So I have already bitched and bitched about the poo poo problem on the streets of Buenos Aires – no one picks up their dog shit. Boo and hoo. Every day walking on the street is akin to a field of landmines, watching your every step as though it could be the last (well, for that pair of shoes anyway).
I thought I had all my caca issues under control. Remain vigilant, especially in the morning (what creature doesn’t drop a load between the hours of 8 and 11am?). But this week, they got me.
Of course I don’t realize it when it happens. I arrive at my slightly snooty gym (there is a snootier one a block away) and head for the elliptical. I get on and start moving, putting my ipod on and enjoying my new gym mix. And then, it beings - a musty, gaggy, repulsive, treacherous and disgusting stench. At first, I look around. Could it be the guy two machines over, sweating a tad piggishly as he huffs and puffs to nowhere? Or the woman striding with purpose up an imaginary hill? Yes, it must her. How gross I think, imaging what in the world she must have done to herself (or not done to herself) to bring such a foul odor onto all of us.
Before too long, the smell faded and I continue my sweatfest. I strolled over to the weights – arms, back, chest, those little triceps all get their due. Wiped out, I collapsed onto a mat to stretch a bit and then, it starts again. That tang, that vicious olfactory assault that had nearly killed me an hour earlier. I frantically looked around for Lady Reek, but she was nowhere to be found.
This could mean only one thing – I was Lady Reek.
Shit (literally)! I quickly look down to my lovely Adidas Supernovas (the only shoe for me, I love them) and sandwiched in the little cavities of the bottom of my sneaker is shit, shit and shit.
Shit!
I leave in embarrassment (after all, I was Lady Reek to everyone else) and when I get to the street, I begin scraping my shoe wildly against the sidewalk, like an animal with a bad itch. But the shit is just caked in after 45 minutes of cardio pounding.
Pissed off, I walk home. I take off my shoes outside the front door, carry them inside and stick them on the patio, leaving the smell for my neighbors to enjoy. What the hell did this dog eat?
I avoiding going to the gym yesterday because I just didn’t want to deal with my shitty shoes. But today, feeling brave, I put on rubber gloves, grabbed the paper towels and held my nose. Done and done, shit-free run.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Knowing What Matters
I have been in the US for the holidays and for a little business time, doing my usual east coast lap from Ft. Lauderdale to NYC to DC. It’s a familiar route at this point in my life that’s spread around across two continents, two time zones and two languages.
Before I embark on these multi-week schleps, I try to organize coffees, meetings, lunches, cocktails, dinners, chats, gym dates or whatever to catch up with people, organize more work, get some gossip or even get some love (love has many forms, you filthy freakshow).
As you can imagine, this is not only time consuming trying to organize all these type-A people’s schedules (No, I can’t do Wednesday, I have my shrink or well, if the lawyers get back to me, I won’t be able to do 3pm – that kind of shit), but it’s just nuts to actually follow through and do EVERY SIN
GLE THING you overcommitted yourself to when you were sitting in the summertime and chilling out. But inevitably after three weeks of dragging your ass through the winter, a cold starts to bud, digits are perpetually frozen and a you have a stump speech on what’s been going on that would make an incumbent senator a little jealous.
Truthfully, it’s all lovely: all the friends, all the festivities, all the food, all the memoires. Everyone is happy to see you; you are happy to see them. But there are other people, the people who you once imbibed with countless glasses of fancy wine and canapés who don’t return your calls or your emails. The people who you thought were friends that once you unplugged from the matrix, no longer want anything to do with you. I don’t have tons of these types but there are some people who have mysteriously disappeared from the universe. Hmmm.
When I first started doing these east coast tours and I didn’t hear back from these ghosts, I felt sort of bad. What happened to my friends? Then I realized that these people were never my friends – they were part of the transactional life that has overtaken life in the big city. And now that I can only regale folks with tales of my wacky Argentine life or third world wanderings, I don’t have something they think of as valuable.
The good news is that people I never thought of as particularly close have also come out of the woodwork, becoming good friends even when I am far away. These people have served as inspiration and support and I am more grateful than ever for them.
