The Streets of San Telmo

Estados Unidos and Bernardo de Yrigoyen. Tuesday afternoon. 13:15. A cup of hot tea, a glass of water and a lone empanada delivered by an unsmiling mozo await my attention. They will have it, bit by bit, what I choose to spare when my mind takes a break.

As I steep my tea a tiny, dirty soccer ball with red-and-white patches rolls across the street and against the curb. A niño of less than ten runs across the street, ducks under an old car and pulls it out. Then he darts back across into the little park on this corner of the city: a paved plaza big enough for a few boys to kick a soccer ball; swings brightly splashed with yellows and reds; high iron fences with peeling green paint; raised brick quadrangles; bare-branched trees. The game continues. He kicks! and the winning shot barely misses striking the head of a passing señor. They gasp and laugh as they retrieve the ball once more, and soon they are at it again, passing, kicking, yelling, chasing the ball across the broad flagstones like their dreams of fútbol stardom. The noise of the city – buses, cars, the hoot of the palomas – melts into the cheers of a stadium full of roaring fans.

Across the way, in this corner café that is starting to become familiar, I watch and reflect on the last seven days.

* * * * *

I cannot sit in this corner of Buenos Aires and look out upon the streets, the buildings, and the trees under the afternoon sun without feeling that I am meeting an old friend, a friend that I have never met but have somehow known for my entire life.

* * * * *

How can I describe the feeling of flight? The truth is that airplanes are not like birds, whose bones are knit from the clouds; they cannot take wing as if on a whim. Instead, I imagine the airplane to be a great winged horse, a descendant of mighty Pegasus. He waits behind the others in the runway, stomping his hooves and shaking his long head impatiently beneath the gray sky. The way is made clear and stretches out open before him. He begins to run, slowly at first, then faster, faster, fast as his earthly legs can carry him. Thundering hooves tear apart the earth. Wind whips through his mane. Foam flies white from his nostrils. At the last possible moment his great wings suddenly unfold from his back and he is in the air, arcing upwards into the morning sky. Heedless of the clouds he flies into the cold gloom, scattering them with the swift motion of his wings. White envelops his eyes. Suddenly the clouds become brighter, warmer, and then the winged horse bursts free into the bright, liberating sun, sailing over rolling hills and plains and valleys of an eternal white land carved with rivers of blue beneath. This is Olympus as the Greeks would have known it: heaven, the home of the gods.

* * * * *

Some things do not change, no matter where you go. McDonald’s and Burger King still command their own cuadras. Beyonce, Avril Lavigne and Fall Out Boy serenade the shoppers in a modern department store. Bureaucracy is still a cantankerous, inefficient system that curses all who must face it; I lost nearly three hours of my life yesterday waiting to obtain student residency papers, no thanks to a computer malfunction and an inattentive clerk. Pizza and Coca (cola) are common foods here. ‘The Simpsons’ can be found on nearly every channel, dubbed into Spanish.

And when your Spanish fails, try using English. The odds are good that they’ll understand you better.

* * * * *

The toilet in my residence leaks and covers the bathroom floor with a pool of dirty water – they leave a mop in there to clean it up. Papers and cigarette butts fall casually out of idle hands instead of into the trashcans on every corner. New facades are grafted onto the faces of crumbling tenements. Somber iron statues of national heroes are decorated with garish red graffiti decrying political figures or demanding justice. What is not done today is always done mañana, tomorrow, whenever that may be.

Over the last week I’ve come to see this as the biggest difference between the cultures so far. The existence here is more temporal, focused on the day-to-day instead of the future. Whereas Americans build castles in the air, the Argentines prefer to settle among the flowers. Buenos Aires is a city of decaying, almost tragic grandeur, a city that neglects itself, forgetting what is already there, not taking care of what it possesses. She lives and breathes from day to day, trembling as she remembers the trials of years past: economic depression, political upheaval, dictators, los desaparecidos. She still bears many scars, and her people are wary too. For this reason you will see walls plastered with copies upon copies of political propaganda, many intact, some slashed through; graffiti on almost every building and in the depths of the subte, the subway system; manifestaciones with waving homemade flags and crackling voices over loudspeakers, all under the watchful eye of the police. Yet she still bears herself with pride, a dignified lady despite her black eye; that much shall never be taken from her.

* * * * *

Imagine arriving in a place and discovering that what you thought you knew, you do not. The language is different, the accent confounds you and you cannot understand what they are saying. The place you are to live is not at all what you imagined – crowded, noisy, seemingly built in the spaces between buildings. You are more isolated from your friends and family than you have ever before. All of these things compound together, until finally, you snap: watch as your pillars of confidence shatter into pieces, feel the ground tremble unmercifully beneath your feet, and see all the expectations and rules that you held dear come crashing down.

Eventually the dust settles. Fear has come and passed through and gone. You do not remain. Yet among the ruins are still many good things that may be reshaped, reused, or restored in a different form. Piece by piece you rebuild from the ground up, beginning anew. In time you discover that the breaking was necessary, that you as you were could not have continued on in this way. To change would have been too difficult; your prejudices ran deep and your ambitions reached high. Soon, rebuilt, you are strong once more, ever yourself but never the same.

I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t been here to help me.

* * * * *

Little things:

Pigeons and stray dogs pick through the open bags of trash strewn along the streets.

Cabs move like dented missiles through the streets, cutting across lanes, slamming on the brakes, barely avoiding total destruction by a few centimeters. The drivers seem to care little for those mortals on foot: to survive is ser listo y estar listo.

Smokers are everywhere. My lungs are blackening by the day.

