Matt In The Hat

don't stop can't stop won't stop

2009-08-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

Don’t stop can’t stop won’t stop. An adrenaline junkie, adventure, swapping continents with regularity, on the move, ex-pat. I take the scrunched up napkin out of my pocket and unfold it. Its one of those recycled napkins, there’s stuff in it, bits of things, specks of their former lives spliced and minced and combined and now this grayish thing holds the cursive scribble that I’ve read over and over tonight:

Sofie Sørensen
-leaving for
Marokko the 20th of July
from Rådhuspladsen CPH :)

A few things stand out to me, how Sofie spelled Morocco the Danish way, Marokko, CPH, the acronym for Copenhagen, this glorious city of no frills I’ve called home for much of the past year, the smiley face- what does it mean? What do smileys mean these days anyways?

It was a few months ago- call it two, a rainy Danish spring night, I was sitting on the upper level of a café I frequent here, a not for profit one, currently supporting an ashram in India. That’s all good but I like the ambience of the place. Sofie was closing up the café. I was on the typer, probably feigning writing but likely checking facebook messages while downing my third cup of coffee. She wiped my table and smiled. I made some mindless comment, maybe about the rain or saying something like “its that time” indicating closing time or whatever. She takes a moment, she gives me this, a smile, some exclusive attention. She asks me something what I don’t remember. But we get around to something she’s very excited about. A plan. She gives me a vague notion of some great adventure about to unfold, when she’s on her summer holiday which seems ages away. I tell her it sounds crazy, but exciting nonetheless. Fact is, I live for things like what she’s proposing. Come, she says. I smile, there’s an electric moment where I see the possibility, even so it’s ages away and I say who knows.

Ages later- I walk into the café. I see Bea, a good friend who volunteers at the place a couple times a month. I met her at a bar job I had in the city, we clicked, I love her openness and willful charge to find the hip and happening, the irregular and alternative, and she’s a genuine sweetheart. We greet, she’s in conversation with a girl next to her, there are a few others sprawled on chairs and couches around, people sipping beers or tea, I greet I acknowledge, I take a seat next to Claude, who at present is rolling a cigarette. Claude is French. Claude also works in the café. Claude is almost mock-stereotypically wearing a beret, this is true, a black and white checkered scarf wrapped loosely around his neck, and a red tee with “CCCP” emblazoned on it, the Russian Acronym for “USSR”. We give each other a hug- “take a fucking seat man” he says in a heavy French accent. We catch up, he takes swigs of his beer, we relate stories. Claude has stories. He claims to have been an exhibitionist at age 5. He claims to have left the communist party at 17, though a poster of Lenin (among others) still hangs in his room. I share conversation with Bea and Claude and the others, people come and go around me, switch places on the couch, go outside for cigarettes and come back, etc. Then she comes in. I see Sofie. We both smile. I know little of the girl, conversations here and there, there was a night we all went out, Me, Bea, Claude, Sofie and some others to see some jazz. Horns wailing, thick blue smoke, a nice ale, some whisky some coke over ice. We talked some that night and some in bits after. But there is something to her. She’s from the Danish countryside, and maybe that’s it and maybe that has nothing to do with it. There’s something in her eyes, they’re warm and calm, they sparkle, they say much when Sofie doesn’t. Claude gets up to get another beer, I get up to give Sofie a little kiss on the cheek. She sits.

“What have you been up to?” I ask.
“I’m on holiday,” she says smiling. “Few days now.” I nod. “How was America?” she asks me, referring to a trip I just made back home, three weeks, New York, L.A., Pittsburgh.
“Amazing,” I say. “Really nice to see family, friends.” She smiles. “And it’s the little things you miss, the things you’re used to, grew up with,” I add. “Like this diner I went to, they automatically bring you tap water when you sit down, and they have ten kinds of hot sauce, and when I asked for barbecue sauce they brought me a bowl of the stuff and they don’t charge you for it,” I say rather excitedly. Sofie laughs and nods in understanding.
“Its funny what you appreciate.”
“Yeah!” I say. We sit for a moment and I ask, “so what are you going to do on your holiday?”
“I’m going to Morocco,” she says. Suddenly I remember everything. She had told of wanting to go there. I had been before, a marvel that trip was. I was a student studying in the south of Spain. A far cry from anything I had expected. Morocco to me was black and white, Humphrey Bogart telling Sam to play it again, Morocco was unoccupied France, Morocco was Casablanca. Morocco, was not Casablanca, but a very special place the same. It was exotic and had its charms. I looked back to Sofie.
“Yeah! Yeah that’s right, you told me about it, a while ago I remember.” There’s a momentary blank expression on her face, then thankfully her face lights up. Funny how we worry about things like that, it legitmates them, makes them real for us, two people can confirm, it happened, it was mutual, reassurance, comfort. “There was a thing to it, right? Something about it.” That big smile nods back.
“We’re hitchhiking the whole way to Morocco,” she says.
“That’s right! That’s it,” I say. I think about it, the logical course, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain, ferry to Tangiers.
“We leave the 20th of July and have a return ticket home the 5th of August from Marrakesh,” she says. Just over two weeks, a hell of an itinerary. Five countries, varied weather, much travel, erratic sleeping arrangements, random occurrences, countryside, food on the go, I picture standing in the rain trying to hail down a truck or car or anything on wheels, maybe for hours, maybe something comes but what if nothing? All those rides there’s bound to be a night if not three sleeping out in the middle of nowhere. The packing would have to be light but precise. Only what you need, basics. I see the thing unfolding.
‘There’s four of us Danish girls,” she says. “Well me and my friend, and two others, we’re teams, competing”
“A race?”
“Exactly,” she says.
“You should bet something, or the winner should get something.”
“Yeah we’re deciding that, maybe a treat once we’re in Morocco, we’re not sure.”
“Well it sounds incredible.”
“You are welcome, we’d love another.”
“Might be tough,” I explain, “I’m maybe starting a job tomorrow, I mean I have a meeting anyways to see, and I’m pretty broke.” I get nods of understanding.
“We’re going to try to do it cheap as possible.” I nod. I tell Sofie I’ll have to get her Facebook name, that there’s little chance but… I talk the next couple hours away with Bea and Claude, it’s near 2a.m., I’ve got to get up early for this meeting, a sort of interview and tryout for this restaurant, the manager called me on the phone and the details were vague but I was told to wear nice clothing. I look over to Sofie, I tell her I’m leaving, make a little scribble motion with my hand, she smiles and jumps up, walks past, comes back a couple moments later, I’m in conversation with a guy about a new film out, she hands me a napkin with something scribbled on it, I glance at it, see her name at the top, nod to her, fold the thing, smush it into my pocket. I say goodbye, I walk out, earlier there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, just that late Danish sun setting, now I find myself in a downpour. I go back in momentarily, ask for a trash bag, the rain doesn’t seem to let any, I put on the bag, puncture a hole for my face, plod through already formed puddles, head for the main square, the night buses are running, as I get there I see I just miss my bus, I stand in the rain, the pattering of the rain magnified in that bag, I wait, I wait, the rain softens enough for me to take the bag off. Screw it, I’ll walk. I want to think anyways.

Don’t stop. I’ve been on an extraordinary journey, a wondrous collage of images come to me, five continents, faces, emotions, I’m young, I’m able. I’ll only be twenty-seven once I say. A couple months before my twenty-fifth, my bags were packed for Buenos Aires. You can only be twenty-four and go to Argentina once, I said. A year and a half later it was a similar situation, London with a vague notion of spending time in Spain. Now here, Copenhagen.

Can’t stop. It comes to me that everything I’ve embarked on was a reaction to the way I saw my life going. Steady job, decent pay, an even life, the long steady climb, settling for things, comfort, a great prospect for most. But I’ve a terribly restless soul, a needy greedy want. It claws at me regularly, at night, just a scratch. I can never see that claw, can’t face it, fight it. I just see the scratches that let me know its there, its within me.

Halfway through my walk the rain almost stops completely. Just the faintest drizzle remains. I take the bag off, it’s quite wet, I give it a good shake, crunch it up in my hand and carry it with me should the sky have some more surprises in store. I cross a bridge and look out at Islands Brygge, at the water glimmering in the moonlight. I’m thousands of miles away from home(or am I home?), I’m happy, I’m living a life on my own terms, doing what feels right. I continue walking and before I know it I’m in front of my flat in Amager. I wrestle my hand into my pocket and fetch out the keys, fiddle with the front door lock, open it, walk up a small flight of stairs to my shared flat, wipe my feet, open the door, come into my room, place my things down, sit on my bed, I take off my shoes, and fall back on my bed. My mind races. Won’t stop.

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Así es y Así son, los Iquiqueños

2007-10-18T18:11:00.000-07:00

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Well? How do you find it? Iquique, the city? How does it seem to you? It’s uh- I’m fumbling for words. And I don’t fumble for words. But what? I’ve only been here a matter of hours, but already I can tell, no rambling diatribes, no sea-scrolls filled for the ages with the emotion like a Buenos Aires or Paris, easy, a New York, or Los Angeles which I bitterly defend. He answers for me. It’s particular. Particular, no? I can’t think of a more accurate description having ever been used for any old place, ever on this earth, or any planet recognized or acknowledged. Particular.

I met Marcelo in the South of Brasil, in Florianópolis. And now I was here in Chile, his country, his city. After a lunch at the Mercado Centenario of salad and shellfish in a seafood broth and fish and mashed potatoes I put a call in to his office. The architects were working in a temporary office in a wing of the city hospital while their new ones were being remodeled. After hopping a bus to the hospital and asking several people in different wings, I found him. He introduced me to everyone and before I knew it we were all in a car driving to the site of their new offices to inspect everything. People minded the paint job and beams and stairs, there was a lot of walking in and out of rooms and comments and agreements and nodding. When do you guys move in? I asked wanting to participate. A month if everything goes well. There was nodding and arm-folding and examining. Before long we bid farewell to the coworkers and were at the clinic where Marcelo has just designed the new wing, which is all but complete, a few last touches, one week maybe. We walked along the boardwalk back to his place. We passed a pack of winos and a group of wild dogs and looking at their eyes I came to realize them as similar beings.

At his place we had some cereal and milk splashed on and he told me about his weekend trip to Arica, how he liked it, met a girl who he felt understood him, how maybe he’d move there but maybe in time. It was interesting to me to see how he lived, to learn more about his life in Iquique. For instance at work I saw a dedicated professional, successful and ambitious. On the walk home he ran into surfer friends and his connection with this life became obvious. At his place he showed me the view on the balcony and we went across the way to see “El Flaco”, his friend who stayed at his apartment when he was in Brasil, and was able to get the very apartment next door. He’s a dentist and in the Air Force. At his place the two chewed up a half hour talking about their weekends until their lawyer friend showed up with the beer, and we went back to Marcelo’s. Slowly people just started showing up. More beer was poured, wine was brought and opened, more people showed up, a couple left, cigarettes were smoked, joints rolled, lit, passed, conversation flowed light with the wine.

I became hungry and Marcelo’s fridge was vacant, I ate a few offerings with zeal, prunes in desperation, two ripe kiwis, before I knew it a small group of us were off to El Wagon in Centro, for dinner and more wine. I ordered a mixed seafood platter, Marcelo and Alvaro a cazuela de jaiba, the lawyer shellfish and ceviche and potato salad. There were three others, René, Ezequiel, and Christian. Introductions were made, crude jokes mixed with sentimental musings. The place was first-rate, not cheap by American standards, everyone seated privileged. Parking the car outside Alvaro had to give a few coins to the bums who in turn “watch over” the car, and a few cigarettes for good-nature. You’d think money would be enough, he said.

When the plates where cleared and bottles empty we paid the check, arrangements were made to move the festivities to Oxigeno, a posh bar. The place was half-empty, it was a Tuesday night, but we sat and ordered drinks the same. A girl Marcelo knew greeted us and in her presence crude jokes were made and she was off, as was Marcelo. When he came back he spoke his mind, and a fuss was made. Marcelo looked tired, he had barely slept the last few days, it had been one long party. He arranged for Ezequiel to see me home, said to call him and we said good-night. He and the girl were off. I was tired, I had arrived that morning but not to insult anyone I kept up conversation while another round of drinks were ordered. At some point, lucky for me as I consciously had to keep my eyes open, the group decided to call it a night on account of work in a few short hours. How? I’m a decade or more younger than these guys on average, and I’d be unable to function.

Everyone said goodnight, but not before a little fuss was made that Marcelo had said he didn’t have a good time with those guys, and what disrespect, and what? How long has he known us? Two years? And the girl? The Mina? Two months? There’s a code. It’s not written. No writing! In fact- unwritten. No words I tell you! A code. Are you getting this? Yes. You are? Good. It’s a code! No words! Understood. Or it could be- an unwritten code, that’s understood between friends. You follow?

Ezequiel drove me home. He drove slow, maybe to hang on to the night, maybe because he wanted to hide how much he drank and if he drove faster it would show. He pointed out historical buildings, told me when he moved, how life was at a slower pace, he said things pensively, with weight that can only be achieved after twenty-waking hours. We arrived at my residencial. It’s not right you know? He couldn’t be back to this. There’s a code, he said with an index finger confirming the code’s existence, possibly lodged somewhere in the fabric of the car’s roof, or invisibly etched in the windshield. You know there are no words to this code. I gazed out wondering if I would still be in the car when it was light out. As if the bored, mischievous cats looking on at the car from wood-paned windows would view us in time-lapse, with people strolling past and cars, specters rushing by, the sky going from black to increasingly light shades of blue.

Hey! I’ll give you my number. Listen I work off the plaza, if you want to go to lunch, call this number. It doesn’t matter when. Or for anything you need. Understand? I took the slip of paper. Lunch! Or anything, eh? Yeah? Yeah. We mutually commented on the pleasure it had been, we’ll see each other, hey Chile and Perú tomorrow night World Cup qualifier, eh? Understand? It’s gonna be Perú, get it? And Chile? Yeah? In the lobby of the residencial I asked for the key to room number ten, I walked down the long corridor, fiddled with the key and knob, chucked my shoes in the corner of the room, ripped the covers exposing a fresh, naked bed, and plowed in. There’s a code, you get it? Understand? Yeah? Faces scrolled through my head, not thirty-seconds elapsed and I was in a deep, profound sleep.

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Time Yet and Time Still

2007-10-10T12:52:00.000-07:00

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I think I shall like to grow old,
I’ll be good, when I’m old
But there’s time yet and time still.
I suppose I don’t have much choice, anyway.
Being young suits me fine, I quite enjoy it.

My Dad is in his seventies
And he’s enjoying being young
As are my brother and sister in their thirties.
Mom’s in her young-late fifties.
We’re just a young family, I guess.

I’ve near mastered time
Rare is the occasion when I’m bored
I can’t even remember the last.
Maybe the ways in which I spend my time,
Will be viewed as more legitimate, albeit the same,
When I’m older.
My humor and wit, more relevant,
As I’ve earned them through the years.

But things are far too good now,
Here in this moment, every moment,
To think to far ahead, into a personal future,
The years are inevitable.
Time is passing, know that it is so
Don’t fret, rather celebrate, it’s passing.
How many great tears have yet to fall?
Smiles, and how much laughter remains?
There’s time yet, time still.

There are moons to pass, suns to come
Rain to fall, snow to play in
Leaves and trees and drought.
There is fruit to be picked, vegetables to be chopped,
What colors have you not seen?
What sounds have deceived you thus far?
Mind the textures, have you awareness of them all?
There’s coffee to sip, tea to brew
Candles to burn, fragrances and aromas lingering, unknown
Landscapes to be discovered,
Innumerable waves to crash, Seas to rise
Motion and harmony,
There’s time yet and time still.

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A Tuesday Hike Trek Tramp, Tafí

2007-10-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

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I’m in Tafí del Valle, a pueblo in foothills of the Tucumán province, Northern Argentina. I set out for my mini-hike, after filling my water bottle and eating a couple of bananas and tangerines that I pick up at a fruit stand and use a handful of the water to wash my hands after peeling the tangerines. I look around, the air is dry and the landscape barren. Immediately hearing gravel under my feet is liberating, as if there is nothing better in the world I could be doing. The valley slopes below the higher I ascend, some trees and casitas scattered about. Half-way up I take a leak, all the more alleviating with miles of open space in front of me, all the way to the mountains in the great distance, dark peaks of the sacred Andes protruding into the cloudless-blue above.

At the top I lay down and experience a novel sensation, above me is only sky. Sky, sky, sky and nothing else in the periphery of my vision. No buildings or trees, mountains or people. Just a light caressing breeze, the warm sun shining down on me, and blue. I close my eyes and pleasant thoughts drift. When I open my eyes some minutes later I perch up and the great gaping valley greets me. The valley feels vacant, there is a great absence of noise. Then, I pick up on some. The rustling of brush, the faint crow of a mighty rooster, what may be a propeller-plane, invisible, far-off somewhere. I decide to add to my own soundtrack and persist with the crunching gravel beneath me, the water slapping against the inside of the bottle, now dusty from the dirt I’ve kicked up. I walk around the mini-cordónes, a cactus native to the region, some aspire immodestly and reach fifteen feet in height.

I begin descending with the glorious valley encompassing the whole of my vision. I look for a way down the backside, it’s steep and there’s no defined trail. I spot some dried-up horse dung and figure if they could make it down I’ll be alright. My foot-holds give way a couple of times causing me to slide, but I come out fine, a few scratches from the brush on my shins. A hare races past, hopping in a hurry. There’s a lot of loose stones, quartz and what I think is limestone. At the base there’s a carcass. A horse picked clean to the bone. Two hoofs remain, another leg is twenty feet away, hide and bone. Walking towards the creek I spot the fourth hoof. If I follow the water I should be back in town soon. I pass a farm with chickens and a lamb, cows and a dog, pigs in a blanket. No wait, actually they’re in mud.

In town I buy up some vegetables and herbs, pasta, tomato paste, three eggs, and I’m going to cook up a big meal and eat it on the thematically-rustic rooftop terrace, and afterwards I’ll buy a slice of cake from next door and boil up some spiced black tea and start my new book. The tea I’m informed, bless the boardroom brainstorm that went down in Oregon, is “In the style of the hill-dwellers of the Himalayas”. When the sun’s all down I’ll head for my room and light my travel candle and think about the day, if I get restless maybe I’ll go for a walk in the town.

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Stock at the Quarter

2007-09-25T00:19:00.001-07:00

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Stock at the Quarter

A Quarter-century old and wild,

To compose verse, to fuck, and wander.

I’m not sure

Of the order.

For ale, for vino, and rum,

Or nothing at all,

Possibly,

In that order.

To talk my head off,

Or say nothing at all, To absorb and soak,

Learning

Every second

Or teaching

Every minute.

Good for food, Of that I’m sure.

Give me music, Give me my friends.

Let me love my family

More than all.

Stay awhile, let’s talk, drink tea.

Give me every minute of yourself

For two days,

Leave me be

For three.

Give me coffee and the papers,

A good city

In which to roam-free,

Or abundant nature,

In which I can freely roam.

Call me good friend or brother,

Or don’t call upon me at all.

Give me books to read,

May they never end,

Or I shall as well.

Laugh with me and smile,

You owe it to yourself,

We

Deserve it.

Hug often, embrace, kiss,

Your family,

Friends

Or lover.

There is nothing greater.

Doing good

Is not

For those who can.

Everyone

Can,

Should

Often.

Who

Have you helped?

Today?

This week?

What

Shall you do?

For your own accord?

By your own volition?

Have you satisfaction in life?

We are all equally

Entitled.

Be sure

Of yours,

Help others

Get theirs.

Tell people

They’re important,

They mean something to you,

There is nothing greater.

Travel, know people and cultures,

All

Are beautiful,

Have much

To offer.

Read

To feed your soul,

To laugh,

To learn.

Find your inner-poet,

If only

For yourself,

To express the beauty

Seeded

Flourishing

Within you,

All about you,

You need not look far,

Nor think much,

It is there, I assure you dear friend.

Embrace

The pleasures in life,

As much

As you can bear,

For they are infinite.

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Ode to BsAs

2007-09-24T23:54:00.000-07:00

Ode to BsAs

Spires in mist, the boulevards of grace,

As good as ever, better than ever, never before so great,

Progression is perpetual.

Blood shed, babies born,

We take growth from the stain.

People fall,

Or persevere,

Death and art,

Progression is perpetual.

The city

Always grows,

With it’s history.

We are for nothing,

If not for this, foremost.

Incessantly,

The city

Flickers, moves, breathes, ever-expanding.

Cafés and parks,

Are not permanent.

Buildings are significant,

But

Will

Go.

Growth and history

Are forever,

Progression is perpetual.

Not

For the weak,

Not

For the irresolute,

Is this city.

For

The passionate,

For

Those that are aware,

Your home

Is here.

Not

For the fickle,

Be a true judge upon yourself,

The beauty

And glory,

The pomp

And misery,

All reside here,

Are to be taken

As one.

Always bear in mind,

Progression is perpetual.

Floss and Errands

2007-09-15T15:01:00.000-07:00

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I’ve been reading the Argentine papers in the morning with my coffee at this hostel, or rather, when I wake up which isn’t always in the morning (nor always in the first couple p.m. hours, tho I’ve been good lately, mostly motivated by the breakfast selection here). Today I was reading Clarín, a Buenos Aires daily that I quite like when the T.V. was on in the background, Dr.90210 to be specific, and this girl on the show says “I’m really excited because I’m gonna have facial procedures done,” then, “on my face.”

I don’t mind it, prefer it, possibly, definitely, having something on in the background but not this. I also want to go to the internet café and check email and messages and figure I should get up to speed on what’s going on back home. On the Yahoo! homepage the top headline reads Keep Him From Straying- this advice will help your man want to stay faithful to you >> 5 tips. Then below:
-Are you being too clingy?
-Flirting vs. Cheating
-7 cool midnight dates
This, I swear is what greets you today on Yahoo! This is at least Cosmo-ish, yesterday the top headline was Tommy Lee apologizes to MTV and Alicia Keys for brawl, but no kind words for Kid Rock, who he refers to(sadly I read the article) as “Kid Pebble”. The Spanish version of Yahoo! featured Brtiney Spears saying during her performance she looked like a pig, or a hog, or perhaps a boar, saying she looked like a boar, that one was in Spanish and I had to look up that word.

This English guy just walked into the internet café and likely thinking himself a multi-lingual savant, asked the woman at the desk “es posible for me to download some stuff?” and sassily doing this neck and shoulder thing she said “Que!?” and confidently he amended “can yo download from the In-Ter-Net?” Unwisely, I translated, ending what surely would have been a delicious succession.

Today, I actually have a frighteningly-long list of things to do. Usually my agenda, and I actually keep one on the calendar function on my cell phone, has “Read” which follows my preliminary alarm that, as it is set to wake me up, actually is alarming. That one says “Up n’ Out!” although the last time I can actually remember hearing that was the last time I was in this glorious city, some three months ago.

