The Bewildered Convert Attains Asylum
I’m staring at The Reading Boy by Joshua Reynolds. It’s not particularly good, certainly nothing special but probably the one piece I feel most attached to here because there’s this boy and he looks very British in a red top-coat and he’s just sitting in this cushy-chair and the title isn’t a mind-bender so as indicated he’s reading and just totally immersed in this book. And that’s what it’s about. At the University when I was at San Diego I had this class and we had to analyze newspaper articles for a certain period on the 2002 election and determine how many had Gore as a subject and how many Bush. We had to determine how many were for, against, or generally objective, nothing can be wholly objective but articles just basically giving the facts like “a rally was held today for…” What we came up with was utterly interesting. In our sample, a very unofficial test of sorts we discovered that both had relatively similar percentages in each category. Something like:
Gore: 23 for, 56 obj, 17 against.
Bush: 31 for, 72 obj, 20 against
We presented our unofficial survey’s thinking that we had correctly determined that the print media was being more or less fair, but we missed the point completely. All you had to do was add up the totals, forget about percentages. The media was giving way more coverage to Bush. Good, bad, “objective”, whatever, there were far more articles, news reports, and references to him and he was in effect made the subject of more coverage regardless of how. Now maybe people fault Gore for not showing his true persona and being reserved and appearing boring, or maybe he really was boring, or maybe it was that this guy spent eight years as the second in command and suddenly there was this new face (same name). Regardless I think it’s just the fact that here, in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, with the piece that I’m observing, Josh (cause we’re like good friends now), could have choose anything, and here with this whole canvas the physical presence of the boy and the book spread before him are what’s offered to us.
Awesome. This guy painted this three centuries ago and here I am staring at the very same piece that he was applying brush strokes to and it’s survived all that time and all for me to be here standing thinking this is cool and offering me a small window into that world, of British aristocracy or whatever world he was conveying. I think and wonder if someone else will be here in another three-hundred years in this exact spot I’m standing in now observing the same work and thinking this is cool or in whatever futuristic way you’ll say that, like this is plak! Or this is so boiling! but probably not as nerdy-sounding. Maybe there will be something different hanging. Maybe it will reflect our times. Maybe it will be of this boy and he’ll be wearing this red coat sitting in this cushy-chair and totally immersed at what’s in front of him and the observer will look down at the title and it will say “The Reality-TV Watcher.”
I go and see this piece by Jacob Willemszoon and he’s Dutch and it says from Haarlem and then I remember that Harlem in New York was named after it’s Dutch counterpart (Haarlem), and that New York was originally settled by Holland not the Brits and wasn’t New York but New Amsterdam. Then I think that a lot of things could have been pretty different. The New Amsterdam Knicks, the NA Yankees, DKNA, NAC, and so on and so on. I walk by a painting of Jesus being crucified and there’s one of him being born and Mary nearby and my cousin, when I told her she had to go to the Getty when she was in LA, said she doesn’t like museums because everything is of Jesus or Mary and I mean how many freakin’ nativity scenes do I have to look at and I laugh and think maybe I’ll count just how many there are here in this museum until I realize that that would be tremendously boring and so quickly forfeit the idea.
I pass the nativity scene and move on and this is my second time in the Museo so I skip the De Goya gallery and pass Manet’s Nude Nymph Bathing and I want to go see my new favorite artist in this gallery and it’s the Parisian, Marie Auguste Menard. I think it’s because not to long ago I read this biography of Van Gogh and I think that I’m attracted to Menard because they both have these curt, impersonal strokes and bold colors and there are a couple great landscapes and I indulge and then walk past Sisley and Monet, Gaughin, Pisarro, and the room with Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir and then I’m in the final hall with Mogdigliani and Chagall and Picasso. I’ve seen all these on the last trip and I’ve now checked out The Reading Boy and Menard on this one so now I want to see the modern stuff hanging at the end which I didn’t have enough time to check out last time as they were closing.
I get to the modern hall and generally I have a love-hate relationship with modern art, my rule being if I could do it I don’t like it, or if it doesn’t really express anything profound or even interesting forget it. I mean all it really has to do is something, and more often than not I’m disappointed. I remember once at this modern art museum, one in Germany or maybe Spain, there was this toilet bowl on display and then below it the artists name and date and I guess I just didn’t know the back-story or something, or perhaps in this case the back-end of the story. So I get to the first piece and don’t really know what to make of it. It’s a large canvass and it’s All red. There are two colors of red, to be specific. I look and I stare and nothing is happening and it’s just red. I keep looking at it, and then I look at the security guard to see if he has a clue, or is in on the joke and he’s just sort of stern and stone-faced so I turn back and sort of cock my head to the side and look up and red and down and more red. I look to the title and it says Light Red and Dark Red and then I nod and look back, and can confirm, with certainty that there are in fact, two shades of red. Perhaps if the curator was here he could enlighten me, tell me if I look closely, at one point the two reds mix, and then he would lean in and whisper ever so quietly in my ear there’s three shades of red and then putting his index-finger over his lips shhhhhh and then he would nod his head a few times.
I skip over to the other side and there’s a canvass with all these shades of green splattered on and again what’s going on and I look to the title and it’s The Perfect Green and I think if I left my five year-old nephew or my neighbor’s dog for that matter locked in a room with a bunch of blue paints for about twenty-minutes they too could create The Perfect Blue.
I decide it’s time to part with this section and there’s another temporary display upstairs by Renata Schussheim that this guy in the museum said I should check it out and so I go up these stairs and over this bridge and into this dark room and the walls are all black and you can only see what’s lit up and there are all these sounds, birds chirping and whispers, and low-voices here and hushed voices there and it’s called Epifania or Epiphany and I’m walking deeper in and it’s very surreal and there are these two mannequins on the floor in a sitting position only their faces are those of dogs and there in the shape of the hounds and on the other side there’s this forest that’s been recreated with fake trees and it’s lit up in green and there’s a figure in the forest and I’m walking up to see it and then the security woman starts yelling at me that the museum just closed and please exit the building and I say okay but keep walking to the forest and now she’s shouting at me and please sir! Will you please exit and now she’s erratically waving her flashlight in circles at me and I feel like I’m at a rave or in a discoteca or something and I want to scream Wait! Finally this is kinda cool and it’s modern art and you want to shove me out! But I just say okay-okay and defeated start walking out and I pull out my cell and look at my phone and it’s three minutes til! She robbed me of three minutes and I guess Renata can wait and hopefully she’ll still be there next time I go.