I no longer feel bad about these spirits that have disappeared. And I don’t even bother sending those emails anymore, I just enjoy my wonderful, amazing North American friends.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Sweet Sounds
Have we talked about noise? This city is a sonata, beginning with the gentle whirring of a saw around 8:30 am. It usually builds to include a chorus of dog barks, a baseline of gruffly cars without mufflers, the evening’s delivery boys with their puny motorcycles chirping and finally to the crescendo of high school boys high on cheap beer clapping and singing at 3 am virtually every night of the week.
Sounds like it must be hard to sleep, huh?
Anyway, this gives you a sense of the daily life of sound in BsAs. So you can imagine what happens when’s there’s really something to yell about. Dude, you don’t want to be there. It’s something along the lines of a Kiss concert without earplugs. Ok, maybe a little dramatic…
So it was not really surprising the other weekend at Masa Critica when one of our masa ended up in a little fender bender with a taxi, that all hell broke loose. We were ri
ding along, the masa growing into a group of well over 100 cyclists. Cruising through the fancypants neighborhood of Recoleta, the group was like a web covering Calle Callo. When we got to the bottom of the hill, there was already something going down, a rolly polly taxi driver screaming at a hippie dippie kid.
Traffic was starting to pile up, as the fracas was in the middle lane. The group of bikers had pulled into a gas station, people were chatting, smoking, sharing food and drink. Bellowing cars begged their impatience to get the hell out of the way. The cops showed up. The crowd warmed up. And the clapping commenced.
Of course, there were words to go with the clapping. “Bici, si. Taxista, no.” keeping with the rhythm of the rhyme as the argument with the taxista, the police and the kid kept going. The voices thundered together, the clapping adding force to the message of the masa. At one point someone held up the bike to egg the crowd on, the back tire deformed by the force of the taxi. We roared.
Another policeman came and the crowd got louder – “Bici, si. Taxista, no.” The honking continued, the chant too, until our hands were red and our voices hoarse from screaming.
After an hour or so, it got resolved. I have no idea what the resolution was exactly. Satisfied, we stopped screaming, got back on our bicis and headed south.
P.S. Thanks to my wonderful friend and writer Sharon Haywood for the inspiration for this post!
Sounds like it must be hard to sleep, huh?
Anyway, this gives you a sense of the daily life of sound in BsAs. So you can imagine what happens when’s there’s really something to yell about. Dude, you don’t want to be there. It’s something along the lines of a Kiss concert without earplugs. Ok, maybe a little dramatic…
So it was not really surprising the other weekend at Masa Critica when one of our masa ended up in a little fender bender with a taxi, that all hell broke loose. We were ri
ding along, the masa growing into a group of well over 100 cyclists. Cruising through the fancypants neighborhood of Recoleta, the group was like a web covering Calle Callo. When we got to the bottom of the hill, there was already something going down, a rolly polly taxi driver screaming at a hippie dippie kid.Traffic was starting to pile up, as the fracas was in the middle lane. The group of bikers had pulled into a gas station, people were chatting, smoking, sharing food and drink. Bellowing cars begged their impatience to get the hell out of the way. The cops showed up. The crowd warmed up. And the clapping commenced.
Of course, there were words to go with the clapping. “Bici, si. Taxista, no.” keeping with the rhythm of the rhyme as the argument with the taxista, the police and the kid kept going. The voices thundered together, the clapping adding force to the message of the masa. At one point someone held up the bike to egg the crowd on, the back tire deformed by the force of the taxi. We roared.
Another policeman came and the crowd got louder – “Bici, si. Taxista, no.” The honking continued, the chant too, until our hands were red and our voices hoarse from screaming.
After an hour or so, it got resolved. I have no idea what the resolution was exactly. Satisfied, we stopped screaming, got back on our bicis and headed south.
P.S. Thanks to my wonderful friend and writer Sharon Haywood for the inspiration for this post!
Friday, December 11, 2009
Bathroom Cultural Alert
The other night, I went to see one of my most favorite singers in the world, Concha Buika. Think Erykah Badu and Nina Simone rolled into one tiny woman from Mallorca, with a family from Equatorial Guinea – the only African country where the predominant language is Spanish
The girl is fly. She dresses and looks like Badu, emits that amazing air of power a la Badu too. But the voice. That voice – a creamy dream with a range that will knock your socks off. She’s kinda jazzy, but girl ain’t afraid to bring in beautiful Cuban rhythms, hip rocking drumbeats or dramatic flamenco.