So today’s list reads “Floss, Pens, Read (a staple), Anne Oli, United, Phrases”. “Pens” refers to the three pens I need to buy ink for, two G2’s, one blue and one black, uni-ball Signo’s, and one Pentel EnerGel metal-tip, black, all of which are 0.7mm. There’s a stationery store on Avenida Sante Fe which I frequent, but they were out of the refills last time. Checking out stationery stores is one of the first things I do in a new city, and one of my favorite things to do. “Read” is self-explanatory. “Anne Oli” refers to two Belgian friends that I have, who I have to give recommendations to regarding some of my favorite New York spots, most of which will probably be places to eat, including my favorite bakery and such, neighborhoods and museums. “United” (family members please skip ahead directly to the next line) refers to the airline, which I have to call to push my ticket back, yet again. “Phrases” refers to phrases that I thought of last night while overly-caffeinated, lying on the top-bunk of a bed at the hostel in darkness and trying to sleep. I plan to use these in public, surrounded by English speakers, at some point today, possibly in a café where I know there will be some. These include: “I think my hamster, Jean-Michelle(said in an overly-articulated French accent), has cancer. I took Jean to the Vet for reconstructive surgery on a torn ligament, which by the way, occurred on that damn wheel, and, they found a lump. They’re giving him a couple years to live.” I’m also hoping to use “I think I’m gonna try abstinence. At least for the next, few hours, you know?”

“Floss” actually refers to a major dilemma. I actually have to go back to a pharmacy because that’s where they sell dental-floss here. I ran out a couple days ago and I tried to buy some yesterday, but it was too daunting. I have now come to really understand why rappers say, “flossin’ ain’t easy”. You tellin’ me. There’s the “Farmacity” generic brand, that comes with 25meters of dental floss and is a good deal I guess. There’s also the 50meter length, there’s a name brand which we’ll just say rhymes with “pole-gate” and contains two boxes, each 50meters long, so 100meters in total, and is way more expensive, but what I have normally used, and then the most expensive, the same name brand, the “pole-gate” has another version which we’ll call “pole-gate eight-ball”, which makes me think of a dodgy, sketchy strip-club, but is actually everything you would ever want in floss. It includes, in gleaming-holographic letters, new “floss-technology”. Now, I feel I should give my teeth the best, but I can be cheap with certain things, and isn’t dental-floss just fancy thread to stick between your teeth? But the name “Farmacity”, thoroughly depresses me. I hate anything that uses the words city, world, or universe in it. Names like computer-world, electro-universe, and salad-city, are supposed to entice you, signifying endless options of that particular thing, like how many more options can you have than a whole city of salads? Or a universe of electronics, that’s hard to top. For whatever reason these names just make me think of the 80’s and are just plain depressing. So faced with cheap (brain says good) “Farmacity” brand (power-down noises), “pole-gate” (sounds like political scandal, abort-abort), and “pole-gate eight-ball” (makes me think of strippers, brains says naked-women-good, eight-ball=dodgy, which might be exciting, but super-expensive for floss-per-meter-count, alas, power-down noises again). So defeated, I left the pharmacy confused, scared, and flossless, and now have that on my list of errands for today.

Once I was with my dad and brother, and my brother said he spent the day running errands, and my dad nodded understandingly, then asked what “errands” were. My brother explained, which was dangerous, because for the next two-months every weekend on the phone I would ask my dad what he was up to and he would say “Oh, just uh, errands. Errands, you know? Errands.” And then I would say “Oh, that’s nice” and then he would follow “you know what errands are, right? Errands?” –“Yes dad, yes. I know what errands are.” Unbelievably, this continued for two months until I would see his number on my caller ID and pick-up “dad I can’t talk right now I’m running errands” and he’d say “oh me too” or I’d pick up and say “Dad are you running errands? Do you want to call me back?” And he’d say “oh how did you know?”

.

Rambling Journal

2007-09-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

There’s so much rambling and babbling I do in my journal, and if you’ve traveled with me then you’ve undoubtedly seen me with one of my spiral notebooks, or scribbling something down every seven-seconds. Below, is a sampling of some of the things in my journal, and some weather-notations which I check frequently in places I’ve been or will be very soon, an increasingly exciting addiction of mine.

8/19/07 2:43a. Che Lagarto Hostel, Rua Anita Garibaldi 87, Copacabana, Rio.

I ended up giving out a half-dozen bananas on my walk home. There was one kid asking for money, and I offered him a banana, he said he didn’t want it but took it from me anyway and asked for fifty-cents. There was a woman who was very grateful, and a man whose face lit-up so brightly that I began tearing and had to walk away fast, his smile and eyes branded in my thoughts. Here I was, gorging my face in a buffet, privileged, and at the offering of a banana (what is it?) he was, if only momentarily, so happy. I need to do more things like this. Whether or not I see an enigmatic smile that lights up two faces at once, these people are in need, and I’m in a position to help. The bananas or any fruit are nutritious and easy to consume, it does some good if only in a miniscule way, it supports local fruit stands and people picking crops and delivering them etc., but mainly it gives hungry people something nutritious. The only bad thing as far as I can see, is it encourages begging or these people loitering in these neighborhoods, but that doesn’t seem reason enough not to do these “fruit runs” or “banana runs”. Excited about the idea! Gonna do some quick stretches.

Oh and I went to Maracanã stadium tonight where Brazil lost to Uruguay in the 1950 World Cup, and watched two of Rio’s biggest rivals, Flamingo and Flumenense go at it. At the game the energy was so intense, the level of play was whatev but these fans were out of control and there was crotch-grabbing and pointing and something about mothers that I didn’t quite get. I didn’t know the chants but deciphered that all the chanting was basically a combination of vowel sounds and I just got by on that. On the way there we were in this van and this Brazilian guy’s telling me all about the teams we’re gonna see and we’re talking about some other stuff and I’m thinking his English is decent, and I say “hey your English is pretty decent” I mean he’s not making too many grammatical errors, and then he just says “what?” –“Your English, it’s pretty good, better than most Brazilians I’ve met”. “Yo man I’m from Queens”. My turn “What?” “Oueens, brother, New York.” “Oh,” and we sat in silence while I retraced our conversation.”

9/1/07 10:51p. Hostel Bambu

I uploaded all my pics online! Feeling slightly sick, drinking liquids, gonna go get food, maybe call N first then.

Some current weather in Celcius at 10:55p.

Foz de Iguazu, Brazil: 19, fair
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 23, fair
Bariloche, Argentina: 5, fair
Las Lenas, Argentina: 15, clear
Portland, Oregon: 27, sunny
Boston, Massachusetts: 21, clear
West Hollywood, CA: 29, sunny

Left a message for N. Food? Or Sleep? I’m pricing more flights, and money is a concern…

9/2/07 1:01a. Hostel Bambu, Foz do Iguaçu

So tonight was exciting for two reasons. One, I spent forever on the phone with United MP to see what cities I could fly to, and two, the whole thing was so ridiculous I wrote it up and will surely use it in the novel, or post it as a blog soon. It’s past one, I’m sleepy and going to bed!

9/2/07 10:37a. Hostel Bambu Foz do Iguaçu

The English and one Aussie and one Irish went out drinking and got in late and in the morning were still potentially drunk, or potentially obnoxious. Actually a couple of them are cool. Anyway they’re all going to the Argentine side of the falls today, and I’ll probably get over to the other side later today. I wasn’t feeling great in the morning, so I’ve decided to soak up some of this sun on the deck here, pour through Leaves and get a little color while there’s still some to get. I checked the ski resorts in Chile and Argentina and there’s no snow in the forecast, nothing in the next ten days. The bus to Salta is something like 26hours, and so I’m confused as to what to do.

1:31p.

I read a little while lying out, it got really hot (right now its 29, sunny although weather.com says “fair” and feels like 30). I did some push-ups and curls and back exercises (lat-pull downs) with some equipment they have by the pool, and stretched. Just had a great shower and shave and got an email from R saying he’s on his way, which means he’ll be here sometime tomorrow around noonish I believe. I’m gonna head out and eat in a bit.

Some weather:

Salta, Argentina: 23, sunny
Foz do Iguaçu: 29, feels like 30
Córdoba, Argentina: 23, sunny and windy
Córdoba, Spain: 34, feels like 33, partly cloudy
Buenos Aires, Arg: 14, cloudy
Santiago, Chile: 13, haze
Lima, Peru: 16, cloudy
Bogotá, Colombia 16, partly cloudy
Chicago, Illinois: 26, feels like 27, sunny

4:00p.

I stuffed myself at Bianco, a churrascoria a few blocks away, telling the guy I didn’t want any meat, maybe just some grilled chicked (true) and mostly salad and I bargained the price down from 18R drinks apart, to 15R with one included. After I ate I wanted to find a place to have a good coffee but everything is closed, not a soul on the streets, as it is Sunday. So I’m back here, I spoke with the Argentines who work here and got them to find the coffee and I’ve made some Ice-coffee. It’s really hot, with a warm breeze even here in the shade and I love it.

7:10p.

Just heard gunshots, which means the sounds I head a couple nights back were gunshots as well. The English girls sitting out here asked the bartender if they were fireworks, and he said no, there’s a favela 5Km to one side, and another the other way and its common to hear shots. I asked about going out tonight, as it’s Sunday, but there’s not a whole lot going on. I’ve also come to learn that a mall is to be opened here in two months, information that, surely will be of great use to me in my future endeavors. Talked to N earlier, I told her about the falls I could tell she was giddy remembering her own experiences. She’s in Cape Cod, going to a concert at the beach.

8:20p.

I just took an Airborne and am feeling okay but have a little mucus. I’m surprisingly not tired, possibly because of the coffee, but considering I was laying out in the sun, and then worked out a little, then masturbated, remembering the faces of girls I passed on the street the first day I got in, then sort of creating their bodies to how I imagine them, or fantasize them, and it started off with one of them giving me head, then it was sex and there were two or three, all brunettes, surprisingly, and then finished with this girl who I talked to for five minutes on the bus sucking me off, but with all her clothes on, and I was mostly just fixated on her eyes, green and beautiful, against the contrast of pale white skin and jet-black hair, probably dyed. Anyway I have some energy now and I’m going to read this poem that I didn’t finish earlier today that’s fairly brilliant.

9/3/07 3:00a. Hostel Bambu, Foz do Iguaçu

Posted The Call, and began writing Leaving Rio. Took a Theraflu going to bed.

9/5/07 12:31a. Hostel Bambu, Foz do Iguaçu

Current weather:

Foz do Iguaçu, Brasil: 28, feels like 27, clear
Buenos Aires, Argentina: 15, fair
Salta, Argentina: 20, clear
Los Angeles, California: 24, clear
Victoria, Canada: 14, partly cloudy

9/10/07 3:30p. on the 59 colectivo, 9 de Julio to Museo MALBA (or a few blocks away), Buenos Aires.

I had a great jog today, around San Telmo where I inquired about space and prices at a hostel on Estados Unidos and Bolívar, ran down to Puerto Madero where I jogged along the river-front and it started to drizzle, and back to the hostel to shower. This morning I was late for breakfast, but possibly because I asked in Spanish they gave me a big coffee and milk and cereal and two seconds later this girl walked up and asked in English and they said sorry, breakfast is over. She looked at me with my bowl, and I just shrugged. I’m all packed up to switch hostels, to something more my onda, but first Malba (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires)! I’m not sure if it will work out but I’m having K possibly meet me there, now. I said b/w 3:30 and 4, either just outside or in the café. I also sent a message to P, but she probably won’t get it on time. On her Facebook her friend that’s arriving today said “have you met any cool people? NOT including Americans!!” And I was peeved when I read it, but really I was annoyed myself at a group that was in Boutique yesterday, just the same as I was at some Aussies and Irish and English who were still drunk and loud and boisterous this morning when I was eating my cereal. By the way, No, I have never heard of Buenoz Ayreez, nor have I heard of Leemer, Peru (Lima). The other night or morning around 6:53 a.m. one of the guys came back into the room, loud, smashed, pissed, possibly on some brain-inhibitor, was crashing into everything, stammering, tried to climb up to go to the top bunk, which, I can only assume, is actually his bed but who really knows, and then he collapsed-back Smack! onto the floor. And either passed-out or fell asleep or didn’t realize he was not in his bed, but two minutes later he attempted the same feat, unsuccessfully, heaving himself up and during exertion either let out a very small, tiny audible moan or a petite wet-fart, I was too sleepy to decipher which, and mid-step collapsed back onto the hardwood floor. Miraculously, when I woke up he was mostly on his bed, with the exception of one leg dangling off.

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The Call

2007-09-02T22:21:00.000-07:00

Call to United Airlines Mileage Plus, the frequent flyer program for United.

-In a robotic voice- Thanks for calling the United Mileage Plus customer service line. Would you like- reservations? Upgrades? Enroll in Mileage Plus? Or for everything else say- account services.

-Reservations.

-You’d like to enroll in Mileage Plus, correct?

-No.

-Sorry, I didn’t hear you.

-No reservations.

-You’d like upgrades correct?

-RES-ER-VA-TIONS.

-Okay, reservations. Is this for a reservation you’ve already made?

-No.

-Is this for award travel?

-Agent.

-I’m sorry, I didn’t-

-AGENT AGENT REPRESENTATIVE AGENT

-Okay, I’ll trans-

-AGENT AGENT! (transferring noises, brief hold).

-Good evening thanks for calling United Mileage Plus. You’d like to make a reservation is that correct?

-Yes.

-From where are you flying?

-Actually I’m in South America, I’d like to know which cities you guys serve. I know I can use miles to fly within South America, but I don’t know what my options are.

-I’m sorry what city was that?

-No. I’d like a list of cities you fly to in South America. Is there some kind of list?

-From what city will you be flying out of?

-OH MY GOD. I don’t have one. Fine, let’s pretend Buenos Aires.

-How many people will be flying?

-Me.

-Is that one person?

-(pausing for mental anguish)Yes I’m- one person.

-And what date will you be flying out?

-Any date.

-I’m sorry I didn’t get that.

-ANY date. This isn’t real. I just want to know my options.

- (pause) I’m sorry sir I need a date.

-September 15^th.

-You’d like to fly out Septem-

-September 15^th September 15^th September 15^th.

-Okay, I have for one person departing Buenos Aires on September 15^th. And the destination?

-I don’t know - where can I go?

-I’m sorry I didn’t get your destination.

-I don’t Have One. Is there a List? A list of Cities-To-Pick-From? A list of of places United, or it’s Partners serve from Buenos Aires?

-Please hold one moment sir (composing myself). Sir?

-Yes.

-Do you want to go to Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia-

-Colombia. Yes.

-You want to go to Colombia?

-Yes, that’s fine.

-Let me check sir (insufferable wait). Sir?

-Yeah.

-Is that Bogota?

-Sure.

-You’d like to go to Bogota?

-YES.

-Please hold (quickly). Sir?

-Yeah?

-I have one passenger departing from E-Z-E Buenos Aires flying to Bogota B-O-G on the 15^th of September, is that correct?

-OH MY GOD, YES, Yes its correct.

-Please hold (short wait). Sir?

-Yup.

-I have nothing on that date.

-Try any day in September.

-You want me to check every day?

-Any day will do.

-Please ho-

-Yeah.

-Sir?

-Ma’am?

-Sir?

-Yes Oh My God, What’d you find?

-(pause, possible confusion on her part) Sir there is nothing for September.

-Are you sure you even serve Colombia?

-There’s nothing for September sir.

-How about October?

-What day in October sir?

-(pause, some difficulty on my part) Any day. All of them. Try Everyday.

-Please hold.

-Sir?

-Still here.

-None for October sir.

-Is there Ever availibility? Are you sure you serve Colombia?

-Nothing for October sir.

-What about for the rest of the year, or even In the next year? What about that?
Anything?

-I’ll check the next twelve months sir.

-(Long, long pause in which I think of exciting things like taxes, cucumbers, hybrid bell-peppers, fizziness-level of South American soft-drinks-) Sir?

-Yes.

-Sir I have nothing for the next twelve mon-

-CLICK-.

The Boy on Ipanema Goes Thinking: Bloody Periods and A Toothy-Gerbil

2007-08-14T07:01:00.000-07:00

Towel in hand and my bottle of water and the new book that I picked up yesterday I'm walking back from the beach and I laugh thinking about last night, I'm scratching a mosquito bite and Ray on the bottom-bunk opposite me says it's too bad we don't have a screen on this window, how bout that expression, it's "too bad". It sounds like something my six year old nephew invented, because he kicks ass (another expression) and could prob invent stuff if he wanted, and it would be legit, but it's something I say all the time, such an archaic expression. It's not only bad, it's too bad. Ray rolls his eyes and says okay, it's unfortunate. I pause and say, "yes, we are without fortune." But now I'm on the sidewalk walking into this jazz club/record store and, still smiling and I see all these listening stations and I spot Gotan Project which I haven't heard in a year and I play it and I'm transported to the more romantic neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, to the milongas of the madrugada, to a time and place I don't know, to one that doesn't exist maybe, but fuck this music is so good and familiar and I scream out "Yes Yes!" and I don't know if anyone hears or cares or is looking over, everyone so numb, but not me and how do I communicate this? How do I transfer what's going on in this head, all coiled up. But maybe there's hope I say, a journey of a thousand begins with a step goes the proverb, and hope yet and some can be saved, but what do I know, a displaced Angelino of but little thought. But I want the Here and Now, the Rio de Janeiro, the Brazil not Buenos Aires, my home of so many months and I switch the CD to ELECTROFUNKSAMBAGROOVE by Luciano Huck, and it works, I'm listening to Marcelinho da Lua's Cotidiano and grooving to it, or maybe I'm electrofunksambagrooving, to it. Then a track by Sergio Mendes and one from Bebel Gilberto and Yes! Yes! I'm in the Here and Now.

. . .

I think it's like three a.m. or so and everyone's in the other room drunk and loud from wine and I'm sprawled out on this red couch adjacent to the pool table and I put down my book on my chest and yawn and think it's time to go to bed but I've been addicted to checking email so I'll go do that maybe. I've been thinking that this hostel's decent, even the cockroaches seem to hold it in favorable opinion, the mosquitoes are undecided as they're sometimes there and sometimes not, but I'm gonna start naming the roaches soon. I'm at the computer checking my email, even though I just checked it two hours ago. There's a new Myspace message and two forwards from my cousin, two facebook messages and a new friend request only I don't recognize the name. Intrigued I log onto the site and check this guys profile, I don't think I've ever seen him, I mentally scan the faces of people I've met and am pretty sure, almost positive I've never met the guy, and I see that all his friends messages are all in Spanish and I think of writing him "te conozco?" But no I don't care if I know him, but still I click on his photos and he looks pretty gay and I check his "interested in" and it says "women" and then I see a picture of his friend, this girl who's pretty cute so I click on her profile and yes, definitely cute, and I begin reading interests: Running, my girls, music, chilling w/ my man, that's annoying I think but continue reading and: laughing, singing, sushi, spending time with God, dancing, wait- spending time with God? And I scroll down and it says Jesus=Love, and under "favorite books": Just like Jesus, and The Bible, and I sigh and sort of scratch my head and there's an irrelevant quote from Sir Francis Bacon, and it's late I think and sign off and there are two new girls from Barcelona that checked into our room and are annoyingly already asleep which means I'll have to be absurdly quiet to not wake them when I go in, because I'm nice and if I was like ninety-one percent of the people who stayed in my room in these hostels I'd just turn on the lights and bang and clang things and maybe say something stupid audibly to no one like "what a night", or "oh, I'm tiiiired" or yell out someone's name who's not even in this room, but I'm not that inconsiderate. The last couple that was in our room was actually pretty cool, although the way I met the girl was interesting. I was sprawled out on my bed, on the bottom-bunk reading, and I knew someone new was above me because there was a stuffed animal on the bed and a pair of jeans and a girly-top, and all of the sudden the door flings open and this girl comes charging in and flies by me and into the bathroom and begins yakking her guts out, I mean vomit-city for like six minutes, and then comes out and casually walks past me and is about to close the door, but then, almost as an afterthought looks back and says "oh hey," and I just sort of look at her blinking, and she amends "that must have been like totally gross huh?" and instinctively I ask "are you okay now?" And then realizing we haven't been introduced say in a sort of asinine way "I'm Matt nice to meet you." And the next two days were gross-free until I think she was on her period and simultaneously forgot how to flush the toilet, and I was slightly shocked to see that, not because of the period but because it wasn't flushed and there was a tampon in the trash and I didn't feel like dealing with it so I left the room and went to the bathroom in the hall and closed the door and locked it and lifted the lid of the toilet and staring back at me was a piece of Rhinocerous-poop, or perhaps a medium sized elephant snuck in and let out a wail of anguish and then exploded a turd the size of an anaconda that swallowed a toothy-gerbil and three bloated parakeets sewn together and there's no way that thing is getting sucked down and seriously did that come out of someone's asshole? So helplessly I unlocked the bathroom and Thank God no one saw me come out and defeated I went back to "my" bathroom that was less zoo-like and did some stuff. Only now it's like, pretty late and I'm gonna go upstairs and get my toiletries and try not to wake up the girls from Barthhelona.

.

Yes, You Do.

2007-08-04T11:50:00.000-07:00

.

Disturbingly, I'm singing "I'm Fergie-licious, hot! hot! that puts them boys on rock! rock! it's so deli-cious". I think it was on in the background while I was eating breakfast or something. I've never been good at blocking out ambient noise. So we got offered jobs at this hostel in Rio, and now I'll have a chance to make as much as seven year-old Malaysian girls with mad sewing skills, but they have to work thirteen-hour days and I'd only have to work six. But free board ain't half-bad I tell myself. I try and think if the Malaysian girls get board. Or bored for that matter. Hmm. In a ten-day span I finished three books and two were in Spanish and I've just started another and I've probably never read this much and I love it. I want to explode from happiness. And I do. My stomach bursts, but it doesn't hurt, it just opens like a door and the cake I ate falls out but not mush-style but whole and dry and a rectangle-slice and then all the coffee I drank is spilling out onto the floor and a small, white-furry mouse scurries over with a small white straw, the kind that bends and it sips up all the coffee in an instant and the mouse's belly swells and pudges out and irrationally I'm furious at the teeny mouse and squeeze it a little and plead with it to give me the coffee back but it's so stubborn and then asks me if it was decaf? and I say no! and squeeze the mouse harder and place it over my mouth and shake it (like a po-la-roid pic-ture) and like a wine sack the coffee comes out in a thin stream, almost mouth to mouth until the mouse deflates to nothing, just a thin sack, soft and I place it on the table. Only none of that happens, only the happiness part. And I think everyone should be happy, there really isn't a reason not to be. Some people have it tough, but I've never known anyone that has. Only fortunate people. And the ones I know who think they have it So tough, Are unfortunate, simply because they don't realize how fortunate they are. Así de simple. And if you're foolish enough to still be reading (what a loser, there's probably good reality TV you're missing out on right now, go!), but if you are still reading (not advisable), then take a second to say "I'm fortunate. I have it pretty good." Because if you're reading this right now, you Do have it good, and you Are fortunate. And you're probably 'Fergie-licious, hot! hot! They want a taste of what I got, so delicious.. To the left, to the left..

.

An Hour and Forty-Eight Minutes in Copacabana

2007-08-03T13:30:00.000-07:00

.