I walk over and give this little number-token thing to the bag check and get my backpack and strap it over my shoulders and head out and look at Avenida del Libertador and crossing streets in Buenos Aires is like a video-game I played when I was a wee-lad or lass or something. Basically the drivers try and hit the pedestrians and I don’t know, maybe they give you something here, like free coffee or lunch if you hit someone, and the pedestrians scatter about in crossing and dodge cars by inches and if you make it you get to keep walking. I’m thinking of renting a car and trying my skills at knocking out a few people, but it’s probably harder than I think and the people are pretty fast here.
No free lunch or coffee for anyone on this cross and on the sidewalk I see something that sort of strikes me. Printed on it says Mentira and then under that a plus symbol and Represion and that’s over a line and under the line OPUS DEI and then something under that but it’s fairly faded and I remember Opus Dei from the Dan Brown books (reserve comments please) and decide to scribble it down and look at it later to see what it’s suggesting. I cut left on the street by the Biblioteca Nacional and tagged on the walls sprayed in graffiti is resiste and then Los Peronistas and then that’s crossed out and then Viva La Revolucion! I think it’s amazing that we’re decades removed from Juan Domingo Peron’s rule but sentiment still runs deep for some. I walk up and see Boca Nacion and they ended up losing in the big match to River last week and there’s also Hambre es un crimen (hunger is a crime). I remember being appalled learning that much of the world’s crops are destroyed every harvest to keep prices up and that we could easily feed all the hungry but it’s a matter of organization and cooperation. I also recall being surprised that the majority of all produce in India never ends up being consumed because it spoils in transport. I think about these things as I cross over into the garden outside of the Biblioteca and I’m not quite sure what to make of it all. I feel as if I need to do some good, as if everyone should be doing more good and it’s only a matter of figuring out how to best channel that desire.
I pull-out a seat eagerly and take off my pack and the moza comes up and hands me a menu and with a earnest smile says Que Tal? And I say nothing much and smile back and please agua mineral sin gas y un café con leche and she smiles and is gone to get my water and coffee and I may or may not get it within the next half-hour as prior trips to the garden café have dictated and I may or may not see her for the next half-hour to flag her down to ask or remind her but there’s no hurry here and I’m staring at the photos on the wall of the garden displayed as part of a public exhibition and it’s places like this that make this city a jewel and how many tourists have ever made it here? Here in this garden? Here outside of the Biblioteca Nacional? I have to often remind myself, especially more so now, that I’m in Buenos Aires, in Argentina, In South America. I have to bow to good fortune, to health and whatever gave me the initiative to create my reality. Today called for me to be in the Museo and who knows about tonight and everyone is going somewhere this weekend, but I’m already somewhere, I’m out of my element and my mind is churning information and producing ideas about people and life and things good and bad and the extremes of everything and perhaps my youth and vigor allow me the optimistic fallacy that all is possible if the initiative is there, and maybe not everything but a whole heck of a lot is and I’ll take it.
I don’t know how long it’s been but she arrives with my coffee and bottle of water and glass and tumbler of sparkling mineral water that comes with the coffee and a plate with a few cookies to munch on with my coffee and I like dipping them and letting them drink some of the coffee too and then they’re history. My sweet-tooth has become insatiable and I ask her for this kind of apple-bar that resembles cobbler, and it’s the second best of four that I’ve had in the city and that’s certainly good enough and I’ll probably be ready for another coffee by the time the bar comes out so I order it and she thinks I’m a little nuts I haven’t even sipped this one yet but I tell her it’s okay and can you bring me a lot of cookies and yes, and no I mean a lot and she laughs and says okay and when she arrives surprisingly there’s like thirty little cookies on this plate with a little doily and none of them will have a chance of survival. I’ve replaced my daily fix of facturas with just about everything else. One day when I was at a bakery I asked the woman behind the counter how can these be so good? What are they made of? She looked down at the media-luna (croissant) and the factura and said the media-luna was made from manteca or butter, and the factura from grasas (fat). I asked what type of grasas and she shrugged and said de vaca. Hmmm, fat from a cow, lard, wholly crap I’ve been eating like five of these a day and that was the end of facturas for me.
The waitress is back and brings the bar and it’s good and moist undercooked as I like it and I despise when pastry is brown and crunchy or flaky. There’s a little bit of cinnamon lined up in this thin little-line next to the bar and it’s like drugs for the pastry. I glance over into the garden and although it’s now quite dark I see a couple lying in the grass and this girl is on top of her boyfriend or similar designation and they’re just going at it tongues and all. It’s strange, or maybe completely normal but strange to me, but Portenos seem to be the world’s biggest PDAers. In bars and on the street and in café’s and if there’s a place to stick your tongue down someone else’s throat it’s done. What’s more couples walk hand-in-hand, pretty much always, as if someone might steal away their significant other at a moment’s notice, or perhaps just to parade about together victoriously. Maybe there’s a rule that if someone’s hand is not taken, literally, then it’s up for grabs!
I glance away and start sipping my coffee and dunking a few of the first to be sacrificed and I consider if I want to see a Movie. Volver is out and it’s the new Almodovar film, and I recently saw Rosario Tijeras a Columbian film about “narco-terrorism” and the drug-trade in the 80’s, about sex and violence and love and no wonder I liked it, but my favorite part were the establishing shots of Medillin, a fascinating and dangerous city that I know little about. I also saw a captivating documentary Yo Presidente in which the last seven Argentinean presidents are interviewed and clips of riots, resignations, news reports of corruption and the like are all spliced into the interviews and it was both insightful and surprisingly humorous because these “presidents” are so ridiculous in their conception of grandeur that you can’t really take them seriously. Also interspersed between each interview was a quick two second shot of a random dog sleeping or barking or chasing it’s tail or just doing dog things and I don’t know if that was an inside joke or trademark of the director, or related to each president meaning they’re all dogs.
