The City Beckons

Los Angeles-

A seventeen year-old girl with leggings and boots and a little skirt over them and bug-eyed glasses yells out “Hey! Valet, park it over there, hel-lo, can you even understand me? Fuck.” The Mexican Valet has the spotless windows of the gleaming new Range-Rover up and can’t hear the high-schooler preaching a learned annoyance, a cool weariness of life months before she can legally be recognized as an adult. The valet sees her standing stupidly and barking at him outside the organic coffee and tea house. Both are annoyed.

I meet a friend at a Macrobiotic café and have the bento-box. Quinoa, lentils, salmon, Chinese broccoli, curried cauliflower and brown-rice sushi-rolls.

I’m in my car spiraling up an eight story parking garage cursing each level I ascend as the red electronic read out suggests there are no spaces to be had, I keep ascending and cursing.

I’m trying to make a left turn, I’m fifteen cars back in the left-turn only, the light goes yellow, traffic doesn’t let up, now red and three more cars whiz by, two cars from my lane make a left against the red. Thank God. Thirteen to go.

It’s December, it’s 86 degrees. There’s nothing romantic about 86 in December.

My short time back comes to me in wisps, images that have ingrained themselves irrelevantly, but I now feel more strongly about the city than ever. I love my independent coffee-houses, the ethnic food, my friends and family. I hate the sprawl. I hate the traffic. All sentiments are renewed with new vigor.

--Buenos Aires--

My flight from L.A. to D.C. was uneventful as the first half was taken in eye-patch slumber, and the second was mired in delicate concentration and being a good passenger (mostly noting exits, 2 in the front, 2 in the back, 2 over-wing(slide self-inflates)).

Total duration being observant passenger: 11 seconds.

Reviewing safety manual: 4 seconds (only cover).

Total time watching in-flight entertainment, looking passenger-like, taxing flight attendants for water, extra pretzels (there’s like 7 mini’s per bag): 2hours (approx.)

Upon landing in D.C. it was twenty-four degrees and walking out onto the jet-way was mildly traumatic. I checked the departure board to confirm my gate/time and it was C14 the same as the last time. Either by nature and higher intuition, or by nonsensical obligatory reasoning, after spending over five hours flying from California to Washington and after a brief survey of the food-court options, I choose The California Tortilla. Three hours to pass in the airport and ten more on another flight and marvelous city this, Buenos Aires.

It’s hotter than two months ago. The humidity permeates life, dress and attitude. Flip-flop laden men frolic aimlessly about distracted by women in flowing white skirts that lackadaisically stroll the avenues with some form of scant mended-cloth generally affixed above the waist, worn as if clothing was a barely tolerable nuisance. I’ve developed a theory that the city may at any moment sporadically burst into a Romanesque orgy. I’ve taken to absorbing my neighborhood and new flat (pics above) in quite possibly the hippest quarter the world has ever seen, New York, Paris, London all included. I keep company with two great friends and frequenting cafés, foreign films, live jazz and the Museo MALBA and a course on literature (tho the first was mediocre) have kept me busy.

I leave you with some recent praise from my first shower (shave and brushing teeth included), after spending almost a day in travel on planes and in airports, and arriving in steaming Buenos Aires.

Praise for my 1st Shower:

“One of the year’s ten best!” -mostly left-side of brain.

“A monumental feat in showering” -Brain, central-ish area.

“I tingled from head to toe” -Matthew

“One of those rare showers that touches the soul (and skin)” -Jen Ewin Lee-Faux, Shower magazine.

“It was extra ordinary. You might even say, extraordinary” -anonymous