It's early afternoon. I'm sitting in a café across from Ray. We're three blocks away from what might be the single most famous beach in the world, Copacabana, in Rio de Janeiro. We arrived in Brasil about seventeen days ago. Or so, I'm to lazy to count exactly. Brasil greeted us with red, clayish-dirt, lithe, svelte palms, an army of them sun-bathing, sloping into the dense jungle-green hills. The key here is sun, warm sun. Uruguay had sun, but not the warm. Our first stop is Floripa. Florianópolis in full, we plan to stay two or three days. Two weeks later we get a move on. Overnight bus to Saõ Paulo, connect on another and Rio. Back to the café. I'm anxious I tell Ray. Why? I don't know. I just came back from the cyber-café next door, I sent off Myspace and Facebook messages into internet oblivion. And I changed my ticket back. From August 28th to September 18th. I think this is the third time i've pushed it back. Or so, I'm to lazy to count
exactly.

Is it that? Is that I'm feeling a slight financial crunch? All this traveling sans work, responsibility, steady income? Was it the big breakfast? Papaya, ham n' cheese on a roll with jam and guaraná juice, two coffees, a hot chocolate and cake? I need to run. Yes. On the beach. And I am. It's twenty minutes later and I'm walking up to the strand. I can see Paõ de Açucar, Sugar-Loaf. And somewhere nearby is Christ the Redeemer looking over all the Cariocas in Rio, maybe three miles away. Or so, I'm too lazy to find out exactly.

My feet are dipping into soft-cool sand and my flip-flops are in hand. I'm wearing white jersey-shorts and a white-tee. I pull the tee off. I plot my route, and I start running. Immediately I feel liberated, a release flowing through my body. Waves are crashing down and the white crest tickles through my toes. I'm running hard, sprinting and now I'm panting and I stop to catch my breath. The clouds hang suspended above, three thin-ones, absolutely still, as if they too want to admire the view. I look to my right. Three large, tanned, glistening-asses are prominently in my view. I count to confirm. Six cheeks. But one of these cheeks is equivalent to a whole U.S. ass (U.S.D.A rump). Carnal desire sets in, I become an animal, a beast, I want to go over, like a dog sniffing, maybe just to verify, and just go at it. Right there on the beach. Raw animal-sex. One of the girls is looking over, smiling. I smile but get nervous or something and look away and start jogging again. I run to the end of the beach and plop down in the sand, huffing.

There are boats and maybe you can rent them but no one has or is so maybe not. I decide to jog back and out of the corner of my eye I spot something flying at me and I look mid-stride and it's a soccer ball about to pelt me but strangely I turn into Ralph Macchio from the Karate-Kid and do some crazy maneuver and bunt the ball with the side of my foot and I can feel it was a great kick and "opa!" and "oi!" and "legal" or cool and two girls on the beach make some comment in Portuguese and this one kid does this flicking thing with his hand that I take to mean "wow that was cool" and I run on inspired and I've probably never had such quick reflexes nor kicked a soccer ball so well and in this the country of Pele and the most World Cup champions I feel like Ronaldinho if only for twenty-seconds.

I'm walking now and I'm thirtsy but I spot some monkey-bars so I stop and do some pull-ups and walk over to a café and buy a bottle of water and sit and sip and gaze. I ask for a lime at the bar for my water and squeeze it and plop and drink and it's done and I go to the "public" restroom and pay $1.50R (bout 80cents U.S.) and take a leak and wash my hands and the bathroom is the nicest beach-bathroom I've ever used, all sleek with stained-glass and modern. I emerge from the subterranean bathroom and the Calle 13 song Atrevete-te-te comes into my head and I start running again and people-watch and before I know it I'm at the other end of the beach and walking back and I've got $1.50R left and want fresh coconut juice, in Floripa they come to you on the beach and machete-off the top and plop in a straw and fresh, cold coconut juice. I hope it's the same here, but all the coco stands charge $2Reais and I try and bargain and finally find one that'll do it and I hope for the machete, I just feel like it's more menacing, South-American, authentic and just plain cool. No machete but he takes out a hatchet and Yes! Hack the shit out if it! Slice it up! Gimme that cold coconut juice and I Snatch! it from him, and then I purse my lips tight and suck through the small-thin straw and smile coyly and say thank you yes it's very good and meander away. I'm walking back to the hostel and I'll be there in nine-minutes. Or so, I was too lazy to pay attention before to know exactly.

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Getting Back to the Elements: Uruguay

2007-07-18T13:19:00.000-07:00

Uruguay

She offers herself fully, palms-open ever-tranquil,
In persimmons-splattered skies,
Clouds too convincing, sculpted.
In modest tree groves, the grassy hills of abundance,
deep-blue sea endlessly nourishing my eyes,
In lanky horses and demure cows,
Rivers nameless and small,
Soil fertile, gallantly giving,
Persistent breezes cold, cleansing,
Dirt paths ending nowhere, sewn in this, nuanced earth.
Fully, she offers herself,
Palms-open, ever-tranquil

On this my third visit to Uruguay I´m more fully able to comprehend what it is I appreciate, so long for. Far from the bustle of Buenos Aires and further from the panache and pomp of LA spattered against a backdrop of neon, rests a small country that allows me a connection with the land, tierra, the elements at their most basic level. Everyday has included walks by the beach, unparalleled sunsets, and huge log-fires piled high to keep warm at night. Ocean breezes, waves crashing or water still, the sun up and down, fire and flame and smoke. My eyes adhered to endless pastures, my body calmly in union with the earth that rests below my feet.

The Road Well Traveled: Copacabana to Buenos Aires

2007-06-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

Copacabana, on Lake Titicaca, Northwest Bolivia. I’ve been traveling three weeks through this implausible country. Humid jungle and arid desert. I’m sunburned from my hike on Isla del Sol but I’ll fight the frost tonight. Usurped by a longing to return to Buenos Aires after an absence of five weeks (two others in Northern Argentina), I close my eyes, the sun glistens on the deep blue of endless Lago Titicaca. I buy a bus ticket in Copacabana to get me to La Paz. It’s Wednesday. I’ll travel three consecutive nights on buses to get back to the city on Saturday. Nonstop traveling. Buses and bus stations. I read and write in my journal, chat up people next to me. Everyone has a story. I buy chocolate or a peanut butter Twix to pass the time. I find internet and check email. The connection moves in fits and starts and tests my patience.

We’re all on some journey. What are we searching for? Ex-pat’s and travelers, gap-year Brits, or just finished Uni, Americans volunteering, Dutch, French, Israelis, small towns, capitals. We’re all here for a reason. Even if the reason is just to be here. What is it? The lure? A line of coke in a seedy club, broken mirrors and red velvet? Snapping three pics and saying you’ve been there? Just being away from what we know? We all have a mild traveler’s Autism. We’re all sending out so many signals but there aren’t enough receptors. So much is happening and we can’t take it all in. Chronically choosing. We are given twenty-four hours each day. We have the freedom to do what we want. With every second. Everybody has this supreme liberty. Every action is a choice. Every action is conscious. Our unconscious actions, are consciously, deliberately unconscious.

I open my eyes and we’re blowing through the countryside. Below a woman in a bowler hat scampers by with a colorful sack tied to her back. There’s not a town within thirty kilometers. The bus smells of coca and ether. Dirt is kicking up into it. I open my water bottle and sip thirstily to clear the dust. When are we going to stop for the bathroom? Down below we’re passing cactus patches, we’re floating in the sky, ten thousand feet up. I close my eyes.

We’re stopping, I get out and pee. I walk up to a cart and sit down. I eat sopita, a brothy soup with potatoes and noodles and a cube of meat and parsley. I ask for another pinch of parsley. I turn my head to make sure the bus has not left me. I pay three bolivianos (forty cents). I walk up to a juice cart. Jugo mixto. Orange juice and grapefruit please. An old man peels a grapefruit with precision. Slices it in half and places it in the vice. I drink it down. How many do you make a day I ask? Depends. But how many about? Twenty, twenty-five he shrugs. I make small calculations, what does that get you here, what’s that back home? The bus is honking, all on now or forever hold your peace. I run back. I get in my seat. I’ve been traveling twenty-five hours now. We’ll be at the border in a couple more. I close my eyes. We float on.

At the border I get my pack and slip it on my back. It’s dusty but so am I. I walk through Villazon. People are offering to get me to Salta, Northern Argentina for sixty U.S. dollars. A six hour bus ride. I know the ticket costs thirty pesos, ten bucks. I’m good I say. Sin compromiso amigo. Thanks but no. They crowd around an American and an Aussie. They’re down to offering forty dollars now. The two discuss it amongst themselves. They catch me out of the corner of their eye. I shake my head no and move on. Before I cross I buy a mixed grapefruit and orange juice. I drink it down and ask for another. I walk across the way to an old woman with a candy cart. Peanut butter Twix? No? Gimme that then. I walk over to the border. I’m waiting in a line at immigrations to get my stamp so I can cross over. There are twenty Bolivians in front of me. It takes forever and I have to piss. I curse Bolivians and Argentines alike (the country and people that have just played gracious host, and my beloved that I’m about to enter).

Three Bolivians to go and my Argentine patriotism increases each Bolivian down. When I get to the window I think of announcing rehearsed lines that I’ve been going over for minutes now in my mind. I’m so happy to be back! My heart is part Argentine! I feel like I’m back at home! But instead I just step up and say hey and hand my American passport. He flips seemingly erroneously through the pages looking at my stamps, as if to pass the time, as if to say this should at least take one minute for you, because it takes twenty for the Bolivians. My minute is up. I have a new ninety-day visa stamp on my passport. Have a good day I say. He probably wants to say Fuck-off asshole I’m working at a border post, go to some more countries why don’t you, you know how many people tell me to have a nice day? But instead he smiles warmly and thanks me. I trudge over to the green sign that announces Bienvenidos a La Quiaca, the border town I’m in, and then printed below it: Ushuaia 5,121Km. Ushuaia is the Southern most town in the world, at the tip of Argentina, last stop before Antarctica. I won’t make it there I say. It’s too cold this time of year anyway. Eighth largest country in the world, this.

I have three hours to kill before my overnight bus to Salta so I find an ATM and a diner. I eat a large meal. I’m the only customer in the place and the girls serving me are excited. They offer me all kinds of things to eat on the house. I take them up on the flan. It’s horrible but I tell them thanks it’s very good. On the bus we watch American films that would be played on cable at three a.m. What a skewed perspective they must have of America. We’re all B actors and exploding cars. We carry guns and inexplicably take our sunglasses off and put them back on, we’re all stuck in 1997. I sleep most of the way. I imagine running through a land where blades of grass are towering Aspens and Bob Dylan’s harmonica wails around every corner, droplets of dew consist of small oblong globs of peanut butter and the main transport is puffy white clouds that float above the dense grass.

At the station in Salta It’s early morning and I inquire about buses to Buenos Aires. Just another day of travel and I’ll be there. What day is it now? It’s Friday early morning. No buses for another several hours. I hop a cab to a hostel I stayed at before. I check myself in and have a nap. A real cama. I wake and go downstairs and have tea and rolls and jam. How was Bolivia? The owner asks me. I smile. Three weeks of people and experiences and sights and tastes. Good. I manage. And the weather? Cold. Very cold. At night. Pleasant days. I told you so. Did you cover up? Yes, yes I did. She laughs. I check email. I go up and have a long hot shower. A rare commodity in Bolivia, not here. I imagine using up the world’s supply of hot water and millions of people on seven continents are cursing at me in eighty languages and I smile and don’t care and say I earned it. I have a shave. I floss and brush my teeth, change my undershirt and underwear. I feel amazing. Get back to the station. I’ll be in Buenos Aires tomorrow morning. I hop in a cab to the terminal, don’t feel much like talking, I close my eyes.

The bus ride goes well enough. The chairs are large and comfy, the movies as irrelevant as ever but the bus is filled with pleasant people. I meet two gap-year English girls. A fisherman from Salta going to Mar Del Plata to work the boats. I meet a girl who’s going to see her girlfriend of two and a half-months. I ask her how the family is reacting. Do they know? My mother supports me, my dad doesn’t talk about it but knows, but my brother is a machista who says he’ll cut her throat if he ever sees her. We barely talk anymore. Just to say the phone is for you or dinner’s ready. Everyone has a story and I’m as interested as ever. I drink endless cups of pre-sweetened black coffee. When we finally arrive excitement spills over me.

I’ve been hurrying for three days to get here and now arrived I take my time getting off the bus. I say goodbye to the fisherman, to the English girls, a couple of us wait to get our packs out from the cargo. Three woman crowd around me. They’re flailing their arms, pointing to cargo, one is sneezing, they’re not from our bus. Common scheme. I flip my backpack around and the zipper is open. I check my stuff. All there. I see another woman opening the lesbian’s backpack zipper. I alert her to check her stuff. She flips it around. All there. The gypsies seemingly vanish into thin air. I get my pack and walk away. Later in line for a cab I see the gypsies being shoved out of the terminal by a security guard. They’re thieves! I tell him. Bored, he nods. Walks off. I look at the gypsies. Fuck off! They yell at me. Nothing will happen to them. I hop in the cab. Welcome back to the city.

As High As High Gets: Potosí

2007-06-05T20:02:00.000-07:00

.

8:17a 6/5/07

Greetings from the highest city in the world! Higher than La Paz (also in Bolivia) and Tibet (not in Bolivia). After a week in Salta aptly named “Salta la Linda” or Salta the beautiful, and getting in some good Northern Argentine cuisine and a couple rejuvenating hikes in the nearby mountains I took an overnight bus to La Quiaca. We arrived at six a.m., frozen over and walked several blocks where you cross a bridge and are officially in Bolivia, in the border town of Villazón. I snapped a couple pics of the persimmons ox-blood colored sunset. Un-doctored. Un-believable. I bought a ticket to Potosí some nine hours away by bumpy dirt roads. To shake off the chill I found a makeshift coffeehouse and sipped piping hot cafés con leche with two Austrians as company. I wrote a poem the other night which I´ll post soon, Commonalities, You and I which basically talks about all these amazing people I meet, and under different circumstances, we could be great friends but we may only have time to have a coffee to share and then we´re off to separate places.

10:19a

I think I got ripped off ten Bolivianos ($1.25) on my seat! This very dark, indigenous, small leather-skinned woman next to me payed ten less. Gringo factor. No bathrooms on the bus! And it´s bumpy. But I´m told we stop every two hours or so. My fingers are cracked dry and my mouth is filled with grit from the dust that´s kicking into the bus. We stopped here in Tupiza, jewel of Bolivia the sign says. The road so far has been breathtaking. From rocky flats, to pebbly cliffs, unconvincing rivers and dynamic cactus plains where mules and donkey freely graze to a backdrop of red rock mountain gorges. How have I been in South America so long and not come here yet? We´re driving bumpy hairpin turns over steep cliffs and the smell of coca leaves permeates the air. Cocaine is produced from a base of coca leaves, here people chew it to ease hunger, for altitude sickness or mild pain, or as a commonplace stimulant. About six hours to the highest city in the world!

11:17a

Dry riverbeds and cascading rock formations and I swear the tire below me has been teetering off the ground at least twice now! Scribbling in my notebook my writing looks like hieroglyphics. I´ve taken a hundred pictures of the landscapes and gone over them three times and can´t get myself to delete even a single one. ´Bout five hours til the highest city in the world, where I´m told I´ll encounter a bone-chilling cold I´ve yet to feel. One brown hoody, check. The bus has stopped. I think a woman wants to come aboard to offer food for sale, trays of meat and potatoes and eggs. She´s speaking to the driver, in a language not Spanish. Quechua? This short dark man with scaly iguana-skin just boarded but he´s wearing a White Sox hat. Rob a wayward Chicagoan? I must look like a large feathery mongoose to these people.

11:32a

Just passed a farm with a dirt roof with a pig and chickens running wild. Oh and I´m officially the last person on the bus without a fat wad of coca leaves in my mouth. Even this baby is doing the coca. That or he/she has large poofy baby cheeks (50/50).

11:34a

Three men are hovering over me watching as I write this. They´re either threatened by my writing, curious, or they´ve clearly never seen a large brown feathery mongoose.

11:50a

Wheel teetering thing again. The good news is I´m starting to regain feeling in my toes, which has been absent since sometime yesterday. I either have poor circulation (newly discovered), or living in Southern California does a poor job of exposing brutishly-cold weather maladies.

11:53a

Lots of shrubs n´stuff. How cool is it that this woman sitting next to me is so indigenous looking!? I´m tempted to snap a pic while she´s sleeping. We´d make a great variety act the world over!

11:56a

Shrubs and despondent cactus sightings. The three wise indigenous men have taken to laughing at the difficulty the large elongated brown feathery mongoose is having writing as his pen is slashing all over the page. Later, if I´m famous I plan to sell these papers as vague impressionist sketches (subjects interpretational).

12:02p

Noises coming from below. I think someone stored chickens as cargo (30/70). Amazingly poofy-cheeked baby not crying on alarmingly bumpy road. Definitely on the coca.

12:32p

We just stopped for lunch. Immediately I ran to a bathroom, and basically paid fifty-centsB to pee in a hole. Luckily I didn´t have to waste time washing my hands as there was neither soap nor running water. Everyone was eating at various street stalls. I opted for a potato (black potatoes and dark brown, and regular old potatoes) and rice soup with a cube of meat and fresh cut parsley. Only when the girl wanted to pour the soup there were no more bowls and she took one from a person who just finished, chucked the last potato, took a cloth and wiped the bowl. Er. Soup was delish. Might (purely speculation) need that travel diarrea medicine I packed. Also had fresh squeezed orange juice from another stall. Lunch cost 50cents. One woman told me “cuidate mucho en Potosí, hay muchos ladrones, te matan por diez Bolivianos”. Be very careful in Potosí, there are a lot of thieves and they´ll kill you for ten Bolivianos ($1.25). Comforting. Very comforting. Four hours to Potosí.

4:15p

I´ve made cordial relations with a small sociable fly. Fly, as I like to call it, understands me. It also understands that it likes the ridge of my nose. Fly may not exist soon. Great Siesta! I chatted up one of the three wise indigenous men, on the pre-tense of asking what his tattoo on his hand meant. I´ve seen a few like it already. Military service, one year obligatory, the tat´s not, but we get it, you know? We spent two hours laughing and joking as he switched seats with awesomely indigenous little dark-leatherette. Again, I couldn´t help but thinking, you´re not so different, you and I. Very close to Potosí now. I can see Cerro Rico, a hill that´s been mined for centuries and in it´s heyday made Potosí the richest city in the new world, with a population that exceeded Madrid. It also was responsible for approximately nine million slaves dying over the centuries, working the mines. As high as high gets, feel slightly winded, but otherwise fine.

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Commonalities, You and I. These Things

2007-06-05T19:55:00.000-07:00

Commonalities, You and I

Traveling, I meet all these people.
We share histories and anecdotes,
As mush as pleasantries and politesse.
We laugh and smile, our hearts may even skip a beat.

Earnestly I look into people’s eyes,
You´re not so different, you and I,
I think but never say beyond these telling glances.
Perhaps we´ll never meet again,
different fates for all and there´s so many.

Maybe in another lifetime,
You and I would be best of friends,
You and I would be boyfriend and girlfriend,
Husband and Wife, you and I
Perhaps in another lifetime.

But for now I have to catch this bus, train, ferry, plane.
Thank you for being sincere and sharing your time,
Perhaps in another, you and I.

These Things

Sometimes I wonder if I could live in a small town, cities are all I´ve known.
Big ones. Bustle. Life. Just the names evoke romantic images,
draw forth a whirl of energy,
as if a small symphony is persistently playing under the surface,
and at the mere mention of one of these places-boom!
New York, San Francisco, Paris, Buenos Aires, L.A.
It´s these things.

I know little towns and I´ve been to them.
I notice the breeze in small towns.
I can go to the outdoor market on Sundays and buy fruit and stroll.
I can sit on the porch and sip coffee (coffee figures into most scenarios in my mind),
And maybe there´ll be a woman made up of all goodness,
And we can share, in these things.

But it´s the cities that draw me. Bustle. Energy. Color. Tight spaces.
Book stores and coffee houses.
The movie theater and all theater.
Bakeries and brick.
I value my trees in the city.
It´s these things.
For now I accept and embrace the city,
It´s inside of me, grows out of me,
But there´s an ever-slight murmur,
A hushed but ever-present yearning,
For a little betrayl.

The "Hostel Report"

2007-05-30T17:07:00.000-07:00

Traipse fertile valleys, scale ominous peaks, roll your tongue twice! The “Hostel Report” is here. Very “official”. Officially “very”. It´s the only report both Paris Hilton and Martha Stewart will be reading this summer (blogs on tape). Saskatchewan quarterly gave it “three twigs”. Which is a lot better than “two twigs”. Trust.

M.

BTW, I´m in Salta, Argentina about 1,500km NW of Buenos Aires and it´s 24 degrees outside. I repeat 24degrees! Driving in through snowy passes and frosty trees was majestic, but this Angelino was wholly unprepared for this...Might be in Bolivia by weeks end.

The Hostel Report

Hostel, 8:12p.m., Córdoba, Argentina, sitting mostly on left side of bed, though right arm is flagrantly on right side.

Number of inanimate people in the hostel: 2

Number of overly-animated people: none. See hostel “chill rating”.

Breakfast situation: rolls/jam/butter. All the tea, mate, coffee you can drink, powdered milk (better than no milk). Downfall: ends maddeningly early. Served 8-10a.m. Obnoxiously enforced. The only time I successfully made breakfast was when I hadn´t slept yet. Or when I ´borrowed´ rolls from freezer in the early afternoon, and ´stumbled´ upon jam tucked away in the nether regions of fridge. Taken to make my own oatmeal as sugar, milk (powdered), vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg are available. X.L.Ent.

Overall hygiene of people staying: Only encountered one person that smelled. A little off-putting. Off-putting makes me think of pudding. Tapioca and Chocolate. Chocolate off-putting. If smell doesn´t count hygiene could be decent. Although no soap exists in any of three bathrooms, fact that ´shower noises´ usually coming from bathroom encouraging. Also sharing room with Ray who has hygiene mirroring mine. Excellent! Should be using more Spanish. Excelente!

Bed: Perceptible sagging. Didn´t leave bed to pee in morning until was finally about to ´burst´. Small (possibly undetectable to others) amounts of frost developed around ridge of nose and nostrils. Also lost feeling/sensation in my toes, though okay as I wasn´t irritated by their freezing. Also no threat of bed-bugs as too cold for ´smaller´ life to exist. Unless they crotched mini-blankets (doubtful).

Shower: Only have to wait four minutes for lukewarm water to ditch luke. Also convenient as never have to fiddle with ´cold´ knob.

Mold/Mildew level of shower: Minor spotting on curtain, allows for mild diversion while waiting for ´hot´ water to loose ´frosty´ feeling.

Female Dilemma: No females. No dilemma.

Hostel chill factor (scale 1-10): 7
1 = Truckers on Meth.
3 = Overly-caffeinated peeps
5 = Pretty chill
7 = Chill
8 = Irritatingly macabre
10 = Have to periodically poke people around me to make sure not sitting on couch w/ cadavers.