This coffee is now done meaning both sips, and I sip the mineral water and back home traffic is crawling on the 405, and the 101, and on the 10 and 110, and 5, and anything that wheels can go on. On the corner of Wilshire and Bundy there’s a line at the Literati Café and people are getting coffee or salads to go and Carla Bruni’s probably coming out from the speakers overhead. Hipsters are walking on Silverlake Blvd. and Franklin and Scenesters are yapping on their cell-phones in their German cars and still wearing their sunglasses even though there’s no sun and at Dhaba on Mainstreet in Santa Monica they’re preparing naan and Aloo Gobi and Dal and the Cabo Cantina’s filled for happy-hour with Frat kids from USC and UCLA and movies are starting at the Grove and the Arclight just as the matinee’s are finishing and people are jogging on Sunset Blvd. and on Santa Monica and Mother’s are walking themselves and their babies and their bellies on San Vicente in Brentwood and nearby at La Scala there is already a line and smells of Spaghetti Bolognese fill the air and in Hermosa people are just walking into the Sushi Club and Sangria and on the PCH cars have parked and people gaze out at the eternal Pacific blue spread before them. The alley in downtown is now near deserted and sky-scrapers in the financial district still have most of their lights on and nearby in Little Tokyo people are sharpening their wooden chopsticks and drinking miso soup and in Korea-town the concrete buildings without windows are bustling inside and the sounds of onion frying and meat sizzling accompany the first tables and in East LA and South Central the TV sets are given use and justifying their existence and beer can’s are being cracked open and foam is being outsmarted as a quick sip is taken and back in Westwood Persian’s are walking on Westwood Blvd and smells of kabob come from hot grills and on Fairfax in Little Ethiopia traffic is at a near standstill and people gaze into the restaurants and markets and the Starbucks and Coffee Bean on Robertson and Beverly Blvd. are packed and the boutiques are closing for the day and people valet at the Ivy and smile as they walk-in feeling important and across the way at the Newsroom café waitresses in dreadlocks are explaining the specials and someone’s sipping a pint of Newcastle at Barney’s Beanery and a pizza is being ordered at the Third Stop and berries on the yogurt at Pinkberry and the treadmills are squeaking at Equinox and people are walking into the yoga studio and warming up and the woman are talking about how they can’t believe something and people are laying on the strand in Manhattan Beach and Zuma and both places are breezy now and the cut hair is being swept up at Umberto and Juan Juan in Beverly Hills and the line is forty-minutes for a hot-dog at Pinks on Fairfax and at Tito’s tacos in Culver City someone is scooping up watery-guacamole with a greasy-tortilla chip and people are riding up the new escalators at the Century City mall and it’s all lit up already and the lights of the valley glisten and plumes of exhaust are emitted from cars going up and down the canyons, Laurel and Coldwater, and people are making wide turns on Mulholland and one way on Ventura Blvd and the lights are dense red, and beaming brightly in the other direction and someone is eating a fish taco in Pacific Beach in San Diego and at The Grove in the Marina District in San Francisco someone is sitting on the bench in my place sipping an Americano and reading a book and people are walking in North Beach and police patrol the tenderloin and underground people ride the Muni and the Bart and read the Onion and The Chronicle and in New York there’s a line thirty-deep on Bleecker street and all for cupcakes and taxis are sailing up and down the avenues and the sommelier is opening a bottle of wine at Babbo and in Portland the coffee houses on 21st and 23rd are bustling and burners are alight in the Pearl district and in Miami someone’s ordering pulpo a la gallega at Tapas y Tintos and down the way at Sushi Samba the Dj is flipping through albums and in Las Vegas the fountains are swaying at the Bellagio and the grandpas and the Chinese and the Chinese grandpas are putting their names down for the lists on the no-limit hold’em tables and people are smoking apple-flavored hookah and drinking Cognac at Paymons on Charleston and people are just being seated and others getting up at Nikimoto’s in Midtown in Atlanta and someone’s just sipped the last of their pint at Dark Horse in the Highlands and the night-markets are alive in Fez and people buy sweets to take home and sip with their mint tea and fires are burning in Dehli and people are huddled together to keep warm and the tapas bars are full in Granada and the Alhambra is still lit up and people are walking the banks of the Seine in Paris and the moon shines brightly and the streets are quiet but people scamper in and out of café’s on Boulevard St. Germain and late movies just got out in Montparnasse and early morning in Ghuangzhou has the taxi’s scurrying about and cranes are lifting beams and the air is damp from the morning rain and rice porridge is being heated up for breakfast and the clouds are still hanging dark-grey and the moza sets down my next coffee and it takes a second to register and I smile and say thank-you and she says noehn’a and walks off.
I take the little cucharita and stir my coffee and being away from home, makes you think about home. You think of things more consciously and there’s no way you can’t. When I return to the US, anytime I get a coffee it will be a big and weak coffee. Before it was just a coffee. And this is just a small example. Everything you see is sort of different, but you are just more aware of things, you see them in a slightly different way and it’s incredible. It’s as if you were wearing dark sunglasses and you’ve just been allowed to take them off for the first time. Colors are brighter, more intense, and so are sunsets and people and food and thoughts and desires and walking and talking and anything else you can think of. I think about being home for Thanksgiving and having the whole family together will be nice and I start thinking about the first things I’ll do when I get home. The first place I’ll go alone will be the Getty. I’ll take the tram up and run to see my favorite piece in the permanent collection and it’s comforting to know it will still be winter and the snow will still be melting in Louvciennes and then I’ll go walk the gardens and get a coffee and maybe a salad at the café and sit on the terrace and maybe it will be nice, and maybe it will be raining, and maybe it’ll be nice that it’s raining.
