I, the profaner

 

I discovered this song earlier today, the whole album in fact, 11 episodios sinfónicos, by the late Gustavo Cerati, a famed Argentine musician, songwriter, and lead singer of rock en español legends, Soda Stereo.

Cerati died too young, just a few years ago, due to ongoing complications from a stroke. This album and concert were recorded in Buenos Aires in the early 2000s when he would seem to have been at a creative peak, at least if this song provides sufficient evidence. (However, the Great Gazoo called and he wants his coat back, Gustavo.) I once had a boyfriend from Mexico who waxed eloquent about Soda Stereo, but I never really got them or got into them, at least back then. But now, I'm sorry I didn't. Maybe hearing this record would have made me appreciate the band. Maybe this record would have prompted me to travel to Argentina much earlier in life than I did, only a mere two years ago.

But I've done so twice now, and I will do so again, espero que sí, once the COVID-19 pandemic ends. I've even toyed with the idea of working remotely from Buenos Aires, which now seems completely possible. I'm not quite convinced my employer would agree, but if this pandemic is really anticipated to last for two years, as recently predicted, then what the hell? Why not? I loathe this job, and if you've been reading so far, you know Canada and I have a marriage of convenience--or inconvenience, given its unsatisfying retail scene and its small screen view of everything. Back home, the U.S. seems crazier and deadlier than usual. So if Argentina would let me in, if I had access to good healthcare, if I had access to a strong, reliable internet connection, would it matter if I did my job from a place I would much rather be, improving my Spanish, a lifelong goal, and exploring spectacular landscapes, steak dinners, and Malbecs along the way?

De veras, after all this meshugas, it's hard to imagine going back to the office, let alone to whatever was passing for normal at the beginning of 2020. If I can work from home for six months in Toronto, I could do the same in Buenos Aires, or Salta, or Jujuy, or Mendoza, or Puerto Madryn, or Trelew, or Córdoba, or Ushuaia, or Rosario, or San Antonio de los Cobres ... well, maybe not San Antonio de los Cobres, a unique and beautiful place but one where the altitude is high, the air is thin, and the roasted llama is a little too free-flowing for a sensitive stomach like mine. (And yet I ate it, loved it, and would go back for more if given the opportunity.) 

But, otherwise, hell yeah, I could do this and still hit up the llama blue plate special in San Antonio every few months or so. So buen apetito and buen viaje, bitches! I'm outta here first chance and a ticket on Aerolíneas Argentinas I get.

I definitely want to

I seek out and share new music from Argentina so you don't have to. "Quisiera" translates as "I would like," using the subjunctive "mood" of the verb "querer." Except for me there's no subjunctive about it--I definitely adore this song and the performance by Argentine performers Natalie Pérez and Coti. ¡Viva la Argentina!

Fantasmas en la casa

As we move from summer to fall in the Northern Hemisphere, it's time to think about tea, fuzzy sweaters, crisp air, and warm fires--or not, depending on your preferences.

Fun Argentine pop group Miranda! will share the moment with us--in beautiful San Carlos de Bariloche no less.

"Pero no, no, no, no, no, no ...."

Poultry in motion

"Portrait of Argentine Actress Eva Duarte" (later Eva Perón)
by Annemarie Heinrich. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

So my all-things-Argentina sojourn continues. And--you're forewarned--likely will for some time.

Currently I'm reading this biography of Eva Perón, Evita: The Life of Eva Perón by Jill Hedges, which is really very good, painting a more more nuanced portrait of Evita than you might get from other sources (such as musicals), but not shirking from her stridency, score-settling, and authoritarian tendencies either.

There is lots to recommend the book--it is thoughtful, sympathetic but clear-eyed, well written and well researched. But for now I want to focus on my favorite anecdote so far, one that brings into glorious flower (or do I mean feather?) the Peróns' mid-20th-century pro-level trolling. This anecdote has both a literary connection (Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges) and a library connection (Borges worked as a librarian for a time during the Perón era and then immediately afterwards, too).

Apparently, during the Perón era, Borges made many ugly public and private statements about Eva's origins--as did many Argentinians on the right, left, and center. If you were shocked how mean people, pundits, and politicos were to Hillary Clinton as a woman in power, really, you will fall to the floor in a faint when you read stories about the vitriol directed at Eva.

Eva Perón's origins were indeed poor, murky, and humble--one of five children born out of wedlock, her mother, Juana Ibarguren, was the paramour of Juan Duarte, an Argentine landowner and rancher who had another, legal family. By all accounts, he kept Eva's family to the side and never really provided for them in a significant way, especially not after his death.

Imagine growing up like that--fatherless, shunned, hungry, treated like trash, your mother working constantly to provide for five young children. Imagine how hungry for justice, sincere kindness, and social acceptance that you would feel as an adult. 

Then imagine having to hear famed author Jorge Luis Borges, a man in the 1940s with an international literary reputation, a man of the oligarchy, claim--based on no evidence then or now--that your mother at one point ran a brothel and that you and her sisters were prostitutes in said brothel for a time.

Hedges argues that it was likely quite the opposite, that Eva's mother worked hard, overcompensated, and raised her children to be as good, clean, and proper as possible so that they would not be tarnished for life by their illegitimacy and poverty.

Borges kept telling these tales throughout his life, including (and especially) when Eva and Juan were in power in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Coincidentally, in those days Borges had a government or quasi-government job as a librarian in Buenos Aires. Of the good, the bad, and the indifferent that the Peróns did during their reign, they tended to practice "clientelism," awarding the spoils of war--i.e., government jobs--to their supporters, poor, middle class, and wealthy.