Room: Hardwood floors, crown-moldings, high ceilings, large wood-framed window. May never leave!

Hostel Location: Two nearby restaurants to note. One with excellent chicken/fries/salad. Another where we discovered a roach crawling to greet us. Positive: Roach could be alternative protein source, possibly vegetarian. Maybe a ´legume´. Hostel also located on main avenue and close to nightlife options, bookstores, etc.

Location Rating (scale 0.89-3.71): 1.77
0.89 = freakin´ incredible.
2.06 = advantages and dis. More or less centrally located.
3.463 = dude we´re off the map.
3.71 = adjacent sulfur refinement plant allows you to ´experience´ something off the periodical table of elements, first-hand.

Internet predicament: Alarmingly only one computer, seemingly always occupied (minor nuisance). Speed: Very good/bordering excellent. Or bordering ´Excelente!´

Coffee/Tea/Yerba Mate Availability: 24/7. Is it any wonder I´ve been holed up here for a week?

In house pets: 1. Yellow Labrador. 8 months old. Name: “Jujuy” after Northern Argentine province/city. Healthy coat, thick and blond, good shine. Shedding level: medium. Cuteness level (1-10): 10. Another reason not to leave. Also dog doubles as toe-warmer when watching DVD on couch.

Beer/ Wine consumed: 1 can of beer. Observations: “malty”, “sticky-taste”. Turtle-urine colored. Note, don´t drink beer from can as not at Sig-Ep party. Wine consumed: 1 glass red. Observations: “mostly-reddish”. Potentially good as am drinking red wine.

Useful things learned: Practiced/learned new French w/ two awesome Belgians. Belgium gains new/improved validity/status in the world. Also red-bearded Canadian suggests cold beer in hot shower. How have I never tried this!?

Misc. Observations (abbreviating misc. not b/c it´s shorter but because I think I no longer know how to spell it.): 1:31p.m. Discovered possible hamster poop pellet on floor. Discouraging since I don´t think hamsters exist in this country. 1:32 p.m. Upon further inspection pellet looks like small roasted peanut. Developing situation.

Food Eaten: 6 Rolls of bread heated on Iron pan on stove.
3 rolls with Zapallo jam (sweet, mysterious fruit. Does not taste like chicken).
2 rolls with Orange marmalade (good chance oranges were used in production. General orangy-taste. Tastes slightly like chicken).
1 roll with ´red jam´. (red).
3 cups coffee- instant with powdered milk. Good except last gulp always has glob of white milk-powder (decent).

1 small roasted peanut (previously mistaken for poop pellet). Medium crunch. Light on salt. Maybe rubbed off on floor.

Portraits, Buenos Aires.

2007-05-22T12:59:00.000-07:00

The People´s Cafe

I stand out in this café not because I’m reading, nor because I can, but that I’m doing it. Most people stare off blankly, coke or beer in front of them. Some are watching the fútbol match on the teli. I yell out to a waiter to order. My third attempt. One stops at my table, awkwardly, not facing me. Three fingers are placed atop the table. He’s looking to the other end of the café but somehow I sense he’s waiting for me to order. I speak to the side of a face. A slice of Napolitana pizza. An humita empanada. A beer. Draft is good. He pauses a further second to see perhaps if I’m done. The side of the face walks off.

I continue reading. The waiter places my beer on my table mid-stride while walking off to the other end of the café. I circle a particular passage of text. Someone else brings my food. When I look up no one is there, but there are a handful of waiters around, a hazy cloud of stained white jackets, revolving, all suspect.

The pizza’s good, and the empanada how I like it. The beer is beer, cold and I’m happy. People don’t come here for the service. They might come for the food, or they might come because it’s cheap. Maybe just to come. Tired souls. Lonely souls. Families. Sweat and dirt caked on hands. Black fingernails, black lungs. A place where nobody will bother you. Perhaps the waiter’s inattention is a service. Not calculated, rather unconscious. The beer’s cold. The pizza good. The empanada how I like it.

Dignity

His hand is still relatively steady, puts the mug to his lips, sipping beer. Mug down he looks at me, smiles. Uncomfortable I don’t know why, I look away. Still smiling I can see and I look back. His hair is thin, grey, slicked back, furrowed brows brushed and ordered. Friday night, eight minutes til’ midnight.

He’s in a suit and tie, loafers and coat over the suit. You get cold more easily the older you get. The waiter walks by and puts a hand on his shoulder in passing. The most affection I’ve ever seen an Argentine waiter give. Old man pick up on it? He’s looking around the room, as dignified a man as I’ve ever seen. Friday night, six minutes til’ midnight.

He’s sitting across the way alone, beer and a slice of pizza on the table. I’m sitting alone, beer and a slice of pizza on the table. Maybe in fifty years I’ll be looking across the way at the youngin’. Friday night, five minutes til’ midnight.

Cider-colored leaves litter our Autumn streets

Our times are cold streams and deep earth
Our times are destruction and creation
Our times are creation that destroys
Our times are all time, passing, susceptible to perception
Our times are autumn leaves falling in crisp air
Our times are yours and mine and everyone’s
Our times are universal, indiscriminate.

These are Our times
They’re yours and mine and everyone’s
Our times are passing, susceptible to perception
Cold streams and deep earth
Creation-destruction
Autumn leaves-crisp air
Universal, Indiscriminate
These, are our times.

Hacia Chile Po'h!

2007-04-30T21:02:00.000-07:00

With Ray having been in Buenos Aires for a couple weeks and having sufficiently soaked up (literally with the humidity) some of the best the city has to offer we were ancy to get a move on. After reading Isabel Allende’s Ines Del Alma Mia (her latest that I got signed when I was in LA!) and pounding my brain with colorful images of the strife involved in settling Santiago, I was curious to check it out. We left behind café’s and the steaks and mosquito’s sucking our blood (steak flavored) and in my case a little peppery)) and we hopped a Lan Chile flight from Buenos Aires and ¾ of the way in we were treated to the peaks of the snow-capped Andes protruding though puffy-white marshmallow clouds and upon descending the clouds broke and we were treated to glimpses of majestic white, birds-eye.

We stayed in Barrio Brasil, a bohemian enclave filled with café’s and coffee shops and bars which we frequented with curious verve. We sipped coffee and ate an apple-raisin filo-dough crusted pastry and the owner showed us a touch of Chilean warmth, something I had been told prior would be in scarce commodity. She invited us to the celebration of the opening of her second café with live jazz, however that would be a few days later and we’d already be an hour and a half Northwest in Valparaiso. Presently, we’re invited upon our return to have some of her homemade seafood, after I casually mentioned that we had great shellfish and Sea Bass and a traditional seafood chowder and I loved it all. We caught a glimpse of the Casa de la Moneda, (the White House, Chilean style) home to Chile’s first female president Michelle Bachelet, a self-proclaimed agnostic running a Catholic majority. The Casa was impressive at night (less so by daylight). We made it to the Plaza de Armas (spectacular in both lights) which contrasted modern architecture with some of the oldest functional buildings in South America. Back at the hostel we hung out with a bunch of Chileans from La Serena, about five hours north. We sat Indian style on the floor and drank rum and then beer and then unidentified concoctions and after warmth and smiles and laughter I was sipping tap at six a.m. and lights-out sun-on.

Our next day in Santiago we checked out the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombiano. Reading placards next to artifacts was depressing, slightly (maybe 3/10 if 10 is ‘dude that’s über depressing’ and 1 is ‘whatev’). Basically they said so and so Indians were in this region and were really awesome and then they were slaughtered and that wasn’t so awesome. Like Sgt. Slaughter without the Sgt. part. Like a banana and berry smoothie without banana’s or berries but Indigenous peeps in a blender. Sorry.

Later I was on the net and engaging in one of my favorite hobbies, I was checking various weather statistics online (weather.com likes me) and I saw something I had never seen before. The weather was 41 degrees (this wasn’t the significant part, wait for it, wait for it-) it wasn’t “cloudy” or “clear” or “windy” but “smoke.” 41 and smoke. This wasn’t some unfortunate fire wreaking havoc somewhere, but a little stain on Chilean pride that Chileans seem hesitant to discuss. Santiago’s reputation as a very polluted city is common knowledge South America way. I had read that they had switched to clean running buses to combat the pollution but later I would learn that the buses had little effect on the air quality. Chile, a country with a booming economy and a relatively well-to-do westernized county, still has poverty and at night on the outskirts of the city and throughout the country the poor burn trash or whatever they can at night to stay warm. This was something I had seen in Morocco and India but it’s understood there and sort of a thorny subject in Chile.

More walking and food and watery-light but still decent Chilean beer and some tasty Chilean wine and another day passed and we were on a bus to Valparaiso. We took the impressive metro to the station and with twenty to go before the bus left we had really flavorless, odorless coffee (?! lots of cursing, fill in your favorite) and I had my first Chilean empanada, a “pino” or meat, onions, and egg all wrapped in yummy dough. We got some brioche for the ride and it was surprisingly good. Passing through the countryside the landscape was California-ish and later (briefly) foresty and Oregonian.

Arriving in Valpo was exciting. I was at first underwhelmed (thanks to all the praise heaped on this little gem) but once I got to run around we made nice. It’s a port town and it has erratic winding cobblestone streets that zig-zag into the hills overlooking the bay. The buildings are in various states of disrepair and rusted, or painted with bright-bold colors. I loved everything about it. We hiked up a small hill and checked out Pablo Neruda’s house (1 of 3 he had in Chile) and rode an “ascensor” or elevator car, an impressive functional system of elevator cars built into the hills in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that still function and aid in getting about in the steep hillside. Couple days in Valpo and another in Santiago and Chile left us wanting more (greedy gringo appetite) and I hope to make it back and into the smaller cities and different regions. I was especially taken with the inflection in the Spanish and the slang and warmth and overall aura.

Uruguayan Blue, Nerudian Sunsets, Pulpo and Reminder: You’re in the Third-World

2007-03-27T16:57:00.000-07:00

With a few days before my next ‘From Hegel to Nietszche’ class I picked up at the university here I decided to take in a few days of Uruguayan coastline, with blue sea, beautiful sunsets that the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda exclaimed are the most beautiful in the world and with the chance to eat some fresh seafood by the water I hopped a midnight ferry with my friend Brendan to Colonia. From Colonia we took a bus to Punta Del Este, which in a nutshell is the Hawaii of South America, and only hours away from the most cosmopolitan of South American capitals, Buenos Aires.

We spent three days reading by sea, wandering about town and eating local fish (Brotola) and drinking frosty local beer (Patricia) and sipping espresso’s (various) while watching the sun’s rays glisten on the water (Atlantic). The cool breeze rolls straight in from Antarctica as there is only the ocean separating the two continents. Looking out onto the water you feel as if you’re at the end of earth. One night staring up at the starry sky with waves breaking twenty-feet away I felt more connected than ever. The boulders of rock around me, the ocean waves breaking on this beach, the stars in the sky, all virtually unchanged and for how many milenia? How much longer will it be like this?

The first couple days we spent in heart of the city by the puerto, and the last in La Barra a quaint town of cafes and artsy boutiques and we found a little shack by the water and I got to savor eating Pulpo a la Gallega or Octopus cooked Galician style (province in the NW of Spain). This, I believe, can quite possibly be my favorite single dish in the world. We washed it down with local Uruguayan wine which is excellent on account of Uruguay’s coordinates which match up to the best wine growing regions in Chile, Argentina and Australia with a climate similar to Bordeaux, France, though slightly warmer and more humid. The wine and a liter and a half of sangria (shared) were the perfect accompaniment to our meal. Underneath the wooden planks on which we were sitting crabs scurried about and a rowboat stood listlessly. Pleasant. Perfect. Perfect.

On the way back we took a few hours to check out Montevideo, the capital city and place where I spent a couple wonderful days a few months back. After a nice meal we were walking through the dark, deserted streets (like most in Montevideo are) on the way to the main plaza. One street kid who asked us for “una moneda” or a coin earlier reappeared a couple blocks down the way and began more persistently asking us for money. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a guy walking fast behind us and gaining ground. Finally the kid put his hand under his jacket trying to insinuate he had a gun or weapon of some sort, we continued walking and now the guy was a few feet behind and I turned around and it happened in an instant. The kid pounced on me and reached deep into my pockets (with my passport, camera, and credit cards as we were about to leave the country heading back for Argentina) and I instinctually grabbed into them and tried to spin him off and we both hit the ground. My friend Brendan was quick to pull him off and the other man didn’t engage.

It all happened so fast. Looking back it could have turned out very differently. As we thought about it on the bus we seemed easy targets. Walking in the dark deserted streets with backpacks on our shoulders, the most all of the streets there are like this. Luckily nothing happened, a couple scratches and a startle, but we were unhurt and had nothing stolen but on the bus I couldn’t help but think about it. I wasn’t angry or upset, but really thought about how desperate these people are. Throughout much of the world there are literally billions of people who are in similar desperation. Not just in South America, but in Asia (think of the numbers in China and India alone) and Africa is beyond comprehension. This is not the same as the poor or those in the inner-city in the U.S. and homeless who have it hard. This is on a completely different scale.

What needs to be done to help change this situation? Education, economic opportunity, time. This is all I can really think of now, but how? There is so much need and so little aid and attention coming. Most of the governments here are strapped thin, and the U.S. announced it’s reducing aid and programs next year to the region to help pay for the war on terror.

Everything taken into account, I Love being down here. The more I’m here the more I grow attached, the more I want to see and the more I want to learn. I’m thankful I made the decision, and fortunate to have the opportunity. Some years from now I’ll look back and perhaps realize these to be among the most important months of my life.

Destination: Rosario, Provincia de Sante Fe, 309 km N of BsAs

2007-03-27T16:31:00.000-07:00

As New Yorkers can well attest to (or shout to), if you spend too much time in a bustling city you’re bound to go a little stir-crazy. To escape the cars, pollution, happenings about town, noise and bustle of BsAs I decided to hop a bus to Rosario, a city four hours north in the neighboring province of Sante Fe. After being on a short engaging Taxi ride to the Retiro Bus Station I thank my driver for his kindness and for the conversation. I’m consistently impressed at the articulate, pragmatic and opinionated cabbies here (70% of the time). I buy my bus ticket and forty-five minutes later I’m on the upper level of the double-decker.

On the monitor overhead a romantic comedy starring Reese Witherspoon (sans romance or comedy) is playing. It’s- Just like Heaven. Which- Isn’t. Though should I be struck by lighting tomorrow and Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon figure prominently in my version of heaven someone quickly accuse me of some heinous crimes in my previous life for which I will be immediately downgraded to a secret fiery hell, perhaps located somewhere in Nevada, Arizona or greater New Jersey, and I can spend eternity playing seven-card stud with privileged high-ranking members of the current U.S. administration.

Pulling into Rosario reminded me of what 1950’s suburban America must have been like. People are out in lawn chairs in the evening in their fenced in front yards, flags wave in the light breeze, people stroll down the streets on bikes and kids are chasing each other and a woman pushes a stroller past, cars roll slowly down the wide lanes. Bus station to cab and my driver tells me, as I’ve heard many a time, or twice, maybe, that Rosarinas are supposed to be the “chicas mas lindas” of Argentina. “Then my eyes have luck” I say. He cackles as we pull up and points to a series of two doors that’s supposed to be my hostel. I walk up stairs and push a buzzer.

The door vibrates open and a woman of about fifty walks down to greet me and gives me a quick peck on the cheek. “Tanto tiempo” she says as we walk up. And I think she has me confused with someone, because it couldn’t have been such a “long time” if this is my first time here. “Se vengan las chicas?” she asks as I casually say sure tell the girls to come out. Girls to check me in? Guests? A girl comes out wearing- not so much clothing. The next one comes and now it just seems silly for me to be all covered up like this. Uh? This is either the greatest hostel in the world or something’s terribly (?) wrong.

What’s the address here? I ask. The address? Yes. The girls look at me and say nothing. Where am I? I ask more authoritatively. “Mothers house” one says. I look at them. They look at me. One of the girl’s lights up. Are you looking for the hostel? Yes. The two say nothing for a moment. Oh. Next door.

Next door I walk in to the front desk. Hey I say. Hey. I’ve got a reservation. Name? I give. Last? I give. Document or passport? I’m a walking charity. “You know” I start, “I was mistaken.” What? “I went in the wrong entrance. Your neighbors”. No response. “You know your neighbors?” His eyes bulge. “That neighbor?” he says pointing to the wall. I nod. “Ah” he says. Then, “did you?” I shake no. I’m not sure if he believes. Him not believing makes me second guess myself. “Welcome” he says handing back my passport.

Where is everyone? I ask. Not here. Sister Hostel. Four blocks away. You want I see if they have room? See. Two beds, both in five-bed bedrooms. Good. Good. He gives me the address. I walk. If my old hostel reminded me of something out of a Garcia Marquez novella, this one reminds me of the hostel in the movie The Beach. Dreads, Reggae, Marijuana wafting in the air, hammock, Brits, French, Germans, Ecuadorians, Colombians, Sweedes- An international buffet for the mosquitos.

The City Beckons

2007-02-18T19:19:00.000-08:00

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

50 Days

2007-02-18T18:58:00.000-08:00

I arrived yesterday and descending into Los Angeles was odd, it hasn't been two months but already I had forgotten the look of the parched Southern California desert landscape crashing into the endless Pacific blue. In the morning when I had a stopover at Dulles airport in Washington D.C. it was 34 degrees. When we got into LA just before noon the captain anounced a temperature of 83 degress. Unbelieveable. My dad picked me up and we took the long way home driving down the Pacific Coast Highway so I could see the beach and all I could think of was I can't wait to go for a swim in the ocean. I've spent the past twenty-four hours with family and friends and excessively splashing on hot sauce and lavishly adorning food with fresh-cracked black pepper that I normally wouldn't even think to spice.When I took my final cab ride out from Recoleta to the airport I jotted down the following:

As the last rays of the Porteno sun shine down on my taxi I'm surprisingly without words. Earlier I imagined this ride to be an exciting one, my journey home. The perfect opportunity to give breath to the countless phrases I've scribbled and to demonstrate what I've learned, though I suppose what I've learned is not just some phrases and a language. There's a lump in my throat and we're just off Juan Maria Gutierrez and now pulling out of Recoleta and the driver, Bernardo keeps frantically darting glances to the rear-view mirror and back at the pensive green eyes maybe expecting I'll cry but I won't. I could, there's a lot of emotion weighing down but I'm distracted staring out at the last glimpses of my home for the past fifty days, looking out at the buildings but not really seeing anything. We're on Avenida Pueyrredon and soon we'll be out of the Capital Federal and will be near Ezeiza. "Goodbye's are always harder" I manage. He laughs and the air is momentarily lifted. "I'm not sure I'm ready to leave" I continue. He nods understandingly and sort of hums "si." Slowly, emphasizing each word, he says "lo bueno duro poco, eh?" I smile. "Claro" I say. The truth of it is fifty days is just that, but so much has transpired that I suppose it could have been some months or a year and not a minute would have been wasted. The bottom line I presume is that I'm grateful, to everyone who made this experience memorable and if you're reading this, than you've contributed greatly to it. My apprehension to leaving Argentine soil is the fault of many, and I'm lucky for it. Lo bueno, duro poco.

The Bewildered Convert Attains Asylum

2006-10-31T03:32:00.000-08:00

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.

And So It Really Began

2006-10-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

At ten minutes to two on my third day in Buenos Aires my phone is ringing and groggily I step out of bed, steady myself and pick up the unfamiliar number. It’s Mariana. Hey! She says. My throat is dry and I scratch out a fairly enthusiastic hello. You sleepin? Me? No. I mean yeah but now I’m up. What’s up? You wanna hang out? I’m in your neighborhood down the street. And I picture an angel in a phone booth, and there is soft lighting as if in a T.V. interview and she has a big smile on her face and these big white wings that are all scrunched in this phone booth while she’s sitting down talking to me. I’ve got class right now I tell her. Oh. Well I thought we could hang out. Unnecessary dramatic pause. But I guess I can run around the mall alone. I try and think logically, as logically as one can for being up for forty-three seconds.

My class already started and will be half-way done by the time I get there anyways. And this is probably my only chance to see this girl. Screw it I’ll meet you. Great decision. Mentally I’m complimenting myself and I’m in a room with several gentleman and it’s smoky and they’re all holding brandy glasses and wearing vests and bow-ties and are mustached and bearded and nodding and bowing and smiling and I smile and they’re all congratulating me on my decision and I tell them the secret to making good decisions is to do it in the first minute of your day, that very crucial first sixty-seconds, when as I have just demonstrated your decision making capabilities are ultimately superior to those once you can think clearly and incorporate reason and rationale. Mariana responds on the other end and the nice men disappear in a flash. Great! Gimme like fifteen minutes I say. We agree to meet at the first store on the left-hand side of the entrance to the Alto Palermo mall. I do morning things (in the afternoon), wash my face and drink some water and peel open one of the bananas I got and pour and drink a glass of milk and brush my teeth and make my hair kinda messy and slip on some jeans and a belt and a shirt and a little band I wear on my wrist and in two blocks time I’m giving her a hug and a peck on the cheek.

We walk through and pass a lot of stores and we’re talking about some things but nothing relevant I suppose and I ask her what she’s looking for and she says she always gets rings from this mall and we start to look for rings but stop into this store that sells underwear and lingerie. I look at some and she looks at some and we tell each other which ones we like for the other and I don’t really need any but you can always have more underwear and so I buy the ones she liked which I guess I liked too and she gets a bra and panties and we pay and she jokes Hi I’m Mariana nice to meet you let’s go underwear shopping. Afterwards underwear in-hand we walk through and go into a store here and one there and look at things and pick them up and look at prices and mostly it’s her and she tries a couple shoes but doesn’t get them.

We walk through the mall and there’s a huge image, I mean this monstrous billboard of their God, the person that Argentineans apparently worship more than anyone or anything, a deity of the deities, a man amongst children, none other than, well, Robbie Williams. I look at him and it’s like one of those paintings that wherever you’re standing it looks like the subject is looking right at you, and here Robbie is looking right at me. I mean yeah he’s British and sings in English, but here his music is not to be blasphemously thought cheesy-pop for school girls, but The Word.

We finally find this ring place, but once at the ring place and after Mariana’s tried on like three different rings, nothing appeals to her and I tell her we need to eat. Mariani’s! Mariana says there’s a place called Mariani’s that she always goes to with her family and it’s the most amazing buffet with everything I would ever want. I tell her I despise buffets, because I get confused and eat too many different things and would rather just have one good meal but she insists that she hates them too but this is different. So different. So I suggest we walk, she says it’s by this street Avenida Scalabrini Ortiz and we need to take to the Subte. I like walking but have yet to take the metro here so we walk underground and in line to buy tickets and gazing at the map I see that we’re only one stop away and suggest walking and she says okay she thought it was like three stops away.

So we walk and it’s a little breezy and cloudy and cool and she says she’s cold but I’m fine and she’s wearing flip flops and a thin yellow sweater and she lifts it up to show me this little black lingerie top she has on that she fills in nicely and I nod my head to confirm that she should be cold and I suggest we stop at my place to get a hoody first and she thinks and says maybe but then decides to tough it out. We get to Mariani’s and she’s jumping around saying this is it and I take out a camera and tell her to stand in front of the sign and she smiles that smile that millions of people have seen her do on her show and we walk inside but they’ve stopped serving lunch now, and don’t start dinner for a bit. She pleads her case to the mozo but nothing and we’re out on the street and we hop inside a locutorio and check email.