The Argentine empanadas are perhaps the most amazing food ever created: light, almost flaky crusts stuffed with cheese or meat or rice. If I could learn any one recipe here to take home with me, it would be for empanadas.

Toilet paper is not, I repeat, NOT always provided. Carrying a roll in your backpack is always a good idea, unless you never want to defecate again.

Words: coger, to fuck. el boliche, nightclub. la esquina, corner. acá, here. la paloma, pigeon. la mierda, shit. el repasador, dishcloth. el locutario, phone/internet shop. la cuadra, city block. el porteño, city-dweller (Buenos Aires). el mozo, waiter.

* * * * *

Ladies and Gentlemen:

What you have just read were the collected scraps of thought, writings, and recollections of the past week. The residence where I am staying has comparatively poor access to the internet – to be specific, the computers are at least five years old and serve for basic internet browsing and email, little more (P IIIs, 256 mb RAM, Win2K). Of the eight that are here, five are functional – these are shared between the eighty-some residents here. Two free hours a month is our allotment before we must start paying. As such, I am forced to use an internet café where the technology is faster and more modern, but always at a cost.

I am currently looking to find a more modern residence (for other reasons beyond the ones I have listed), but the reality is that I will not be able to update as often as I wish. However, this may have been destined from the beginning. “Sennight” is an older English word meaning ‘seven nights,’ a week - a cousin of ‘fortnight,’ which is to say fourteen nights. Bearing this in mind, I will try to make it once a week for now, and keep you all posted. Please leave me comments or questions – I’d love to hear them. Prayers are also appreciated, no Spanish required.

Saludos a todos.

D2

the Boy on the Bicycle

Nearly two weeks have crawled by since my last post (thank you, Jamie, for reminding me). My defense, for the record, is that these last two weeks in Pennsylvania have been less than exciting, inwardly stressful, and probably not much worth recording in any great depth. I don't care to remember them in any great detail, and a laundry list of events is something I explicitly want to avoid. All apologies. Instead, I'll do my best to write something, even if it's nothing of great consequence.

Still, I have had some interesting experiences - in particular with the strange society of people known as "bicyclists." They prowl the hills and curves of these country backroads, sometimes alone, sometimes in menacing packs, clad in obnoxiously bright spandex and sleek, streamlined helmets as they cycle upon lightweight frames and thin tires. A few of these individuals make an effort to wear only yellow, a symbolic gesture that I believe is a sign of respect to one of their gods.

Behind the wheel of a car, they are at most pests on the road, preventing me from attaining the speeds that my reckless driving nature demands. To them, cars are obnoxious metal beasts that consume gasoline and never share the road. Yet ever since I have taken to the road on my own bicycle, I have come to learn more about these people. Admittedly, I do not share their appearance: I am neither brave nor foolish enough to wear skintight clothes, and my bike is a simple model designed for rocks and dirt roads, with straight handlebars and a faulty, clicking gear mechanism. Nevertheless as I wander the roads in the early hours of the morning, or late in the afternoon as the sun sets across the tall corn, they greet me with a smiling 'hello' or a generous wave of the hand. I feel that I have been accepted into their community of roving riders, and am no longer an object of scorn. Even the civilians I encounter, be they crossing the street to check their mailboxes, mowing their lawns, or enjoying a walk, seem friendlier when they see me riding my mud-splattered mountain bike.

Perhaps it is the human contact of actually being face-to-face with someone instead of seeing them through a windshield that brings this change. Possibly they are laughing inwardly at the comical sight of me upon a bike. Or perhaps, as it later occurred to me upon thinking of a certain girl, I lose the "fuck off" look that I (apparently) often wear when out in public. Don't ask me about that; I'm not even sure I believe it.

As much as I want to leave, I will miss riding my bike.

10 days.

the Man under the Sunrise

Se ha sido roto mi silencio, mas ya no estoy completo.


Ladies and gentlemen and all others in between,

Welcome to the as-yet-untitled place where, in the tradition of Marco Polo and Beppe Severgnini (his book, 'Ciao America,' is hilarious), I will be recording my various ventures and experiences during my time in Argentina. I will not be leaving for Buenos Aires for another 23 days, yet I thought it might be wise to establish something now, so that once I arrive I will have made a habit of updating. This also buys me time to let people know about it.

You may already notice the rather Spartan-like surroundings and the apparent lack of a title or description for this page. I can't promise that those will change anytime soon, or that if they do change they will remain consistent. The title, especially, is always the hardest part to come up with; I've always believed that the title should be very last, after the work is finished - a philosophy that is not very applicable to an ongoing project like a 'blog.'

Now, a few outlines and promises as to the nature of this journal:
- Few, if any, mundane details. I personally can't stand journals that read like a laundry list: "Today I woke up, fed the cat, took a shower, ate a bagel..." etc. So, unless they build to something more interesting, don't expect to find them here.
- I will not, to borrow the phrase of a precocious 9-year old, "be mushy." Yes, I'll miss my girlfriend, yes, she'll also be in Argentina, yes, she means a lot to me. However, I'm certain that none of you care to read about that, so I will keep my comments to cryptic minimums. Similarly, I will do my best not to kvetch excessively about things that are not going well.
- I do reserve the right to use Spanish, as well as any other language, to record events, conversations, or other situations which might be better rendered in something other than English. If necessary, I will translate.
- There may be links to Wikipedia, the dubious fountainhead of all great information. Think of it as a way to expand your horizons, or at the very least understand what I'm talking about.

Comments will always be welcome, be they good, bad, or just plain weird.

23 days!