Chunka Pichqayoq

We age not according to time, but according to experience.

Sabrina and I began on the Atlantic coast of Argentina and ended on the Pacific coast of Peru. We drove practically to Antarctica and then flew practically to the equator. We started at sea level and we finished at the height of the Incan gods. At the end of it all – 4 weeks later – I was relegated down to the place where I began, forever changed by experience. My body has aged weeks. My heart, centuries.

My heart was captured by Cusco, Peru – the final destination of my 4 week (/centuries long) journey. I fell in love with Cusco. She made me come alive – painfully alive.

BAires, mi amor, te cuento: my heart is capricious.

My love for BAires was a surging sensation of bliss and admiration. It was blind and it was pure. My love for Cusco, por otra parte, is beautiful and tortured – characterized by an ache in my chest and a flutter in my heart. I see Cusco. My love for her is everything.

Cusco is beyond beautiful. Upon first encounter she left me breathless, dizzied by her splendor. She sits proudly on her throne, 3400 meters in the air, with soft mountain peaks framing her exquisite golden physique. Her yellow sun burns and blinds you. Her height leaves you dizzy, gasping for air and off-balance. Her people are golden-brown, curious, outgoing, envious, hard-working. She is extreme: hot and cold and dry and wet. When you stand in her main square, Plaza de Armas, you sense the colonial buildings engaging in a dialogue with the tops of the surrounding mountains. Cusco is in the sky. Cusco is glorious. She is everything.

Cusco was, for centuries, the capital of the Incan empire. Then, in the 16th century, Spain entered la historia and systematically endeavored to crush the Incan civilization. As history demonstrates, in the literal sense, Spain succeeded. And, the conquistadors – in their symbolic attempt to convey dominance – built their churches and buildings on top of the ruins of once impressive Incan structures. Today, as you meander through the sloping streets of Cusco, breathless and struggling to maintain balance, you find Spanish colonial edifice after edifice seated triumphantly atop of what remains of the Incan stones.



But the Spanish were equivocado in thinking that they could crush the spirit of the Inca. The spirit of the Inca was not contained in the impossibly arranged stone foundations of their buildings. The spirit of the Inca was not something tangible, suppress-able, containable, quell-able. The spirit of the Inca is an energy – permanent and infinite. Today the Inca energy hugs your skin and invades your body with every labored breath you breathe. The Inca energy lives on in the powder blue sky that hovers inches from Cusco’s rooftops and mountaintops.

Modern Cusco is a thriving gem of a city, where appreciation of the Andean-Incan culture is just pushing – but not quite overstepping – the bounds of exploitation. Locals, small-scale entrepreneurs, try to hustle you, obvious extranjero, out of money: a few Soles in exchange for a useless trinket. Cusco is also remarkable because for a South American city rife with tourists, it is uncharacteristically safe (Conversation for another day: I loathe justifying inseguridad with the ‘this is South America’ qualifier. Hit me up via e-mail, Skype, thefacebook, etc. if you care to discuss...). Cusco’s people are hustlers, not beggars and thieves. Perhaps the deep Incan heritage persevered into modernity: in the Incan kingdom there were no beggars or thieves; if you did not work, you did not eat. Here, again, another piece of the Incan identity that could not be contained by mere execution of crushing physical force.

Maybe that flutter in my chest was the Incan energy stirring me to life, stirring me to love. For me, love often manifests as tears: I shed tears for Cusco when I left her 4 days ago. My tears make no sense. Nor does my love make sense; it is simply a feeling.

Three days in Buenos Aires and already the ache in my chest is dulling. BAires’ soulful art is slowly trickling in, rekindling the flame of romance that evaporated in the burning Peruvian Andes, in the powder blue Cusqueño cielo.