I have some messages from friends and read a couple briefly and she’s seeing if there is anything from her agent and I tell her I’m going to step outside and wait. Next door on the busy avenue there’s three little steps and I sit down on the middle one. I take a deep breath and look at the evenly spaced trees, mirroring Paris. With each gust of the wind people breeze by and there’s a man walking six dogs, real dogs not toy dogs, labs and retrievers and such, and I look down at them and their tongues are hanging out and I bet if we could talk they’d have stories too, maybe not all of them but maybe five of the six and I see my self sitting at a table with a coffee in front and they all have bones except for the one because you only get something if you have stories to tell and we’re all chatting and laughing and there is a lot of nodding going on. They scatter by and I’ve been cheated of my stories, for now, and someone’s car has turned off and they’re distressed trying to start it and all the cars behind honk their horns and an especially pleasant taxista sticks his head out the window and kindly delivers appropriate obscenities.

There you are! I get up and we start walking backs towards Alto Palermo and I suggest we try and find this restaurant I passed the other day and she says sure and so we turn off Avenida de Sante Fe and west onto Araoz and then south onto Guemes and walk a few blocks but I don’t see it and I know it’s around and I was only a few blocks from my place when I spotted it but it’s not on this street so we turn off and then try Charcas and then Mansilla and then Paraguay and nothing and now she’s hungry and cold and I’m hungry and annoyed so we decide to stop into this café, a pizza place a couple blocks down from the Alto Palermo mall and my place and we’re back to Avenida de Sante Fe and after all that.

We take turns walking down this tiny narrow spiral staircase to get to this tiny narrow hallway leading to these tiny narrow bathrooms to wash our relatively normal-sized hands. Back upstairs I look at the menu and study it and realize that this will be my first sit-down meal in Buenos Aires, and it’s fitting to be in a pizzeria because it seems like there is one on every block. We order the special pizza of the day and I get a mineral water and she gets a Coke. I look out the window and there are people walking by, a gust of wind kicks up some leaves and a big bus drives by and there’s a huge picture of Robbie Williams looking at us as we wait in the pizzeria and he doesn’t let his eyes off us until the Avenue curves and finally he’s out of sight and I ease up a little. The waiter comes out with a pressed towel around his arm and a round shiny tray and two Collins glasses and a large bottle of mineral water and a little swivel bottle of Coke. He puts her glass down and then my glass down and then pours her Coke filling the glass one-third full and then pours my mineral water a third-full, bows and walks away and that ends the mini-performance and all for us and I sorta want to clap but don’t.

We talk about aspirations and plans and goals and then our pizza arrives and the waiter has the pizza on a big tray and he places it down and takes the a large food-turner (commonly mistaken for a spatula, but it’s not) and a sort of spoon thing and serves her slice first with a romantic, dramatic swoop of the slice into the air so that the stringy cheese can say goodbye to the rest of the pizza and it does and it’s on her plate and then my slice and the swoop as if offering my slice to the heavens and pizza Gods above and then it finds it’s way on my plate and each slice has exactly one green olive placed exactly in the center.

Mirroring Mariana’s proper etiquette I take out a fork and knife and begin cutting away and eating and it’s yummy, the dough has a light crunch on the outside but is fluffy, warm, soft and light inside. I remember this girl once saying that if you use a knife and fork for pizza, it looses exactly fifty-percent of it’s flavor, and I don’t remember if she was drunk, or I was drunk, but there was definitely some inebriation because there had to be, and I asked her how she could be so sure of such an exact percentage, and she looked at me like I was crazy and said that it was well known scientific fact. Cutting sandwiches diagonally was thirty-percent. Or maybe pizza thirty and sandwiches fifty. Anyways I bite and look and wonder if I’m depriving myself of taste, and then I forget about the whole thing and begin cutting another piece.

I think the pizza is great but has way too much cheese for my taste and so I take some off, and Mariana thinks it’s great but has way too much bread in relation to cheese and so she eats all the cheese and leaves like half of the bread on her plate and takes her next slice. I tell her she should just eat all the cheese and me all the dough and sauce and she laughs but I’m totally serious. When we’re done there’s enough cheese on my plate for another half-pizza and enough dough on hers to go under it and she says we should assemble it back and ask for half our money back. I laugh but really I’m still hungry and looking at her dough, and she’s smiling but really looking at my cheese, and we both are smiling and enviously admiring the plates in front of each other and then the waiter pops by and asks us if we’re done and we simultaneously say yes so he picks up the plates and it was great and no, no dessert but thanks and just the check.

I nab the check when the waiter brings it and pay the bill and she puts up a faux(?) fit and I tell her she’s getting dessert. She says I need to try facturas which are like these croissant, pastry-like things, and that I need to try alfajores (cookies with filling) from Havana, which is like the Starbucks of Buenos Aires. Basically there’s one on every corner, but they’re great and so we decided to go to the Havana in Alto Palermo, there’s this little coffee stand with three little stools and we go and occupy two of them. She doesn’t drink coffee only tea, but I insist that she get a coffee and its café con leche times two and we get one of the famous alfajores to split.

The barista prepares our coffees to order, and serves them on these little trays with three small cups, one with mineral water, one with orange juice, and one filled with two little crisp chocolate-covered cookies, and all this comes with every order of coffee. Mariana suggests we get a Myspace picture of my first alfajor and Havana experience and takes out her camera and extends her arm and gets one of the two of us. I take out my camera and ask the woman behind the counter if she can take a picture and bashfully she says she doesn’t want to ruin my camera and I insist and she takes it and asks us if we’re ready and sort just holds the camera and we smile and then she just hands it back to me and Mariana and I are confused and we asked her if she took the picture and she just sort of smiles and I double-check and no, no picture. I ask her to take it again and she insists she doesn’t want to ruin my camera and then I realize that she’s probably never taken a picture before and I show her where to push and she takes the picture and it turns out great and I show it to her and she proudly smiles.

The alfajor melts in my mouth and I shoot back my coffee, which is tiny by American standards, little more than an espresso. I’m going to order another but Mariana gives me hers and says she’s already feeling it and it’s so strong and I don’t put up much resistance and savor each sip, or I should say, both sips. Mariana pays for the coffee and It’s now close to six o’clock and she has her cousins picking her up soon and I tell her we need to hang out again but she says it will be tough with her limited time and she needs to see her family but that she’ll be back in December and then it’s for a month not four days and I think to myself I’ll be back in California, or in Oregon celebrating Christmas with my family. I tell her to call me if she gets a chance this trip and she smiles and says she’ll try but I doubt it and we part.

I sit for a few minutes on the stool, I think about our exchanges, I think I was especially conscious of every time she grabbed my arm and emphatically pointed something out, or gave that smile with the eyes that glittered. I ask for another coffee and the woman thinks I’m crazy and I think about telling her that these three coffees are smaller than one I drink back home but I’m lazy and I just smile and she makes it. I try and take inventory on the afternoon, and I realize that the futbol game I was gonna play in is going on right now, and that I missed that but I think it was worth it, I had fun and walked some streets and ate in a restaurant for my first time and I finish the second gulp of my contemptuously small but strong coffee and there are just some grounds left in the cup and I put it down and walk out of Alto Palermo.

Outside it’s gotten colder, the wind gusts strongly and I look to the sky but I don’t think it’s going to rain. I decide I need to find a ferreteria or hardware store so I can get a converter for my laptop. I hop into a pharmacy on the corner and ask where I can find one, and am given instructions for a place about five blocks north of my place and so I head off and walk down Guemes and I find the place and I walk in and see they have one of those little ticket-holder things where you pull a number and wait your turn and there’s this big display indicating whose turn it is, and the place is basically like a Home Depot, but like 1/32 of the size.

When it comes to me I formulate with good cause my inquiries and they have a converter and I buy it and go home and realize that this only is made for plugs with two tongs and my laptop has three and it’s back in the box for the converter and down Guemes for me and into the ferreteria for both and back to the same guy and I explain my dilemma and he nods and says no pasa nada and tells me not to worry and that I can just flip my plug and plug in two of the three tongs and it will work just fine and I ask if he’s sure and he says not to worry and so I thank him and go back home, and out the box again for the converter, and I do what the guy says and the light on my laptop goes on! For about three seconds. Then it’s off and won’t go back on again and I realize that it probably blew a fuse or some other erroneous electronic babble something. I want to cry but I don’t, and it’s back into the box for the converter and down Guemes for me and back to the ferreteria for both and the doors are closed and the lights are out and if I was a dog I’d whimper, but I’m not so I just sort of moan, I’m not sure if it was audible or mental, but there was some moaning, and defeated, body weak and limp, I crawl back home.

At home I scamper in and place the converter on the bar-top (sounds fancier than it is, seriously). I open the fridge and eat a handful of almonds and then another. I open a yogurt with fruit-on-the-bottom and it’s peach and I lap it up and then open another, an unidentifiably sweet, fruitish, berryish, heavily colored and saccharin flavored thing. I grab a bowl and pour in some milk and cereal and then another bowl and I think I’m going to turn on the radio but as soon as I do it’s a Robbie Williams song and I shut it off and I go to lie on my bed. While I’m on my bed I’m looking at the map and realize that I came within a block, on three separate occasions, of the plaza where the restaurant I wanted to go with Mariana was. I toss the map on the floor and lie on my side and stare at nothing in particular.

When I wake up my eyes cringe and the sun is beaming in and I try to get up but I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck and I lie back down and close my eyes. When I awake again it’s mainly because I have to pee and I crawl out of bed and do the necessary and I think if I had a million bucks in my hands and someone told me I either had to hold it for ten more minutes or could go now but had to give them all the money I’d probably have thrown the money at them and darted into the bathroom.

I wash my face and look at the clock and it’s one in the afternoon and I do the math and realize I just slept for fifteen hours. My Spanish class has just started and I lay down on the futon and try to think if I had any assignments to do, and I think back to last night and the ferreteria and turn onto my side and look at the stupid converter. When I wake up it’s just past two and I think this is getting ridiculous and I dart out and turn on the tap and fill a glass and drink thirstily and amazingly I haven’t gotten the runs or a stomach ache or anything and maybe that agent was right after-all, the water seems drinkable. I sit on one of the barstools and try to think why I’m so tired. Quickly jet-lag pops into my mind, and time difference, and I think it’s only 10a.m. in LA and that’s not so bad.

If someone made me, I mean absolutely forced me, to explain in one word why traveling and getting out of what you know is so important, I would hesitantly, grudgingly answer change. Some people just get excited when they buy a new comforter for their bed, or a new painting for their room, and yet others when they discover a new restaurant or see a foreign film. In about sixty hours my mind, body and senses have been assaulted by change and it’s all very exciting. Everything’s different. The air is different, and the pollutants and humidity or dryness. The water is different with all it’s microorganisms and parasites and bacteria. And I’ve been given that new comforter, and sheets and bed to go with it. I’ve been given a new apartment and a new neighborhood and a new language and new food and new restaurants and here all the films are foreign to me and everything is basically change-to-the-extreme.

Even things that are routine are different. You go to the supermarket, but here you’re given a new market and a new system and totally different products and brands and a new layout. You go to the gym but here there’s different equipment and classes and kinds of people that go. You get your morning coffee and pastry and the coffee is different, it tastes different and is served differently and your pastry can be the same thing but it won’t taste the same. Somewhere a farmer is planting grain, and this grain grows in soil with different minerals and ratios of them and it’s more or less fertile, and this grain is cut and fed to a chicken who hungrily (mindlessly?) pecks away. The chicken lays an egg that doesn’t quite taste the same, and it’s properly treated and shipped for consumption, used in conjunction with other ingredients that go into making this pastry that will taste, to a greater or lesser degree, different than any pastry I eat back home, even if it’s the same thing. Apple pie in the Argentina, for better or worse, will taste different than apple pie back home (If I was a politician I already see a neo-con attack on this: “he even tried to suggest that apple pie could be better in another country!” and this of course would be spun to show my lack of “faith” and “values”). But I digress, basically everything is different, there is so much change, and that is what makes it so exciting. I also think all the change has taken it’s toll on my body and this is how I justify to myself sleeping off half the day.

I feel in many ways as if I’m in a new relationship. When you enter a new relationship everything that is new, novel, is exciting. First phone calls and kisses give you butterflies in your stomach and a nervous feeling and you’re all giddy. That’s what it’s like in a new environment, and you can appreciate a new cityscape just like you can appreciate some new person’s appearance, and in both cases you’re striving to reach a comfort zone, which eventually leads to taking things for granted. Just like a couple having a conversation-less meal, or someone walking or commuting home and not seeing what’s around them, and we need to get to the point where we’re always consciously appreciating things.

Every time I leave the city I grew up in, and come back, even if just for just a week or even a weekend, I notice something new, and travel allows for excitement by means of change, by giving us a new environment, a new relationship. Some people reach a point where they don’t want that excitement through change, and they want to settle or get “married” to their environment. Even still, couples will need to take vacations, getaways, and experience excitement through means of change by traveling.

Anyway I look out my window and it’s a gorgeous day, warm sun and blue sky and I dress accordingly and have a banana and a bowl of milk and cereal and then a handful of the cereal dry and I put the boxes away and then open them again and another handful and then the raw Chilean almonds that are a little softer and then I wash a big red apple to take with me. I slip on my backpack and turn the key twice in the lock to open the door and turn the key twice in the door to lock it and walk down the two flights of stairs and turn the lock to the front door to open it and turn the lock once back to close it and I feel like chucking my keys in the street and using a baseball bat to smash open the glass door in front next time and kicking down my own door but then black exhaust kicks out into my face from a bus and I smell the diesel-soot and I begin walking if only to escape the black cloud.

I turn right off Guemes onto Avenida Coronel Diaz and walk the one block down to Avenida de Sante Fe and then it’s straight for like twelve blocks until Junin and then nine more blocks to our special X-men campus. On Sante Fe I pass a café and a newsstand and someone’s selling flowers that smell sweet and then Havana and then Aroma which is a Euro-sleek coffee and gelado place. I’m walking by another of the green newsstands and this woman who must be like eighty years old and sorta resembles Barbara Bush collapses onto the magazines and I jump! Grab her and try to steady her and all the magazines are sliding out from under her and her husband or equally old companion is just realizing that something is happening and turns and tries to process the sight in front of him and I’m holding the woman up by her arm and she’s just staring straight but as if at nothing and I think she’s shocked, and I’m shocked, and just looking at her and she’s stiff and doesn’t move and before I know it a couple of policemen are holding her up and one takes her arm from me and I don’t say anything and now there’s a crowd and they’re all mumbling and the old man is looking at her and still trying to process everything and the woman is stone faced and my heart is beating and I don’t think she’s moved and the cops are screaming things at each other helping her up and still this empty blank look and I think there’s probably nothing else I can do and so I walk off.

I walk past boutiques and cafés that I tell myself I’ll try and I read street signs and mumble them under my breath and I hear someone talking into their cell-phone saying no es nada but in this heavily accented cut Rio Platense Porteno way that comes out noehn’a and I mumble noehn’a about seven times under my breath until I get it just about right. I walk by this heavily pregnant woman and I think she looks beautiful and I think of my sister when she was pregnant and I thought she was the most beautiful thing ever and if I could have seen my mom pregnant I’m sure I would have thought the same thing and what can be more beautiful than giving life?

While I’m walking I stop for a second and think how amazing it is to be able to walk everywhere. In Los Angeles you get in your car for everything and I feel as a result you’re cut off. The car becomes a casket because you’re trapped inside and outside there is all this life going on but you’re just cut-off. There’s no spontaneity, you get in with a place in mind, maybe a restaurant or the mall or the supermarket or something, and you drive over and park and do your thing and then back in the car and then you’re back home and it’s all predetermined! Today I saw the newsstands and smelled the flowers and heard the noehn’a and there was that excitement with the lady and all these interesting people scattering by and I felt alive. I cut right onto Junin and I think back to the old woman and I just keep remembering her cold frozen eyes and that gaze and how stiff her body seemed and I all I can think to myself is May Robbie be with her.

When I’m at campus I get into my class that’s already started and the teacher is this woman who looks like she should be a librarian, and she wears these huge, humongous, gigantic, enormous (and like three more analogous words), glasses that make her eyes look like little peas behind these two magnifying glasses. She’s really nice but utterly boring and I ignore most of the lesson and so have the other kids, because mainly we’re supposed to be making some abstruse, highly-perplexing list of “things you might find in a drawer.” What! What drawer? What things? What is the point of the exercise? Couldn’t she have thought of something slightly more stimulating than listing drawer components?

During our break we’re sitting in the cafeteria and I bite into a toasted jamon y queso (ham n’ cheese) sandwich. It’s pretty tasty and I say it’s pretty tasty. This tall, lanky, curly-haired kid from Berkeley says Dude those are like tasty for the first week you’re here. Then he tells me that they get old fast. Real fast. And I bite, and savor, and some other kids gather around me with a conspiring air. Well what do you think? they ask. Think of what? I inquire. Our teacher! She’s whatever I say. She blows says this one young Harvard-girl. She must go! Says the girl from Belgium in a heavy French accent. The others nod and agree and it’s decided that something must be done. We go back to class for the remaining hour and assemble outside just after. The girl from Belgium gets the dean of the language school. Protests are made and arguments and there’s some nodding and a show of hands and before we know it we’ve thrown a coup and replaced our teacher! The day after tomorrow you will switch with the other class says the dean. Smiles around and the director leaves and one girl says she feels bad and we all nod and then the girl from Belgium says she doesn’t and then we all nod and then disassemble.

The young Harvard-girl and her young Harvard-guy friend and I decide to walk together because we all have to go see the director of the program to ask basic questions and the office is a fifteen-minute walk from campus and we decide to walk together and when we step outside it’s pouring rain and the sun has gone and it’s windy and cool and we’re in shock. Serious shock. It was like eighty-degrees without a cloud in the sky. The girl is prepared and takes out a poncho, but me and the guy have nothing and I say wait a sec and hop into the cafeteria and ask if they can get me the biggest trash bag they have and I get one and rip a hole in the top big enough for my head and two small ones for my hands and we’re off, with young Harvard-kid in flip-flops sans umbrella, young Harvard-girl in a poncho, and me wearing the latest trash fashion. I suppose if someone wanted, they could, rather erroneously, point to me and say “white-trash.”

We walk and it’s really coming down and my head is soaking wet and young Harvard-kid hops into a kiosco and asks if they have umbrella’s and no until we find one that does and he buys one and we continue walking. We walk by an umbrella that has been torn inside-out and is all broken and kind of laugh and say that sucks. The gusts pick up and we can barely see it’s coming down so hard and then whoomp! A gust of wind smashes into us and we hear some kind of sound and I look back and young Harvard-kid is trying to adjust and toy with his umbrella that is now broken, inside-out. He tries to pop it back into place and it’s still pouring down on us and the umbrella is broken beyond repair and he chucks it and young Harvard-girl and I look at each other and say that sucks.

We get to the building on Avenida de Mayo and it’s beautiful and built in this French style and inside we go up this marvelous spiral-staircase to the fourth-floor and the Harvard-kids go first and are done and are off to make their tango class. The office is tiny and painted bright green. I take off my trash bag and the director laughs and asks condescendingly is it raining? And this as I try and rub out all the water in my hair and am dripping everywhere. I sit and she’s seated and I’m wearing a blue tee-shirt and she says my eyes seem blue today, not green and I tell her they change with what I wear and she laughs and says nonsense. I try to explain that if I wear green they seem more green, and blue=blue, and gray and they’re more grayish and she laughs and doesn’t really buy into it. I ask her some things and we sit and talk for fifteen minutes and then I’m done and she says she’s really craving a cigarette and will I step out in the hall with her while she has a smoke and yes and we’re out and she lights and inhales and exhales and she smiles and I smile.

She tells me of the history of the building and says that on the bottom floor there are statues and designs on the wall and it’s supposed to represent hell. She says there’s a big cupola at the top and there are angels and clouds and etchings of heaven things and that we’re in purgatory. I laugh and she says en serio! I ask her what the “purgatory” things are and she takes an inhale and smiles and blows smoke out slowly and smiles and says “there are purgatory things.” I smile and leave the vague elusive answer to float up into the heavens and the clouds and the etchings.

I’m in a cab and heading home, I had the director call me one because I thought the trash bag was fun for fifteen-minutes but not for the thirty-minute walk back home. The cab driver snickers out at the traffic and out at people on the street and asks me where I’m from. What do you think? I ask. He shrugs and snickers and says how the hell am I supposed to know. I don’t really say anything because I was told to try and avoid letting people know I was American if possible. I say nothing and he says England. I say nothing but think the pound is stronger than the dollar and that financially I’m probably more of a target and politically it’s at least close to equal. France he says. This is better but then I think what if he asks me a bunch of France questions and I falter, or on the off chance he can chat me up in French my accent will shine through in a heartbeat.

Estados Unidos I finally acknowledge. He nods and snickers and screams out obscenities at the car in front of him and says Argentineans are the dumbest people on the planet. I’m a little surprised and he says they’re all crooks. He asks me what I think. A test? I remember the Berkeley-kid saying that his friend was coming from the airport on his first day, and either the cabbie was in on it, or the mafia overheard on the dispatch that they were probably tapped into, but at a red-light three men came up to the cab and one hit the driver over the head and they effectively kidnapped the kid at gunpoint and accosted him for twenty minutes and robbed him of everything he had save for his money-belt under his pants with his passport and credit cards. They then kicked him out of a car in some sketch neighborhood and left him.
I try and think and maybe the story isn’t true. I mean maybe it’s like in elementary school when we had that experiment where the teacher whispers something in one kid’s ear, something like “Debbie ate a ton of chocolate, and gained a lot of weight” and then the kid would turn around and whisper it in the ear of the next kid and then that kid would turn around and so on. Soon one kid goes from saying “Debbie ate a ton of chocolate, and gained a lot of weight” to “Debbie ate tons of chocolate and gained a lot of weight” and then “Debbie ate a tons of chocolate and gained tons of weight” and eventually when it gets to the twenty-seventh or thirtieth or some absurd public-school-number of kids in a class Debbie has eaten the world’s supply of chocolate and weighs like seriously a lot, like nine-thousand pounds or something.

In the cab I weigh my words and say I think Argentineans are fairly nice. More or less, to be exact. More or less is a great way to express anything, I mean they could be really, or not really nice if they’re more or less nice. Crooks! He screams out erratically shooting his index finger up towards the hood of the cab. I say nothing. Son falsos amigos he cautions me. I nod. They only want your money! No more money (he smacks his palms together for dramatic effect) no more friends! He snickers some more. Falsos Amigos. Even though I’m like ten blocks away from the address I gave, I nicely, somewhat nervously say this next corner will be perfectly alright to drop me off. This next one!? Yeah, or I mean actually you can drop me off in two blocks, that’d be perfect. In two blocks he stops and the fare is like six-something and I take out seven pesos and hand them to him and bolt open the door, and then try to casually step out of the cab and he shouts Ciao! And I shut the door and raise my hand bye and open my backpack and fake-search for something so this guy can leave and doesn’t see in which direction I walk home.