The first place I’ll eat out, because I’m going to be going to my mom’s and getting as much home-cooking as possible, will be this new taco stand that just opened like two block’s from my apartment and I’ll have them make me a special burrito with shrimp and black beans and guacamole, lots of guacamole, and pico de gallo and lettuce and maybe sour cream and I’ll get all my favorite salsas and hot sauces, something that’s apparently deficient in this country and I’ll squeeze some lime on the shrimp and I’ll savor every bite! All this thinking of food and I’m hungry so I call up Adam who lives in Recoleta just a few blocks away and ask him if he wants to join me for dinner here. I just made some ravioli, why don’t you come over? And why don’t I come over? Well is there enough for both of us? Yeah, well lemme check and some muffling with the receiver and I’m on-hold and then yeah more than enough come over! I pay and walk through the garden and cats lazily stroll by and don’t clear the path when I walk by and they’re clearly not intimidated and the café feeds these cats so they’re pretty socialized. The couple that was making-out on the grass has apparently found a new locale to indulge voyeurs and I walk down the steep steps and I’m on Avenida Las Heras and I cross the street and there’s the heladeria that I was at two weeks ago with Adam and young Harvard-kid and we ordered coffee and they brought us a little scoop of ice cream with our coffees and it’s things like that, that make all the difference.
That night after young Harvard-kid left I stayed and talked with Adam and perhaps engaged in the first relevant conversation I’ve had here and we discussed travel, LA, Europe, politics, philosophy, our favorite writers and a lot of sentences with have you read this? And what did you think of that? And we talked of poems and pop culture, and films and shared countless laughs and that was two weeks ago and now in three blocks time I’m at Adam’s door and he’s coming down to do his own key-tango to let me in.
Inside I drop off my pack and head in and he has his table set by the balcony and the wind is blowing at the curtains and from outside sounds of the street below and he has his plate and some red wine and it smells great, Wolf Parade is playing out of the speakers and I go in his kitchen and fix myself a plate of spinach and ricotta ravioli and pour over the pepper and onion tomato sauce and he gets me a beer from the fridge, a Quilmes and how wonderful that the local beer is good, cheap and abundant and we sit and eat and I talk of the museum and he went to the MALBA which has Latin American art and we exchange museum stories and when we’re done we head to the bar that I went to with Kat and Connecticut and Massachusetts to have Belini’s and it’s dark and high ceiling and red-brick walls and all candles and more crowded this time. I look at the menu and it says absinthe and I’m convinced that it can’t be authentic and ask to see some bottles and the manager comes out and I explain about the wormwood and it seems that one of them seems to be genuine but that one in particular is the most expensive and we decide that not tonight, but at some time we need to order the absinthe and run into the cemetery next door where all of Argentina’s most famous are buried in these ornate mini-palace like tombs and the richer the person was the more intricate and some are like houses with caskets in them and Evita or Eva Peron is like fifty feet from us but that’s all for another time and I get a Caipirinha and Adam a dry Martini and the couple next to us is putting on the usual show and her tongue is down so far it’s probably ticking his intestines and this is crazy cause they’re like thirty-something not thirteen-something.
Adam and I talk for awhile and the man of the intestine-tickling couple next to us has just gotten a huge creamy pasta dish and he’s digging in hungrily and I order cachaca on the rocks this time because the Caipirinha was too sweet and Adam gets a Rossi Martini and we talk of Buenos Aires and some of the students from are X-men mini-campus are going here and there but we’re content on really absorbing this city for now and then maybe going here or there. Earlier today this girl from Michigan was telling me that I should go to Chile with her and some people are going to Iguazu falls and young Harvard-kid said it kills Niagra! No it’s insane, you don’t understand, seriously. Have you been to Niagra? No. Makes it look like a faucet. A faucet. And maybe I’ll make it there at some point, I’m told it’s something like a seventeen-hour bus ride or a little less than a two-hour flight. Other kids are planning trips to Peru and going to Uruguay and I think, all in time.
Are drinks come and we’re sipping them down and we look over at the intestine-couple and only the guy is passed out. His mouth is gaping-open, and he might or might not be snoring, it’s kinda loud I can’t really tell and his head is in the girls lap and she’s just stroking his hair and Adam says how freakin awesome, this guy basically comes here, has a drink and makes-out for an hour, eats a huge meal and just passes out while she’s doing that and I look over again and nod and we laugh but it is pretty awesome and I’m jealous.
It’s near four a.m. and we pay and back to his place so I can get my backpack and I haven’t been home since before my class today, and I went straight to the museum after that and it’s been a long day but Adam shows me a really funny skit on YouTube and we talk for another hour and I borrow the Diarios de Motocicleta which I saw in theaters in the U.S. but it’s about a young Che and his friend and both were Argentines and started in Buenos Aires and so I want to see it again and I leave and it’s now five a.m. and I’m walking on Avenida de Pueyrredon but see a locuorio that’s open and I hop in to check my email. The homepage is Yahoo! Argentina and I see that Spain beat Argentina in a ‘friendly’ futbol match 2-1 and I do this little mini-cheer for myself and then realize that I obviously haven’t been here long enough because my sentiments still clearly lie with Spain and I think back to watching all their games in the World Cup this past summer and being heartbroken when we lost and I think that country will forever have a large part of my heart.
I check my email and there are some from friends and a few myspace messages and an absurd amount in the spam folder and its light-blue outside now and I go back out onto Avenida de Pueyrredon and head west to Avenida de Sante Fe and its chilly and I walk more briskly and in a few minutes I’m making a left on Coronal Diaz and then another on Guemes and tango and up two flights of stairs and more key-dancing and lights and backpack off and clothes off and tee-shirt-on and radio-on and bathroom and foot of floss and toothpaste on brush and teeth and splash water on face and dry and glass of water and set alarm and rip covers and lights and bed and 6:04am and lids closed.