BAires – in her transparent attempt to regain my admiration – has for 3 consecutive days flashed her azure cielo. Oh, how I once adored that sky, how it used to touch my heart. Now, however, it seems distant – thousands of feet away. My heart knows new love and a new sky. My heart was stirred and awakened by the eternal Incan energy. Stirred too by the powdery Cusqueño cielo that hugged me closely while I gasped at Cusco’s breathtaking beauty. My heart has aged with experience, experience that dates back centuries, when the Incans were more than an energy – when they were an empire.

f o u r teen

Ohhhheyyyyy! It’s been more than one month since I last wrote to you, reader-friend. Many days have passed sans communication on my end but I think of you often (everyday, in fact!).

I am On The Road. Have been for the past 10 days, accompanied by my dear friend-from-undergraduate-university, Sabrina. Currently I am in a warm café in rainy Pucon, Chile, a town nestled between a gorgeous lake and an active volcano, about 800 kilometers southeast of my home-that-could-have-been, Valparaiso.

Words are pouring out of me these days, so I’ll recap the past month and move onto a more detailed narration of ‘me these days.’ Brief recap: finished cuatrimestre numero 1 (of 2) at la UBA facu de derecho; continued preying on Buenos Aires’ cultural cuisine; formed friendships, solidified existing amistades and bid adieu to a good number of buena gente that briefly called BAires home; and, of course, participated in a lot of wholesome Rotary fun.

And onto the gift of the present, precious reader-friend:

Eleven days ago, Sabrina and I packed up my belongings, deposited it in my ridiculously-awesome friend Melissa’s sweet Palermo digs and set off On The Road. Ah, delicious Freedom!

‘Me these Days’:

Day 1—

The Sab and I arrived in Bariloche – in the famed Patagonia region of Argentina – surprisingly refreshed after a 20-hour bus ride, greeted by a terrifically grey sky, 'twas a blustery day. And, given that blustery weather rarely, if ever, graces south Florida, I was quite eager to have it out… which turned out to be a very bad idea given the violent wind (think hurricane force, Floridian reader-friends) thrashing Sabrina and me through Bariloche’s streets.


Our very first friends in the hostel were a group of Irish guys. We decided to join the lads for an afternoon of locally brewed cervezas, hearty soups, World Cup futbol and good times at an (incidentally) Irish-run pub around the corner from the hostel. Eight hours, 1 German victory, several rounds of cards and cervezas later, the violent wind and blustery weather continued, as did the good times.


Evidently the weather in Ireland can be (and often is) as grey and blustery as Day 1 Bariloche’s. Lucky for the Sab and me, the Irish blokes (who tell me ‘bloke’ is more of an English word than an Irish one…) generously shared their savvy knowledge of how to make a blustery day of grey burst with shades of fun.

Days 2-3—


Epic skiing on Cerro Catedral, the mountain just outside of Bari. Epic skiing, I tell you, my reader-friend! The ski conditions, especially at the top of the Cerro, were awesome – fresh powder, minimal crowds, pure fun. There’s nothing that quite compares (particularly in Miami!) to the feeling of gliding over packed snow, surrounded by trees and snow and mountains and brooks and streams and everything that is beautiful and magical about winter.



Days 4-7—

S and I hopped a bus from Bariloche to El Bolson on a brilliant – nearly blinding – sunny day.

Bariloche, the city itself, is… interesting. I don’t really have a good sense of the city after a week spent there because staying at hostels can be numbing in the commercial, contrived, path-has-been-dug-worn-and-beaten-by-travelers-before sense.

The city is a pop of development and commercialization, entirely enveloped by sweeping Andean terrain – set on the edge of a vast, mirrored lake and framed by rolling, jagged, rhythmic mountains. The Patagonian sky, the same Argentine azure that makes my heart melt every time I see it, is enormous. The sun looks small – like a tennis ball – in the infinite azure. But, the lake – a mirror – and the snow-capped peaks, produce a remarkable effect when playing with the light bursting from the tennis ball in the sky: the light is reflected, refracted, scattered in every which way.


