It is our first night in Miami and before commencing our art fair-ing at Satellite, held in the art deco Parisian Hotel, we grab an outdoor table next door at Taquiza, a busy taco window housed on the ground level of the HI Miami Beach Hostel. We each order three little blue masa tortillas filled with various stewed and seasoned meat fillings. Everyone sitting around us is here for Satellite (you can just tell), the fair hosting Baltimore galleries Platform and Terrault among other artist-run spaces from all over the country (Baltimoreans: Think Open Space’s Artist-Run Art Fair at Artscape, except with three levels and air conditioning and a bathroom installation in nearly every room and, somehow, Nelly Furtado wandering about). Before our food even arrives, I see heads turn to the sidewalk, where a man wearing a bright blue wig and a makeshift toga flogs two shirtless men on their hands and knees, ball gagged.

“Look at these motherfuckers!” a Taquiza employee shouts to his co-workers, sitting on the curb while on his break. As the two gagged men crawl forward, dragging a towel upon which the blue-haired man walks, the blue-haired man repeats “Work harder!”

The next day, as we near the end of our journey through Untitled, a curated art fair held in a massive air-conditioned tent on the beach, we come across a cluster of wooden chairs—after standing for hours, chairs are really what jump out at us—designed by Sébastien de Ganay in collaboration with famed artist Rirkrit Tiravanija. The backs of the chairs are printed with the words “DO NOT EVER WORK.”

As we drive to and from our Airbnb, Rihanna’s ‘Work’ plays a few times on the radio, between what amounts to mostly Rick Astley’s greatest hits.

We’re getting a lot of mixed messages here.

It feels strange for us, and for the gallerists and exhibitors here who are showing and hopefully selling art, to come to this city that presents itself as a vacation spot, where Will Smith came to “Party in the city where the heat is on/ All night, on the beach till the break of dawn,” a city that is, geographically and culturally speaking, pretty close to leaving the country without really leaving, to work—for some, harder than they’ve worked in a while. Every visual message we receive between art fairs, from bus stop advertisements to neon signage to posters for beach towel sales, suggests “relax” or “party” all while we’re pushing ourselves to absorb more art, to take more notes, to remember every detail, to stay on our feet. But this is still an escape, or an attempt to escape, even if we’re far from relaxed. Anything that involves averting our gaze from the rest of the world right now feels like vacation, albeit a vaguely guilt-ridden one, as vacations often are in tough times.

Not that the fairs here are lacking political art or art that imparts a sense of doom or malaise. There’s Sam Durant’s giant glowing sign proclaiming “End White Supremacy” (which, by the way, was made by a white artist, was selling for $75,000, and was frequently used as a backdrop for selfies taken by white fairgoers—there’s a lot to unpack there) at international gallery Blum & Poe’s booth at Art Basel and Glenn Kaino’s stunning ‘Invisible Man’—an aluminum figure of a man with his hands up in surrender (or protest), his back three-dimensional and textured, his front a flat mirrored surface reflecting the Bass Museum’s authoritarian facade—at Art Basel’s Sculpture Park, to name a few notable pieces. It’s just that for any work that isn’t so blatant in its messaging, it’s hard to find the time and stillness to catch nuance and carefully consider the artwork’s relationship to anything but itself, or to the fairs, or to its price tag.

There’s no way to prepare yourself for the onslaught of visual stimulation here—each day, we’re seeing thousands of works of art. It’s all a rush. You don’t go too deep with anything or else you might miss, well, everything else. Or maybe that’s just us, being new to this?

At each of the fairs, I’m trying to have more Art Critic Thoughts, like if I see one more formalist airbrush abstraction I’m gonna pluck my eyes out, and fewer thoughts like I really need to look into how fucked my health care might be in a month. I’m trying to escape into artwork, even of the most banal and dead-ended sort, of which there is plenty here.

On Saturday, my mom texts me and my brother a link to a breaking story about a fire at a DIY venue in Oakland. “Makes me think of all the risky places you two have gone for concerts.” I read only the headline, put my phone away, and forget to text back.

Art Basel is intoxicating.

There’s no telling how much time spent in the massive Miami Beach Convention Center is required before you finally know where you are and how to get from point A to point B, let alone find an end to what feels like miles of booths hosting hundreds of blue-chip galleries and dealers. You’re forced to let go of your sense of space, and time, really, because there’s no predicting how long it’ll take you to find your way out once you decide to finally pull yourself away. My only guide here is impulse triggered by visual stimulation—in other words, look, something shiny.

