11(:11)

Music has made my time here in Buenos Aires profoundly, meaningfully – often unbearably – magical.

This is thanks in great part to my great friend Eric, who allowed me to raid his iTunes music library in the days preceding my Sudamerican departure. (Credits too to my various music senseis, that do a phenomenal job of supplementing my collection of tunes... JBdC, GF, SV...)

My life in BAires has a veritable soundtrack: Music enters my ears, at the very least, 22 hours per day. (The 2 hours sans musica are the 2 hours I spend in class!) I sleep with music, shower with music, walk the streets with music.

Most of the time I use my mood as a barometer for mi selección de musica. But, every once in awhile, I'll leave it to the iTunes gods to select the perfect tune for the moment (i.e.,'Random Shuffle').

Last week, caught up in my duties as porteña tour guide (in a city, mind you, that I am just coming to really know) to my mom, I decided to let the iTunes gods pick my soundtrack. Per usual, they worked their divine magic, and, with precision and prescience, selected the most apt song for my current etapa of BAires existence. Check it, please press play to hear the selection of the iTunes gods:

Thank you iTunes gods. Thank you David Bowie. You are perfect. Really. Perfect for now, for these moments, for this etapa: Etapa 3.5. You see, treasured reader-friend, Etapa 3, the etapa of unconditional love for BAires, remains. It is now accompanied, however, by recognition of life's transience... of Ch-ch-ch-changes. (Hence, the appropriateness of David Bowie's crooning. Haha! I love this song!)

It's curious – change is a gradual process, yet true recognition of change is always marked from one moment to the next.

Change is usually slow to arise. And, change usually greets us by surprise.

And. Things. Are. Certainly. Changing.

Namely:

On 28 May, the class I entered law school with – the peers I endured the challenge of 1L with, the friends I delighted the brief respites between the demands of law school with – graduated. My classmates changed from JD-seekers to JD-holders. (Felicitaciones, dear friends!)

On 29 May, I changed from 24 years to 25 years. (Felicidades to me!)

On 30 May, my mom – my 'sister,' my best friend, the person that possesses the unique ability to bring out my very worst and my absolute best, the woman that gave me life, the person that I love more than life – after having spent 16 days sharing my porteña life, returned to USAmerica. My life changed from the constant tumult of another's presence to peaceful, melancholic solitude.

These are obvious changes, back to back to back.

More subtle changes abound, around BAires, too. Por ejemplo, seasonal changes: Just today I realized that it really is invierno. While my friends in USAmerica are aprovechando summer, boating and BBQing, I am in Buenos Aires, bundling and BRRing.

Today too, after class I passed by my favorite art exhibition space, the Centro Cultural Recoleta. I poked in and out of the salas (I believe there are something like 21 salas in the CCR) bereaved of the art that ordinarily adorns the spaces and invades my soul. Empty salas because it's the end of the month, the day that the art of the month past is replaced by next month's delicacies.

But even the more permanent installations were changing: I watched, in a trance, as 2 painters on a ledge made the mural – that has menacingly graced the wall of the interior courtyard since I arrived in BsAs – disappear into a wash of white.

These changes have been a long time coming, I suppose. I've been too busy elsewhere – mentally – to notice to onset, perhaps. And so, in a seamless thrust, on 30 May, recognition of (Ch-ch-ch-)changes penetrated my mind and my life. My friends changing, my age changing, the seasons changing, familiarity changing...

... I walked home this afternoon (post-2 hour class-sans-musica and post-CCR-walk-through) with my earphones snug in my ears, soundtrack of my life flowing. I entered my apartment alone, uncharacteristically still in the absence of my most recent guest, and immediately opened my balcony door to peer over the street below. I was met, much to my surprise – despite the cold of the winter air and despite my solitude – by warmth. Incidentally, with the onset of winter, my balcony is now graced by the sun's warm afternoon glow. The sun's position in the sky is slowly changing and slowly offering my balcony its luminous light.

Things are changing. Things are uncertain. And with the recognition of change and uncertainty comes freedom: the freedom of life's possibility for abundant warmth, abundant music and abundant magic.

Today, 31 May – one day after change thrust its surprise upon me – I was unexpectedly reminded: Change (Ch-ch-ch-change!!!) is always accompanied by the power to illuminate possibility. ('When nothing is certain anything is possible.')

'Changes are taking the pace I'm going through.'

There's the music. There's the magic.

Αριθμός 10

Here in the Capital Federal, I find myself shifting, every few weeks, into new stages ('Etapas') of perception. My first 4 weeks in Buenos Aires – Etapa numero 1 – were marked by novelty, tranquility and the mild terror of the unfamiliar. Etapa numero 2 (weeks 4 through 8) was marked by acclimation, the comfort of routine and the spice of new friendship. My most recent Etapa (numero 3, week 8 through present) is marked by unconditional, glorifying love of Buenos Aires.

I am genuinely enamorada.

My most loyal reader-friends recognize that love of Buenos Aires is a recurrent theme woven throughout my blog posts. It's only of late, however, that I realize just how deeply I have fallen in love with this city. When I hold her in my mind, I feel in my heart the surging sensation of joy and bliss characteristic of any true enamorada. Like anyone who is in love, I see the object of my admiration with adoring eyes. I am quick to see BAires' beauty and even more quick to dismiss her faults.

Cada ciudad tiene su buena y su mala. ('Every city has its good and bad.')

