Anchorless postmodern subject in the Land of the Sun.

Bienvenidos a Texas!

2008-08-03T17:14:00.000-07:00

The warm smell of Texas hits me like a baseball bat as I descend from the plane onto domestic soil. It beats me over and over and I try to run back inside, but as the cabin is congested with people and their bags, I have no choice but to march on under the assault through the little plane-to-gate tunnel. My muscles finally relax in the refrigerated comfort of the airport, although the missing teeth have left my gums still hurting. Back in Houstonlandia.

Apart from that, I find the readjustment to my birth town completely non-threatening. Customs asks nothing about the newly purchased technology I´m bringing in (including an undeclared camera and laptop). And I find myself surprisingly apathetic to the North American culture of consumption. I even revel in small acts of consumption, like buying name brand items of junk food, loading ketchup onto my lunches, and eating butter, which, since there are no cuttings of roads in protest of controversial government policies, gets delivered to supermarkets in large quantities and costs less than ten dollars. I don´t let myself be bothered by our famous car traffic, choosing often to ride the bus.

I hop on the bus this week to go to my mom´s house. The driver makes a friendly comment about the bike I´ve set up on the rack in front. It rides mostly empty except for a mom with two boys and a teen couple.

The bus goes through all of the suburbs that are west Houston. Schools, supermarkets, one- and two-story homes, a post office, and the new zone of gated communities near my high school. My gaze wanders up to the posters they put over the aisle. One of them pictures George Foreman. He is speaking for the ´´I Ride´´ movement: a new campaign to convince riders to cut down traffic by taking the bus.

This, for Houston, is revolutionary. This is the kind of movement that I´ve been wanting to happen ever since middle school when I started thinking about global warming and how much the city sucks. It makes the connection between cutting down on gas use and public transportation in one of the country´s most oil- and car-loving cities. It´s simple but necessary and has taken a long time coming.

I Ride. Unfortunately the campaign´s naming has been inspired by the ´´I´´ Branding trend that was started by the Ipod. Before going to Argentina I would have been repulsed by the Metro bus system´s choice of wording, reading in it a subtle promotion of narcissism to sell a service. But something in me has changed. Now: The proliferation of the ´´I´´ prefix = a symbol of reveration of every person, no matter who they are. An appreciation of however an individual chooses to present him/herself.

Dare I even consider the ´´I´´ prefix an example of democracy in the North American cultural industry? It´s a laugh to try to do so with the case of the Ipod; those little apparatuses cost like 200 dollars I think, and 1800 pesos in Buenos Aires. The availability of all songs, those units of personal expression which teens select meticulously and arrange as an attempt to define themselves, is only possible for a relatively small group of upper-class kids in the world.

I would venture to call the Metro bus system ´´democratic´´ because it´s so much more affordable; a ride costs a buck. (A laptop, by comparison, costs 1800 pesos at the cheapest.)

...........
I guess I´ve never been in personal harmony. A lot of things have made me feel shitty: being estranged from my family, witnessing people´s relationship problems, avoiding relationships, and not having a perfect body.

I guess I never will be in personal harmony. But I will be whole. That is the fate that I am creating for myself. I cannot split my body to be in Buenos Aires and the States at the same time. The light that´s coming down on my hands is undeniably that of the Texas summer sun. But if I close my eyes, a different light glows out in the dark. I see the intersection lined with stores of Córdoba and Corrientes, the alamo trees on the road to Neuquén, the orange stop button on the 29 bus line that runs through San Telmo. Everything is remembered.

Cómo escuchar a tu madre

2008-08-01T08:21:00.000-07:00

My mom came to visit me here after all. To realize what a big deal this is, you´d have to factor in that she hadn´t been to Buenos Aires for about ten years, and that the last time she was here she got very bipolar and things went to shit. Nonetheless, I really wanted her here with me, and I think that what finally convinced her to get the plane ticket was me getting upset enough with her about not coming to put our relationship on the line over it. Sometimes being bitchy with other people really does get you what you want. (That´s a lesson that I learned from her.)

Anyways, her decision to come was as abrupt as all of her decisions are. She actually called me a week or so before the date of her arrival and announced the fact. Then a couple of days before her arrival to say that my little sister was coming too! My stammered Spanglish did not do enough to express to her over the phone how freaking excited I was for them to come.

The two of them stayed at Mama´s friend´s house in Belgrano and fell into whirlwind of meetings with Mama´s friends and family in the city, which was parted by our visit to Neuquén, where one of her cousins lives.

The micro ride there, and really the entire week, were uncharted territory for us. If we had done such a trip in the States, my sister and I would have been giving my mom hell. I.e. throwing wads of paper at her while she snored and yammering on and on at her about nonsense and the grossness of the pudding desserts that they served us on the bus. Because we could. But here the power relationships were inverted. My mom could respond in quick witty Spanish to whatever we said to her, so we contented ourselves with just a little bit of conversation and generally bent to her will. I wonder if the teenage girl with the seat between us noticed anything odd in how polite my sister and I were with her. I mean please, she´s our mother. A little bit of hell would be in order, no?

The politeness carried into the long and noisy meals we had with her/our cousins and great-aunt in Neuquén. I listened to their childhood stories, which I liked, and equally to my mother lie about my grandparents (her ex-inlaws). Not a single critical remark from my part. The only thing that fished me out of my serene silence was when Guillermo, Mama´s oldest cousin, baited me with talk of U.S. politics. Some of my thoughts on Obama were presented. Maybe I came off as an interesting person. (?)

