Yesterday Here

Yesterday was an eventful day here.


First, it was the national census, which is done live. It was a national holiday and everyone had to stay home and wait for the census-taker to show up. There were 650,000 of them across the country. Each one was paid 250 pesos (about $60) for a day's work, which is not bad here.

My cencista showed up just after noon. I told her right away that I'm foreign, so didn't know if I should participate, but she said sure. It was a brief form, maybe 25 questions. The usual stuff (age, education, number of rooms, etc.) I did very well answering the questions, except for one that I didn't understand about what the roof of the building is made of (I couldn't answer that in New York in English either, actually.)

So, I've been counted in two censuses (censi?) this year, which is clearly over-representation, but pleases me nonetheless.

Afterwards, I walked to Martha's (most public transportation was shut down, as were all businesses.) The streets were mainly empty, except for the census-takers, with their white census bags and forms.



The census alone would have made for a memorable Wednesday, but earlier in the morning came the news that Nestor Kirchner had died of a massive heart attack. (Mickey's first response: "Did they count him in the census?" To which later in the day one station actually reported that yes, they did.) He was popular, moreso than Cristina, and was almost certainly going to run for president again in the next election. At just 60 years old, his death was a sad moment even for his opponents. I don't get much of Argentinian politics, but people seem to mainly agree that he was an energetic and devoted leader.

People mobilize very quickly here. As his body was being flown up from Patagonia to Buenos Aires, people were already starting to gather in front of the Casa Rosada. Several of my friends went there last night (I decided against going—crowds make me squirrelly, and political crowds that I don't understand even moreso.) There will be three days of national mourning.


During the night, these posters were printed and plastered all across the city. ("Forever Nestor. Be strong, Cristina.")


And then, some time after that, someone added those little paper tags you see all over the place here, in phone booths, on building walls, and on advertisements. They're little take-away flyers for call-girls. The more things change...

Book Lust

So I'm going to a housewarming tonight at a friend of a friend's. The host has just finished renovating two apartments, so it'll be a movable feast from one to the other. He's asked that instead of wine or cheese or whatever, people bring used books, which will be used in the apartments.

I love the idea, but when I looked through my bookshelf here I couldn't find anything I was willing to part with. So a quick stroll through some of the bookstores on Corrientes and I had way too many choices. I bought a cheap collection of Argentine comics from the 50s (I have the same book in my apartment here) and a sweet little copy of the Odyssey (in Spanish, natch). Then I found this, which I just couldn't resist buying for myself, even though I'm trying not to buy unnecessary things.


For a mere $1.50, this seemed quite necessary. It's got not only a great cover, but is chock full of the most gruesome diagrams. The thought of young Argentine boys poring over the pages of this grim how-to guide makes me shiver with a ghoulish nostalgia. And of course it reminds me of when my brother Rob (then Robby) took a taxidermy class at the local Natural History Museum. The main project was stuffing a rat. As I recall, his final result was a mitigated success. He didn't add quite enough stuffing, so it was a little sunken and floppy. He also got in trouble with Mom for boiling the rat carcass in one of her good pots.

Colón, Again

I went to the Teatro Colón again this week. My second time since it reopened in May, but the last time we had seats in the Cazuela, an upper ring, and had to enter through a side door, so we didn't get to see the entire spectacular lobby. This time I splurged on a pricier ticket. The sound is the same (great), but the experience is rather different. It's one helluva theater.


That's the moon, not a streetlight, by the way. Anyway, I entered my box in the third ring (Palcos altos) through a private door. Here's the first view you get.

Every box has an entrance foyer, where you can hang your coats.


Those are the boxes to my left. The six seats in each box are unnumbered and you better get there early because the view from the front seats is fine, but the view from behind must be pretty lousy. Lots of people were standing behind the front-seat sitters. (As you can see, I did get there early enough to grab a front seat. Phew. I'd be cranky if I had to stand after paying that much for a ticket.)

The curtains are baroque and lovely.


Here's a view from my box.