Divine. Here’s a little clip.
Before we went into the show, a friend and I ran to the bathroom. Of course, in true woman form, there was a line. We waited patiently, as the line moved at a decent clip. The bathroom was your typical post-modern public outhouse, with stale green walls and an antiseptic vibe. I noticed out of the corner of my eye there was a woman selling your usual bathroom fodder, including little squares of TP.
My friend leans in and whispers, do you think its drip dry? I look around and see that no one else is buying paper. Well, I respond, when I am in a place where the custom isn’t clear, I usually look at what other people are doing to get a sense of the system.
We opt for the gamble. My friend, who enters the bathroom ahead of me, yells out to me in disgust, “So much for when in Rome…”
The girl is fly. She dresses and looks like Badu, emits that amazing air of power a la Badu too. But the voice. That voice – a creamy dream with a range that will knock your socks off. She’s kinda jazzy, but girl ain’t afraid to bring in beautiful Cuban rhythms, hip rocking drumbeats or dramatic flamenco.
Divine. Here’s a little clip.
Before we went into the show, a friend and I ran to the bathroom. Of course, in true woman form, there was a line. We waited patiently, as the line moved at a decent clip. The bathroom was your typical post-modern public outhouse, with stale green walls and an antiseptic vibe. I noticed out of the corner of my eye there was a woman selling your usual bathroom fodder, including little squares of TP.
My friend leans in and whispers, do you think its drip dry? I look around and see that no one else is buying paper. Well, I respond, when I am in a place where the custom isn’t clear, I usually look at what other people are doing to get a sense of the system.
We opt for the gamble. My friend, who enters the bathroom ahead of me, yells out to me in disgust, “So much for when in Rome…”
Monday, December 7, 2009
My Sparrows
But since it’s the end of the year, which is a time for broad reflection and thanks for everything, I keep coming back to a story about a lovely little necklace that represents my journey of the last 18 months.
My favorite shop in Washington is called Nana and is owned by a dear friend Jackie Flanagan. (Everyone in DC, go and go immediately!) She has the cutest stuff known to humankind in her beautiful U Street boutique, including lovely jewelry by a designer called Pieces of a Girl.
Years ago, I bought myself a lovely little necklace of a sparrow. I always got compliments on it, as it is delicate and beautiful and looks nice with almost anything. I wore it all the time and even bought a few for some dear friends.
I have had my sparrow with me constantly, a reminder of the people that are far from me physically but not emotionally. They are all my dear friends in DC and throughout the world that have helped me get to right now. And for them, I am grateful. Especially my friend Jackie, as she is an example in my life of how one can achieve something with hard work and a desire to succeed.
Sparrows are tiny little birds that are found in almost every part of the world. The great thing about a sparrow is that they are free to come and go wherever they want, only constrained by the extremes of temperature. Because their tribe is everywhere, they are able to find their own group of fellow sparrows wherever they end up.
My own little sparrow flew with me from Washington to Buenos Aires, from La Paz to Cape Town and all the way back to the US. Sometime earlier this year, it broke. I held onto the chain and my little bird as they continued around with me through the US and Colombia. I finally brought my sparrow in to Jackie in the late summer when I was back in DC for a while and she vowed to get it fixed for me.
On my last full day in town, I went over to Nana to say goodbye to Jackie. Things had been crazy at the store and while everything looked beautiful and ready for fall, she hadn’t had the time to get my sparrow fixed. She wanted to just give me a new one, but she didn’t want me to continue traveling without my first sparrow, the one that had been all of those places and had experienced all those things with me.So now, I have a necklace with two sparrows. The sparrow from the first part of this great adventure and now, a shiny new one for the next part.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Thanks
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday in the world because it is a holiday that is about food, not gifts. Thanksgiving is a memory of people and shared experience, not about spending money because of a societal obligation. Because of this, I had no idea what kind of experience I was going to have living in a place where my roots are just starting to take hold.
We went Thanksgiving shopping on Tuesday, my friend Mary and I scoured the giant megastore for cranberries, turkey, green beans, and the ever necessary, bricks of butter. Success on the butter and the beans. Well, the turkey too – we scored these little girl turkeys from Brazil, pavitas, and we grabbed two of them from the nearly empty giant freezer. The cranberries were sadly never found and tangy plum marmalade was subbed in its’ place.