After Neuquén we went on a trip to Villa Pehuenia, a ski town in the mountains. The ride there was memorable… my sister and I asked to stop on a snowy road to take pictures; when we got back in the car we realized that the only direction it would go was down the mountain. Thank you icy roads. My cousin Eduardo struggled for half an hour in the freezing cold to put chains on the tires.

Finally we made it to the cabin, which sat by an enormous, placid, grey lake. With the snow blowing everywhere and all of us in our floofy one-piece snowsuits, it felt like the scene from the first Harry Potter book. You know, where Harry and the family go to the most abandoned location possible to try to escape the blizzard of letters and Hagrid, who are trying to get Harry to go to Hogwarts? The ambiance was fabulous. Of course we had to go to the water and take about a million pictures. Then we went back inside and stuffed our faces with food.

Afterwards we went to the village, where I allowed Mama to buy me a t-shirt that says ´´Villa Pehuenia´´ on it. Then we went back and had dinner. It was satisfying to watch the TV coverage of the Vice President Cobos, who voted against Cristina Kirchner´s plan for the retenciones. Those are the taxes on the agricultural sector about which there have been so many protests. The fam was and is very critical of Cristina. Then I went to bed at about 8:30 p.m. Because I could.

The next day was going to get us back to the ciudad Neuquén on time to catch the micro bus back to Buenos Aires. With the putting on of chains, the flat tire, and the endlessness of gas station snack breaks, we made it late. But Gerardo is a able politician and talked the kids at the bus company office into giving us free replacements on the tickets, so we made it back to Bs. As. on the same day as was originally planned. My sister and I watched parts of the great movie about androids that they showed on the ride. There´s this one really epic scene where this motorcycle dude-y android is chained up to this very feminine-looking man android in the middle of the desert and they have to make it somewhere together and they get grumpy and have a battle.

Realizations: I actually have a family. Neat. and Hey! Now I know where my mom gets her wackiness from!! The latter after witnessing half of her family go chase after loose sheep on the side of the road while Edu was fixing the flat.

***

On Thursday I said goodbye to Serena, the friend at whose house my mom was staying. We met at the Universidad de las Madres, where she works.

Serena is the kind of person who I think has the capacity to love everything and everyone. She invited me to her house last year when I was here alone and burst into tears over how much she missed my mom. She overlooked my awkwardness that day. And when I came this semester with the study abroad program, she insisted on calling me even after I ignored her phone calls. Why did I do that? Because I didn´t think she would like me. How silly. When she finally reached me and we met again, she loved me as much as always.

Serena met me in the bookstore of the university that day with a book on the history of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, which she then took and had autographed for me by Hebe de Bonafini, one of the leaders of the group. A total sweetheart. She knew that it would mean a lot to me. Then we went upstairs and she showed me the cool paintings that hang all around the building. We saw the classroom where she teaches and also the library, which is pretty big, and photographs taken by art students.

After the tour we sat down and had a coffee in the university café. Sadly Serena had to rush away to class then, but I´m glad I got to see her at least for a while. And it won´t be the last time. Because Mama´s coming back.

But first I´m going back to the States.

En mi casita

2008-07-30T12:46:00.000-07:00

Baaack. Excuse the absence. I just lost myself in the Real world for a bit too long. There´s really been a lot of essentially unbloggable things going on in my life for the past few weeks: things between friends and resi kids, partying things, beautiful things, teloh things, watching movie things (which get written about on IMDB), and studying-ish things. It feels good to be here again.

Reflecting on how things were a few months ago, I realize that some things have changed. Basically I´ve lost the standards of quality and intellectual exigency I thought were an inseparable part of me. This realization underlined the preparation leading up to my final exam for Argentine and Latinamerican Social History at UBA. Here´s what I did: read the assigned class readings for the second or third time, looked at a list of Argentine presidents that my tutor sent me, and handwrote three pages of notes on the Saenz-Peña Law (which made the vote in Argentina universal, obligatory and secret for males) and Radicalism (referring to the Union Cívica Radical party of Argentina). I passed because I´m an exchange student who´s paying specially to go to UBA and because the professor who gave me the oral exam was charmed by my ability to talk about Obama. Though mostly he did the talking.

So now I´m thinking about why I wasn´t able to expand more on the questions I was asked during the exam. Partly it´s because I wasn´t raised in Argentina. Also because I´ve spend a lot of time here going to boliches, recovering through sleep, and downloading free shit. And because when I go to my grandparents apartment in San Telmo (the only place available to me that’s 24/7 quiet) I end up eating ice cream and watching Susana Jimenez on TV. Google this woman: she’s one of the most famous celebs in the country, has her own talk show, and looks like a queen. She´s a truly fascinating construction… I wish she would march in the samba dance-parade that goes by the apartment on Sunday afternoons. That way I could shoot her from above with water pistols and feel that something was accomplished.

But there´s something bigger I can blame for my sense of personal failure, and that´s the the population of non-Northamerican exchange students at the residencia. Those of them who made conversation with me are excused from the criticism.

The rest of them basically seemed to be saying: Shut up and dance! Over and over. Play! Drink at the bar that we´ve specially chosen to go to tonight!

Sure, playing is lovely. Undoubtedly. But there´s a point when the playing turns into lying. This is when I´d rather have someone explain something to me or listen to me than just surrender everything to the moment.