At intermission, I walked down two levels and wandered around the glorious halls. Stuff like this:


A fine night at the opera. Oh, the operas? Two early 20th-century oddities, Zemlinsky's A Florentine Tragedy (based on a short story by Oscar Wilde) and Korngold's Violanta, chosen because they'd never been done at the Colón before and they wanted to do some premieres during their reopening season. The Korngold was lusher, more romantic (and over-heated, but in a fun way. Hard not to hear adolescent hormones pounding when you know he wrote the opera when he was 17); the Zemlinsky an intense 3-person chamber opera that has a great pair of final lines, Oscar Wilde's pervy idea of an O. Henry twist. An older merchant husband has been quite dismissive of his wife throughout. Nonetheless, he finally gets jealous enough to strangle her lover, the Prince. She's been hoping the Prince would kill her hubby for the whole opera, but now that the deed is done:

Wife: Why didn't you tell me you were so strong?
Husband: Why didn't you tell me you were so beautiful?

They climb over her lover's corpse to kiss. Curtain.

Butterfly Bush

We bought a new butterfly bush and I'll be damned if the thing doesn't actually attract butterflies. Proof below (in the first if you look closely, you'll find 3 butterflies, though one is way out of focus due to the extremely shallow depth of field. It's in the lower right, near where Bobby is equally out of focus in the last pic.)

Goodbye, Bicentennial

Justa couple of photos I like from the Bicentennial fair. Caught this ice cream trailer poster making eyes at a passer-by.


This is a hot-water vending machine, to top off your thermos so you can refill your mate (a bitter-but-habit-forming tea they drink down here).

Carne Argentina

The country seems unusually open to art that would never pass the official muster in the States. Take this "portal." There were three of these huge temporary gateways built at the main entrances to the bicentennial fair area. This one was at the base of Corrientes, designed by pop photographer Marcos Lopez and titled Carne Argentina (Argentine Beef).

The main image above the roadway was a parody of the Last Supper, recreated as a typical Argentine asado/barbecue, with footballers, drunks, and so on.


On the flank sides (ha ha) were some saint figures, several of them very bloody lady butchers. I cannot imagine the U.S. government supporting this sort of art, and yet here it seems to go down without much fuss. He's a well-known artist and people accept that this is what he does. I'm sure there are people who don't like it, but that doesn't keep it from being plastered on large, city-sponsored canvases.

Bicentenario

Today's the bicentennial here—happy 200 years of Argentina. Though as with many things here, what it is we're celebrating exactly is a bit confusing. I bought a history comic book, but haven't finished reading it yet and am still a bit baffled. As I understand it now, 200 years ago marks the formation of the Primera Junta, which was the first anti-Spanish Government in Buenos Aires. That's the city, not the country. And actually, they were only against Napoleonic Spain—they were still faithful to what they considered to be legitimate Spain. (Napoleon deposed Ferdinand VII and put his brother Joe in charge of Spain.) Anyway, the country itself didn't really form for quite a while later, but they celebrate May 25, 1810 as the day that began it all. So here we are.

They've closed off a big stretch of 9 de Julio, the huge street that cuts through the center of town. There are three stages, of which this is the biggest, as well as lots of pavilions representing each province. Here's what the main stage looked like a few days ago when they were setting up.


And here's what it looked like on Saturday, before one of the many parades.


This family got good views for the day by driving their truck there and then mounting a viewing platform on front.


The magnificent Teatro Colon reopened yesterday, after having shut down in October 2006 for renovations. I'll be there on Friday for La Boheme.


This is the Cabildo, the building where the Primera Junta (that first anti-Napoleonic Spanish government) was formed. Actually, it's been rebuilt since then, so this is a reconstruction.) It faces the Casa Rosada on the Plaza de Mayo.


And here's the Cabildo in chocolate in a store window around the corner from where I live.


Here's an odd elevated half-boat they put up in front of the Cathedral, also on Plaza de Mayo, where San Martin is buried.


One of the diagonal streets leading to the Obelisk at night.


And this is my street, Corrientes, last night. As you might imagine, I'm a bit tired of elbowing my way through crowds like this. It will be nice to get back to the usual chaos and traffic tomorrow.