Bariloche shines, shimmers and glitters in the cacophony of light bouncing from snowy peak to reflective lake to open, heart-melting, azure sky. Every which way goes the light – blinding. Bari’s numbing cacophony of commercialization also glitters under the golden tennis ball. I find commercialization to be sort of vile and kind of offensive, but, alas, my repulsion is softened by the hope that commerce brings resources to a humble native population of weathered Patagonian people.



Back to the bus from Bari to Bolson: I left Bari a bit numb (blame it on the morning spent in town rather than on the Cerro). Twenty-five minutes later, however, there we were – Sabrina and me – contained within a roaring rectangular prism of metal and glass, unapologetically cutting through the thick serenity of the Patagonian wilderness. We were careening on the edge of a mountain in a box of metal, with jagged rocks threatening us from above and an icey lake beckoning from below – my numbness melted into mild terror. Terror has a funny way of making us come alive.

Our bus driver, aggressive and confident, maneuvered the treacherous terrain and we soon broke into a valley, with not a sign of human activity as far as my eyes could see. For as long as I can recall I have been struck by a deep sense of appreciation for reaching places apparently untouched by modern ‘civilization.’ This familiar sense of appreciation invaded me as I stared out the window, iPod in my ears, pouring Iron & Wine’s ‘The Shepard’s Dog’ into my mind (aside: if you have heard and don’t like this album it’s because you’ve never basked in the unending glory of untouched Patagonian beauty). This place, somewhere between Bariloche and El Bolson, is everything I never knew I had imagined when I dreamt of magic. I could feel myself opening up, things inside me stirring – feelings and thoughts I never knew lived within me. (Writing these words now, even, my body aches for this place that I only briefly met, a place I have known for eternity.)


We pulled into El Bolson, a town with no traffic lights that you can only enter and exit via one street, set in a valley with protective mountains smiling from above. ‘Aqui’ where ‘lo magico es natural.’ El Bolson is a town known for its hippie community, Feria de Artesania, cervezas artesanales, homemade jams and homemade ice creams.


On Day 5, S and I went for a ridiculously long hike – nearly 7 hours of curious exploration. Given the season (winter!), so far as I could tell, we were the only USAmericans in the town (really, it was that small that I feel relatively confident with this bold proclamation), and we were practically the only people that set out for a hike on that grey, mid-week day (in the whole 7 hours, we crossed paths, only briefly, with 9 people). Sabbie and I hiked so far that we ended up beyond the limits of the town and had to re-enter through the police checkpoint, relying on our charm to convince the official that we weren’t gypsy wanderers trying to slip into the oasis of peace in the middle of magic wilderness.


There is something about walking 10 kilometers (this is how far we deviated outside the town! We lost our map in between the mountain lookout over the Rio Azul, ‘Cabeza del Indio’ and the ‘Cascada Escondida’ and rather than retrace our steps through the trail decided to follow a dirt road home…) down unpaved roads and past estancias ('ranches'), observing a life so simple and pure, a life that boldly challenges conventional notions (Western notions, really) of how life is meant to be lived. Attribute it to the crisp, clean mountain air (more oxygen, more thoughts!) – or to the chickens, or the sheep, or the horses, or the pigs – or more likely, to the overwhelming, invading sense of peace and tranquility that I gleaned walking past estancia after estancia, fatigue slowly washing over me, curiosity quietly stirring, exploding with a profound sense of appreciation for the apparent simplicity of life in El Bolson.


Wandering down este sendero ('this path'), I reflected on the fact that despite differences in caminos ('walks') through life – among people and cultures all around the world – we all ultimately seek the same ends: love and relationships, connection and significance, purpose and contribution.

Beyond the wandering, our time was spent pow-wowing in an adorable coffee shop adorned with bursting flowering arrangements – generating Energies, excitedly brewing ideas for the future, laughing over memories past, losing ourselves in those moments. There we were, in the middle of this magical place, where the people – like the food, like the terrain – were natural, wholesome and refreshing.


The peace, magic and beauty of El Bolson was cleansing and therapeutic. I returned to Bariloche feeling alive and clean. El Bolson took a piece of my heart and replaced it with magic.