And speaking of moments:

Last night as I was hurrying out of the resi I saw him, smoking casually against an old car parked by the curb. In spite of the fact that his shirt was fully buttoned and his hair ungelled, I recognized him instantly. Andrés. The law student from the Universidad Católica.

He glanced upwards, just barely, as if anticipating a remark. The ensuing silence did not bother him enough to make him stir. His body kept its place as I swept past, laughing with a friend behind at back, maybe telling him about things that never happened between us last March. Why hadn´t the aspiring lawyer disappeared forever? Nothing in the residencia is worth coming back for if you haven´t got any real friends there.

No answers. None still. Just him, waiting for another hot body to wrap itself around his.

It´s so good to be back to where I feel some sort of integrity can be achieved.

Notas acerca del Nuevo Periodismo

2008-05-12T06:31:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday was pretty special. I ended up going to listen to Tom Wolfe, the author of The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test and more, the Father of New Journalism, go speak at MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires). Sorry, I will only end up using two of the four techniques of New Journalism for this entry. But given people´s limited attention spans, that may not be so bad.

I showed up to the museum in a taxi and circulated the building on foot before ´´appearing´´ nonchalantly and meeting up in the waiting line with the super awesome editor from the exchange program´s magazine, who is a journalism student and interested in Tom Wolfe, and her equally awesome boyfriend. We chatted about artistic grants, Hillary vs. Obama, and el Nuevo cine argentino. Okay so actually there she talked and I nodded. Yes, New argentine cinema disrespects the actor´s importance. Yes. Of course I´m familiar with the movement, nod, nod. Naturally.

Entering the auditorium… some people picking up headphones to hear Tom Wolfe´s speech translated to Spanish. The place is packed. A lady from the United States embassy introduces him. Wow, he fits perfectly the description that the Clarín´s Ñ magazine gave of him. A ´´dandy.´´ He´s wearing exactly the same outfit as he did for their interview. A white coat, white pants, blue shirt. He could have brought a cane and a top hat. He could be sipping iced tea on an old porch in the summertime. Anyways, his suit is very bright under the stage lights. The man is a vision…

Tom does a brief salutation in Spanish that includes a little joke about coins being in short demand here and comments on how nice it was to be in a country where you get to kiss pretty girls upon first meeting them. Then he confesses in English to knowing almost no Spanish, which didn´t stop him from being assigned as a young correspondent to cover Castro´s coming to power in Cuba in 1959. Lucky him! How did he survive?

Then Tom tells about the techniques of New Journalism.
These are the four techniques of New Journalism:
1. Scene by scene construction of the story.
2. Use of as much dialogue as possible.
3. The notation of character´s status details, such as their ways of dress, their furniture, and how they talk to superiors and inferiors.
4. Using a specific point of view. As in, telling the story through the eyes of one character.

Tom exhorts poets to ´´get out of the apartment!´´ I think that by that, he means
that he thinks that some poets don´t get out into the Real World enough.

So I am totally intrigued by his elaboration of the third technique: ¨I am convinced that we all live lives determined by status considerations… by how we look in the eyes of other people.¨

I am wearing flannel, Levi jeans, and beat up Saucony tennis shoes. I am sitting next to the magazine editor. She is taking notes like me, though not as many, and chuckling a bit during parts of the speech. She likes to wear a lot of black.

Tom Wolfe also says that he thinks that you get ´´status points´´ every time that you get information that you didn´t know before. For example, this happens when you figure out instructions on how to get places in Buenos Aires. I think this happens a lot everywhere.

Finally the speech is turned over to a question and answer segment with the public. I know just what I want to ask him!! I raise my hand, and La Editor suggests I go up to the front of the auditorium to where the people in charge the mike were. So I do. I stand there and look out over the crowd. Everyone looking forward at Tom. Some guy asks an insanely convoluted question about translation and democracy and justice and Tom´s latest book… I think, maybe, I don´t know. It sounds like an interesting question. Like the kind where the questioner just wants to show how much he knows. Tom needs a lot of translation help understanding the question. I think that he exhibits some nervous laughter. Some people in the audience try to clarify what is meant by the question.

So I stand there smiling like an exchange student (who is too pleasant with people for her own good because she just wants to come across as an amiable person, who is who she actually is most of the time in the States) while people ask a whole lot more questions. I tell the lady who had held the mike before it had gone on its journey around the auditorium that I want to talk, to ask Tom a question in English.

At this point La Editor´s boyfriend is beside me telling people the people that seemed to be in charge that I should be allowed to talk. ´´She´s been standing this whole time!´´

The mike never comes back. It is announced at last that there is only time for two more questions. I talk to the lady who announced that and say I want to talk.

She asks: What paper am I from? I say I am just speaking for myself.

The second to last question is asked.

The last question, the lady said, is reserved for La Nación.

The question was asked, a satisfactory enough answer was given, and applause, and Tom was gone forever. I was cheated. The question was going to be great. I was going to look into his eyes and state clearly:
So, Tom, I thought that your explanation of the third technique was pretty fascinating, and, uh, I just wanted to know… How often to you think of how you look in the eyes of other people?

Tom Wolfe was going to understand me perfectly.