Art Basel is also suffocating and offers few moments of relief. After an hour or five of rapid-fire art consumption, I scan the expanse for relief and see a pair of fairgoers disappear between two heavy curtains. As they pass through, I catch a glimpse of a darkened, uncrowded space. Squeezing my way out of the swarm, I make a beeline to the curtains. The vinyl signage indicates that inside is new multimedia installation ‘Stream or River Flight or Pattern II’ by American performance and video art spearhead Joan Jonas, represented here by Milan’s Galleria Raffaella Cortese. Inside, two video installations illuminate opposite walls, linked by three spare, fragile drawings of birds—what looks like a cockatiel, an owl, and a woodpecker; I don’t know birds—the graphite rubbed directly onto the connecting wall. Something about the linework feels like it wasn’t really drawn, but imprinted, leaving three suggestions glowing here under spotlights in the darkened room. On one screen, shadows of human figures interact with the lush, foreign landscape projected behind them, cradling the foliage in their hands. For a minute I think the figures casting those silhouettes are here in the room, until I realize this is something like a video of a video projection—the shadows’ origins are invisible, but feel present, maybe more present than I feel now. On the other screen, an elderly woman in sunglasses and a silver jacket (the artist) seems to float in space, her body sprawled, as worn tiles in a diamond pattern pass over her, their translucence coloring her figure in stony black, orange, white. The space feels like a fuzzy intersection of ancient and contemporary and woman and nature. I’m entranced.

I pull myself away after not too long—there’s too much else to see—and after dragging myself to what appears to be a maximalist Ikea display room of the internet’s dreams, where I find a tall man wearing a red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap. To be clear, at this particular corner of Basel (a collaboration between Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari’s Toilet Paper Magazine, commissioned by the Swiss museum Fondation Beyeler), there is also an artificial alligator with spaghetti spilling out of its jaws, a taxidermied hen perched on a table with plates piled with spaghetti—there’s spaghetti everywhere, actually; even the wallpaper is fucking spaghetti—but here, the only thing that seems out of place is the hat. And everyone around me seems to be thinking the same thing. Cameras fly up.

“Why is he bringing that here, to Art Basel?” says a sharp-dressed Italian woman to another sharp-dressed Italian woman, both grimacing.

The Trump guy sits at the chicken-spaghetti table, holding a plate, and poses for the cameras pointed in his direction, including mine.

“Make America great again!” he says. “No flash.”

At this point I assume he’s a performer and this is his set, some weak commentary on American idiocy and gluttony—or something. But then he just gets up and leaves. I follow him past a few booths, until he stops to look at a painting, and then at me, to glare. I want to ask him, What brought you here? But the malice in his face and my desire to continue believing that he’s just an artist doing a goofy performance convince me to turn back on my heels.

I return to Jonas’ installation to hide for a breath.

We spend all of 20 minutes at the beach, after the sun has set, near Untitled’s monolithic tent mounted on the shore. The ocean is the only place here absent of neon—somehow, though the lights and tents loom directly behind us, the black water is reflection-less. There’s no moon; only a few stars push their way through the light pollution and purple clouds, and a flimsy string of lights straight ahead—a cruise ship? Another island?—separate the sea from the sky. I let the small but choppy waves hit my calves, and consider wading deeper into the near-icy water, no longer warmed by the sun, but opt to stop there. While I grew up routinely trembling in Ocean City’s frigid, murky piece of the Atlantic, Rebekah is used to the cozy Gulf. I wouldn’t want to push her beyond her limits by going in myself. Plus, we didn’t bring towels. So we just stare.

It’s only Friday, the first night after our first full day in Miami, and we don’t know that this will be the only relief we experience from the art shows, the city, the parties, the buzz of every European language spoken at once, during our entire trip. Our quiet, suburban Airbnb is half an hour outside the city (we waited too long to book), but there we do nothing but milk the few hours of sleep we can get; we might as well not be there at all.

But we can’t get sucked into this—the ocean, the beach, the Florida-ness of it all; we came here to see and do. After Rebekah runs along the tide and I let it bury my feet, hoping it’ll cement me there and forbid me to leave, relieving me of that pesky autonomy, we pull ourselves away and prepare to head home on a high, quiet note after a day of exhaustion and blistered feet. But the Biblical demon FOMO creeps behind, and we soon learn of an exclusive party thrown by MoMA PS1 happening nearby, and somehow, for reasons we still don’t understand, we’re “in.” Princess Nokia is playing. Our friends are there, Baltimore is there. We came to Miami partly because we felt FOMO (fear of missing out) last year when a good chunk of Baltimore attended the fairs and, judging by the Instagram updates, had a grand old time. So, I guess we have to go. We’ll just stay for one drink.

After trudging past outdoor diners sipping margaritas, petite dogs on late night walks, and park benches with dividers (“so the homeless can’t sleep on them,” Rebekah notes), we float past the line of eager partiers waiting to get into the Delano Hotel’s patio side entrance, and note that they all look much more prepared than we do. We just came from the beach, so I’m wearing a one-piece bathing suit—functional, not sexy—underneath loose-fitting striped cotton pants I have to cuff several times to expose my boots, which are dusted with sand. As our friend bargains with the bouncer to let us in, I think about how an outfit or a piece of clothing I feel great wearing in one city I’ll feel awful about in another. In Baltimore, I love this bathing suit, and these pants. I hate them here.