There’s shouting and knocking and a door slams! Open and more shouting and what’s going on and my mind is darting and perhaps they’ve gotten into the building, maybe they have guns, more knocking and maybe that’s what they’re doing, knocking and it’s so early and people are disoriented at this hour and when you open the door it’s too late and I force my eyes open and the clock says 6:37 and my eyes are burning and more shouts from below and boots marching up and maybe they’re coming up floor by floor and I hear something splashing on the ground and are they pouring gasoline? They’re going to light the floor on fire and then you have to open the door and what happens then and some more shouts and knocking from downstairs and the boots stop and shit! I left my radio on and it’s low but loud for this time of the morning so they’ll know someone is inside and the boots are stopped right in front of my door and I hear a light scratching on it and then a light-tap twice and I’m not even breathing and I try to reach my hand out to the bar-top and grab the remote for the radio and my bed squeaks and shit shut-up and I get it and hit power and the radio goes off and the boots go in motion again and even if I called the police it would be too late by the time they got here and the neighbors obviously won’t be able to help and my heart is beating and the boots march up another flight of stairs and everything is quiet. I lie back down and blood is ripping through my veins and I try to think of what the commotion was but it seems like it’s stopped and I don’t want to open my door.
Paranoia. I wake up and it’s past noon and I try and think of the morning and I don’t know if I had a nightmare or if everything I heard in the morning was real. I try and think and I piece everything together and a likely scenario is me, in my somewhat disoriented state from lack of sleep and perhaps the stiff drinks heard shouts but those could have been the neighbors saying hello to each other and the echo coming up the stairs, and the knocking may have been someone trying to get the portero or landlord or vice-versa and it was close to 7a.m. and people could have been up going to work early and the splashing sound was probably the portero mopping down the floors in the morning and he probably heard something that was my radio and stopped and leaned-in to hear and the light tapping was probably his necklace, the cross that he wears coming out from his shirt when he was leaning in and this all seems the most logical and I laugh about it now, but I think hearing a collection of all these crazy stories since I’ve been hear finally got to me and really I’m pretty comfortable in my surroundings and think Buenos Aires a relatively safe place, but still there are the stories.
The sun is shining brightly in through the windows and I pull up the blinds and open the windows and it’s warm and this is more like spring. I get a banana and peel it and pour a glass of milk and the milk here tastes different than back home but not bad, just different and I realize that at home I normally have soy milk in the mornings and it’s almost as if I completely forgot about soy milk and I wonder if my body misses it. The banana is good and is the same as we have in the US mainly because there are only a couple of Central American countries that supply bananas to this side of the hemisphere. I see the remote for the radio but then I look at the TV and realize that I haven’t turned it on since the first day I was here and I flip it on out of curiosity.
There’s a guy showing his bloody knee to news crews and he nods and shrugs and takes a deep drag of his cigarette and it cuts to shots of riot police nearby and flip and some local news and flip and more scenes of riots this time it says San Vicente below and that’s a province of Buenos Aires a couple hours away and the report says arrests are being made flip weather, gonna be hot flip, cartoons flip cartoons flip talk show flip cartoons flip more San Vicente coverage flip futbol highlights flip futbol players practicing and joking with each other flip futbol match flip something in the ocean, nature channel, flip Arrested Development! But not now flip made for TV movie flip some black and white film flip TNT and it’s Boiler Room subtitled flip soap opera flip something with before and after results for acne flip car racing footage flip E! with Leonardo DiCaprio giving an interview flip stained-glass windows with a sermon flip cooking channel looks good flip synchronized teenage dancing flip music videos flip music viedeos flip cooking show flip interview on FashionTV with Madonna flip two straight channels of CNN flip BBC World flip local news flip music videos flip-off.
I go back to my mini-fridge and take out the milk and three boxes of cereal from the pantry and mix and fix a bowl and spoon and crunching and dunking cereal in milk and spoon of just milk and seventeen spoonfuls and bowl in sink and sponge and liquid detergent and scrub-rinse-dry. While I’m drying my hands I stare at one of the boxes of cereal, on the cover of the granola one I bought are like seven Huge slivers of almonds crashing into this Elmer’s Glue creamy milky substance and all on one spoon and I think seven slivers! I’ve had half of this box dry and another quarter mixed into my bowls of cereal and I don’t think I’ve had one freakin slice or sliver or speck of almond! I pour out a handful into my palm and it’s basically all just puffed rice and some crunchy little things but No almonds. My California instincts kick-in and I think of lawsuit and front-page news and finally someone stood up to the big cereal-conglomerates and they’ve been addicting us for years with phony-box images and we’ve just taken it and there should at least be warning labels and at least an asterisk at the bottom of the image Most spoonfuls will not contain seven slivers of almonds. No actual almonds were used in the production of this granola. Some or all of the contents of this box may be inedible. Nursing or pregnant mothers should abstain from using our products. Children under six should avoid contact and keep a distance of no less than six feet at all times. If nausea, dizziness or rashes occur please discontinue use and consult a doctor immediately.
It’s Saturday and I’ve created a small list of to-do’s and it’s basically laundry, grocery shopping, haircut and read some of the book I just got, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Memoria de Mis Putas Tristes (Memories of My Melancholy Whores). Once completed it will be my first novel read entirely in Spanish and I’ve wanted to read this for some time so the great Argentine writers Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar must wait a little longer. I get out a large trash bag and stuff all my laundry in and this will be the first time I’ve done it and the leasing agent had told me there was a place just down the street on Calle Billinghurst and dramatic tango and down two flights and keys and left on Guemes and right on Billinghurst and past the kiosco on the corner and walk-in hello and woman approaches me and takes the bag from my hand and says when? I process everything and say today and she shakes her head and then rubs chin and say okay then at eight p.m. tonight? Eight it is and at that time I’ll be picking up my washed, dried, pressed and folded laundry and all for less than it costs me to do two loads in the U.S.