On my walk home I get distracted by this little coffee and pastry place on Avenida Pueyrredon and walk in and it has orange walls and is cozy and though it’s not raining anymore I want a hot café con leche and there’s a display with a million little facturas winking at me and glistening proudly. I walk up to the case and choose two especially delectable, doughy facturas, one plain with sugar on top and another with custard in the middle. The girl tells me if I get a third it’s actually cheaper because of a promotion they have when you get a coffee, and she’s smiling at me, and I choose this jelly factura, and I think the wayward pastry girl thinks I’m cute or some nonsense and she winks and throws in another jelly one into the basket and now I have four and then says for me to sit and she’ll bring them to me. I go and sit and there’s a T.V. and the Argentinean version of Wheel of Fortune is on except the Vanna White girl is wearing a tinny-tiny skirt and these high heels and is a brunette. I watch for about three seconds and lose interest and it’s just in time because the girl is there and she has a tray with my coffee and facturas and a little glass of orange juice and a little sparkling mineral water. I ask for a paper and she says which and I ask for a Clarin.

I bite into the first factura and it’s ridiculously delicious and then in true Porteno style I dunk it into my coffee and take a bite and oh my something it’s gotten even better. I finish the first and lick my sticky fingers and wipe them on a napkin and sip my coffee and start reading through the paper. One headline reads “Smoking Like Nothing.” This is in reference to a law that was just passed, like the one in Los Angeles, or California that was later adopted in Ireland and eventually New York that bans smoking in public places such as indoor restaurants and bars. Apparently Portenos decided that this was ridiculous and are ignoring it so far.

There’s also a huge article about the big match-up this weekend, the biggest rivalry in all of South American futbol, the match between Boca Juniors and their biggest rival El River. There has been a lot of hoopla all over the news and in the streets and there is great anticipation and police are prepared for the usual violence and fervor and excitement. Another article says Swiss banks are divided fifty-fifty on which growing South American economy to invest in, Brazil or Argentina. There are related facts and figures in support of both. Meat exports are apparently growing and inflation was 0.9%, and twelve people died in Bolivia for control of a mine, Argentina is looking to improve relations with Mexico and there’s a picture of appropriate officials holding hands and shaking and smiling. Condoleeza Rice arrived for a surprise visit in Iraq and she has a big smile on her face. Cities in China are feeling the effects of global warming, and some accord has been reached on the “energy problem.”

I bite into the custard factura and decide I like this one more than the sugar one I just had and I guess it’s fitting because custard doughnuts have always been my favorite. I look up at the T.V. and it’s still the Wheel of Fortune and absurdly three woman are now on the screen in tinny-tiny skirts and super high-heels and they’re shaking they’re butts and throwing confetti in the air or something and I sip my coffee and order another café con leche and back to the paper.

There’s a quote from the president, Nestor Kirchner directed at critical church officials who’ve been at odds with his administration and issued scathing remarks. The quote fires back saying “God is for everyone, but careful: The devil is also coming to all: To those that wear pants and those that wear cassocks.” I’m a little shocked and think it daring for the President of a country almost wholly under the cross to make such an emphatic statement. There’s another headline saying El ‘Correo-Basuras’ No Para De Crecer and apparently the amount of inbox junk-mail in Castellano has grown forty-two percent this year and some great sage, a real expert suggests that often they can contain viruses and be careful and okay thanks. There’s a huge one page ad, and there He is, looking at me again, none other than, well it’s Robbie. I nervously smile and think if I’ve committed any sins and then I quickly turn the page.

I’m enjoying sitting in this little cozy place sipping my coffee, and I think if I was still in that cab I would have never stepped in, probably not discovered the place but the spontaneity of walking in a city like this allows for the discovery of little jewels. I glance back at my paper. Other important and urgent matters suggest “Jenny says enough.” Apparently Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn are no more. A study suggests that sixty-percent of people over thirty don’t know their cholesterol level. There’s a pic of Matisyahu in full garb and under it “I’m not trying to influence people.” There’s some more analysis of the River and Boca game and an article saying Diego Maradona “asked God for Boca to win.” I close the paper and push it away and my second coffee arrives and the girl has brought me another factura and I think tonight will be the perfect night to pay a little visit to my gym.

When I’ve done the key-dance and gotten into my apartment I see that stupid converter and it’s in my hands for the converter and more jingling for the keys and down Guemes for me and to the ferrreteria and I’ll be happy to finally get the proper one and charge my laptop and I arrive and oh, no, you’ve-got-to-be-Fuck! The lights are out and the door is closed and Why! Why! I just want my stupid freakin convertor! I kind of look inside as if that’s really going to change anything and I futilely and ineffectually shake at the door back and forth and it rattles and I want to scream and I sit on the corner of the still dampen sidewalk. I feel like crying but decide on just doing that moan thing, this time I’m pretty sure it’s internal. I get up and try to see if there are any hours of operation listed and say something stupid like it’ll never be open! And there’s nothing except a sign saying “sixty-five years of service” and I think where are you now when I need service! Defeated, once again, I whimper back home and my keys fumble through the Pentagon series of locks and I finally make it up and it’s on the bar-top (still not that fancy) for the converter and on my bed for me.

I decide to take my frustration and make it work for me and I hop up and change into some jersey shorts and a white tee and a hoody over that cause it’s still cold outside and I put on my tennis shoes and key dance and Guemes to Coronal Diaz and I’m in the Megatlon gym. I walk into the locker room and check-in my hoody and keys to this guy that gives me a number and back in the weights area I find a mat and some space and do a couple stretches and some push-ups and more stretching and I pick up a set of dumbbells and do a set of curls but I don’t really feel like lifting weights so I walk over to the treadmill and hop on and work up a good sweat while watching subtitled made for T.V. American movies that I would never watch at home, but only to take my mind off the fact that I feel like a hamster on a wheel do I watch and then get off and get some water and then hop on the bike and do that for fifteen minutes and more water and treadmill for a little more and stretches and home and shower and shave and snack and bed and nap.

When I get up from my nap it’s about midnight but I have a lot of energy and so I decide to call around and see what’s going on only it’s expensive to call on cell phones and everyone sends text messages here so I send one out to the girl from Belgium and one to the Brazilian guy in my class and one to the Austrian girl and one to this British girl, and to a girl from Connecticut and another from Massachusetts and to the girl from Maryland who’s cute but I thought was my age and was shocked to learn she’s a freshman in college.

I get total crap service in my studio and it takes me about three attempts to successfully send this message hey everyone, what u guys up to 2nite? And I get no replies and I’ve fallen back asleep and suddenly my phone lights up my dark studio and it’s vibrating on the bar-top (even in the dark it’s not that fancy) and all of the sudden I have four messages at once and I look at the time and it’s past one. The Brazilian guy and girl from Belgium are together and say to come meet up at some bar, the girl from Massachusetts and the girl from Connecticut are with Kat the British girl and they’re at some bar on the other side of town, and Maryland says eating din with some kids, gonna go somewhere wanna meet?

I send out another message assessing the updated status of everyone to decide the best course of action and kinda wait on my bed holding my phone and it’s close to one thirty when I look and then it’s vibrating and I look and it’s 4:32a.m. and I have three new messages that read things like yeah come meet up! And it’s time stamped 1:37a.m. and why am I just getting it now! And there’s another estamos en bar … and that at 1:39a.m. and Maryland Hey, yeah we’re in Palermo shooting pool come if u want it’s chill 1:43a.m. I look back at my phone and 4:38a.m. and I put my phone down and close my eyes.

When I wake up it’s 12:42p.m. I do my morning things (again, in the afternoon), I wash my face and fill a glass with the finest agua de la canilla (tap) and drink thirstily and I turn on the kettle and fix a cup of instant coffee and pour a little milk into it and heat up some bread and spread jam on it and sip coffee and take bites of the bread with jam. I’m still hungry so I get out a big frying pan and some broccoli and tomatoes and slice them up and toss them into the now hot pan with olive oil and crack open three eggs and use half the yolks and scramble everything up and I sprinkle some salt and I look, remember and crap! I forgot to by pepper. No Black Pepper.

For anyone that knows me I don’t really need to go on. I can’t really taste my food unless it’s black and covered in pepper and I look at my broccoli and tomato omelet disdainfully and if I was a dog I’d snarl and raise my upper lip and show my fangs and I might as well be eating yellow and green and red. I heat up some more bread and sadly mop up the egg concoction and wash an apple, a green one today and I eat some raw Chilean almonds and brush my teeth and get my keys and we dance and down two flights of stairs and key dance, I suppose the tango if I had to choose a dance because I’m in Argentina and right off Guemes and onto Coronal Diaz and right on Avenida de Sante Fe and I walk by the newsstand and Havana and Aroma the coffee and gelado place and the sweet smelling flowers and all the snippets of chatter and characters and faces and I smell the exhaust and hear the horns and walk past the cafés and it’s right on Junin and who knows what the day will bring.

Two blocks from X-men mini-campus I run into Maryland and pinch her from behind and she doesn’t turn around but grasps her bag more tightly and picks up the pace and I weave in and out of the people and place my hand on her shoulder and she flips around nervously and behind her huge buy-eyed sunglasses looks pale and then smiles and puts her hand to her heart and I say hi and she says hi and we walk the two blocks together. How was last night I ask and decent she says. We just went to this pool place and drank some beer and it was whatever. Cool. I was kinda tired anyway and sent you a message I think. Yeah I got it but at like five in the morning and I colorfully explain and enlightened we say we’ll talk later and part for our respective classes.

Apparently the director thought we should have our new teacher starting today and his name is Isaac (name changed cause..) and he’s young and energetic and hilarious and we’re all pretty much laughing the whole time and I look down at my notes and realize I actually feel like I’m learning things, and practical things and I think about our little coup and democracy in action and smile and before I know it class is over and I’m satisfied. After class Kat the British girl and Connecticut and Massachusetts all come over and ask me what I’m doing and I say nothing planned and lets go get a coffee or something and they say sure but one wants to check her email in the lab first and the others suddenly have emergency emails that need to be checked and fine and I say I’ll go to the cafeteria and get a coffee while I wait for them so that we can all go get coffee.

In the cafeteria there is Reggae music blasting and I kinda like it and I get my pre-coffee coffee and take a seat and grab a copy of La Nacion off this rack and peruse the paper and sip my Americano. At first I hesitated ordering an Americano thinking it too typical for an American to get an American coffee, but whatever and it comes in this tiny plastic cup like the kind my dentist gives me to rinse my mouth when I’m getting my teeth cleaned and whatever and I decide to sniff it for a while to make it last longer.

The headlines suggest the Vatican is concerned with the recent gaff between Kirchner and the Church. There’s more pictures of futbol players and half the bottom part of the page is dedicated to Boca and there’s a picture of the captain and the other half for River and there’s a pic of theirs and some statistics and more about the great anticipation and the players are ready and the police are ready and the fans are ready and it won’t be much longer now and it says El Partido Que Todos Esperan and it’s the game that everyone’s waiting for in Monumental Stadium. There’s an article about the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow and it says that she was the journalist most publicly opposed to Putin’s politics.

Amazingly there’s an article on Hilary Clinton in Ohio campaigning for Sherrod Brown for the Ohio Senate. Ohio’s Senatorial race! Here thousands of miles away, most Americans probably don’t know that the President of Argentina is Nestor Kirchner and here is state-specific senatorial race updates! There’s a University of Belgrano study indicating that Portenos believe that women are more ethical and would prefer one as president. I think they’re more ethical too but for a woman to overcome such political obstacles, to ascend to the highest level of the political spectrum can they really remain ethical? What sorts of people go into politics anyways? Were they ethical to begin with?

New numbers suggest that despite four years of consecutive growth Argentina’s poverty rate has only declined marginally and still one-third are at or below the poverty line. A travel article says Praga: El Nuevo Corazon de Europa and apparently the city of a hundred cupolas and centuries of history, the city that inspired Kafka, is now in fashion as a travel destination and I think about my own experiences in Prague and recall them fondly and turn the page and a headline poses “What is Political Freedom?” and there’s a fascinating quote “To be free is to not be obstructed, to have the capacity to do what you want to do. To be absolutely free is to find oneself in a state where nothing can oppose your wishes: To be omnipotent.”

I read this two or three times and let the words roll off my tongue and have visions of addressing a massive crowd and the image is in black and white like old newsreel footage and I’m emphatically delivering these lines and people cheer and flags wave and then I sip my coffee and everything is in color again and I’m back in the cafeteria. But I think about the quote for a moment. I have personally freed myself and it’s not really political freedom and I’m certainly not omnipotent but I broke down hindering obstacles in front of me and confronted opposition and in some very small scale won a very large victory by just being here. By taking action. By breaking free of what I was in, to allow myself, if greedily, a fresh perspective.

Kat and Conn. and Mass. are together and tapping my shoulder and we’re off and east on Junin and we talk and there’s more of this legitimating ourselves and pertinent background information and talk about things in common and past Corrientes and Cordoba and Avenida de Sante Fe and now we’re in Recoleta and it’s my first time in this neighborhood and we’re at a café and my Spanish sadly is the best in the group and I’m talking to the mozo and ask about what they have at the café and look at menu’s. Kat exclaims look you get crisps with beer! And we all look to the table next to us and they bring out chips and various fried crunchy things and there seems to be a platter with cubed ham and olives and peanuts and suddenly I’m hungry and Kat wants crisps and the other girls sorta shrug and instead of coffee it four cervezas and Quilmes on draft and it comes and it’s cold and crisps and crunchies and ham and olives and peanuts and there’s a small discussion about how amazing peanut butter is and the girls already miss it and Kat says she doesn’t understand Americans and peanut butter and I vehemently defend the peanut and all of peanut-kind including in smashed, mashed up form. I tell them how my brother and I practically grew up on peanut butter and honey sandwiches, our personal favorite but PB&J’s and PB and banana’s and PB and celery and PB ice-cream and everything peanut butter and Kat laughs and shakes her head.

Connecticut gets cold and we all decide to go in for round-two and the cubes aren’t cutting it and I order a chicken sandwich and it comes out with the beers and it’s dry-slices of chicken breast and a baguette and nothing else. I ask for hot sauce and none but he brings ketchup (catsup?) and mayo and golf sauce which kinda just tastes like mayo with a little ketchup and I ask for black pepper and open like thirty-little ketchup packets and the thing is still dry as hell and I chew and swallow and it barely goes down and I take a healthy sip of my beer and its cool and runs down my throat and I feel calm and sit and we talk more and I finish the sandwich and we pay and start walking and see this really cool bar that looks like it’s just out of the Village in New York or something and it’s happy hour and you get two belinis for like twelve pesos and what a deal and we’re sitting inside and there’s a DJ and red brick and leather modern red and white couches and heavy red curtains and the cute waitress comes over and round-one and we toast and talk about travels through Europe, or mostly Kat and I and then round-two but actually four and we’re laughing and joking and more people come in and I walk up to the DJ and ask him to play a couple songs and he says he has to look and see if he has them but we pay the bill and say we’ll all meet up later tonight where like everyone from our X-men mini-campus is gonna be and we part and they take the subte home and I walk and sadly I have like no tolerance and feel pretty buzzed (drunk?). At home I fill up a glass of water and drink and pass out.

I wake up dizzy at just after midnight. I crawl off the bed and it’s cold in the room and I didn’t get under the covers and just slept in my clothes and I take them off and put them on the bed and go in the shower and sort of squat and let hot water run over my hands and I splash some on myself and adjust the temperature a little and stand and pull the little knob that switches it from down to up and it’s spraying out hot and I turn around and let the water run down my back with my eyes closed and then wash up and towel and dry and teeth and hair and shirt and khaki-colored jeans and watch or no watch? I think it’s safer with no watch, and I do a band on one wrist and another one I got in Cinque Terre on the other and shoes and socks (?) and camera or no camera?

I think about all these stories and I don’t want to get jumped and have my camera stolen but I think I want to get some pictures I don’t really have any except of the digital map on the screen on the plane and the ones of Mariana and where is she and I think and she’s already hovering somewhere over Brazil or the Atlantic or maybe the south or D.C. or back in New York and I do the key tango with the door and on the other end and push the light on in the hall because it’s pitch-black and down the two flights and key tango with the front and right off Guemes and onto Coronal Diaz and this time north on Avenida de Sante Fe. The cafés are crowded and the streets are crowded but my eyes are peeled and cautious and I walk and observe.

Passed Alto Palermo and past Mariani’s that we never got to eat in and past Scalibrini Ortiz and Plaza Italia and Avenida Bullrich and I try to follow close to groups and couples walking and finally I arrive at Bar Kimia. Just outside waiting is young Harvard-kid and a kid from Colorado and another from California and he says the state cause when he says the city I’ve never heard of it and he already knows this cause no one’s heard of it and so California it is and there’s some other guys and before we walk into the bar I see Him. A bus passes us and on the large billboard Robbie and I exchange an intense glance and hold it until the bus fades off and I ease up.

Into the bar and down to the back and up the stairs and I see young Harvard-girl and Kat and Connecticut and Massachusetts and hugs and pecks and cheeks pointed outwards and smiles and hey’s and hi’s and it’s dark and already crowded and there’s some electronic song ringing out all over the place. There’s a system to getting drinks, a rather ridiculous system. You wait in a line and go up and tell the cash register girl what you want and she gives you a ticket and you have to pay for the drink. Young Harvard-kid and I order Isenbeck’s and I’m really in the mood for a cold beer and now it’s into the second phase of the system. You wait in another line and then hand your ticket to this guy and he confirms the drink you want and then phase three and you wait in another line a little ways down to pick up your drink. Colorado comes over and joins us and we all partake in a little inane conversation while waiting.

Someone’s tapping me on the shoulder and it’s the director of the Spanish program and she’s dressed up and smiles warmly and a peck and she jokes that I’m wearing a white shirt and so are my eyes white? And no, no they’re not but I defend my shirt-eye-color theorem and we talk about some other things and she steps away for a second and Colorado bends over towards me and shouts over the music dude you should totally hit that! Why is this guy standing here and fine I make some attempt at an explanation of her boyfriend and such, and he just kind of looks at me indifferently and I’m not sure if he just hasn’t processed what I told him or just didn’t hear me or just doesn’t care and I turn away and thankfully young Harvard-kid and I get our beers and we walk away and talk for a bit. I learn from adolescent-Harvard that California is thirty-four years old and has an eighteen year-old girlfriend in whatever crumb of a town he lives in and my eyes widen and young Harvard-kid shrugs and adjusts his glasses and I sort of shrug.

Connecticut and Massachusetts come over and we all talk and they’re fun and flirtatious and I look down at their cups and wonder how ahead they are of me. They’re both drinking Vodka-tonics in tuvos. I wanted a bottle of beer but got chopp or draft instead and I normally prefer it but not when you’re in a club and there are people dancing and hands swinging and it’s dark and people bumping into you. I see Adam who’s doing a graduate program at UC-Irvine and is also a writer and lived in LA and originally from Cleveland and so I go over and we talk for a bit. Brazil and Belgium have just arrived from a Milonga or tango show and young Harvard-girl comes over and we’re all in a pretty good mood and joking and laughing. Maryland comes over to me and smiles and I kind of walk-off with her a bit and we talk and she looks good and I still think she’s cute but remind myself she’s young. So young.

Some other people come over and we’re all taking pictures and laughing and have to shout everything like three times to understand each other. I survey the crowd and I swear some of these kids have to be like fifteen and I think it’s like Europe where there’s no real age restrictions enforced for anything. It’s pretty smoky and apparently that law really isn’t being followed and I wonder if and when it’ll catch on. I go and dance with Conn. and Mass. and Kat and there are these Argentinean kids dancing up really close to them and they’re kind of like little dogs humping away at a thigh or doing these short erratic dance moves and Kat and Mass. look over at me and I sort of dance closer to them and phase out the other guys and Mass looks relieved and says something but all I hear is ank..ew! and I say what and then tha.. ew! And I smile and wink and we dance a little more and the songs are getting more horrific by the minute and we decide to step off the dance floor for a bit.

I see Maryland in a corner and she’s talking to Wales and Colorado is just sort of looking at Maryland, not really talking but looking at her talking and her back is to him. Maryland jumps up at me and shouts hey som..gon’a ooo! What? We’re gon’ go! Where? ‘ther bar! I don’t know who’s going and try to get this information and there are some shrugs and smiles and I say okay gimme a minute and she says she’ll be down getting a cab or down! Ab! What? Axi! Oh. I try and think logically, and this time I have the misfortune of having to make this decision after being up for more than sixty seconds and I decide that I’m not gonna go alone but try and gather a little group so I go and gauge interest. I come back and some girl who I haven’t met yet but that’s part of our X-men group is asking me if I’m Matt and I nod and she says good cause Maryland wants me to come with, and don’t go anywhere she’s going to get the others and there’s a cab waiting.

I go talk to Brazil-guy and Belgium-girl, and Wales-girl and young Harvard-duo and Adam and Massachusetts and Connecticut and Kat and twice-the-age-California-guy and some others and finally it’s decided that everyone is ready to go to ‘ther bar! People take turns finishing drinks and getting in a dance cause this song’s decent and where’s this person lemme go find him and then the person that was missing comes over and says where’s blank and I say they’re looking for you and they say they’re gonna go get them and forty-five minutes later it’s decided that we’ll stay because it’s too hard to leave and I walk over to the dance floor to save Conn. and Mass. and Kat from thigh-humpers and through the pulsing strobe-lights I see Maryland and some guy’s practically licking her neck, or doing something equally malicious like talking to her and they’re fairly close and Maryland seems drunk and I kind of get possessive and keep dancing but my eyes keep peering over through the strobes and this is ridiculous because she’s a kid and I don’t want to do anything but still maybe she can’t think straight right now. I walk over and ask if everything’s cool and the guy is looking at me like stop cock-blocking and he hates my guts already and she says she’s fine and that’s it cool and I suppose I can’t pull her away and so I walk off and go back to the girls and somehow they’re getting thigh-humped again and I go back and shoo off the culprits and I look over at Maryland and I can’t even see if her eyes are open and it looks like oversexed guy is holding her upright.

I try and distract myself and look around a bit and a couple Argentinean girls are looking my way but I turn my head and look back to Maryland and I see that Massachusetts has gone over and they’re talking and it’s dark and then boom bright white and dark and bright white and the pulsing continues and someone bumps into me and I turn around and it’s some guy that has already passed and he’s hugging some girl now and I turn back and right before me are Mass. and Mary. and the latter is oddly thanking the former and what? Confused I ask Mary. why she didn’t leave when I came up to her and she says she wanted to practice her Spanish and she sort of mumbles it out and it’s loud and crowded and I nod still confused and walk off the dance floor and Brazil and Belgium and Wales and Colorado and Adam and young-Harvard-duo and twice-the-age-California are all sitting. Brazil says he and Belgium are going to check out some Brazilian bar he found and invites me but no, no thank you, have fun and they’re off.