When I arrived at Mary’s on Thursday, I had already been living in cognitive dissonance. Always in two worlds, it was more severe on this day – life hummed as it always does in my physical space, while half a world away existed some other reality that is also my own. But it was different. Thanksgiving is about the people you love and there were many people who were in that world far, far away. Normally I spend Thanksgiving with my dear friend Marc. I even wrote a poem about it last year, closing my eyes to imagine his day of thanks at the same moment as mine. I remember feeling the distance of half a world on that day.
But this year, something was different. I walked into Mary’s house to a hurricane of cooking. Mary, an incredible cook, had prepared beautiful green beans worthy of a Gourmet photo spread and pale yellow potatoes au gratin laced with cream and cheese. I ran out to get some wine and when I came back, the smell of the pavitas filled the kitchen. Darkness had come and with that, a drop in the temperature that made it feel closer to a slightly bleak northern world November than a crisp Argentine spring evening.
Before too long the guests began to arrive. Argentines, a Cuban, a Brazilian. Only one-third of us had celebrated Thanksgiving before, so it was a treat for many of the newbies. As we were piling our plates with food, we had to show the newbies where the most delicious stuffing was (inside the bird of course), explain the plum marmalade on the table.
It was a joyous occasion – in English, Spanish and even a little Portuguese. When asked about what she was thankful for, our host put it perfectly – “I am thankful for yesterday for becoming today and today for becoming tomorrow.”
Me too.
We went Thanksgiving shopping on Tuesday, my friend Mary and I scoured the giant megastore for cranberries, turkey, green beans, and the ever necessary, bricks of butter. Success on the butter and the beans. Well, the turkey too – we scored these little girl turkeys from Brazil, pavitas, and we grabbed two of them from the nearly empty giant freezer. The cranberries were sadly never found and tangy plum marmalade was subbed in its’ place.
When I arrived at Mary’s on Thursday, I had already been living in cognitive dissonance. Always in two worlds, it was more severe on this day – life hummed as it always does in my physical space, while half a world away existed some other reality that is also my own. But it was different. Thanksgiving is about the people you love and there were many people who were in that world far, far away. Normally I spend Thanksgiving with my dear friend Marc. I even wrote a poem about it last year, closing my eyes to imagine his day of thanks at the same moment as mine. I remember feeling the distance of half a world on that day.
But this year, something was different. I walked into Mary’s house to a hurricane of cooking. Mary, an incredible cook, had prepared beautiful green beans worthy of a Gourmet photo spread and pale yellow potatoes au gratin laced with cream and cheese. I ran out to get some wine and when I came back, the smell of the pavitas filled the kitchen. Darkness had come and with that, a drop in the temperature that made it feel closer to a slightly bleak northern world November than a crisp Argentine spring evening.
Before too long the guests began to arrive. Argentines, a Cuban, a Brazilian. Only one-third of us had celebrated Thanksgiving before, so it was a treat for many of the newbies. As we were piling our plates with food, we had to show the newbies where the most delicious stuffing was (inside the bird of course), explain the plum marmalade on the table.
It was a joyous occasion – in English, Spanish and even a little Portuguese. When asked about what she was thankful for, our host put it perfectly – “I am thankful for yesterday for becoming today and today for becoming tomorrow.”
Me too.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Sweet Calesitas
Two weeks ago, my friend Nestor dragged me to the outer reaches of Buenos Aires to attend a birthday party in a barrio called Liniers. We took a bus along Avenieda Rivadavia, which he told me was the longest road on earth and after this bus ride I think I believe him. Finally, we hopped off at a quiet corner with a lush park tucked between two sleepy streets. Quiet? Sleepy? Were we in Buenos Aires? What kind of party was this?
Truth be told, it was 5 pm, which is really when the town just begins to wake up.
As we circled the corner, I heard what I came for. The high-pitched screams of children. The retort of parents who begged their offspring for voices an octave lower as they all yelled over the high-pitched kids music. And then, I saw it. The street was stuffed full of children, parents, grandparents, even great grandparents all celebrating the 90th birthday party of Don Luis, the man who operates the oldest calesita (merry-go-round) in Buenos Aires. His particular merry-go-round, was built in 1920 and has been bringing squeals of delight to the kids in the ‘hood for close to a century.