Laundry-check and now shopping and on the corner of Billinghurst is a Fruteria and Verduleria and all these guys sell is fruit and vegetables and I figure it has to be better than what I’m getting in the market. A car drives by and it’s playing the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s new song and there’s a line that goes “Cal-i-for-nia rest in peace” and I nod my head and think, yeah, just for now maybe, and a colectivo (bus) passes by and blows out a thick plume of black smoke and it rises and dissolves into the early-afternoon air and I look at the balconies above and some have potted plants and horns honk and people scatter by me and Hola que queres? The produce man is standing smiling and I look at feel some of the fruits and gaze at the prices per kilo and the peaches are small and ripe and look like they’ll be sweet and juicy and I haven’t had one in Argentina yet so two of those and oranges and he asks me how I plan to consume them, and I tell him for eating not juice and he nods and wraps around to this other bundle and there are bigger oranges and he asks how many and three and maybe a grapefruit as well and bananas and apples green and red, two medium avocados because I felt them and they’re soft and growing up in California it’s almost mandatory to consume as many as possible and three tomatoes because if there’s One ingredient my salads must have it’s them and lettuce, red and green leaf and onions to slice up into my omelets and a bunch of radishes for fun and to mix up my salads a bit and two cucumbers because I like those in my salads too or just to eat plain. Seemingly every-time this guy is picking perfectly ripe fruit and when I get a few of something he gives me the first couple ripe for consumption now and a few that will be in a couple days and the unspoken simple logic makes me smile and he takes the bags to the scale and weighs only doesn’t wait until the scale settles but just yanks the bags off before because he knows how much it will land on and it’s a more or less thing anyway and with a pen he makes some notations on a sheet of paper and says a number and I hand him a bill and he hands me change and smiles and pleasantries and yes see you in a few days and this place is on my corner!
Back to my place to drop-off, fridge and bags away and wash hands and lots of tango and back to Guemes and now right on Coronal Diez and left on Sante Fe and down to the front entrance of the Alto Palermo mall and inside there’s a salon and some girl from my classes asked me if I was really going to trust your hair to someone here? And yeah If they do I terrible job and really screw the thing up, which is unlikely, then I’ll just shave it. But I’m in the salon and sort of communicating that I want a cut and the woman is smiling and this is a top salon and very expensive for Buenos Aires but still about the same as the cuts I get back home or maybe less, just depends where and I wonder how it works here, do I get a smock and who washes my hair and do they even do that and the place is chaotic and hair dryers and going off and people yelling over them and all these lights and shears clipping away and nodding and I’m directed to wait in this area and I pick up a magazine and I’m about to open in and Paula greets me and she’s going to cut my hair I think and kisses on the cheek and I’m seated and I think that even men do the kiss on the cheek here and how would small-town homophobia deal with that in America and she says what do I want to do? I explain to her how I want my hair-cut, only I don’t know all the right specific things that I could effortlessly communicate in English, so I give perhaps the most vague, general instructions ever, something like um, yeah well maybe cut a little off the top and some in the back and maybe you can cut the sides a little and the front a little please, thanks. She smiles and we talk and asks me where I’m from and I tell her and she tells me something I’ve heard quite a bit, that I don’t have an American accent but that it’s not Porteno and she can’t place it but says it’s a mix of Spanish from different countries and I’m watching little dark-brown, blackish locks get snipped here and cut there and for whatever reason I notice that she has these really straight, white teeth and then she’s asking me to go sit in this chair and she’s going to rinse and I lie back and she’s rinsing and shampoo and massage and I tell her this is the best part and she laughs and then she asks me if I want Nutricion? Now, this is sort of a nice salon, but I think it’s ridiculous that’s she’s calling conditioner or acondicionador nutrition, but I guess it makes sense, I mean I guess it’s nutrition for your hair and I ask her to be safe what’s in it and she starts naming vitamins and says minerals and for all I know she’s about to toss a fruit-salad on my head and but she walks away and I’m laying with my head in this big bowl and she comes back and is holding this tinny-tiny clear bottle and she uncorks it and swirls it about under my nostrils as if it was a fine wine and this is sort of ridiculous for conditioner but I guess fun and I nod and she puts a couple drops in her hands and then slaps her palms together and starts to massage it in to my scalp and it does smell great and then rinse and dry and sit and she slaps some product in her hands and rubs it in my hair and styles it and it’s a total faux-hawk and I sort of did that for a bit last year but no, I’ll rub it out when I’m gone. I go to pay and the woman at the counter hands me the bill and the total is twice as much as I thought it would be and I look down and there’s two things on the bill and the first is corte and yeah a cut and then nutricion and that’s the same price as the cut and I roll my eyes and nod and slap my credit card on the table and pay and back to Paula for tip and kiss on cheek and out of the salon and out of the mall and on Avenida de Sante Fe.
I’m walking and my phone starts vibrating and I have a text and it’s Niki, this girl who just finished med-school at UMass and is going to start her residency as a surgeon in a few months and it says Sushi tonight n if so when? We’ve been talking during breaks at our X-men mini-campus and she’s in the level just below me and she told me about this sushi place that’s supposed to be among the best in Buenos Aires and I’ve been craving it since the day I got here so we’ve been saying we’ll go together for days and now I think we should do it tonight. I reply and say yes and a couple more texts and it’s settled we’ll meet at the restaurant at ten. I stop off at Ticketek which is basically like Ticketmaster back home and look at a list of upcoming concerts. One thing I miss about being in LA is going to all these great Indie-rock shows at small venues and just seeing incredible acts and I think there’s been a real resurgence in music in the past couple of years and at least in that scene there are a lot of good groups out there.
Flipping through I see information on Creamfields and it’s this big electronic music festival and a lot of people I know are going but I don’t care for that kind of music but there’s going to be at least eighty-thousand people there and every DJ from Paul Oakenfold to up and coming ones are going to be spinning in different tents and outdoors and basically it sounds like a big rave and I was on the bus with this kid from Nevada that takes classes in our mini-campus and he asked me if I was going and I said I don’t know and in this really slow stoner way he said dude, it’s gonna-be sick. Really really sick. And he nodded his head a few times kind of stared at nothing in front of him and then he said to no one in particular I hope there’s going to be like a lot of drugs and then he turned to me and I said there probably would be and he kind of cocked his head and I could tell he was carefully weighing how to properly get the next phrase out and perhaps something profound was to come and then after the pause I sure hope so. And he just sort of stared at me for a minute and I stared at him and then I turned away. There’s also the kid from Berkeley in my class and he told me to get tickets to the Bue Festival because there’s going to be a lot of great acts and Daft Punk and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and TV On the Radio and DJ Shadow and more only I’m most excited to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and he wants to see Daft Punk so everyday he asks me Yo, like did you get on those Daft Punk tickets or what? And I usually reply no, I haven’t gotten the Yeah Yeah Yeahs tickets and this pretty much goes on everyday. Looking at the catalogue I skip over to the Bue Festival and read the acts and it’s a two day-festival and all the groups I want to see are on the second day so I buy my ticket and now the next time I see Berkeley in class I can say Dude I got my ticket to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show.