Motherfucker. The lesson of the story is, the questions were never truly free and open to the public. It was planned in advance who would be chosen to answer. The biggest newspapers got their quotes. Quotes that, although they must have held emotional value for the journalists that recorded them, (I would wager) held less value than one quote would have held for me. Quotes from a guy who understands English marvelously and Spanish not very well and who said so himself that when works of his are translated, he doesn´t feel like they came from him.

25 de marzo, 2008

2008-04-12T06:51:00.000-07:00

My eyes were caught by an advertisement in the newspaper some weeks ago, the clipping of which by now shares a grave with the alfajor wrappers with which I was keeping it. It was a sort of announcement for La Federación Argentina de Trabajadores Pasteleros, Confiteros, Heladeros, Pizzeros y Alfajoreros, or, translated, the Argentine Workers´ Federation of Pastrymen, Candymen, Ice Cream Men, Pizzamen, and Alfajormen. This mouthful of a name calls for quite a lot of ink and space, maybe explaining the absence of a detailed description of the objectives of the group, which is, simply put, a sindicato. A workers´ union.

If it were possible to marry into sindicatos, this one would be my first choice. How sweet it would be! My Dessert Man and I in the kitchen, me boiling cans of condensed milk, him mixing up the butter, sugar, egg, and flour for the alfajor wafers... all before going off to a union meeting where agreements would be made quickly because everyone would just be so jolly all of the time. Ahh. ... Our children would be tiny like Pillsbury Doughboys and smell of cinnamon and sugar.

Since the union´s offices are in the same neighborhood as one of the UBA Ciencias Sociales buildings that I´m coursing at, I thought I would drop by one afternoon and do an absolutely fabulous interview with one of their representatives regarding their take on current events. But upon arriving at the front door of their building, I chickened out.

It wasn´t just the language barrier that stopped me from carrying on, but rather, my general ignorance to the level and complexity of the controversy that surrounds those events. Namely, the events that occurred on the night of Tuesday, March 25, when president Cristina Kirchner defended the national government´s new plan for higher retenciones (export taxes) on agricultural products, which would mean less profit for producers. People in Buenos Aires took to the streets banging pots, and a big group of the protesters marched to the Plaza de Mayo, where there were confrontations with counterprotesters. These actions were intended to show support (and alternately, non-support) for ¨el campo¨ -- that being the farmers who were protesting the higher retenciones by cutting roads across Argentina.

The road cuts definitely had their effect on the city. Suddenly fruits and meat were in short supply because trucks couldn´t ship them in from farms. They were being stopped at various points across the country. The kitchen at the residencia informed us that some foods wouldn´t be available for the next few days. I could have been upset, but honestly it wasn´t a big deal. As a student in the FLACSO international exchange program, I´m allowed to have a refrigerator in my room. I could buy the food I wanted at a supermarket, at a price that wouldn´t be too high for an American, and store it.

This difference between me and other people who live in Buenos Aires, that of economic resources, is part of what keeps me feeling like an outsider. This feeling, in turn, kept me from talking with the Alfajor Men´s union and from jumping into the cacerolazos (the pot-banging protests) on March 25, as sorry as I felt for farmers who would be making less of a profit because of the government´s new plans. But the feeling can´t all be traced back to the issue of money, though. My lack of understanding about local politics, what with its multiple parties and interest groups, also differentiates me. Interestingly, the dimension of differentness that I first experienced way back last summer -- that of being an American citizen in Argentina -- did lead me to become involved in an incident in the mini-politics of the student residencia.

Being one of the group of American exchange students, I was invited to a meeting one night to discuss an issue that was thought pertained especially to us. My friend spoke over the phone: ¨Come down to my room. We´re going to demand that we get our fridges.¨

Fridges, at the time, were lacking in all of the rooms. The residencia administration had removed them before I got here this semester and sold many of them away. But part of the contract that our group of American exchange students had signed said that we´d have personal fridges. People were complaining about the unkept promise, big time, at that town hall meeting.

We must have been an amusing sight to see. Maybe eight or nine of us in one room, my friend´s roommate gone, everyone trying to get their word in. Fighting for our rights against the man! ¨The man¨ being the broke-ass residencia.

I understood my American friends´ argument, but I was still not into demanding the fridges back. How could it be fair for us to have them and everyone else – all of the international students from Europe and South America – not? All that made it ¨fair¨ was the big payment that FLACSO made to the resi, which came out of the package that was paid by us for the complete exchange student program, which includes housing, food, cultural activities, and academic counseling.

The way that they wanted to get the fridges back was to talk to one of the exchange program directors and get her to speak to the residencia, asking them nicely to ¨return¨ to us the fridges. Some of the people more concerned about the thoughts and wants of the non-American-exchange-student residents suggested that we ask her to ask the resi to give them fridges too. The problem that I saw in this was that once we entered into negotiations with her, she really wouldn´t have the power to ask something from the resi for people who weren´t in the program. But the fact that we, the exchange students, are the reason that she gets a paycheck would mean that she´d see it as her duty to assure that we did get the fridges.

In support of these thoughts was the secret that my roommate, who is not a FLACSO kid, had heard about from one of the ladies and the concierge and told me – that the FLACSO kids were already about to get the fridges back. I suppose the one or two kids had complained a little already, and that was enough to get the program director started on correcting the resi´s error.

So. My point of view was, in short that we should push for all or nothing. Either we the Americans along with some non-Americans demand the fridges collectively, or we keep our mouths shut and live without fridges like everyone else. Any other action would amount to voluntarily setting ourselves as a group apart because of our economic resources. It could be alienating, I thought.