There was a moment – barely into our epic, 7-hour adventure, as we approached the first lookout over the slivering Rio Azul – that I was struck with a deep sense of gratitude for the amount of beauty my eyes have seen in this life. This is absolutely attributable to the abundant privilege I have been afforded, by virtue of my parents, my USAmerican citizenship, my education, and now, by the generosity of Rotary. I have seen in my life so many beautiful things that I now recognize beauty not with my eyes, but with my heart: beauty is a feeling, deep and profound (appreciation, a little bit of love, and a lot of magic).

Suerte--Numero 1 3

Heyheyhey, reader-friend! I hope you are in great spirits. I am (per usual... but particularly so today) because recien I finished writing my first report for Rotary! Yay.

I'm going to copy and paste pieces of it here...

(Preparate, it's quite verbose...)

Dear Rotary District 6930, Rotary District 4890, and beyond,

Question: What would it take to change the world?

Answer: Collaborate – communities making a global impact – to resolve the most pressing sources of suffering faced by humanity: hunger, lack of access to healthcare and education, intercultural misunderstandings that result in ignorance, intolerance, injustice and war.

But, Rotary, you already knew the answer to that question, didn’t you? You knew because you were the one that observed humanity’s perilous challenges and responded with solutions. You provided solutions and thrust them into life with strategic action. Rather than curse the darkness, you provided light.

In 1953 you were Hope In Action. Today, The Future Is In Your Hands. In between, you have sown themes of Hope, Action, Human Dignity, Service, Unity, Help, Belief, Love, Participation, Renewal and Peace. Rotary, you have woven these themes into the fabric of your organization, and effectively into the fibers that comprise each of your 1.3 million members in 33,000 clubs worldwide. These themes, like your solutions, are ideas dressed as words. But, with your resolve, you have given these ideas life. And in 95 years, Rotary, you have changed the world.

When I was granted the Ambassadorial Scholarship in 2008, your theme was ‘Make Dreams Real.’ Appropriately enough, my initial foray into your organization was no exception: I approached you with a dream – to live, study and travel in South America – and you made it real.

But Rotary, I must confess: things have changed for me. Your confidence in my ability to fulfill the mandate of an ambassadorial scholar stirred something inside of me to life. The themes that you delicately wove into the fabric of your existence are now a part of my existence, and now they are pouring out of me – ideals of Hope, Dignity, Love, Unity, Participation and Peace.

Rotary, I approached you with a dream to travel, to see and know the world. Now that I am living this dream, things have changed for me – this dream is not enough. I can’t just live this dream for one year and let it slip away into the recesses of memory. Two years ago, you made my dream real. Rotary, I write today to report to you that this year, I am taking the future of Rotary in my hands, and effectively, I am changing the future of this world.

I write to report on my first three months as an ambassadorial scholar, specifically: (I) information about my study program, adaptation and progress at la Universidad de Buenos Aires facultad de derecho; (II) the steps my sponsor Rotarian, Sherry Eastwood, and I took to prepare for my experience abroad and how it helped me meet the challenges of living and studying in Argentina; (III) how I have been involved in Rotary since I arrive in Argentina; and (IV) my first impressions of the culture in Argentina and Buenos Aires. Ultimately, with this report, I convey to you, Rotary: as my dream is made real and with your future in my hands, I am changing this world by illuminating in it the very ideals that you illuminated in me.

Okey dokey.. so I am cutting the bulk of the body, since it's quite boring, in my humble opinion! You are very welcome, reader-friend-whose-time-I-will-not-waste-with-mundane-reportings... : )

(IV) My first impressions of Argentina and the people in Buenos Aires and cultural delights that I have enjoyed and shared

I arrived in Buenos Aires in early March, not quite enrolled in la UBA, sans a place to live, unsure of whether or not the city would accept me. Initially, I was shy; I cautiously wandered the streets and tiptoed in and out of the throngs of people delighting in the final days of the southern hemisphere summer. I dressed discreetly and avoided drawing unnecessary attention to myself. After all, I was supposed to be in Chile; I changed the course of fate by forcefully steering myself to Buenos Aires. Would Buenos Aires recognize that I didn’t belong and reject me? Would she force me to live a year ridden with strife because I wasn’t supposed to be here? I felt like a replacement organ placed in a body, making every effort to acclimate so that the body wouldn’t misidentify me and attack me with antibodies.