Introductions

I've been to a couple of events lately which came with helpful introductions. People here seem much more open to the idea of someone teaching or guiding you at the beginning of an event. In many instances, they even expect it. I like this. Shows a healthy respect for learning. I think the general attitude in the States is "Oh, I know enough already, just get on with the show."

First was a chamber music concert at the Casa de Catalunya, a lovely building in San Telmo. Lydia and I were waiting in the lovely lobby, when all of a sudden, waiter started passing out free soda and tapas. Turns out the concert came with appetizers--including a very tasty ceviche. I tried one (or more) of everything. Lydia wouldn't try anything at all--said she had eaten a late lunch. So I felt like I used to at Hamilton receptions, when we would all pig out on the appetizers because they were better than the cafeteria fare.


Before the concert, a young man comes out and gives a brief but informative introduction to the first work--Mozart's "Dissonance" quartet. He was just right--didn't give an annoying interpretation, but talked about the how Mozart used the quartet form. Then after the intermission, he came back and introduced the (really excellent) Dvorak string quartet. The players were from Cordoba, excellent and passionate. Their encore was a marvelous Piazzola piece.


A couple days later I went to this nice little library in Recoleta for a free movie, El dependiente, from 1967 by a famous Argentine director, Leonardo Favio. The screening was in a beautiful wood-paneled reading room and once gain, an informative young man come out and talked about the movie in context of Favio's career and films of the time.


The movie was interesting but, alas, typical of its era, the sound quality was abysmal. Luckily, I had read a pretty full synopsis of it beforehand. Otherwise, I'd have been lost. The microphones and other sound equipment in Argentina up until the last decade were pretty lousy, so going to old movies is always a risk.


That's the actual title screen--very casual. About a hardware store clerk in a small pampas town who's waiting for the owner to die so he can inherit the shop. He falls in love, in a manner of speaking, with a quiet young girl. The movie is mostly his courtship of her, all of which takes place at her house with her very strange mother and semi-retarded brother nearby. The movie is tonally odd, to say the least. The lead actor had an almost Peter Lorre-like intensity. I was glad to see it.


Especially because a few nights later, Martha and I went to see a play that I loved, called El pasado es un animal grotesco (The Past is a Grotesque Animal) and a funny scene featured one of the characters having an interview with Leonardo Favio. Which proves that the more things you do, the more connections you find.

Things I could live without in Spanish

I've recently added a new entry to my list of complaints against the Spanish language. This is not a long list, and overall I'm still pretty happy with Spanish (or castellano, as they call it here), though there are some things that really get under my skin. For example:

• There's no word for toes. They say "feet fingers." Ridiculous.

• The word for "go straight" is just one easy-to-miss letter away from the word for "on the right" (derecho/derecha).

• It's also too easy to confuse the words for 2 and 12 (dos/doce). Several times I've made plans to do something at one of those times, only to realize at the last minute that it was actually the other.

• The whole subjunctive thing. (I admit to a certain repulsion/fascination with this one.)

Here's my latest addition: I've sadly had to learn that the Spanish euphemism for putting an animal to sleep is "sacrificar." So every time I start to talk about Aggie, I feel that word looming ahead of me. I know that soon I'm going to saying that we had to "sacrificarla." Sometimes I think I'll use the blunt word for kill instead, just so I don't have to face the image of an Aztec priest leading poor Aggie to the top of an ancient pyramid before slicing her open and holding her beating heart aloft to an approving crowd. So far I've resisted the temptation, but really, couldn't someone have come up with a more soothing euphemism? Isn't that what a euphemism is for?

An Odd Thing to Miss

Just did laundry here, which means hanging damp clothes on a drying rack on our outdoor balcony. I enjoy doing this, though I still haven't quite come to terms with the crispy crackle of air-dried underwear.


And I realized that in addition to all of the really obvious things I'm going to miss, I'm also going to miss scooping Aggie's hair out of the lint screen in the dryers back in New York. I always enjoyed doing that, too.

Aggie Barking and Not

Very hard to believe that I won't see Aggie when I get back to New York at the end of May. Then again, I think it was often hard for people to believe what we said about Aggie, because she could be very different in different circumstances.

People who came to visit us at home could hardly be expected to believe us when we insisted that Aggie was a very quiet dog. And people who knew her on the street had a hard time believing tour descriptions of her as a relentless barker. Yet both were true.