No one else agreed with me, so I left the meeting early. In some very few days, the American kids (including me) had our fridges. Maybe that´s all that I could´ve expected. Maybe that´s just how things run: the Ameicans who pay a lot get nice accommodations. This seems to be reinforced in the resi´s bilingual website. The English ¨translated¨ text says that all rooms are equipped with refrigerators, while the Spanish text says nothing about them.

Another difference that I feel is the gap between me and a full understanding of Argentine national politics. There are so many elements here that don´t exist in the States. There are, for example, the sindicatos, who tend to be generally Peronist (I think??). There are the piqueteros, some of whom are supported by the Kirchners (Cristina and her husband Nestor, the previous president), and who in turn support them. Although the Kirchners could be classified as Peronist. The piqueteros at least seem to be heard about outside of Argentina; I know I´ve seen a documentary or two about them shown in English. They are the famous guys who cut roads. But not the same ones that cut the roads this time! What some people don´t know is that piquetero bosses are the ones who are really make alliances with Kirchner. The people under their leadership more just tend to follow along. The whole structure is pretty hierarchical.

That night of the cacerolazos, a piquetero hit a sindicalista. His bloody face was all over the television news. But, as you might now realize, it takes a whole lot more than images to understand the all of the ¨why¨ behind that act of violence.

In answer to the question of whether or not I expected violence as I emerged from the subway station on March 25, watching the gathering mass with their pots and spoons, I´d say no. I didn´t expect much of anything. I just leaned my heavy backback against an empty corner café table and mused, kind of surprised to see so many city dwellers shouting for ¨el campo.¨

I was different. I couldn´t join in the protests, as sorry as I feel for farmers who are working so hard to make a living.

But you know? Something inside of me recognized the situation. I´d been witness to marches with a similar feel in America. There was something behind my surprise at so many people being out there banging their nice and shiny pots to bits, something on which I couldn´t quite place my finger until a girl in my UBA social history lecture class shared her thoughts out loud the next week.

Girl (approximated quote): ¨I think it´s tragic that it was almost exclusively the middle class that went out to the cacerolazos. It´s like… do we need a crisis this big… huge protests… to get us to show support for people in el campo? I got all of these text messages from my friends excitedly inviting me to go out and march. But what for? Most people seemed not to know very deeply why they were going. There was a class consciousness seriously lacking. The actions seemed to be empty of real meaning.¨

I wanted to tell her Yes! You´ve spoken my mind! And give this girl an applause. It takes guts to be critical of student action at UBA. I would say that it takes guts at my college in the States, too. But criticism and self-reflection is necessary, if we really want to work towards the equality that we´re supposedly fighting for. So many times I´ve seen well-intentioned, privileged, often white kids be the ones to get out and get loud in support of marginalized immigrant groups and wondered how much was really understood about the problems that these groups experience. Sometimes the split between the representers and the represented is funny, sometimes it´s alienating, and sometimes it forces me to choose with what side I most identify. The marginalized, or the empowered? And always I wonder, what are some ways to bridge the differences between the two groups? How much hope is there really? There must be some way...

Perhaps I should just take it easy and go share alfajores and coffee with some fellow UBA students.

Correcciones

2008-04-12T06:38:00.000-07:00

The author would like to correct the names of two previously mentioned alfajores.

Catchafatzes are actually Cachafatzes. Jorgelines do not exist. However, Jorgitos can be found almost anywhere.

Additionally, it has not been confirmed that the Terrabusi brand actually has ten or more flavors.

The author maintains that due to time constraints, she is unable to do very much editing or fact-checking on entries. Furthermore, she hopes that the inevitable error or two will be seen not as a distortion of truth, but rather, a representation of the foot-in-mouth reality that she experiences on a daily basis.

Anuncio para alfajores

2008-04-04T05:30:00.000-07:00

The ladies who clean our rooms at the residencia threw out my bag of alfajor wrappers.

I suppose they didn´t see why they should be of any value to me. The wrappers´ crunchy, sweet contents were gone, so they could be safely disposed of, the ladies must have assumed. Assumed. Without considering that, perhaps, their owner had sustained an emotional and aesthetic attachment to them.

Now the sweaters of those Bon a Bons, Catchafatzes, Terrabusis, Pepitos, Aguilas, and Jorjelines that I savored are gone forever, leaving me nothing to remember them by but empty names and their copies in kioscos. Yes, I could get more. I could take for inspiration what my cousin who lives in Florida did on her last visit here: buy several dozen of different brands at a gas station and fly them to America. But I´m not really interested in trying each kind more than once, and neither do I buy a ton of alfajores just to have the taste of chocolate in my mouth. The first time tasting a new kind of alfajor is always the best; it´s an experience that brings the eater in union with that one Bon a Bon´s, Terrabusi´s, or whoever´s unique qualities.

The Catchafatz, for example, is soft and indulgent. It is your mother´s soothing talk after a hard day. It´s best after spending a hot afternoon in your backpack and coupled with a glass of milk.

Terrabusi is all of the contrary – a hammer. Dry. Heavy. Defiant. I´m not so crazy about Terrabusis, but for the angry eater, they´re ideal. Crunch crunch crunch. Eat some more. Maybe your problems will go away. Have another. There´s at least ten varieties.