Young Harvard-duo decide to call it an early (4:00a.m.?) night. Others make plans both objectionable and reasonable and before I know it I’m on the street with Kat and Mass. and Conn. and Mary. and Colorado and some guy named Jay hi nice to meet you, Los Angeles, yeah, pretty cool, yeah how long you here for? Really? Yeah cool and this act with another guy named Conrad and oh Washington state, yeah my sister lives in Oregon and yeah Portland and yeah it’s cool and yeah I love it and yeah Seattle’s cool and you live just outside nice and we’re waiting for two cabs to take us to some kid’s house in Palermo Soho where there’s supposed to be some sort of party going on.

Kat says she wants some crisps and Conn. goes into an open kiosco and buys some chips and I look at Maryland and she’s holding a beer and her eyes are closed and what the fuck! I walk over to her and nab the beer out of her hands and her eyes bolt open and I chuck the beer on the street and she slaps! Me on the chest and I could have finished that asshole and I tell her she’s had enough and Mass. nods her head and Kat and Conn. come back and they’re munching on chips and extend the bag and no and a cab pulls up but refuses to squeeze all of us in so me and Kat and Mass. and Conn. get in this cab and me in the front seat and Jay stammers over and yo just uh, bro just um and he looks like he’s trying to think of how to tell us where to go and he says a street name and I think, am almost positive that this street doesn’t exist and it doesn’t even sound like something Spanish or like anything really and certainly not on the map and more emphatically he yells out just bro look, tell the guy wannamajanga! What!? Just like, jammanachangu And I realize this guy probably can’t even really speak Spanish and he’s our source for this party and then he closes the door and my window is up and he yells out calabazoo! And taps the hood twice and we start moving. I flip my head back and look outside and Jay’s already turned around and is hailing another cab and Colorado just wrapped his arm around Mary.’s thigh and I’m not even sure if she’s realized this and now in the distance I see a cab stop for them.

In our cab the girls are smiling and giggling in back and Kat asks if I want some crisps and Connecticut hands me the bag and I reach in any grab a handful and they’re salty and greasy and perfect and now the taxi driver is asking me where to go and I attempt Wannamachangu and assorted variations and he looks over at me and just keeps shaking his head saying these streets don’t exist and then he asks me if I know a real name and I tell him hold a sec and try and get the girls attention but they’re all laughing and giggling and Mass. says she’ll call Jay and she does and he just keeps screaming things like labazumanga! And I try that and no and then Choolopatanga! And the cab driver seems to be getting pretty aggravated and one of the girls has just put her feet up on the middle console and he looks at them and then at me and I kinda do a half-smile but he’s not amused and I try and distract him and ask him absurd things like is it going to rain tomorrow and what time does the mall open and such and it sorta works because he answers but then just seems annoyed and finally Mass. hangs up the phone and says confidently that it’s a block off Plaza Serrano and I thankfully tell this to the cabbie.

He looks at me and says there’s no such thing as Plaza Serrano, however there is a Plazoleta Julio Cortazar and it’s on calle Serrano and I shrug and say just take us there and Mass. keeps screaming tell him it’s on El Plazo Soraino and I try to act like I don’t hear this and then from the back what happened to all the crisps? And some more giggling. We arrive and oddly, surprisingly, at the mini-plaza are Conrad and Jay and Mary. and Colorado following closely behind and they scamper towards us and we’re in the heart of Palermo Soho and I think it looks exactly like New York but not Soho, rather more like the Village but I suppose Palermo Soho has a better ring to it than Palermo Village. There are bars and cafés and they’re all packed and there are brick buildings and we walk off a little and turn on a street and look to see the name and, well, I think he wasn’t that off on at least a couple of those attempts and it’s Gurruchaga.

Connecticut interlocks her arm with mind as we walk and whispers that the guy who’s party we’re going to is exactly like Chris Farley and I laugh and she whips her head at me and goes no, no she’s super serious and Mass. and Kat must have heard this because they turn around and nod. We stop at this gate that apparently leads up these stairs and to the party and from a not to distant rooftop we hear chatter and music and laughing and voices and general party sounds. Jay keeps banging on the gate and just yells Jon! Out loud and I think Jon probably would have been able to hear this, Jon and about three hundred people who are probably, or were probably sleeping and not participating in all of the festivities.

Some guy scampers down and screams hey! And then I think he burps and Jay says Dude let us in, come on man. And then Jon just looks at us and the way his head is moving he resembles very much a bobble-head doll and he’s short and portly and has redish hair and a double-chin and freckles and just keeps looking at us and screams heeey! And then oh! Keys! Keys sin-yor! And he scampers back presumably to go get the key to unlock the door so we can come in, and I see I’m not the only one with the key-tangoing. When he comes down he has them and opens and we go up and with each step it gets louder and when inside we see there’s a fair mix of Portenos and International kids and there’s an open bag of these fried pretzel things and I point them out to Kat and say look crisps and she says she likes this party already and I grab a handful and they’re salty and good and I walk through the kitchen where a couple people are dancing and onto this rooftop patio and there’s a couple sucking face in the corner and some more Brits and another couple and some girls smoking cigarettes and a couple of guys talking in a corner and people walking in and out. I walk up to Maryland and she’s smiling and I ask her how she’s doing and Colorado sort of lurks up behind and I say what’s up and he nods his head and if only to get him away from her I start talking to him for a minute but he’s only really looking at her and she walks off and his eyes trail her and Kat comes over and puts her arms around me and says darling are you having fun and I answer naturally and then, as if they were in the corner of her mouth or something, her jaw goes in motion and think she’s chewing on crisps.

The Jon guy comes over and it’s his place and I say hey and put my hand out and he sticks a sweaty paw out and his hand is damp and while he’s holding my hand he asks may I call you Ingrid nickeloper? I think he attempts this as a joke, but I don’t laugh and just say no and he looks confused and his body shakes as if there was some mini-explosion within, a little bomb that was just detonated and he blows out burp fumes to the side and says well then, I’ll call you Matt and I remove my hand and nod and Kat comes back a puts a crisp in my mouth and Maryland comes over and smiles and she starts walking towards the kitchen and I follow and we dance for a minute and then what-the-fuck! One of the thigh-humpers from Bar Kimia earlier tonight is here and I think you’ve got to be kidding me and who does this kid know and Colorado comes on the dance floor and just sort of stands there looking at us and I walk away into the hallway and there’s a line for the bathroom and I wait third in-line.

In-line I hear a Spanish accent! As in from Spain! I turn and there’s a guy speaking in Spanish and I ask him if he’s from Spain and yes, yes he is and then he lifts his tucked in shirt to show a yellow and red striped belt with the Spanish insignia on it. He leaves the girl he was talking to and he’s seriously an inch away and he leans in and I sort of mini-panic and his face is an inch away from mine and he reeks of alcohol something and in English he says haaave you beeen to Espana? And he’s so close and what the fuck is this guy gonna try and kiss me and I try to back my neck slightly back and I answer yes and I’m thinking this must look extremely bizarre and try to look around a little but no one seems to be looking over and then he says it’s a be-uuutiful count-ry and I nod and he says well then, I must be off and he puts out his hand and I take it and shake it and he turns away and walks off and relieved I flip back and I’m next in line for the bathroom.

When I get out I go back and am in the kitchen and start talking to this Argentinean girl and Conrad and Mary walk by and she says she’s leaving and I’m sort of startled and I ask where and she says home and Conrad says we’re gonna get pizza man and I nod and they walk off and Colorado walks by me and looks down the hall where they just left and is just sort of staring after them and I don’t think he moved for like three minutes but just stared at the empty hallway. I walk back outside and the sky is light blue and I catch a whiff of something faint, and it’s either pot or hash or a clove or maybe just a cigarette and it’s so faint and I think it’s coming from a group huddled in the corner just standing and holding their drinks and then it’s gone and there’s some Brit guy talking to Conn. and I think he’s making fun of her to her face and she doesn’t seem to notice and I’m looking at him and he makes some snide comment to me and I throw it back in his face and I think he might get defensive but he doesn’t and then comes over and starts asking me all these questions in this very genuine way but I’m not in the mood to converse and Kat puts her arm around me and just keeps shaking her head and says what, I mean really what, are we doing here? And I try to think if she means here at this party but I gather it to be on a more philosophical level, like here on earth, or at least here in Argentina.

She tells me of her studies at Cambridge and how she loves art and studied art but really everything’s been done, all the extremes have been pushed, and I try to think about writing, and she says there’s nothing left to be done, all the people have been shocked in everyway that they possibly can be. I think about this and tell her that maybe you don’t need to shock or push any envelope, but just do something really solid, something pretty damn good and that’s enough, there is plenty of satisfaction to be had in that. But what sells is what shocks! And I just go back to the doing something good and seeing that through and now she’s more philosophical and like the Spanish guy before she’s like an inch from my face but carrying on a full on conversation and I wonder what it is tonight with the proximity and she’s talking and yup! I think our noses just touched and we’ve effectively done an Eskimo kiss of sorts and her eyes are right in front of mine and it’s intense but impressively, with the proximity and the all the drinks she’s still carrying on a fairly adequate conversation and I take a moment and am impressed. And now she’s back to what’s left to be done, and I suggest that any endeavor can find it’s merits and now the sun is up and I glance down at my phone and it’s 6:43a.m. and I say I’ll be back and I go to the bathroom.

I don’t really have to do anything but just wanted a moment and sort of stare in the mirror and I think I’m exhausted and I want to leave so I go out and I’m back on the patio and there are a few people sitting and I walk up to Kat and Mass. and Conn. and tell them I’m leaving and they all say they’re leaving too. We walk down and Jay comes with us and apparently they’re all going in the other direction and a cab stops and they all hop in and scream out bye Matt! And a few variations of that and I say by and walk down to Plazoleta Julio Cortazar and a couple of the cafés have closed but there are still two or three bars going strong and people are still walking in and now the sun is completely up and it’s just past seven. I wait for a minute and a taxi comes by and I hail it down and get in and sitting I think about Maryland and wonder what happened to her and if she actually went and got pizza and I try to assess what I think about Conrad and I really didn’t get a chance to see what he was like and I think about Colorado and what happened to him? I didn’t see him after he was just sort of staring blankly in the hallway. The woman, I’m a little surprised that it’s a woman, asks me where we’re headed and I ask to be dropped off on the corner of Coronal Diaz and Avenida de Sante Fe. She repeats what I said and I nod and she nods and turns up the volume on the radio and yes, wait, yes He’s on and it’s Robbie Williams and I think he will be the last voice I hear tonight.

We stop on Sante Fe and I look at the meter and pay the fare and the café on the corner is open and there are some people inside and some out and I walk past on Coronal Diaz and turn left onto Guemes and tiredly perform a clumsy tango and I’m in my apartment and I look at my bed and I rip of my clothes and climb in and it’s 7:27 and the sun is bright and coming through my windows.

And So It Begins.

2006-10-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

(Novel Café Santa Monica 9:34p 7/20/06)

Call To Action

Inspired thoughts
at all hours of the night
swirl about
beckoning an answer
when my defenses
are at their weakest.

How deviously clever
to call under dark moonlit hours,
when my judgment
is hindered
and nothing can I do
but lie paralyzed
victim to each stab
piercing me in fragility,
reason
dripping through my wounds.

How shall I respond
but to tire myself
to a numb slumber
amidst the cyclone,
awake only to meander,
grotesquely tempered
by the brutish sun,
my energy replenishes
only
for what I know
awaits
in the late hours.

How else
can I break
this cycle
but
to answer its calls?

I wrote the above poem a couple months ago. It expresses countless nights of frustration and angst for nothing more than my own quarter-life crisis. For living a life not at full potential. Everyone has their calling. I’m not exactly sure how mine will take form, in what shape it will arrive but I know that it wasn’t the life I was living the past few years. I’ve been living a wonderful life, the best of anyone in the world but something I can’t exactly describe, something I can’t place, something, has been poking away at me daily. It’s usually worst at night. The only time I’ve been free of it in memory was when I was abroad four years ago. That was just a few months. It wasn’t backpacking, and following a Fodor’s guide and snapping pictures of the Eiffel tower and saying I’ve been somewhere while living the experiences of countless drones. Not that I haven’t had an amazing time doing those very things, but there was something indescribable about Living abroad and being in an environment that challenges you, that has you on edge that lets you know that blood is vigorously flowing through your veins. For years I’ve deprived myself of this.

I’m in my loft right now in Palermo, a fashionable neighborhood (or so I’ve been told) in Buenos Aires (Argentina for the geographically challenged). I’ll probably go to a café with WiFi and attempt to post this after. I could use a beer anyway. After much peer pressure I’ve decided to blog, in this case a travel blog of sorts rather than do the mass emails that many of you have read before. However I wish to make a disclaimer as I’ve told the more persistent of you that inquired as to why I’ve yet to join the bandwagon. Bottom line is most of the blogs I read are 1) very good, 2) you can tell effort and consideration have gone into them, and 3) are updated regularly. It’s the last of these culprits that has kept me from blogging, perhaps my “noncommittal” nature. In any case, I am going to be savagely honest in recounting my feelings, emotions and thoughts. A writer acquaintance I met at a café in Los Angeles once told me that he thought to be a great writer, you need to “not give a fuck what anyone thinks.” I nodded my head knowing full well that this was obviously impractical. There are always considerations in order not to offend people and just plain old etiquette. Well I’m through with that. I’m a Real person with real thoughts, and I’m offering a window to whoever wants to accept such. As habit allows for now, I scribble thoughts on napkins, on scraps of paper, I record messages on my cell and write myself emails. In doing so I’ve become my own best friend, and all this trouble in order to just understand myself. It’s these very thoughts and ideas that I will share with you, taken as I live them.
With this I’ll leave pleasantries and impressions of me in the dust. I meet so many people going through life who seemed uninspired, or just unaware. I’m not that person. Also, I’ve decided to accept comments from you, however these will only be between you and me and will not be posted publicly. In an idyllic world we would all be free to say what we want not caring what anyone thinks. I’m at a place in life where I want to Feel Everything, and with this attitude there is no room for vague generalities. With the confidence that we are in communication in private, I may actually receive some genuine insight. If you want to say “Have fun Matt!!!” or “Have a great time in…” then save it. Not that I don’t want well wishers, but if you choose to communicate with me, make it mean something. I may learn something about you that I never knew, or circumstances prevented me from knowing. From now on and for the rest of my life, I have chosen to bare my soul. In this I have freed myself from countless constraints, from being overly-socialized, from not living at full potential and capacity.

In this, the tenth month of my twenty-fourth year of life, I bow in acknowledgement of my past, I am beginning anew.

Forty-eight hours ago

I’m my apartment in Los Angeles with a revolution of ideas poking away for attention. At three a.m. with blood-shot eyes and the lids burning at every blink, I stare blankly at the ceiling in my room. I think about everyone I have talked to in the past few days, goodbye’s with friends and the phone conversations and thinking about how my time in Argentina is going to be. It’s just a matter of hours now and I’ll be on the plane. Although I’ve traveled extensively I’ve never been there. It’s kind of weird going someplace not knowing Anyone. You have a fresh slate. You are whoever you say you are, your past what you want it to be. I’ve always been brutally honest, maybe to a fault, but rather than deviating from this path I want to continue on it. To go deeper, to understand others like never before, and in doing so perhaps through self-reflexivity further understand myself. To strip down the layers, to feel as alive as ever.

My flight is from LA to Washington, D.C. I stop for an hour in the nation’s capital and take an opportunity to stretch and practice some basic yoga. My flight was spent mostly sleeping, occasionally awaking to the seatbelt sign bolting on, a slight drop, a little turbulence or the flight attendants crashing through the aisles repeating things seven thousand times in slight variation. Juice? Coffee? Juice? Some coffee for you? Juice? Also the guy sitting next to me was overly flatulent, and I would have loved to have been upset, but I think to myself that maybe it’s some sort of fart-karma and I laugh and try not to breathe.

In the airport in Washington I study the faces of the people at the gate. I try to discern who is American and who is Argentinean. It is the latter that I try to especially study- clothes, shoes, facial hair, jewelry, manner of talking and body language. I try to understand what I am about to embark on. Everything is magnified, if there is one person strumming a guitar in a corner they have become a “musical people.” I make ridiculous mental observations to myself trying to catalogue them. They like wearing jeans.

D.C. to Buenos Aires is not to different. I befriend the couple sitting next to me. They are older though I don’t know how old. Later it becomes apparent that they had been to LA once thirty-five years ago. Together. They were married. They’re older than I thought. At first they are suspicious of me, a pompous American perhaps, some young punk-ass. I mistake them for Portenos (from Buenos Aires). They are from Montevideo (Uruguay, a couple hours from Bs As by ferry and bus). At first I speak broken Spanish with them. They speak Spanish and in time gain courage to throw in a few English words. Soon they are speaking completely in English. Before I know it, absurdly, the English speaker is speaking in Spanish, and the Spanish speakers are speaking in English. Later on the flight, a good eight hours from now I will drop the attempt and continue a greater conversation with them in English allowing for greater breadth.

I tried recently to explain to a very good friend that I become ultra-patriotic when I’m away from home. Patriotic in it’s real form, pride of country, not the neo-con version to bow and agree with everything our government does. So I defend and boast of all that we have back home, and as if in an upside down pyramid, I go from applying this to neighborhoods, to Los Angeles, to Southern California, to California, to the west coast, to America, and in the occasion that I befriend a Canadian, I suddenly have a deep continental connection.

In any case me and these Uruguayans talk and sleep, only to be awoken to Pasta? Beef? Pasta? Some Pasta for you? Would you like some Beef? Pasta? Sir. They’ve come to me. Now I’m a bit confused. I’ve decided that in order to defend myself against the barrage of meat that will be thrown upon me in this, the country that is proclaimed to have the best meat in the world, I will try and avoid it, consider myself a vegetarian (I was raw for a little bit last year until I found it impractical) until I can determine where the best Parilla or steakhouse in the city is, and then go nuts. I decide to stick to the strategy. I ask the flight attendant what the pasta has.

“It should be good.” So unhelpful. Well do you know what it has in it? “Should be some sauce.” I want to cry. Tomato? I inquire. Annoyed, he actually tears open the foil on one and puts it about seven inches from my face. I see a bunch of cheese and what looks like a speck of something red that could be sauce or lint or anything. Also a noodle seems to appear out of nowhere. The edges are trimmed. Think childhood, think commercials. Chef Boyardee? I have correctly identified what I believe to be Ravioli. Covered in cheese and garnished with a dollop of tomato sauce. There’s carrot cake too. Sold. And “salad.” I take the carton from his hand. “There’s barbecue sauce on the beef” he informs me. I think this is to let me know that he would have taken the beef. He’s trying to show me all the beef has to offer. Like barbecue sauce. I nod and start eating the pasta.

I take a few bites to confirm, but I think this pasta actually has no taste. I mean like nothing, I feel as if I’m eating colors. I’m eating beige with melted white and yellow. I stare at my salad. If this was back in my salad bowl at home this would be one bite. I decide to strategically make it three. I eat the sliver of carrot first. It tastes fairly close to a carrot. I then bite in to the tomato. It’s really good! I’m surprised and I think I smile and now I look down at my greens. I think there’s four leaves. I count. There’s actually six but two of them are shreds really and may have been part of a larger leaf at one time.
I must go about this right. I can’t screw this up. I shake the packet of dressing. I decide that there’s more dressing by volume than salad. I could have made soup I suppose. Oil and spice soup. The greens could be the garnish. My index finger and thumb go to work and a successful tear is accomplished. I pour the dressing on the salad. I wait thirty seconds so that the four leaves and two shreds have been properly marinated.

It’s not long now before we land. I’ve been asleep for a few hours. It’s freezing on the plane and my headphones are slightly off my ears and music is still screaming out of them. I pull them off. My ears are ringing and I think how pointless that was that my ears were being pummeled senseless while I wasn’t even enjoying it. Or maybe I was subconsciously would say anyone I would ever tell this too. The Uruguayans are in a talkative mood and we begin. At one point I take out my camera to snap a pic of the screen in front of me showing a red line draped over a globe. It shows the route and I stare at it and am amazed. I suddenly realize this is the farthest south I have ever been. I’ve been to Europe and to Asia but never this far down south. I study the countries we’ve passed over from North America past Central and into South. I take a pic but it comes out blurry and then another and this one’s better and I crop it right there and my first picture of the trip has been taken. I delete the first one and look over and to my surprise the couple has been looking at this the whole time.

They are silent, more reserved. I immediately feel embarrassed. Ashamed maybe. They’ve been looking at my camera. I just bought in Oregon when I was visiting my sister and brother-in-law and nephew in Portland. It’s shiny and red, digital and tiny. It occurs to me that they may not have seen a camera like this before. Or maybe that this man that has worked his whole life, who has pleasantly bragged about places he has been and things he has done, and he can’t afford such a thing but I have one. He nods his head and smiles and says it’s really nice and his wife agrees but I feel bad and try and put it away. We go on talking a bit, and maybe it’s just mental, maybe I blew the whole thing up in my mind, but the conversation is not the same. Getting off they wish me well and I do the same. He actually gave me his business card and I gave him mine and we both said “if you’re ever in…” but I’ve done this before and so have others and it’s never really panned out to something. For a moment I get really inspired, I tell myself that I am going to call this person if I ever… but then the moment fades and who knows really.

I glance back and get a warm smile from Mariana(name changed because who knows if she wants everyone to be reading something about her). When I was arriving in D.C. from LAX, she was arriving from JFK. I noticed her sitting in the airport. Twice. I thought she was cute and mentally sparred with myself about whether I should go over and talk to her. The prosecution, for, began the opening arguments. She’s hot. She’s sitting alone. She’s hot. The defense countered in a fiery rage. Are you crazy? Don’t. She probably has a boyfriend. What’s gonna come of it? The prosecution again. Dude she’s totally hot. Defense. What are you saying? The fictitious judge handed down the decision. Go take a walk for a minute. Do some stretches. Go talk to her. Don’t be a pussy! What was all this living to my full potential crap not going to have anything hold me back stuff you were thinking to me? I have no response and what the fictitious judge says goes so I don’t have to receive real guilt about not going over and talking to this girl, something that I want to do.

I walk into the gift shop next door. I buy a water. Thank God we can take water on the plane again. As long as it’s bought in the boarding area past security. I walk back and look at her. I quickly get excited, but caution myself as these scenarios are frequent and something usually spoils this image of perfection, my soul-mate, sitting in front of me. For the record, depending on how many times a day I get out and where I go this can happen anywhere from three to a dozen times in a day. If I’m out and I’ve had anything to drink I suddenly have millions of soul-mates right there just in that bar! Sometimes it’s just a glance while I’m making a left at a green light and the other person goes straight and I create this image of us together, I think of us kissing, of getting into big fights and her coming to me pouty-faced and saying I’m sorry, of us holding hands thirty years from now. I’ve never even said a word to the girl!