Down Sante Fe and I walk into a supermarket and eggs and milk and pasta sauce and out and now grocery-check and I’m walking back only I decide on stopping into an heladeria and they seem to have endless artisan ice cream shops and I get a cone and menta granizada and super dulce de leche and she sticks a spoon in it and I take it out and lick it and ask for a taster spoon and she says no that’s the spoon to eat with and I say I want a smaller one and she looks at me like I’m crazy and then cautiously hands me a taster-spoon and I like to eat my ice-cream with a little taster to make it last longer and I sit and about thirteen-minutes of heaven ensue. The only thing that drives me crazy about these places, is that they are very regimented, and there’s no real “scoop” system, but rather a weight system and I like to usually get three different flavors back home, but here on the smallest sizes you get one flavor, and then the large ones two. And I always ask if I can get three flavors and no, only they say I can if I get the gigante size and they point to a bucket that may be used to hold gallons of ice cream or can double as a bucket used to hold whale-feed. I think of maliciously explaining to the young girl behind the counter that sometimes guys want different tastes, more than just the same old flavors but I think twice and I usually ask if I can “split” my second flavor amongst two different ones and what’s the difference anyway, I’m paying for the weight and it’s always no and I want to scream why can’t I have three flavors! So after much careful consideration and unending sleepless nights conjuring up a solution, and after diagrams and dimensions of scoops scribbled on scrap sheets in the dark of night I’ve decided to order my normal two flavors, and then I ask for a “taste” of the third, and when they hand me the taster spoon overflowing with two considerate bites of my third flavor, I smush it down on top of my cone and voila three flavors without the obese-o-meter bucket! Bitches.
At home I shower and shave and back on Avenida de Sante Fe I’m hailing a cab and I tell the driver Las Canitas and we’re off and I give an exact address and he asks where I’m from and we talk and he asks me how I like it and fine and then he says let’s go to a puteria and I think for a second and I know a fruteria is a place that sells fruit, and I know puta is defined as whore and what? I then for whatever reason remember in elementary school sitting in an assembly hall and the candidates for class president are giving speeches and they always started them off with Websters dictionary defines (add ludicrous words i.e. valor, precision, commitment, dedication etc.) as.. and then after I’ve totally zoned out they finish and I’ll make sure all the vending machines work, follow a few hands clapping and someone heckles something and then the dude gets up and yeah just like vote for me if you want I don’t really care and then he walks off and unruly raucous applause erupts and back to the cab and the driver is nodding his head in a trance si si vamos amigo, puteria, si vamos, ‘tan buenas and he’s trying to sell me on the whore house and no, thank you really for the offer, no whores tonight and he laughs and says oh, you’ll wait until later tonight? And yes that must be it and we’re in front of the restaurant and he asks me if I want to get his card to go to the puteria later, and thank you but no go please get your commission off some other passenger, chau-chau.
I hop into the sushi place and it’s dark and it’s like nothing I’ve seen yet in this city. There are women with jewels that glitter and shawls and eyes of privilege that shimmer mischievously in the candlelight. The crowd is young and hip and evidently rich. I look around to see if Niki is sitting amongst any of these people and I don’t see her yet and the host walks up to me and I tell him I’m looking for someone but she’s not here yet and can I see a menu and as he hands it to me out of the window I see a taxi pull up and she gets out and closes the door behind her and her long black hair is wrapped around and coming over on one side and she rushes into the restaurant and sees me when she comes in and I give her a peck on the cheek and she has a big smile on her face and we sit down.
As we sit I look around the room a bit and in the corner on a two-top I see Connecticut and Massachusetts and I get up and walk over and give them pecks and we say hi and they just finished oyster shooters and the sommelier walks over and shows the label of the wine they ordered and he uncorks it and pours a little in Connecticut’s glass and she sips and nods and says it’s good and asks me If I want to try it and sure and it’s a Pinot Grigio and light and sweet and fruity and perfect for sushi and I ask them which it is on the menu and they show me and we talk for a minute and I say I don’t want to be rude and go back to Niki. At the table I tell her about the wine and Niki says she thinks white wine goes better with sushi than anything else I like it so we order a bottle and some sparkling mineral water the waiter is off and when he’s back there’s a huge bowl packed down with ice and two large oysters resting atop and two lemon wedges and a bottle of Tabasco and he says compliments of the house and maybe every meal starts off like that or maybe if you get wine. Anyways I squeeze the lemon and drop-on some hot sauce, the only one available in the city if any at all and I swallow down my oyster and Niki hers and the waiter is back and explains to us that they don’t have red-tuna, or tuna of any kind for that matter because it’s not a local fish and if you ever find it in Buenos Aires, which will be rare, it’s imported and not fresh. So no tuna for our sushi and he recommends we get an assorted platter with all the best rolls but they’re all made with salmon and I want some variety so we get one with salmon and whitefish and when it comes it’s huge but all the rolls are very simple and there’s a little ball of wasabi fit for one piece and three little slivers of ginger and I want one-hundred times more of each and I ask for a hot sauce because they don’t offer spicy rolls and all they have is Tabasco and I guess that’ll have to do.
