The Winds Shift

Winds to the north pushed the toxic smoke cloud out of Buenos Aires and into the north. Good for us, bad for Rosario. Here's the view of the Obelisk from my corner on Saturday and on Sunday. (By the way, depending on your browser, you should be able to click on photos here to make them a bit bigger.)


Feeling quite well, I took a trip to the Botanic Garden and sat there reading for a while. Martha gave me some extra books including one that she taught in a book group at the Cervantes years ago. So far it's fine--a very readable account of a powerful newspaper editor who controls every aspect of his life strictly except for his obsessive voyeurism of a woman half his age. But the best part is Martha's annotations, which are plentiful, explaining (in Spanish, natch) many phrases she thought might be unfamiliar to her students (she was usually right). So it's like reading with Martha sitting there beside me, which is lovely.

Here's a street scene of the sort I like.


And finally, lest I seem too ready to forgo my refunfuñando, I'll add that I was strolling past one of my favorite signs in the city, for a hardware store not too far from my apartment. I found it about two years ago and sometimes walk a block out of my way just to see it. Well, I hadn't been by that corner this year and...well, here's the sickening evidence.


Yup. Ripped out the beautiful old neon sign and replaced it with an anonymous metal rectangle. I know I shouldn't get too attached to these things, but this one hurts.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

and nose, and clothes, and so on.


So while I was busy being deathly ill, the city has been submerged in a steadily growing smoke caused by intentional fires that got out of control in the north. It was supposed to be a managed method of pasture control, but the fires spread to areas that are hard to reach and they can't really do anything about them. Meanwhile, the current wind patterns are bringing all of the smoke into town, where it's messing up traffic and breathing and such.


They've shut down some roads, one of the subway lines, and cancelled many flights. They say the smoke itself is harmless, but that's what they always say, isn't it? When you first smell it, it's almost OK, like a neighbor's got a nice grill going, but then on second whiff, it's darker and mustier, slightly rotten. And, of course, it's everywhere. It's worse today than it was yesterday, with visibility noticibly decreasing by the end of the block in front of you.

If it's not one thing (relentless pain), it's another (creeping toxic fog).

Homesick

Being sick is generally lousy. Being sick when you’re alone in a foreign country is even less fun than that. Tuesday morning I woke up violently unwell with fever, chills, stomach woes, headache, etc. Felt godawful, but figured it would be the sort of thing that at least passes quickly. Wednesday I felt a teeny bit better, but by the evening started having agonizing stomach cramps. I decided to see a doctor the next day, but then around 5:30 in the morning, the pain was relentless enough that I changed my mind and headed off to an emergency room listed in one of my travel guides.

The cabby left me off at the Faculty of Medicine building by mistake, so I had to walk a slow block to the hospital. I get to the front desk and a sleepy-headed guy looks up and explains to me that “due to a problem with the team” there are no doctors attending just now. No doctors! In an emergency room! His attitude suggested there was nothing particularly unusual about this. He gave me the name of another hospital and directions to the bathroom. But when I got to the latter at the end of a long corridor, it was a scene Poe would have admired, with dripping walls and scrapings of rust everywhere. Worse, inside each stall was one of those awful squat-blocks in the floor instead of a toilet. Plus, not a scrap of toilet paper. So I left and didn’t feel up to trying another hospital, so I got a cab and came home.

Got a doctor’s appointment for 10:45. He gave me a rather cursory once over, listened to my stomach with his stethoscope, and took my blood pressure. His verdict: stomach infection. So I’m on antibiotics. They sure don’t go in for non-essential testing here. No blood test or samples or even temperature. Still, he seemed quite certain. I hope he’s right.

How You Look at It

It would be quite possible (and I’m sure it’s been done) to assemble a photo book that makes Buenos Aires look just like Paris. The city’s chock full of pretty vistas like this one, that mix the rugged South American aloe-plant with the European cupid and exquisite mansards.


The thing is, almost nowhere in the city actually looks like that, because when you turn around, here’s what you see.