Jorgelín is more of a simple guy. He´s chocolate, powdered, or strawberry, nada más, for the price of only one peso. Jorge is who I turn to in the café of the Ramos Mejía social sciences building of the UBA, just before class, for a little bit of consolation or advice. What does Jorge say? Normally: ¨Go grab a seat in front of the class, fatty, so that you can hear the professor.¨ or ¨Smoke a cigarette.¨ So I do. And it feels good.

But NEVER as good as trying a new alfajor.

Chica loca

2008-03-22T19:24:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently asked me if I´ve done ¨anything crazy¨ so far in Buenos Aires. And I want to feed her good stories. So I told her about my new job in prostitution… how my choose-your-own-adventure novel is getting published… how I saved my fellow students in the university residence from intentional food poisoning. The problem with these stories is that there´s a certain amount of liability attached. I can´t break my publisher´s contract to secrecy by revealing the plot, and I sure as hell can´t tell the full name of who snuck ratkiller pellets into the raviolis because she´s kind of nice and I think she would maybe want to be my Facebook friend in the future. So it looks like I´ll just have to tell some PG-rated, mildly entertaining real life stories. It may be more enjoyable for readers to think of them as individual snapshots instead of sticking spots in a skippy DVD, which I sometimes think is what lives translated into blog form look like.

#1. The Hotel Faena
To improve our public speaking and confidence, us kids in the study abroad program have to give group presentations about tours that we´re taken on around the city. My group goes to Puerto Madero, which is the newest and fanciest neighborhood that has recently (as in, a few years ago) sprung up around the waterfront area. It´s where Zen City lives; it´s home to the Universidad Católica Argentina, where I´ll be doing a journalism course.

The gem of our Puerto Madero tour is by far the Hotel Faena. The price for a room here is $4500 (American) a night, but our guide asks the guards at the door nicely, and we´re allowed free entrance in little duckling rows of ten at a time.

The sober brick exterior reveals nothing of what we´re about to see. First it´s tinkly angel-like music… as though from a dream… and a sweet girl speaking English welcomes us. And beyond, it´s like a church in red velvet with a looong carpeted aisle and dining rooms off to the side, where no one´s sitting in at this time in the afternoon. One has antelope heads on the walls. My absolute favorite is the one painted all in white with some two dozen unicorn heads on the walls. Their eyes are red and glassy. I imagine that their owners would be like the plastic bride and groom that get put on top of wedding cakes. Or maybe the owner is a maiden, like the concierge lady, who feeds them English tea biscuits.

We keep walking, passing rubies in display cases, a gift shop (WTF?), and some lovely black-and-white photos of – guess where – New York City. I mean, what other big city would you photograph? Sigh.

…It´s really just too much. We have a quick look at the outdoor pool and leave. I think I´ve just been witness to the most ostentatious hotel in the world. I mean, I´m sure there´s similar ones to be seen on the Travel Channel, but being in one is what really makes you wonder to what use people´s money is being put.

#2. A Special Treat
The exchange program kids who are going to be living in a shared student residence instead of with families all show up together to the Residencia Universitaria Mayor. That includes me. After much lugging of suitcases and waiting, everyone gets their room key. I´m told that my roommate is on vacation for a few days, so the room will be empty.

The accommodations I find are pretty nice! And there´s what looks like free candy on our desks! Mine is white and has the figure of a cow´s head on it. Fucking great. It must be milky and sweet. I take a bite.
Hmm… not bad… it IS milky. But then bitter. Then kind of burny. I run to the sink and start spitting. Soap suds.

Whatever made them think to give us soap that is so obviously candy-shaped and appealing?!! Fuck. I spit and rinse for about 15 minutes, then brush my teeth. My tongue is all sensitive because the soap took away all of the good bacteria that live on it and protect it. Sad. : (

#3. Cheeseburger Reunion
The first weekend at the resi, everyone (American kids and not) go out clubbing at a boliche (club) called Asia de Cuba, which happens to be in Puerto Madero. It´s got columns in the shape of dragons, lady dancers hugging/straddling them, and a huge golden statue of a reposing Buddha behind the bar. The music is lots of techno with little variety, but we have tons of fun anyways.

I spend the night dancing with people who I didn´t know before: Spanish speaking kids from Colombia and Ecuador with whom I probably couldn´t keep up more than a simple, quick conversation for lack of vocab. That´s why I love dancing so much – it´s a different language. Everyone has access to it. And I think that everyone can use it, if they are able to let go of their shyness.

I could dance forever, but breaks are good too, for people-watching and such. I stand off to the side and a guy nearby starts to talk with me. I guess that he´s from Bolivia, which flatters him, because he says he´s from Los Angeles. He´s here with friends. Then I look over to where he´s pointing, and it´s the kid who sat next to me on the plane. And the kid next to me is his friend! Double cheeseburger! I tell them this, and we marvel at the coincidence. In a city of 3 million, what are the odds of our meeting in a dark club? I get his phone number and leave with the resi kids.
One of my friends doing the exchange program told me about a porteño expression that really describes these ¨it´s a small world¨ situations:

¨El mundo es un pañuelo.¨ (¨The world is a handkerchief.¨)

Maybe that´s a metaphor because some people just end up sticking to each other like boogers.

Una ciudad creciente

2008-03-11T19:59:00.000-07:00

The first few days back in the city, I´ve been taken/attracted to green spaces. They can be found in the outskirts, but like any big city I guess, they find their way in patches between the streets and avenues that make up Buenos Aires´ concrete network.