Well, here I am, Rotary, three months after my quiet arrival, fully integrated into the organ system called la Capital Federal. And, I am not merely integrated. Dare I say it – I am thriving. As it turns out, Buenos Aires’ melancholy, romance and bohemian spirit are precisely the qualities my soul craves at present. And in reverse, I believe these very qualities allow me to be so readily accepted in Buenos Aires.

As I explore friendships with other ambassadorial scholars I observe that we each approach this Rotary experience with differing expectations of experience and outcome. Each of us deliberately chose to evade the comfort and familiarity of family, friends and culture for months or years, motivated by a sense of curiosity, or the nag of adventure, or to fully immerse in a distinct culture, or to observe from the perimeter the novelty of a foreign culture, or to perfect a second (or third, or fourth, or nth) language, or to study at a particular institution, or to travel in a specific region, or to contribute to a particular cause, or to shift our perspectives. There are abundant additional reasons, and most of us are motivated by some combination of the aforementioned and unmentioned.

Profound implication: the diversity of Rotary ambassadorial scholar-experiences is immeasurably vast, convincingly positive and has a tremendous impact in the world. Ambassadorial scholars dive, head first, into unfamiliar cultures, not merely to see the world, but to know the world. And we do it so the world can know us, too. Every year Rotary supports hundreds of students as we create these enduring relationships of knowing, thus etching Rotary ideals of Peace, Goodwill and Friendship into the fabric of humanity.

So, preaching aside, my initial impressions of Argentina are overwhelmingly positive. I was motivated to come to South America as an ambassadorial scholar (beyond my commitment to spreading Rotary goodwill and cheer!) to perfect my Spanish, to gain an international perspective on the law, to travel, and, above all, to relish in the cultural delights of an unknown place.

It’s curious: Culturally, Miami is very much a part of Latin America due to the fact that there are many Latin American immigrants in Miami (that are accompanied by their vibrant and flavorful Latin American culture). Accordingly, Argentina’s language, food – and even people – are found on the streets of Miami, much as they are found on the streets of Buenos Aires. However, Buenos Aires possesses something that can never be emulated, no matter how many Argentines bring their culture to Miami. Buenos Aires has onda. ('Onda' is a Spanish word, unique to Argentina that roughly translates as ‘ambience.’)

Buenos Aires has a remarkable onda that is enigmatic and impassioned. This onda, I believe, is responsible for Buenos Aires’ unrivaled porteño culture (or, perhaps, it is BA's porteño culture that is responsible for its exceptional onda...). It is a culture of carne and Malbec, rock music, tango, world-famous fultbolistas, world-renowned literature, epic design, architecture, art and fashion; it is a culture of passion, melancholy and romance. There is something really exceptional about ‘culture’ in Buenos Aires – namely, culture is ubiquitous. In Buenos Aires, there is a culture of culture.

In Miami there is an ‘art scene,’ which impliedly suggests that one must independently penetrate the ‘scene’ in order to feast upon the art. In Buenos Aires, so far as I can glean, there is no ‘art scene’ – there’s just art. Art is everywhere, literally on every block: there are cultural centers in every neighborhood, dozens of museums, hundreds of art galleries, well over one hundred theaters. Murals and street art adorn walls, buildings and sidewalks and everywhere you look there are statues – there must be like, a gazillion of them – many of which adorned with street art, too. The dining is famed the world over, attributable to the caliber of meat, wine and chefs. Buenos Aires is a world capital of rock music and the world capital of the tango dance. But if rock music and tango isn’t your thing, there are music and dance venues of all types open every day of the week, every week of the year. The onda in Buenos Aires is a culture of culture.

