Every building in Oaxaca's center is built around a courtyard, which is another way of saying the city is built around silence. I sit in one for most of an afternoon: fountain on one side, laundry on a line, a cat keeping the precise hours of a cat. The courtyard is not a gap between rooms. It is the room. Meals happen there, arguments happen there, weddings happen there, and the rain — when it comes, sudden and theatrical — turns it into a drum. I have kept a list, over the years, of places where I have felt time pass at the right speed. Oaxaca's courtyards have taken the top of the list, and I do not expect to be displaced soon.