She almost never barked outside, especially on walks or at the dogpark. Outdoors, she had a world to explore and as well as my nearly full attention. Knowing her convinced me more than ever that dogs prioritize their senses much differently than we do, placing so much less emphasis on sight and so much more on smell. Every walk was a chance to re-smell the neighborhood and no matter how many times we recircled the same blocks, she would find subtle changes in smell fascinating. New sights, such as a new building or sign, didn't mean that much to her.

The only time she would ever get barky outdoors was when I would have a long conversation with someone and she would get antsy. If I was oblivious to her obvious nudging, she would finally bark to let me know it was time to move on.

Indoors, she was equally quiet, though she would woof once or twice to come in from the patio if we had closed the door. When visitors came, however, it was a different dog. She didn't like sharing our attention (especially mine, I'm afraid), so when anyone came over, she would start barking, just to make sure she was getting enough focus. Bratty? Yeah. But also very hard to train, because who wants to train your dog when you have company over? Finally I would often have to resort to putting her on her leash indoors. Just being connected to me seemed to calm her down (well, that and having one hand scrunching her ear non-stop helped, too.)

She did not like to be separated from me. She didn't mind at all when I left the apartment, but if we were outside and I left her with someone else, she pitched quite a fit. This was especially noticeable at the vet. They tried to take her downstairs to take blood samples several times, but the ensuing struggle was impressive. As they started to take her away from me, her eyes would suddenly register sheer panic, her legs would lock, and soon all 95 pounds of her was bucking this way and that, trying to get back to me. Usually, she won.

Once she ate a bit of rat poison, so we rushed her to the emergency vet. She felt fine, and was certainly confused as to why I was acting so oddly. They took her back for testing and I went to the waiting area and continued to fret terribly. Then I looked up and there was her fuzzy snout, bounding around the corner, hurrying back to me. I had to escort them back to the testing room and then close the door quickly on my way out. (She was completely fine--she hadn't eaten enough poison to do anything. Though she was certainly less fine after the vet pumped her stomach full of carbon. Her face and chest were black with the stuff, suggesting that it had been a rather sloppy scene back there.)

Finally, our vet gave up and started just drawing blood upstairs, with me at her side.

But no matter what we did to her at the vet, she loved going there. I think that as far as she was concerned, it was just more attention.

Aggie

Aggie died on Friday night. She was a great dog. I'm not feeling up to writing very much about her right now. I spent so much of almost every day of the last 11 plus years with her. She was a pleasure to live with, interestingly quirky and moderately obsessive, but also really loved a good cuddle.

Norma

Caught Norma for the first time last night.


At the Teatro Avenido, a very nice old theater. I was off to the side in the third ring (la tertulia), which had decent views and very good sound, for a reasonable $36 or so.


Turns our, I shouldn't have waited so long. Norma's a terrific opera, including 12 minutes or so in the first act that are about as close to pure opera bliss as I can remember (the famous aria Casta Diva, which really is lovely, segues into an equally compelling passage.) But the whole show was remarkably engaging and vibrant. The singers, especially Norma (Soledad de la Rosa) and Adalgisa (Guadalupe Barrientos), were excellent. Sure, the story's a bit silly, but hey, it's an opera.

The setting was fine, without getting in the way. Though I was slightly disappointed that they didn't move those barren trees at the end to make the funeral pyre that Norma and Pollione immolate themselves upon as the curtain comes down. Too expensive, I guess.

You Never Know

What's my point? That's a mighty big lemon?

Actually, no. Although it is.

The point is the measuring tape. I just stuck the lemon there for some color.

I had a measuring tape here, but one of my renters seems to have walked off with it. At least I can't find it anywhere. I was looking for it to measure pot and planter sizes before I went to the nursery. I managed without it, but when I was shopping at a giant grocery/housewares store called Easy on Sunday, I threw a measuring tape into my basket, figuring it's a nice thing to have around.