Niki and I talk about sushi and I say I think LA has the best sushi outside of Tokyo, and it may even be better because all the top sushi chefs come and open restaurants in LA and have celebrity backers investing millions and they have all these adventurous fusion rolls that aren’t necessarily traditional but they’re incredible and she says Boston has great sushi but she’ll accept that LA has better sushi if I accept that New England has better seafood and I don’t resist and an accord of sorts has been reached and food-ambassador’s on both coasts can celebrate. During dinner I notice she’s wearing a ring and I’m not sure so I ask her to hold up her left hand and yup! And I ask her why she has a ring on her ring-finger and she says I thought you knew. Um, knew what? Wait, I just assumed you knew I was engaged. Uh, how would I just know? She shrugs her shoulders and gets all red and tries to avoid talking about it and I let it go but come back to it after because it’s kind of a Big deal in someone’s life and might be beneficial to know and she explains that she’s been going out with the same guy for the last eleven years save for a one-year separation and yeah that’s the story. It was weird, because all of the sudden, with that whole stigma of what is this, and now it’s clearly not a date I could really ease up and then we started talking and I think I enjoyed myself even more without having any pressure there and after dinner we indulged in this rich chocolate mousse and I got an espresso and we were both in a pretty good mood and talked and ended up being the very last table in the place and finally when the staff had outnumbered the clientele (us) three to one, we figured it was time to leave and we paid and it was a bit breezy outside and Las Canitas was a decent walk for both of us home but we decided to do it and thirty minutes later we were in front of her door and I gave her a kiss on the cheek good-night and walked in the direction of my flat.
Walking up Scalibrini Ortiz to Sante Fe I realized that I’ve been walking with my head down more lately and that’s perhaps because I’ve already seen what’s up and I know what the buildings look like and even if not exactly how each individual one is I have a mental image of the buildings in general and I can kind of fill in what’s above me without even looking up and the inevitable is happening as I’m settling into my new environment. Looking down I notice that I’m walking on cobblestone streets but then it quickly switches over to asphalt and now I’m on the sidewalk and it’s concrete and then tile and then a different checkered tile and now a checkered pattern and I look down at my Pumas and with each step down I wonder how many different surfaces I’ve walked on and how many different patterns and it’s always like when I walk into someone’s apartment or house I like to look up at the ceiling because that gives you a different perspective, you can see how much space there is and the layout without getting distracted by all the furniture and decoration and clutter. Checkered tile back to smooth marble-like sidewalk now and concrete is coming up and soon Coronel Diaz and Guemes and keys and two flights of stairs and keys and shoes off and socks off and belt off and hang and shirt-off and jeans off and tee-shirt on and bathroom and teeth and glass of water and lay down and I’m calm, my mind goes clear.
I’m in my apartment only it’s the apartment I grew-up in, that my family hasn’t lived in for years. I’m in the kitchen with my brother and it’s between five and eight in the morning and neither of us has slept. He just made pasta and we’re talking and I open the fridge and munch on things and close the fridge and open it again to pull something else out to snack on and then we’re in the living room and he sees this lizard or the lizard is more like an iguana its huge! And I think if I smash it, it would probably explode like a bomb and it crawls quickly into this vase and here’s my chance so I put a magazine on top of the vase and my brother is telling me to get it out of here and I carry it to my room only there is a balcony and it’s open and facing the alley and it’s raining outside and there’s a screen with a little hole in it and my room never had a balcony and certainly not with a screen and a hole in the screen and I walk up to the hole and remove the magazine-lid off the vase and turn it upside down through the hole in one fast-swoop motion and the thing doesn’t come out so I shake it a bit and I think it comes out this time and I flip the vase back towards myself to check and lean-in and there is nothing there and it’s raining outside and I think the huge lizard is running around somewhere in the alley through puddles and behind these really green plants.
I open my eyes and my throat is dry. Buenos Aires. What time is it? I reach over and it’s just shy of six a.m. and I haven’t been asleep for two hours yet but it’s hot and I feel like I’m suffocating and I walk into the bathroom and splash water on my face and pee and in the kitchen drink from a bottle of water I bought earlier and I pull out a stool so I can stand on it and fiddle with the air conditioning unit that’s near the high-ceiling and it whistles and rumbles and hums to life and I crawl back into bed and pull off the comforter. I toss and turn and my forehead is damp and I get out of bed and touch the window and it’s slightly warm and go back in bed.
I’m lying down in a chaise-lounge chair and there are two right next to me only I can’t make out my neighbors lying in them but there faces are blurry and irrelevant I guess but they see what I see and turn their head when I turn my head and I’m in this hotel only the hotel doesn’t exist because it’s a mélange of three relatively famous hotels and I know some features are from some hotels only I can’t tell which from which and this famous New York rapper comes in and he’s the one that dated the Puerto Rican girl and gave her the famous three letter name that she uses still when she sings and he’s wearing this poofy-fur coat and there’s three other rappers behind him and one of them has a tattoo on his neck and he’s the one who produces music but started to sing more now and teams up with the Asian guy for their group and the three behind the main one all wear fur coats but are distinctly different in that they have white poofy-rings around the neckline and they’re all wearing sunglasses and there’s this other rapper laying on a chaise saying how he’s better than all of them and rapping only he has a blond beard and mustache and his body is not black and defined but red and defined and he’s not wearing a shirt and they see each other and the three walk over by this indoor pool with a skylight but it’s overcast outside, and they walk over to the red-blond one and they all greet each other and then this French woman with a coat tightly wrapped and hair up in a bun and two leashes with two dogs walks over to my chaise and looks down at me and one of her dogs puts it’s paw on me only it’s nail is puncturing my skin at the hip and I want to scream but am in pain and I can’t and the dog is white and checkered-black and just sort of smiling over me and finally I scream out Madame! And then almost instantaneously she’s gone, vanished and then there’s a mosquito and it’s pierced my skin and is sucking away only it’s little needle that sucks up the blood is lodged in my pelvis bone at the hip and I wince and kill the mosquito but the needle is still lodged in and there’s a faint wail in the room and I look around open! my eyes and my alarm is going off and the room is freezing-cold and it’s near eleven a.m.
posted by Matt In The Hat | 3:32 AM
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