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.