Back to Dulles international. I strike up the conversation with the girl. She has a beautiful smile and is not wearing any make-up save for some lip-gloss. Her pedestal rises by the second. We talk for what’s probably the good portion of twenty-five minutes. We talk about things that we know, New York, Airports, LA, things that legitimate ourselves. Show each other that we’re normal people, not some freaks. With familiarity we establish a comfort zone. Back to the plane. I want to walk off with her but there are a few rows and some people separating us. I take my time getting my things, do ridiculous things like zip open my bag and make important faux-adjustments. I zip it closed but only a couple people have passed and if I take any more time it will look like I’m deliberately
waiting. A compromise indeed.

I walk off wondering if I’ll be able to see her in line for customs. I look back a couple times casually, I think one of the times I faked a cough-and-turn maneuver to casually glance behind me. Not her. A family comes scattering out of the jet-way. In line for customs I take a look around at the people in front of me. This time I turn around she’s there and she’s beaming a smile and comes running over to me. We exchange some amusing comments but its like I’m deaf for a second, I’m not even sure what I’m really saying. We talk and go through the line, we talk about what we’re doing here and how long we’re staying. My comments must have been less defined than hers, but I gather she’s visiting family and friends only for a few days, that she was born in Buenos Aires and her family moved to the U.S when she was five. I also learn that she’s hosted a music video show on T.V for the last four years. Maybe if I’d watched more T.V. I’d know this. Suddenly all those hours pouring through books seems to have been so wasteful. I could have been watching her.

I walk up to the gate agent and show my passport. I don’t know whether to speak Spanish or to speak English so I walk up and look and Hola comes out. I answer something and then he clicks down the stamp and I walk and wait for Mariana. We walk to baggage claim and she tells me I don’t have to wait for her but I do and then we talk and decide to hang out in the city. The bags take a while but I’m in no hurry. It dawns on me that I have nothing to do. Not immediately anyway. I’ve decided to take a Spanish class while I’m here, a pact I’ve made with myself, that for any country I spend a significant amount of time in, and actually care about learning their language, I’ll take a class to further my immersion. Anyway we walk over to the baggage customs and I see two agents smile and laugh and wink and such and obviously they’re enamored. Fuckers. We get closer and I lift her bags into the machine to be scanned and then mine. The two get up from their seats.

Apparently we have aroused suspicion. She probably does this quite a bit. They ask her in Spanish if we’re together. No. What’s she here for. Oh really? Family. Ah. What are these photos? Headshots. Really, you’re on TV. Blah blah while he’s rummaging through her clothes and stuff but not really even looking down, just looking at her and blatantly hitting on her. The other one takes an assertive tone with me. In heavily accented rapid-fire Spanish he grills me. What? Why? How long? Why? He stares me down, and then sends me on my way. Contact info in-hand Mariana has her cousin pick her up and I get a cab.

The driver is heavy set and animated and I probably fuel this by curiously asking about a million questions and he proudly answers the foreigner interested in his select knowledge of everything Buenos Aires. I get to practice my rusty Spanish and when he says certain things I remember oh that’s how you say that. He proudly shows me where the Selecion Nacional Argentino practices. I caught some games on T.V. during the World Cup this summer. We talk futbol and when I ask about the famous local team Boca Juniors he emphatically says Hay Boca y Boca! Basically they’re The Team and nothing comes close. Although I learn that their closest rival is El River, River plate, Rio Plata.

He points out things in neighborhoods and before I know it we’re in front of a student residence, a place where I have arranged to hang out until my apartment is ready in a few hours. One of the directors of the Spanish language program asks me to meet her and I do and she shows me up along with a nice man and I’m offered coffee and sipping and its sweet and I go to the bathroom to brush my teeth and say hello to some of the students in the common room when I come back. The girl to my left seems to be in a daze. We give pertinent information on our background. Legitimating ourselves again. She’s from Maryland and stares at the dubbed movie in a daze and answers my questions not really looking at me but then she turns to me and we talk some more and I’m shocked to learn that she just graduated from high school. Then there’s a girl who just graduated college in North Carolina or something and another from Wales which she says and expects me not to know where that is but I do and she saves the “by England” comment that she probably gives great exercise to. I meet some more people, girls and guys, just waking up although it is now past noon.

Before I know it the director and I are in the cab. She tells me I have amazing eyes and I tell her that she does as well. I’m serious. They’re big and blue and warm. Although I’m attracted to her, and there seems to be some energy between, quickly I understand that she is not an option. She has a boyfriend that she lives with, she moved in after her mother died. Her father passed away when she was two. She is an only child. She probably needs her boyfriend for support. When she tells me her mother passed away recently I can see that she’s sad and I want to say something but I can’t remember the fucking word for sorry! The only thing that comes to mind is Desolee but that’s French and I hate myself for not saying I’m sorry and I just look at her with a deep serious look and there’s an awkward pause and then she moves on to the next thing. I totally blanked. That moment plagues me all day and then later when I’m in the maket I remember how to say it.

After we get to my place the agent isn’t there to let us in, so we go to the café at the corner and talk and wait. She says she hasn’t met the agent but he seems so friendly on the phone. I order a tea and she gets a soda. We sit and laugh and she’s really sweet. I ask her about cellular phones and she tells me all about getting a temporary one and buying a card and I make a mental notes. The agent calls her cell and we go to the place which was deceivingly pictured. The place is about half as big as I thought but it doesn’t really matter. It’s also not cleaned, there are dirty towels on the floor and the bathroom and kitchen need to be cleaned. The agent apologizes profusely. He’s gay, I think, am almost positive, but as advertised is very nice. He explains the contract and I nod a bunch and ask if there’s a gym nearby and a supermarket and such things.

I also ask about the safety of the neighborhood. They tell me it’s super safe. Then after a little pause, the director adds, well like in any city you need to be careful. Then she casually adds that she’s been mugged a couple times. I say nothing, and neither does the gay agent, and there is a little silence. Then she says what, what did they really get, nothing, maybe fifteen or twenty pesos. I nod my head and do some quick conversions. Five to Seven bucks U.S. Then nothing is said for what seems like thirty seconds. Then the gay agent must be compelled to speak and adds that he’s been mugged twice this year. I say nothing. He goes on. But they just snatched my cell phone out of my hands, and they were kids on bikes, you know? I say I do.

Then the director counters with a more menacing story. One of the girls from the program had her laptop taken at gunpoint in a café I’m told. I say nothing. She adds that as long as I don’t act like a tourist or total foreigner I should be fine but then she tells me that I could pass for a Porteno and I’ll be fine. I smile reassuringly for her although I think that her and the gay one are both native and have been mugged but whatever it should be fine.

Smiles and thanks and we all part, me for the mall. I walk out it in the street for the first time. I study faces and street signs and the font on buildings and I smell exhaust and this will all be home. I walk into the Alto Palermo mall on Avenida Santa Fe, a couple blocks from my place. I look at all the stores, I study them, the clothes, the people inside, everything. The place could be like any of a handful of malls in LA or anywhere in the States for that matter but it was foreign to me and I studied everything. This is what I love about being abroad. I automatically absorb everything, my eyes see all, my ears hear everything, my nose smells, fingers feel, awake, conscious, aware. And I’m just in the mall. Alive. I walk into a bookstore and then another and flip through some books and then look at a menu at a restaurant to get an idea of prices and then go up the escalators and to the food-court and order a fruit salad and bottle of water and sit and observe everyone around me.

I finish and ask a group of four girls sitting close by where I can find a locutorio or internet café with phone boxes. I get directions. I leave the mall and see the gym, my gym and walk in and ask if I can look around. It’s supposed to be tops here but is not as nice as mine back home but will get the job done. On the street in the Farmacia I ask where the closest market is. I get totally lost and keep hopping into kioscos and getting new directions to the market. It’s getting dark and I finally find one.

I go in and take a cart and start feeling produce and checking for bruises and determining ripeness. I see on the labels that most everything is grown locally. Except Almonds which are with the produce. They are from Chile. And Bananas from Honduras. I get all kinds of cleaning sprays and buy a couple of candles and bread and milk and bran cereals and jam, coffee, organic tea both green and black. I buy pasta and sauce and I get shampoo and conditioner and soap. I want to get wine but I don’t know if there is a bottle opener with the utensils and so I buy sparking wine, or Champagne to white trash even if it’s not from the Champagne region of France. It’s the most expensive the market has and I only purchase this falsely buying into the misconception but is still not to much and I get excited just thinking what may come with it, its always fun to drink and I pay with my credit card and to my surprise the girl at the counter asks if I want the groceries delivered it’s free and I say yes and give my address and leave and begin walking home.

Walking back I feel disoriented. I try to think if I’ve eaten and no, only a coffee and a media-luna (croissant) on the plane and oh there was that fruit salad but really I haven’t eaten. My eyes are slightly blurry and I close them and open them again but it doesn’t really do to much. I walk back in the direction of my place, but on the way I stop into a store and buy an alarm clock and I ask where Avenida Santa Fe is and I follow it and then I ask where Avenida Coronel Diaz is and then I know my way from there. In my place I lie on the bed and I’m in my clothes and I want to shower and shave but I’m too tired and I bargain with myself to at least go and brush my teeth but I close my eyes and when I open them again its very cold and I shiver a little and curl up and again the close and open and the ringer is going off and it’s the groceries guy only I don’t know how to open the door.

There are only two buttons and I push the first one and ask and nothing, then the seconds fails equally, and then a combination and then holding them down and I hear someone else is downstairs and the delivery guy explains his case and gains entry. Then up the elevator come the delivery guy and an extremely concerned neighbor and he bangs on my door and I jump at the door and open it. The two look at me and the neighbor starts asking me if I know this guy and I vouch for the stranger and he comes in as if nothing and goes in my kitchen and drops a bunch of bags and my groceries are here and I sign but the neighbor who comes to identify himself as the super seems concerned and I realize he’s cross-eyed and emphatically explaining that we just can’t let anyone in and I need to always go down and open the door and some other things and after a while of nodding I slowly begin to smile less and begin closing the door on him and from behind the door he continues and I wish him a good night and somehow he replies the same in a very pleasant voice lacking malice and seeming genuine.

I open the bags and rummage and sort and put things in their “places.” I peel an orange and then a banana and have a bowl of milk and cereal and then brush my teeth. There is a stereo and I fumble with it a little and listen to the different stations and stop when I find something agreeable. I click on the television and flip channels and am surprised to see a Bears-Seahawks game on. I watch a little of it but it’s a blowout so I flip some more and there is “The Office” and it’s dubbed. I had never seen the show but they had an episode on the flight earlier in the day, wow, all the same day and although only one episode I got a good feel for the characters and picked up on the dynamics and thought the show very clever.
I watch the remainder of this episode and I pull out my futon but only half-way, and rip the covers back and plow into bed. I’d like to proclaim some romantic notion that I lay in bed thinking of all to come and what had already transpired but I think I was just plain-old exhausted and next thing I knew light was shining through and the sounds of rain puttering and crashing onto the window and window-sill and all things related to the window. It’s late when I go in the bathroom to wash my face but my phone is ringing and its my director telling me that I had missed taking the placement exam and I paused and think how to explain that I was exhausted and slept through my alarm, must’ve shut it off and passed out right away and then in broken Spanish it was understood, or at least I understood what I had communicated and promise to get over there soon.

I sit on the bed and think about the conversation and I lay back and when I wake up it´s been an hour and twenty minutes. I take a shower and brush my teeth and feel like a new person and I slip on clothes and grab my umbrella cause the puttering is still going and when I get out the rain is coming down pretty hard and spring is late in coming this year and I think about where in spring we are exactly and its early October so spring just started here and then I think back to LA and realize we have rain in April and besides this isn’t LA but I’ve heard the weather is comparable but persistent Angelinos would probably smirk at such a remark. On my way over I get a water from one of the kioscos and walk for what seems like ever but am thoroughly distracted by the rain and the buildings.

Buenos Aires smacks of Paris with its cafes and Newsstands, some areas are New York, others Madrid and some Barcelona but all the while remaining rather uniquely South American. I willfully adopt a mild form of lunacy, mumbling to myself and mimicking snippets of conversations that I hear on my walk. I try and get the inflection down and play with the tonality. Children and the elderly are the most fun. The kids because they’re so animated and the elderly because they speak with an air of what can only be described as I-don’t-give-a-fuck pessimism mixed with a heaping dose of wisdom. I entertain myself for a long time, too long. I step into a heladeria which is empty because who’s gonna buy ice-cream when it’s pouring? I pull out a map and read and study and realize that I’ve over-walked the street I needed to turn-on by twice the distance and I turn back and go the reverse way.

I often joke that my wife will have to be American or Brazilian or Italian, although now one of those three has to go. I think about this a little as more of the women scatter-by with umbrellas open and they’re walking in boots and wearing scarves and what could be sexier? I consider which of the countries I would eliminate and then decide that I can, after much deliberation, begin listing my “top four.”

I finally find the mini-campus, an extension of the Universidad de Buenos Aires and there are all kinds of students around and oddly I feel as if I’m some sort of special student, as if we were all special just to be here, like X-Men and this was our place. I suppose I do in fact think that. I’m more open to people I meet abroad because, well one, who’s to get too picky with whom you call friend and whom you dislike when the picking is thin, but more importantly if they’re in the same place, then something up there, something in their mind has allowed them to become open enough, to allow themselves to be vulnerable enough for me to like them. It’s almost as if without knowing them they are an acquaintance, a friend of a friend. They’re okay because it takes a certain type and I’m that type and they’re that type and there’s not to much more to it.

I walk into the building and explain the situation and hope I haven’t missed anything. I think I’ll have to explain how I spent a day flying to get here and get my place and go shopping and the time difference and it hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet but I don’t need to and before I know it I’ve taken an exam and given a level to be placed in and there’s an orientation where we all get up and say some things about ourselves and half the students are Chinese and they all group together and the other half are European and American and I’m sitting in the only free seat which is with the non-Chinese. When its my turn to stand I explain some things and attempt a joke that goes off well and all the non-Chinese laugh cause it was in English and the Chinese look and smile and I wonder if some brave one will translate if for them in Mandarin or Cantonese but I’ve lost interest and soon we’re in the class.

There are about ten of us in the class and we’re given exercises and we ease the unfamiliar with jokes and quickly have become an intimate group. It’s amazing how that can happen, how the intimacy is almost fast-forwarded. We’re already given our “okay” passes and all just cause we’re here. We have some sort of break and there’s a cafe downstairs and I get a melted cheese sandwich and a coffee and there are others from the orientation who were placed in other levels and we chat a bit. I sit next to them and it’s as if we’re old friends or something but we’ve only know each other for a couple hours and we all get more acquainted and give anecdotes about where we’re from.

One guy who said he was from California is there and I ask him where and he tells me Los Angeles, and I ask where and he repeats again Los Angeles. I ask where again and tell him to specify street names and there’s a pause and then he says its not Los Angles and names a city just outside and I nod and he asks me where I’m from and I say Los Angeles and give streets.

It’s weird I suppose, these situations are interesting, a grand sociological report needs to be done on this dynamic, and I think for a second that I’ll do it but then I sip the last of my coffee and go back to the class. Afterwards I go back down to the cafe and they’re giving free hot chocolate or coffee and I take a coffee and they’re offering churros and I’m about to take one as it’s offered to me but one of the girls from my class in the background looks at me and shakes her head emphatically no, and later tells me they’re stale and that she saved me. I pick up a local paper and begin reading but soon lose interest in the articles about a cardinal giving a speech and about futbol and I read a comic strip and I think I get it but it doesn’t really seem funny so I’m not sure if I get it.

I’m told that tomorrow if I want I can join in a game of futbol, and its one of the instructors telling me and I think it sounds like fun and I joke with the Brazilian guy sitting close-by from my class that he’s not allowed to play, and he, laughing asks why and I tell him he’s Brazilian that’s why and we both laugh a bit. I hop in the lab to check my email and there are some from friends and some wayward spam that snuck into my inbox and a lot of offers from airlines and travel sites and the New York Times in email form and some MySpace messages and some of the emails are amusing and I savor the communication from close friends. I try to reply to a couple and occasionally it looks like I stomped a fist on the keyboard and the punctuation is not quite right and I decide I can wait until I get to a cyber with more regular punctuation. The funny thing is within the city different places have wildly different keyboards and placement and none of them are what we use back home, but why isn’t there one standard ´different´ one here?

There’s an email from Mariana, she called earlier to maybe hang out but I told her I had class and she told me that tonight her cousin was playing with his band at some huge show and that they were opening for some huge band here. The email confirmed that she got an all-access backstage pass and that we’d spend the day tomorrow together. She asked me how my slang was coming and that she’d teach me some! I replied all that I ask was to be corrupted a little and some little flirtations sprinkled in and it’s in keeping with her playful tone.

At 5:30 the apartment agency is supposed to send someone to clean but I’m running late and I call to see if they could come later and we just end up rescheduling for 11:00am two days from now. My classes are daily from one until four so it works out. I’m excited because with some awkward pauses to think, and a little stuttering I was able to get in a full albeit short conversation entirely in Spanish and of course this was very, very exciting.

On the way home I see a cozy cafe and get out my pen and scribble the address and name and decide that I’ll come back later this week and spend some time there. I walk by people and it’s finally stopped raining for a second. I try and gaze into peoples eyes and all of them have stories behind them. Sometimes I gaze deeply into someone’s eyes, and if it’s a girl and I’m attracted to her I hold the gaze and almost every time they hold it too and we look at each other and sometimes a little smile comes out and I think that I must do this too and all the while we cock our heads as far back as they can go, usually a three-quarters turn back as we pass each other and then I flip my head back around and I’ve yet to act on any of these exchanges but I create the extravagant scenarios in my head and I have several of these little affairs per day.

Walking back it starts to rain again and I open my mini-umbrella, the one I bought for $5 in the streets of Midtown Manhattan last time I was there. I thought I was wise to bring it although my furnished apartment apparently considered umbrellas furnishings but that one is huge and cumbersome and mine petite and handy. I keep passing by these newsstands and they have what must be the equivalent of Playboy or Hustler or something to that effect. With each newsstand I pass my conviction to investigate one becomes increasingly strong. I stop at one of the stands and scan the magazines. I stand by the homey ones first to lower suspicion. I can’t really do it and I walk away.

I come up to another and stare straight at what seems to be a fairly raunchy magazine, only the guy sees me looking at it and before he can say anything I’m off. I laugh, tell myself this is silly. I justify the purchase to myself. Bless our puritan ancestors. I try not to feel guilty and think that I’m gonna be here for a while, that I just want to check one out and all this becomes ridiculous and I walk up to the next stand and look straight at one of the magazines. I try to formulate the words to ask for it wondering if certain things translate and as I open my mouth a woman walks up beside me and I’m annoyed and who cares I’m a guy that wants to buy this but then she looks at me and smiles warmly, innocently and I walk away from the newsstand. I pass a few more and have really forgotten about the whole thing until I get stuck at an intersection and there’s a stand right by me.
I gather up some courage and authority and walk right up to the guy and say something like “and what of women do you have” and he shrugs and asks what I want and people walk by and why is he asking and not just handing me something and I ask him what he has and he points to one with a cover of two women on it and another with a brunette and she’s “cleverly” covering herself but looking surprised to be naked and this is obviously ridiculous and this girl probably doesn’t know when she has clothes on and when she doesn’t most of the time.

Then I notice him talking to someone behind all the magazines and it´s his daughter who’s like two years old and I tell myself she’s probably to young to know what’s being said and he asks me for a preference and more people walk by and I imitate his casual shrug and he doesn’t budge but just stares at me. I ask how much they are as if this is of any relevance at a time like this, and he says five pesos, and corrects himself with $4.90 and finally gives me the one with the surprised brunette girl and mutters something like “morena” but I generally prefer blondes and now this is tucked under my arm as I walk back and I feel like people are watching me or something, that they must “know.”

I get home and my feet are soaked as are my shoes and my jeans about half-way up to my knees. I take off my shoes and socks and my feet are white and pruned and I go to the fridge and take out some fruit and then a salad and eat and then some more milk and cereal and decide that I’ll change and get some food, only I decide to pop open my laptop and write. There’s a song on where the main line is something like “yo te quiero con limon y sal, yo te quiero...” and I hear it about three times in an hour and it’s popish but it’s my new favorite song I decide and if I had it I would listen to it on repeat about seventy times in the next three days and then never listen to it again. I decide to write a little something and then suddenly all this stuff comes out and I’m writing about my whole time here so far and before i know it my five-hour extended battery is drained and I haven’t gotten a converter yet to adjust to the power system here and I have to go to a locutorio to finish this thing. Already It’s late and this will take me well into the morning hours but its important to me to write it out.

I climb down the rickety steps from the top part of my loft and hop down the last one and jump into the bathroom and wash my face and get a drink of water. Yesterday I took the always precarious first-drink-of-tap in a new country. I usually try to get it out of the way early so that I can deal with all the new bacteria and parasites and pollutants my system isn’t used to and deal with the effects on the other end sooner rather than later. I eat a handful of almonds and put the bag away and then put on my shoes and socks (why do we always say it in that order? It’s the reverse, or is it only me who says it that way?) and then I find myself back at the fridge and crunching on the raw Chilean almonds and these ones have more give, a little less crunch than the ones I eat in California and I can’t decide which I like more. While eating I pick up the magazine of the brunette and scan through it and am thoroughly disappointed, it’s like a cross between a Victoria’s Secret catalogue and a Playboy and I toss it back on the counter thinking what a boring waste.

It’s late or early depending on how you look at things and I want to I leave my place and I exit the loft and lock the door with the key. One of the inconveniences of the place, that seems to be normal here, is that you have to lock the door inside and out, using a key. There’s no latch and it’s always this fuss with the keys but whatever who am I to complain. I push the button for the elevator. I normally take the stairs, another pact I made with myself that while I’m a young healthy guy I should be taking the stairs at every opportunity, who knows when that won’t be the case. The elevator is the kind where you push a sliding door to the side and then another gate for the elevator and this would never fly in the US because as you are going down you can put your hands through the gate and they’d be chopped off and lawsuit-city. But I’m not three years old and I’m not a moron and I manage to amazingly resist having my hand chopped off if only this once.

Front door and again key to open the door to the building, step outside, key to lock, turn twice, click, got it. On the street there is a shadowy figure and its past midnight and as I walk towards him I try to look menacing, I wince my eyes a little and look mean and angry and I broaden my shoulders a little bit and tighten my body and then I sort of laugh as I realize I’m that bird on the discovery channel that spreads its feathers and wings when threatened or the lion that roars to show his might and fend off predators. It’s my first time walking out in my neighborhood late at night and I don’t know what to expect. It’s more quiet than I expected and some café’s are closed and some are half-full and its mostly couples and guys.

I walk out and to the locutorio that I know is open twenty-four hours and it is and for fun I ask if they have a keyboard American style so I don’t get all this goofy punctuation that I’m not used to and keys with accents and it’s not really a big deal but I ask and no they don’t. I´ll just have to learn the new places and shortcuts. Saving things is not as I found out Ctrl+S but Ctrl+G, because save in Spanish becomes keep or protect and that’s guardar and these are things that are sort of fun to learn. Like walking in the mall or buying groceries, everything including the mundane takes on new excitement as a result of it’s novelty. I’ve just finished running through all my thoughts and I think I can rest although I’m sure when I’m in bed I’ll remember something else and get up and jot it down. It’s early now and I’m excited to go out and see what things are like here at this hour.