The crappy modern is inextricable from the elegant past, and you have assume a pretty selection point of view to find a postcard-perfect city. I’ve come to the point that I actually prefer it this way because with every shift of your head, you get a new view, another chance to figure out what the hell this city is really like.

You Can Take a Guy Out of Ohio...

Saturday night I decided I’d go to the independent film festival here, the BAFICI. Although I’m not usually drawn to them, I found two hour-long documentaries that seemed appealing. Plus there were tickets available (lots of shows sell out in advance.) One was set in Cleveland and the other was a French film-maker’s view of Buenos Aires. So I got tickets to both (they were timed just right.)

The first film is called The Golden Age of Fish. It focuses on an African-American geologist in Cleveland, the camera following her around through various daily chores, and also recording a fake public service announcement. This is interspersed with found footage of mostly two varieties: news coverage of murder/suicide stories in Cleveland’s black community in the 70s, and sports footage. It’s done in an experimental style, so the narrative is well submerged, but the found clips are extremely interesting and the geologist (who turns out to be an actress playing the part) is very likable. By the end, I was quite drawn into the director’s poking at layers of history and the traces they leave today.

So I decided to get over my usual shyness and introduce myself to the director, Kevin Jerome Everson, using our Cleveland connection as an excuse. He was extremely friendly, and we’re immediately gabbing away about the flats, Hough, Mansfield and the Browns (I faked the last part by nodding at what I hope were appropriate moments.) For an experimental film director, he’s extremely accessible and free from artsy mannerisms.

Turns out he’s got a ticket for the next movie, too, so we go together. Despues de la Revolucion was a poetic analysis of video footage that the director took of Buenos Aires during his first visit here four years ago when he was presenting another film at BAFICI. A literally naked self-portrait, as it includes the director’s hotel room sex with a guy he’d been corresponding with by e-mail, as well as his use of cocaine. The narration was Frenchy/philosophical, which contrasted nicely with the images, which were rough and non-poetic or touristic.

Kevin invited me to a BAFICI after-party at a club (Palacio Alsina) and even though the techno music was dreary, it was a very nice night out. I met Kevin again yesterday to show him around town a bit. Here he is in the Recoleta cemetery.


He turns out to be quite prominent on the festival/museum circuit, and his work is included in this year’s Whitney Biennial and he’s been shown at MOMA. I fessed up yesterday that I hated this year’s Biennial and we had a pretty good talk about it. He gave me two disks of his movies and I gave him a copy of Great Estimations for his daughter.

Now, when I go to festivals or plays or concerts, I often fantasize about going up to the director or actor or singer afterwards and hitting it off and going to after parties. Of course, I don’t usually do it and when I do, it usually ends with a friendly smile and a wave. So this was pretty swell. The lesson here is either that a) good things happen when you make yourself open to them or b) people from Cleveland are nicer than other people.

A Ways to Go

One step forward, two back. I've been pleased with my Spanish comprehension, especially of movies. I borrowed a few DVDs from Diego and have watched three films (two Spanish, one Argentine) and actually understood all of them pretty well. I also discovered Narciso Ibañez Menta, the Argentine Vincent Price. Very fun.

On the other hand, my on-the-fly comprehension takes humiliating hits all the time. I just got back from a fairly unsuccessful trip to Easy (that's what the store's called, in English, but they say it "eee-see"). It's a sort of Home Depot/Walmart with groceries. On the way there, a businessy guy stopped to ask me...something. No idea what. So I had to just shrug and say I didn't know. The sad part is that I know that neighborhood fairly well and might actually have known the answer if I'd had a clue what he was asking.

Once I got there, I was looking for a cream to etch glass (I want to frost part of the kitchen window). Well, I managed that question pretty well (they don't carry it), but I don't get points for being able to say "acid cream that etches glass" because I practiced at home.