The line disappears behind us and we’re now approaching the poolside, strung lights guiding our way between palms. Beautifully painted faces hover a good several inches over my natural line of sight, where my eyes meet amber-toned clavicles and glossy, pointed fingernails clicking against glass stems. I wonder why, elsewhere, I enjoy a good pool, an aromatic mixed drink, and well-dressed people, but I hate them here.

I think I feel a man’s fingers gripping into my thigh. I’m sober but dizzied by the glamorous crowd and my own fatigue and when I turn to find a culprit I don’t know who I’m looking for in the shifting crowd. Maybe it’s the unfamiliar man who, as I move away closer to the pool, says to me “Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” I pretend to not understand, even though I know what he’s getting at, and I know he’s doing this not because I look good—I’m easily the most disheveled person here, and the light makeup I applied this morning now looks caked on after melting and relocating in the sticky heat—but because I look sad and confused, and separated from my group.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on,” he says. “Just smile.”

And now I’m a reporter in a bathing suit, feeling sorry for herself and struggling not to weep at a party full of strangers, annoyed that my nearby friends are looking great and having fun even though I know they’re at least as exhausted as I am—they must be. I text my girlfriend back in Baltimore “ugh i kind of hate it here.” I want to get into the pool and hide beneath the glowing teal, but stop myself when I see that the pool is empty except for two or three bikini-clad, peach-assed model types clinging to the perimeter. So we chug our Stellas (complimentary, though it’s possible someone stole them for us) and leave the alt-Playboy Mansion party as quickly as we arrived. We stayed for one drink; we did what we set out to do. Even though we were ready to leave, there was still part of us stuck in FOMO’s clutches.

On the final night of Miami Art Week and the eve of our return to Baltimore, we revisit Satellite to bookend our trip with familiar faces and peek into any rooms we might have missed. I realize I still have not had a mojito—something I promised myself, for self-care—and remember that the friendly gallerists in a room on the third floor of the hotel were mixing $4 drinks. I pop into the space hosting New York-based Gallery Sensei and chat with Katie, the gallery sitter, who mixes my mojito extra strong because, she says, I look like I need it. She, on the other hand, looks like she’s fresh from the spa.

“I think this is the museum of the now, you know?” Katie says. “Everyone is here. It’s like heaven. If you care about the game, you’re here. And it is a game.”

Before I can ask her what she means exactly by “the game,” we hear chanting right outside the room.

“Mni Wiconi! Come join the march! Mni Wiconi!”

I thank Katie for the mojito and head to the hallway, where a cluster of people, many wearing embroidered vests, huddle around a woman holding up a laptop. The screen is playing video of protesters at an encampment. Beside her towers a gangly guy reading what appears to be some kind of email or public announcement.

“‘...The Army Corps of Engineers has denied the drilling and easement and work on the Dakota Pipeline,” he reads. “Standing by for future implications but for now the mood at camp is celebratory. We just held an enormous prayer circle around the entire Oceti Sakowin camp and the news was announced to protectors as we stood in prayer.’ Mni Wiconi!”

The procession winds down the three levels of the fair, growing steadily as the reader rereads the message aloud and the marchers repeat their chant (which I later learn is Lakota for “water is life”). I realize I’ve been following them, snapping photos with the heavy DSLR camera I’ve borrowed for the trip in my right hand, recording their chants on my phone in my left, and gripping my quickly disappearing mojito with the third hand I’ve somehow grown in the process. Watching from the other side of the window in the hotel lobby, performance artist Paul Outlaw sits in the inflated pool installed in lobby and filled with fake, enlarged Captain Crunch cereal and milk—or just murky water—where he has been lounging all weekend on and off with his performance partner Jen Catron. The milk-water continues to flow gently from a giant carton attached to the ceiling. With his bare belly floating to the pool’s surface, Outlaw nods with dudely satisfaction.

The sun is gone, and I check the time. It’s six: Satellite, Art Basel, all of the art fairs—it’s officially over.

And again, I’m a reporter trying not to cry, but it’s different now. Still, I wish I could hold it together, for once.

But I am not alone. Elsewhere, eyes are swelling. The news from Standing Rock is the first good news of 2016, right? More or less. And now we can actually relax, more or less.

Rebekah and I know this feeling of immense relief and—could it be?—joy won’t last. And it doesn’t: The next morning we learn that back in Baltimore, residents of the DIY venue the Bell Foundry have been kicked out of their home without warning in the wake of the Ghost Ship fire.

But for the moment, we’re smiling without looking away.