Don Luis’ merry-go-round is one of 55 scattered through the neighborhoods of BA, with nearly one in every ‘hood. With wooden carved horses, carriages and trains painted in faded pink, purple and gold, they quickly leave you with the impression of another epoch. The city has embarked on effort to save these little jems of history that conjure up happy images for young and old alike, going into far flung neighborhoods to reconstruct and rescue piece of the city’s strong European history.
“Three generations of my family came here, including me,” a wrinkled woman of the barrio told me. She was in her early 90s, her husband 97. That was what made this party so remarkable – the mixture of generations who all were united to celebrate what was, is or will be part of their collective memory. It was a symbol of community that is too often forgotten in an age of video games, Facebook and television.
There was an award for Don Luis from the city, for his dedication to the community. He spoke briefly, with pride about the challenges throughout time to keep the calesita running. “Today all the children of Argentina can enjoy the most fun and healthy diversion we have,” he declared, beaming with joy as the throngs of children and adults alike clamored to kiss and hug him on his special day.
There was a torta (cake) of course, a 90-kilo purple behemoth, in honor of Don Luis’s age. It was extra sweet, with dulce du leche and nuts sandwiched in between a moist yellow cake and the crowd pushed with ferocity to get near the table underneath a jacaranda tree to grab a slice.
Soon the crowd was energized, maybe from the sugar, maybe from the celebratory vibe. Kids climbed onto the merry-go-round, making life-long friends, making temporary enemies, loving their sisters, hating their brothers, with parents snapping pictures furiously in the golden spring afternoon. Either way, it was simply a beautiful sight.
To see more pics, go to my flickr site. Also, be sure to check out the special cultural programs the city has going until the end of the year at calesitas throughout the city.
Truth be told, it was 5 pm, which is really when the town just begins to wake up.
As we circled the corner, I heard what I came for. The high-pitched screams of children. The retort of parents who begged their offspring for voices an octave lower as they all yelled over the high-pitched kids music. And then, I saw it. The street was stuffed full of children, parents, grandparents, even great grandparents all celebrating the 90th birthday party of Don Luis, the man who operates the oldest calesita (merry-go-round) in Buenos Aires. His particular merry-go-round, was built in 1920 and has been bringing squeals of delight to the kids in the ‘hood for close to a century.Don Luis’ merry-go-round is one of 55 scattered through the neighborhoods of BA, with nearly one in every ‘hood. With wooden carved horses, carriages and trains painted in faded pink, purple and gold, they quickly leave you with the impression of another epoch. The city has embarked on effort to save these little jems of history that conjure up happy images for young and old alike, going into far flung neighborhoods to reconstruct and rescue piece of the city’s strong European history.
“Three generations of my family came here, including me,” a wrinkled woman of the barrio told me. She was in her early 90s, her husband 97. That was what made this party so remarkable – the mixture of generations who all were united to celebrate what was, is or will be part of their collective memory. It was a symbol of community that is too often forgotten in an age of video games, Facebook and television.
There was an award for Don Luis from the city, for his dedication to the community. He spoke briefly, with pride about the challenges throughout time to keep the calesita running. “Today all the children of Argentina can enjoy the most fun and healthy diversion we have,” he declared, beaming with joy as the throngs of children and adults alike clamored to kiss and hug him on his special day.
There was a torta (cake) of course, a 90-kilo purple behemoth, in honor of Don Luis’s age. It was extra sweet, with dulce du leche and nuts sandwiched in between a moist yellow cake and the crowd pushed with ferocity to get near the table underneath a jacaranda tree to grab a slice.
Soon the crowd was energized, maybe from the sugar, maybe from the celebratory vibe. Kids climbed onto the merry-go-round, making life-long friends, making temporary enemies, loving their sisters, hating their brothers, with parents snapping pictures furiously in the golden spring afternoon. Either way, it was simply a beautiful sight.To see more pics, go to my flickr site. Also, be sure to check out the special cultural programs the city has going until the end of the year at calesitas throughout the city.
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