The store is huge, and so were the check-out lines. The woman in front of me had done a really impressive job of buying a ton of groceries for about 100 pesos (about $25). She must have bought all the store specials. When it was my turn, the check-out girl scanned in my stuff but couldn't get the barcode on the measuring tape to read. She said I could go run back and get another one, but there were at least 8 people waiting on line and it was just a whim, so I told her it wasn't that important, so left without it.

Then yesterday on the subway on my way to lit class, a subway-seller was hawking measuring tapes for just 5 pesos. (The one I was planning to buy was 14 or so.) You never know what you'll find and when you'll find it.

So there it is, measuring my lemon (10 cm/4in.) Subway sellers hawk all sorts of stuff, from stickers and tissue packs to clip-on reading lights and plastic expanding file folders. I remember seeing a lot of those file-folders on my first trip here: they open up to have about 10 or 12 compartments. I remember thinking that people here must have more filing needs than we generally do in the states. I was glad to see one again just yesterday. I guess filing is still one of the local pastimes.

I am cranky, until...

The apartment here is in the middle of town, right off Corrientes, which is the street with all the theaters on it (as well as many, many bookstores). During the week, it's a very busy neighborhood, hectic with people going to and from work. But the building itself is very quiet. Since there are two inner courtyards and we're off the second, I don't hear any of the hubbub.

One of the things I like is that my neighbors are very much locals. For example, directly to one side is a nice couple of 20-somethings. He writes for a newspaper called Perfil and she's a lawyer. Then there's the crazy couple below them. I'll leave their oddities for another entry.

And there's a family across the way with a young son, or maybe two. I'm not quite sure. Anyway, last week was quite nice here, and I noticed that they were letting their son run wild more often than usual, and he was particularly inexhaustable, running about and screaming a high-pitched kid scream for what seemed like hurs, but was certainly at least half an hour. Now, that sort of thing is cute for a while, but does begin to grate, especially as it's just noise in my apartment—I can't actually see what's happening because the walls of my galleria are too high to see over.

Yesterday after a particularly long scream-and-run session, I was getting a bit cranky, so decided to go browse some bookstores, get some ice cream. When I get to the bottom of my stairs, I'm greeted by a black, waggy puppy and two squealing boys.

So it turns out that's why the change in noise levels—they got a puppy. And I gather their main method of exercise is to let the puppy and boys loose in the patios. Boys run, puppy chases, boys scream. Repeat.

Of course, dogs being cuter than kids, my heart melts and I forgive them. For a bit. The dog is sweet and surprisingly quiet.

Well.

It's very quiet when it's chasing boys around patios. It's less quiet when they're not home. It tends to bark relentlessly for much long periods of the day. Or at least I think it's the new puppy.

Hopefully the dog will get used to being alone. Or I'll get used to having a bit more of a soundtrack than before.

Some Gloating

My Spanish is a bit rough so far on this visit. It's my own fault, as I hadn't been taking a class or even doing much reading while in New York. I manage conversations pretty well, but I'm creaky. It's a bit better now, but I'm pretty hard on myself, hearing every stumble and stutter and slip-up long after my companion has moved on.

So I don't feel too bad about gloating about one of my happiest Spanish moments ever. Martha and I went to see grim but beautiful German movie The White Ribbon (showtime 10:10 on a Wednesday night! My schedule here really is different.) and I followed the Spanish subtitles quite well. Afterwards, I asked Martha the meaning of comadrona. Turns out it's a midwife. Now, I didn't feel too bad for not knowing the Spanish word for midwife. But then Martha said there's another word for wet nurse, but she couldn't remember what it was.

And I said, "you mean nodriza?" And she said, "Thanks, that's it." And we carried on our conversation.

I actually knew the word for wet nurse! And no big deal, I just casually offer it and she says thanks and on we go, jabbering in Spanish. I was pretty pleased with myself (and obviously still am).

As it happens, I had just read the word in a novel this week, and remembered it because it looks funny. (Often I don't remember new words.) I hadn't looked it up—I got the meaning from context. That works well for very concrete words, like wet nurse. For other words, I can often infer a kind of blurry semantic aura, if not a precise meaning.

To go back to beating myself, I should honestly report that what I actually said was "you mean nodrizo?" getting the final letter wrong, which was kinda stupid because it makes sense that a wet nurse would be feminine, but hey, I'm not going to feel too bad about that just now.

