’t quite a travelogue. It’s more like a dream I had while awake, somewhere in Coyoacán. Every word is true—just not all of it happened in the usual way.