Then at the end of an aisle, an Easy girl was demonstrating adhesive tabs that temporarily hang up pictures and kitchen gadgets and so on. I got that fine, and accepted her free sample of two adhesive thingies. But then she added something mysterious and I nodded OK and she took me to a board where a bunch of the tabs were holding up hooks and so on. I was already pretty much over the whole idea, but she seemed quite insistent that I try one. I figured it was easier to just go along, so I picked a small hook and pulled its tab. It was supposed to come off, but it didn't. She noodged me to pull harder so I did and the tab stretched almost to snapping until finally the hook came off. She looked at the back and cheerfully said "you won!" and handed me a baseball cap. I was mainly happy because I know the word for cap. So I said "Ah, a cap!" which is actually a pretty stupid thing to say when someone gives you a cap.

Five Months Later

I promise I'll stop posting plant pictures after today. But as I've been settling back into my apartment, I've been very pleased at how well they pulled through. Before pics on the left; after on the right.



I met my last tenant, a nice bloke from England named Richard. He had a great time staying here (was taking Spanish classes, much like I did during my first stay in Buenos Aires). He was pleased that he hadn't killed any plants. Apparently the two bushes had been crisped before he arrived, which means, sadly, that he spent 5 weeks looking out the kitchen window at these:



Ah well. At least they all didn't look like that. As you can see in the next one, my "palm" has grown a bit (it's a dracaena, I thought it was a palm, but Bobby corrected me), but the floppy, viney plant has had a great spurt, doubling back on itself. I think I'll string a cord somewhere to encourage it to grow upwards. And that stumpy weed in the tile planter has become a lanky weed with semi-attractive leaves.

El Cadequilo

I'm generally one quick slip away from utter confusion in Spanish. Silvana and I are talking by telephone (uh oh) and she is trying to give me the name of an Internet address. I'm not hearing it well, so she decides to spell it out letter by letter.

Silvana: T. P. A. R. Cadequilo. A—
Me: Cadequilo?
Silvana: Si, cadequilo.
Me: Que?
Silvana: Si, cadequilo.
Me: Que?
Silvana: Si, Bruno, cadequilo.
Me: No entiendo.

I deduce that a cadequilo is one of those weird symbols, like an ampersand or an asterisk. And I hold firmly to that deduction, even though it is clearly doing me no good. So Silvana and I are locked in a battle of stubborn repetition until at last I realize that she's not saying "cadequilo," she's saying "ka de kilo" ("K as in kilo"). I also remember that Silvana speaks some English, so when I kept saying "que?" she was hearing me ask "K?"

What really burns me is that I've had exactly the same problem with another letter a couple of years ago. Hector was giving me his address and he said he was in Apartment "d-d-dedo." Now, Héctor doesn't usually stutter, but I let it go. Later, Max was giving me his address, and he said "d-d-dedo." Suddenly all of my Argentine friends have developed a stutter? You're way ahead of me, of course, and realize that they were saying "De de dedo" ("D as in dedo") (That's finger).

So, El Cadequilo doesn't exist, but it's my new name for the bright white stupefaction I feel when my comprehension disintegrates and I'm stuck gazing numbly at el mundo. So when I utterly lose the thread, I'll still feel like an idiot, but I'll at least I won't be alone. I'll be there with my good (albeit imaginary) friend, El Cadequilo.

I'm Back

I arrived back in Buenos Aires yesterday and was quite happy with the state of the apartment in general and, specifically, of the plants that Bobby said were doomed to a slow death by neglect. As it turns out, only two of them out and out croaked and pretty clearly it was by a more sudden and violent demise. They were both outside the kitchen window, which also put them just above the air conditioner motor. Burnt to a golden crisp, I'm afraid. Surprisingly, one of the bushes that was just inches to the left was completely unsinged. I moved it to another window anyway, just in case.

But on to the happier news. My avocados survive! I planted two of them last year at this time and they are both still here. One of them is even thriving. Here's what a 1-year-old avocado looks like.



Other plants seem fairly happy, too.



I bought this one on my last day here. It's grown a bit top-heavy, but seem sturdy. I like its threatening spininess.



Of course, it wouldn't be Argentina if I wasn't confused about something. I was about to pull off the dead fronds from this totally normally fern, when I had a closer look and realized that they aren't dead fronds but hairy roots.



I haven't a clue as to why they're sticking out of the pot, but I guess I'd better leave them be.