Good. Bad. Ugly.

It’s really just a matter of perception.

Once upon a time, a wise friend pointed out that in the context of relationships we humans tend to systematically and discriminately select the details upon which we will focus. O sea, we choose which details of the person, object, or of the relationship itself, to focus on – good, bad or ugly.

Por ejemplo, when it comes to my mom (I’m using her as an example because, incidentally, she is sitting at this cafe with me, here in Buenos Aires, disfrutando a cappuccino and a book…!!) whenever I feel the stir of (appropriately) childlike frustration, I’ll remind myself to shift my focus away from the circumstance-induced triviality and towards the reasons I am so grateful that, by the divine graces of chance, she is the creature that gave me life. (Poetic digression: Life she gave me 25 years ago, guidance 22 years thereafter, and now, as I transition into my adulthood, she provides me with a unique blend of friendship occasionally punctuated by enlightened pedagogy. XO, Mom!) When I feel compelled to surrender to that familiar sense of frustration with her, or our relationship, I’ll force my focus – following some mental grappling – back towards gratitude and appreciation of her zest and spunk. Mucho mejor.

Please excuse my soliloquy. There’s a Point here, esteemed reader-friend. Promise.

A Point: Every person, every object, every relationship, has its good, its bad and its ugly. How we see the aggregate of goodness, badness and ugliness in a given person, object or relation – I believe – is a reflection of ourselves more than it is a reflection of the other. O sea, what we perceive in the other is dictated by the details on which we choose to focus.

I, in the fiel form of an enamorada, focus so intently on Buenos Aires’ good that I am often bewildered when confronted by her bad and ugly.

One piece of Buenos Aires’ bad that has me puzzled is the precariously complex social situation. Not a day passes in which I am not reminded – directly or incidentally – of the inseguridad. ‘La situacion esta mala.’ I feel ignorant, blind even, as daily I seek evidence of the 'bad.' Sure, I feel la inseguridad – that ubiquitous sense of mild-terror – but the bad… where is the bad?

Donde esta la mala?

I once wrote, 'Buenos Aires' streets are where her real magic is found.' Well, Buenos Aires' streets are also, so far as I can see, where la mala is found. La mala: Homeless people, asleep under meager plastic sheets, adorning storefronts and plazas; children and adults sprinkled throughout every barrio, shamelessly begging for monedas; unrelenting suspicion of taxi drivers and moto-scooter-ers; on trash-collection nights, people of nearly every age, rummaging through nearly every bag of trash, on nearly every block. The symptoms of poverty. And these are only the most obvious examples of la mala, that I perceive with my own eyes, on Buenos Aires’ streets. The worst of la mala, I can imagine, is not quite so obvious.

This coming Tuesday – 25 May 2010 – Argentina celebrates the Bicentenario, 200 years of independent statehood. In 200 years, Argentina has seen a lot of la mala: political instability and economic breakdown, a number of golpes de estado, and thousands of desaparecidos.

Yesterday I had the chance to observe, along with a group of fellow UBA students, the judicial taking-of-testimony for the ongoing ESMA (Escuela de Suboficiales de Mecánica de la Armada) trial. The ESMA trial is prosecuting top officials of Argentina’s 1976 to 1983 military dictatorship for harrowing human rights violations committed during their years of tenure. (It is uncontroverted fact that nearly 5000 innocent Argentine citizens were unlawfully detained, tortured and/or murdered at the ESMA facility during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.)

One man testified on behalf of his mother and sister, both desaparecidas. When asked about his mother’s nature, he responded, through tears and overwhelmed by emotion: ‘Ella siempre me decia, cuando uno tiene la mirada limpia uno puede llegar a cualquier lado.' ('She always told me, when one has a clean perspective, one can arrive anywhere.') It is one etapa beyond ironic that someone with such a pure nature – someone that could offer such goodness of perspective – would be murdered at the hands of her own government.

The brave man's words – all of them – continue to haunt me 36 hours later. He concluded his testimony by stating: 'Solo quiero la verdad. Solo quiero justicia.'

Somewhere in Buenos Aires – I believe (I hope) – enveloped by the good, the bad and the ugly, la verdad and justicia exist.

The riddle remains: how and when will la verdad and justicia be revealed?


Like I said, I am bewildered when confronted with la mala of Buenos Aires (and Argentina, generally). It seems to me that the bad is so complex, so beyond what I can glean using my 5 senses of perception, almost out of reach, conceptually, for me as an extranjera.

My natural proclivity is to shift my focus away from la mala and back to la buena de BAires – the abundant art, the inspiring design, the epic dining, the barrios with souls of their own, the resilient people that day after day, in defiance of la mala, return to the streets to work, to play and to love – and retreat into the solace of a true enamorada.

número nove

One of my greatest dreams has been realized.
(Please scroll down to the photo at the bottom of the linked article – 'Bread and butter.' I've courteously included the photo in this post – above – for those of you who'd rather not navigate away from my blog page (who could blame you for not wanting to leave my blog...? Teehee...).)

Yes, you guessed it! That's my hand dipping a chocolate-covered, dulce de leche-filled churro into Buenos Aires' most famous submarino (at the unabashedly unpretentious and auspiciously authentic La Giralda café).

Me. Little me. A hand model...

A dream come true, really. (Thanks Pavel!)

Buenos Aires 2010: Narrowing my life-goal list, one sweet moment at a time. : )