El solo entre nosotros

Somewhere under the gray sky, as the rain continued to fall for another day after so many, I woke up in the dark and figured it out. His face was exposed, and I saw him. Once I realized who he was, I laughed.

In that same day, for better or worse, I was left to face him alone.

I know now that I can defeat him. Perhaps this is the only way. I only hope that my victory is not marked by a terrible, terrible loss.

It's too easy to be angry at that which we cannot understand.

*

There is nothing so strange and yet oddly delightful as singing random Disney songs off key with your roommate. Who knew that I could so easily remember the words to "Be Like Me" from The Jungle Book?

*

His name was Roberto. He didn't live very far from the park at all. His house was a beautiful place - twenty beds, lots of trees, fresh air, open to the sun on warm days. When it rained he had to leave, of course, and find someplace with a roof, but he always came back. Visitors always came to his house and he, out of curiosity and some loneliness, always talked to them. In his dirty jacket he held several folded pieces of paper, worn smooth so many readings, letters from the many strangers-become-friends that he had gotten to know over the years. The letters were addressed from different places - far-off provinces of Argentina, Israel, Germany, the United States, Brasil. In his head, beneath the combed-back gray hair and the smiling, stubbly cheeks, he held the many stories of his life - his beautiful wife, his son murdered in the streets. The stories came from many different years - before he knew the police, before he moved to his house, before his wife left this earth. When I first met him he was in the middle of composing a poem for Kiki. Who knows how many he had dreamed over the years in his gray head and lost to time and memory, never once leaving them upon paper?

Altercados domésticos

Rain in Buenos Aires is never a simple conversation between the sky and the ground. Instead, like a marital dispute gone wrong the sky unleashes every bit of frustration on the city, throwing down chips of hail, sheets of slanted rain in torrential bursts, bellowing thunder, snaps of lightning, and winds that whip around the buildings to accost unaware pedestrians. The fallout is enormous and the streets are empty of dogs, trash, pidgons, and street vendors selling bead necklaces and other handicrafts off of blankets. As if by magic other street vendors sprout like mushrooms to take their place, hawking paraguas for ten pesos.

The porteño has learned, like children do, that it is better to hide in your room while the two parents settle their differences rather than try to walk through the kitchen where they are arguing. Days like today are best left to long naps, retreats to a coffeehouse with a good book and some café con leche, or movies of dubious legality rented from the movie store one block down.

Unfortunately, I have a parcial this morning.

Extractos de un 'mail'

Excerpts from an email:

It is a place of light and air, earth and water, trees and stone. A foreign land within a foreign land, it draws its serenity from a distant world and a lost time, before the glass and steel cities sprouted up. Red and gold bridges arc elegantly over deep ponds teeming with long fish whose gaping mouths break through the clear surface. Pink blossoms shift gently in the breeze and glow in the afternoon sun that has broken through the gray clouds. Wooden lantern posts and intimate pagodas dot the swells in the carefully crafted green landscape, inviting ancient energy to flow. Strange symbols adorn many surfaces, sweeping brush-stroke characters that our pens and pencils, so accustomed to angular Latin letters, cannot reproduce. It is Japan within Argentina, and it is a pocket of peaceful timelessness in the eye of the whirling storm that men know as Buenos Aires.

I spent nearly two hours there, taking photos, sitting and watching the sunlight shimmer crazily on the water, and ignoring the work that I had in my backpack. I made a friend; a scrawny but oh-so-adorable gray and brown cat seemed to enjoy be petted for a change. Eventually I looked at my watch (that curious device of gears and clockwork in which I imprison time and bend it to my will) and began walking south to the office, many blocks away. A detour for lunch in the form of spinach tartas with cheese and ham and a subte ride later I arrived at my mystery destination...

... After the appointment I continued walking down Avenida Santa Fe, with the intention of eventually winding up near the building that holds my afternoon class. With an hour to spare I finished my lunch in a plaza and read about the fractured history of Argentina in the early 1800s. Class came and went, and I returned to Casa Grande on the subte. An hour or so after that I took off to a cafe to read and study. The mozo was friendly, the coffee cheap for Buenos Aires, the sandwich a godsend, and the atmosphere tranquil...

De la oscuridad y la bondad

Where did you come from?

Did you crawl out from some suffocating space in the subway tunnels? Did you escape from the broken streets when the lights went out in the storm? Did the thunder shatter your serenity and rouse you to seek out a new victim? Did the rain drip down and drive you out of the dark?

This place, this city, this concrete-glass-and-sky labyrinth was destined to be our battleground. Here we are equals, your wits and mine. I am stripped of my weapons and my allies. My armor is my skin; my will, the only cutting edge I bear. Now we are matched.

If I should fall you shall consume me and leave me ruined with tears in my blind eyes. Yet should I will, should my hands drain you of breath and life, so much sweeter the victory won by my own strength.

I am my own sharp steel.

*

A cooked mandioca on a small white plate, or two sumptuous pieces of homemade dessert at an early hour of the morning - they both come with a warning, "¡No dice nada!" (she could get into trouble!). A lent glass jar to hold up freshly-ground pepper. A bowl of cereal with café con leche and juice, instead of one or the other. A phone call to distant family members, asking if a total stranger can spend the night in their house so he does not have to spend money on a hostel. Countless hot meals, a bed, and full reign of a house in which I have no right to be in - all without accepting any form of recompense.

Kindness comes in many forms, most of which are not deserved and cannot be adequately repaid with "gracias," handwritten notes, or a set of drink coasters with flower prints.

Perhaps the only way to repay such kindness is to show it to others.