On Habits

I try to stifle my coughs and I try to avoid flushing the toilet here at night. Both instincts are self-trained and entirely unnecessary now, but it's very hard for me to overcome these impulses.

I try not to cough because our dog, Aggie, trained herself to come when I cough. I wish I could say this was the result of a diligent training effort on our part, but no, she's entirely responsible. In fact, it took us a while to realize that she was doing it. Once we finally figured it out, a quick test proved that it's the most "obediant" thing she does. (Me: "HACK. HACK." And here comes Aggie)

I have no idea why she decided that she should come when I cough. It's as mysterious as why she prefers to carry her rawhides in and out of the house instead of chewing them, taking care of them as if they were scrawny offspring. If one is outside, she has to fetch it at least daily, bring it on a tour of the apartment, and then bring it back outside. This happens several times a day (especially annoying in the winter, when you have to leave the door open while the rawhide child is being shown the apartment. Brrrrr.)

She doesn't come when Bobby coughs, just me. It's cute, but it makes me feel bad if I didn't particularly want to see her. Say I'm lying in bed and she's in the living room, half-asleep. If I cough or even clear my throat a bit, she gets up and comes in with a "You rang?" attitude reminiscent of Lurch from the Addams Family. It can be useful if I actually want her. But mostly I have to struggle to avoid her hearing me cough (pillows are helpful here), or she'll get up and come trotting over and I'll feel bad for "ordering" her to do so.

So when I'm here, you would think I could cough in peace, but I have built up such a strong resistance to coughing that almost every time I feel like coughing, I have to go through the same drawn-out thought process: "Oh dear, I have to cough. I wish I could cough, but I can't because—oh wait. She's in another hemisphere and can't possible hear me. Yay! I can cough. HACK!"

Same thing goes on now with the toilet. One of the "charming" traits of the apartment is the surprisingly loud plumbing groan that the toilet makes every time it flushes. It's an old-time water tank with a pull cord, and the sound is not immediate. Something occurs a minute or two after flushing as the tank is refilling. A slow moan builds to a aching, reverberant groan, eventually reaching a deep hollow scream of plumbing sorrow.


Or at least it used to. Something happened and it's better now. I asked Héctor if he fixed it and he said he didn't do anything. There's a clue, though, which has to do with not knowing what goes on in my own apartment when it's rented out to strangers.

At least I'm convinced it's a clue: The toilet seat is broken. One of the hinges is snapped.

Now, the seat isn't anywhere near the tank, so that has nothing directly to do with the death of the toilet's scream, but how did it break? I figure you'd have to be putting in some pretty heavy time opening and closing the toilet seat to snap a metal hinge. Seems very unlikely to me. But if you were, say, standing on the toilet seat to try to reach the water tank and fix the toilet's inevitable, sorrowful groan because it was driving you crazy—especially in the middle of the night— you might easily have torqued the lid in the wrong way as you were reaching for the tank and snapped the hinge. (See photo. But the water tank isn't as tiny as the lens makes it look–I had to go wide angle to get the shot.) (I know, I know, what am I thinking, putting pictures of my Buenos Aires toilet on my blog? I was also standing in our big, claw-footed bathtub to get this picture, if you want even more information. No?)


So that's my guess. I think one of our tenants did just that. And maybe we should thank him (they've mostly been men, and it's easier to imagine a man trying that repair anyway) for breaking the seat, because he fixed the groan. And really, the seat is easier to replace than the groan was to fix.

So now, the toilet is nearly silent and I can flush whenever I like. But I don't. At night, I have the same habit-built instincts, reinforced by sleepiness. My thought process remains stubbornly ingrained: "I wish I could flush the toilet, but it's late and I don't want to wake the neighbors, or myself for that matter, with the sobbing toilet. Better leave it til morning." And often I do.

All of which is just to say that old habits die hard. But also that I kind of miss our moaning water tank. I feel a little anticipatory "will it come buck?" with each flush, but so far, nada.

And while I'm here I certainly miss Aggie's fuzzy and possibly annoyed face looking at me, saying: "You coughed?"