People that create orchestrate culture; ergo I find no surprise that Buenos Aires boasts a culture of culture. Everyone I encounter in Buenos Aires creates; everyone is an artist in one form or another. Herein lies the crux of my experience as an ambassadorial scholar and my cultural experience in Buenos Aires – I too feel the stir of an artist inside of me. The more I come to know the onda of art and culture in Buenos Aires, the more it comes to know me and the more I come to know myself (the artist!).

And there you have it, Rotary – three months worth of experience as an ambassadorial scholar, contained in this report that consists of too many words, yet does not say nearly enough.

In three months I have had the opportunity to perceive the law through a unique Argentine and South American lens, to form friendships with Rotarians, Argentine artists and fellow-foreigners, to savor the cultural delicacies of Buenos Aires, to see Argentina and know Argentina. These three months in Argentina have been among the most formative in my life.

Rotary, I think I am flourishing.

You made my dream real – I am seeing my dream and knowing my dream. Knowing my dream, knowing the world, and knowing the faith of Rotary placed inside me are the most empowering privileges that have ever been placed in my hands. This privilege I am paying forward every moment of this ambassadorial scholar experience: illuminating this world with Rotary ideals of Hope, Dignity, Love, Unity, Participation and Peace.

The question I initially posited – many words ago – was ‘What would it take to change the world?’. The underlying inquiry, I believe, could be more appropriately dressed with the words ‘What does it take to change the world?’.

Question, Rotary: What does it take to change the world?

Answer: Rotary, you already know the answer because you created the answer.

The Ambassadorial Scholarship is the answer.

You, Rotary, are the answer.

Muchos cariños de Buenos Aires, Argentina,
Natalie

T w e l v e

Yo, reader-amigo! I changed up my blog. Te gusta?

I do. This is mostly because I really, really love the sky.

Have I ever told you that one of my life-dreams is to travel the world and take fotos of the sky? Well, it's true. (I guess I am kind of already fulfilling this dream, albeit slowly.)

I miss South Florida's sky. I think it's one of the most beautiful skies I've ever seen. This is particularly true at sunset – wild splashes of pink and gold, muted greys and purples, penetrating blue hues. Colors chaotic in disarray, perfect and fleeting.

Buenos Aires' sky, though not nearly as spectacular as SoFla's, is nice too. On many days the Argentine sky is an unforgettable shade of azure, illuminating BAire's places and spaces below. It's almost unfitting – contrary to logic – that a city distinguished by its melancholic culture would be found under a brilliant, incomparable, often-azure cielo.

That's the thing with Buenos Aires, though – she's not what you expect. She just is who she is.

She's a friend, if you want her to be. A dynamic friend: She boasts sabroso meat and serves wine that is tasty and inexpensive. She loves rock music. She is international and cultured and maintains a very strong sense of her porteña identity. She's crazy about futbol. She is down to earth. She doesn't wear much makeup. She drinks mate and cafe con leche. She is socially conscious. She is family-oriented and has many friends. Sometimes she dances until dawn. She never eats dinner before 10 p.m. She doesn't read as much as she should. She loves children. She is romantic. She is bohemian. She has a young spirit, an old soul. She has struggled. She is resilient. She creates. She is an artist. This is Buenos Aires as I see her. This is Buenos Aires, my friend.

Like I said, she's a dynamic friend. To some she is a sensual dance partner (those that seek the intimacy of tango), to others she is a adventurous shopping accomplice (those drawn to her by her distinguished leather and artesania), to still others she's just a South American city (those folk lacking in imagination and curiosity!).

Buenos Aires handles with poise and authenticity the demands of her different roles of friendship. But, no matter how her friends perceive her, she always remains true to her alma.

That's just who she is – a city of soul, a city with many faces, a city of melancholy and romance, underneath an unforgettable sky.

I hope you see the beauty, reader-friend... (It really is a marvelous shade of azure...)

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. : )