… My grandma surprises me outside of my bedroom door the February afternoon that I arrive. ¨Pensabamos ir a la laguna Chascomús.¨

The drive to the pond is so great! Patsy (aunt), Tommy (uncle), Oma (grandma), Foxy (wild dog) and I scoot into the old model Taurus, and we´re on the road south. We chatter all the way down. This is a big deal for me, really, because it shows an improvement in conversational skills over how they were Last Time, in July. The wind blows in warmth and dust, and I feel like an especially accomplished hispanohablante every time that one of my clever comments makes Patsy laugh. She´s such an attitude booster.

Two hours later, Tommy pulls onto the road that circles around Chascomús. First there´s restaurants and families and couples on the sloping grass just off the side of the road. Then we pass a house that Tommy says belonged to my grandfather on my mom´s side. It´s got an entrance road with trees and a sign out front that reads ¨El Fortín Chascomús.¨ Ha! A fortín. (Fort.) And it´s got a cell phone tower on top now. This can only be explained only by the fact that the place has gotten new owners. My grandpa on my dad´s side did my mom the favour of selling the house for her after she moved, which was after she married my dad and after her parents passed away.

More and more driving, until we finally choose a spot on the east bank on which to park. We set out mats in a clearing surrounded by tall grasses and some trees and have a picnic. We have to swat away flies, but at least it´s shady and far from people, who Foxy always likes to pester. I wander down to the water while Oma and Patsy stay behind.

Not many people are swimming; Patsy has suggested that the water might be kind of polluted. Or it could just be the sharp rocks underfoot that keep people from coming to the lake in droves. I don´t really care. Tommy brings down his windsurfing board and gives me a quick lesson in how to pull up the sail and take off. I fail at doing it alone, and am happy to just lie flat on the board as he does the sailing. Man, it would be awesome to be one of those dogs that rides on people´s surfboards!

I take two clam shells away from the pond, which I´ll give to my mom once I´m back in the states. I hope she can appreciate them! She´s got memories of the pond, of spending all night at a party dancing with the son of Raúl Alfonsín, who became president of Argentina with the end of military rule in 1983. It´s said that Alfonsín still has a house by the water somewhere. I should really investigate further and put random love letters from the past in his mailbox or something.

… So, a day or two after Chascomús, I decide to visit the Reserva Ecológica, which is a nice green stretch by the river, el Rio de la Plata, which defines the eastern limit of downtown Buenos Aires. Since my aunt´s apartment is nearby, she accompanies me on the bus ride up to downtown from Burzaco, the municipality where my grandparents live, and we go together to the preserve. It´s a 15 minute walk from the park entrance until you´re by the river, which really resembles more of a bay. All around the path are trees, trees, and expanses of low, swampy grass. It´s amazing to think that the foundation of the preserve is actually debris that was left over from the construction of the 25 de mayo highway. This is the one spot in the city where native plants and animals were allowed to win over the concrete.

But in Puerto Madero, the surrounding neighborhood, concrete´s victories go pretty much unchallenged. Skyscrapers offer home and office space to the city´s wealthiest residents. Now in construction is the so-called ¨Zen City,¨ a multi-use (office-home-hotel) development that may end up blocking my aunt´s apartment´s view of the water. She´s irritated. We want to be able to see the water! And unfortunately, if development blocked the view, it would definitely bring down the apartment´s property value.

Still, regardless of whether you can glimpse the river from your apartment or not, I am convinced that it will always be worth it to go out walking to the river if you want to really see it. The water is choppy and brown on this day, and the beach presents a varied collection of trash items (or human artefacts, as I would also call them) strewn over its rocks, but the place is lovely. If the wind cuts up the water, it also does an elegant job of blowing back the red-flowered branches of the ceibo, a tree that grows out from under the rocks. Its blossoms are Argentina´s national flower. Families sit about, and a couple kisses in the shade. The more I look, the more couples I see. So many people…

Surprisingly, just to the south of the reserve and hidden from view, are more families. They make their home in an asentamiento (squatters´ village). You could also more bluntly call it a ¨villa miseria¨ because of the poverty there. The villa hasn´t been evacuated by city officials, at least not yet. My aunt says that it´s gotten pretty entrenched, to the point that some of the homes there have two stories. Apparently it´s a fascinating enough place that tour buses even go there. Um, yeah. No joke. You can pay to see it.

…A day or so even later, I end up in Palermo, wandering through the Carlos Thays botanical garden, where homeless cats greet you at the front gate and where you can stray around observing the Greco-Roman statues that have been placed along the path. Or where, if you´re lucky, you can make out on the grass with your boyfriend/girlfriend. I would say that this is what about one-third of the visitors are doing when I´m there. Public displays of affection are very common in Buenos Aires. And I know a person – who will remain unnamed – who claims that they collect photos of people sucking face in public plazas.

Anywho, I try to look more at the trees and statues. Although according to the handbook for my international exchange program, staring at people is a very common activity in Argentina, I believe that there is a clearly marked limit between observation and voyeurism. Mmmm, trees.

They´re more jungle-like than any that I´ve seen in the States, with branches like inverted drippings of brown paint that runs up and up to pool in spots of green canopy. It shows what little mercy it can to visitors by semi-successfully blocking out the sun.

Maybe I should stop to here to breathe. To enjoy the present moment and contemplate the past. To sit with the weight of the city that is held as if in a basket by the web of roots below my feet.

But trying to find a free bench or patch of grass to sit on today is like waiting for a parking spot, and I´ve got other things to do. Tangents to follow/coffee to drink/lists to cross out and recreate. I shuttle myself back into the D Line subway. Zap!

¿Viajo sola?: Long Introduction

2008-03-11T19:55:00.000-07:00

I want fate to exist. I´d like to believe that I was fated to return to Argentina and to become fluent in Spanish. I want the kind of fate that maybe drives time in The Joy Luck Club, the kind that I always imagined made famous the diaries of Anne Frank. I want one of my fates to be a happy one. A fireworks finale. Not like the fates that meant that I´d get bickery divorced parents or 20-year-old singledom, or that I´d go through high school, make it into a really nice college, and then feel at a loss as to what exactly it was that I´d achieved and where it could possibly get me. But it´s not like those things make my life any more tortured than anyone else´s. And putting talk of the future aside, I could say that, in this moment, I am happy.

I am happy and floating in this funny sort of in-between place.

I boarded a flight to Buenos Aires on February 14^th at 9:40 p.m. Much of the crowd at the gate could be pegged as Argentinians, but as we gathered around the exit, I saw plenty of Americans and other foreigners too… an older Asian woman with short cropped hair and stylish glasses, a couple getting tips from a native porteño on where they should visit in the city, and a family dressed in ridiculously floppy safari hats (surely on their way to Patagonia). A mishmash of elements we were, all shapes and colors. A hot international pizza of passengers on their way to the coolest (at least, I think so) place in the Americas. I did not anticipate my being seated next to two double cheeseburgers. They were L.A. boys, with short hair and an Ipod passing between them. Nice enough guys. We chatted about the international exchange programs that we´d be doing and where we´d be living. The conversation turned to my family.

¨Yeah, my parents are Argentinean.¨

¨And you are…?¨

¨Well, I was born in Houston.¨

¨Oh. So do you speak Spanish?¨

¨Ah… not so fluently. But a little.¨

¨So can you say something to us, so we can hear that beautiful accent?¨

¨Bueno, es que lo van oír tanto cuando lleguen que no les quiero aburrir ahora con mis palabras.¨

Later on, a flight attendant came out with the little lunchbox meals that Continental gives out. My special vegetarian dinner arrived as I´d hoped, and I explained to the guys that, no, I don´t partake of fine Argentine asado (barbecue), and that I haven´t for seven years. Except for that time that I visited my mom´s cousins in La Plata and felt guilty about pushing my animals` rights views on them…I still can´t deny that Italian sausage tastes damn good.

Dinner became mild entertainment when my compañeros bought themselves some wines and then pulled out the shots of tequila that they´d stashed onto the plane in their cargo pants. They talked excitedly about their poolside plans for the weekend; I smiled and turned towards the window. What with their alcohol-induced sleep and the sound of reggae pulsing softy from the Ipod, it was a peaceful night.

So I have this thing that, whenever I fly, I start to think about other flights that I´ve taken. That night I thought back to last July, when it had been my dad seated at my side, explaining some things about Argentinity that I´d never learned in the years of all-English classes and near-total cultural isolation that we´d spent in Houston.

¨Los argentinos son muy traviesos,¨ he began, and told me about the time he´d flown with his Argentine friends as a kid to California. They´d snuck the yellow emergency life vests under their clothes, and, as a prank, set one of them off at the terminal on disembarkation. Se cagaron de risa (they died laughing). I listened on to his story while watching the hot soccer player two rows ahead of us finish eating his beef dinner. What a champ.

I wondered myself into circles that winter (in the southern hemisphere), trying to find out just how it was that I should fit in in Buenos Aires. Was I a foreign tourist shopping around before deciding to do a semester abroad there, or was I a local living with family? Foreign tourist, or Argentinian? Walking through tourist spots, more than anything else, wrecked attempts at self-definition. Take the San Telmo fair, for example. It´s a mass promenade of people that goes on every weekend down a street bordered by crafts vendors, hippies, and tango dancers who pose for photos. I saw an Argentine guy talking an American couple into paying a rip-off price for his homemade (?) churro and had a psychic freak-out. The Argentinean in me understood everything that was spoken in the street; the American in me was frustrated yet still too shy to try to argue her way out of paying tourist prices.

I eventually resorted to making silly lists comparing ¨Argentine culture¨ and ¨American culture.¨ I even made myself a checklist of the cultural items that Lonely Planet considers Argentine and checked those that I consume and participate in: mate (OCCASIONALLY, BUT MUCH MORE OFTEN COFFEE), soccer (NO), tango (NO), meat (HELL NO), national rock (NOT REALLY), empanadas (YES), quality family time (YES). It looks I´m about one third of the way to pure Argentinity. Well, damn.

But you know what I think now, as I sit here in my grandparents´ house, this exact minute, yes, waiting for a lunar eclipse to happen outside of my bedroom window? That I´ve got to take a stand on some things. I take a stand on my personality. Let me explain. It´s not Argentine. It´s not American. It´s subjectively observant, curious, intellectual (pardon any unintended arrogance), maybe not quick enough to anger when it should, maybe a little timid, but mostly looking to connect with other people. Hopefully I´ll be able to express some of that personality with the imperfect language that I´ve been given. (written Feb. 2, 2008, and at many other dates too. Sometimes it takes weeks to finish an entry. This is what it´s like not having a computer on you.)