Borges was not one of those supporters, obviously. So they offered him a "promotion": A plum position as an inspector for poultry and rabbits at the Buenos Aires municipal market.

I don't know if he took the job, but he likely wasn't happy about the offer. I imagine that he thought his privilege would excuse his being a jerk but surprise! No.

I do know that there are a number of librarians I've worked with that, if I were in charge, I would promote to poultry inspector in a heartbeat. Who knows? They might be good at it, better than they were as librarians, colleagues, and human beings, but I fear incidents of salmonella and bird flu would skyrocket during their tenure, nonetheless.

All's well that ends well, I guess: When Perón was ousted, Borges became head of la Biblioteca Nacional de la Argentina, the Argentine national library. Years later, he still repeated those stories and continued to display his right-wing, oligarchic street cred as a big supporter of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Maybe a little more time in the chicken coop, stepping around and through all that chicken shit, would have adjusted Borges' attitude some. But probably not.

Poor you, poor me, poor us

Street scene, Purmamarca, Argentina

Is Argentina a poor country?

Well, as far as poverty is concerned, it may all depend on how you define it. Using the World Bank's World Development Indicators from 2018, approximately 7% of Argentina's population lives on less than $5.50 USD per day. That's compared to 1% for Canada, 2% for the US (still shockingly something like 6 to 7 million people), 21% for Brazil, 35% for Mexico, and a whopping 57% for South Africa.

However, viewed another way, according to the the CIA World Factbook (2016, 2017, et al.), 32% of the Argentine population lives below the national poverty line--compared with 9.4% for Canada, 12.3% for the US, 4.2% for Brazil, 46% for Mexico, and 16.6% for South Africa.

Say what? The numbers are all over the map (literally) and don't necessarily translate well when comparing one country to another.

***

Viewed more subjectively, Buenos Aires looks great, like a stunning, slightly funky, "exotic" capital city, every so slightly lived in. At least that's the case if you stay in Palermo, Retiro, Recoleta, downtown, and most of the city proper. (In comparison, tidy Toronto is so un-crumpled, so unlived-in, so anodyne, and quite tedious, so much so that I almost cried upon landing back home.) I'm not sure what Buenos Aires is like in the poorer, more industrial suburbs, although a ride in from the international airport in Ezeiza reveals its share of tenements--but no corrugated shacks or squatter camps, at least as far as I could tell.

If you watch the Argentine news or current affairs programs there, you see your share of people of different income levels and social classes. And inevitably, like much of the rest of the Western world, the lighter the skin, the higher the social class/economic level tends to be (although not exclusively).

Despite the prevalence of Turkish soap operas, there is at least one Argentine soap, El Marginal (which was available on Netflix at one point--but not in Canada), shown on Argentina's public TV broadcaster, that takes a very gritty look at life among the poor, prisoners, ex-cons, petty criminals, and other "marginal" people.

Farther afield, the city of Salta in northwestern Argentina feels like a rather pristine Spanish colonial city with modern conveniences. "Salta la linda" doesn't have the glamor and cash that Buenos Aires does, however. Smaller Altiplano indigenous communities like Purmamarca and Humahuaca look more "developing" with unpaved streets and adobe buildings--but the restaurants at least have wifi.

Suffice it to say that Argentina is poorer than the US and Canada but does not feel desperately poor. Nonetheless, how do you maneuver this as a tourist without looking clueless or insensitive?

I still stayed in nice hotels and ate good food, but I tried not to overdo it or be ostentatious, much as I live in North America. I shopped some, both from stores and street merchants, including those trying to get by selling dishcloths, tissues, candies, and other small items, all part of the more informal economy. Did I need dishcloths while in Argentina? Not necessarily but they did come in handy. And as allergy-prone as I am, tissues are always in season.

I generally gave some money to those on the street, when asked, same as here. The "need" in Canada is sometimes questionable--with young guys on Queen West requesting money "for their band" or street people near my building asking me if I have something "better" than the $1 or $2 coin that I offered. While in Argentina, I didn't constantly pass out cash, only if I was prepared to, able to, and felt comfortable doing so.

***

What was more challenging was knowing how to handle a situation like the one I'm about to describe.

One night for dinner in Salta, I passed by the more elegant option recommended to me by a fellow tourist, instead opting for the old and familiar--McDonald's. Hey, what can I say? I was just feeling a little homesick that night and not very adventurous, especially after my lunch of "cazuela de llama" (llama stew) earlier that day in San Antonio de los Cobres. So I kept it simple: A grilled chicken sandwich and fries, a Diet Coke, all a prelude to some vanilla soft-serve, which I'd been craving all week for some reason.

While seated at a communal table, I vaguely noticed that a young boy sat down near me. But I didn't really focus on him, as I was no doubt scrolling through my Facebook or Twitter feed or reading the news from home, with home still being the US, despite my life in Canada. The boy eventually got up and went to another table where he asked a young couple if they were going to finish their fries and if not, could he have them.

At that point, I paid attention. I hadn't seen that happen before--or at least not in a very long time, and certainly not in glamorous Palermo.

The couple generously gave their fries to him without even a second's hesitation. So I decided to do the same. It wasn't much--there weren't many left, as I'd been eating them absent-mindedly while engrossed in the access to the wider world provided by my phone. But, literally, it was the least I could do.

An image of Eva Perón, downtown Buenos Aires,
exhorting the wealthy to do more for the people of Argentina

I started to leave, making my way toward the ice cream, served at a separate counter. But then I paused. I have more resources at my disposal, I thought; I can and should do more.

But what exactly? If I give too much money, will I look ostentatious? As Americans, we have a reputation for overtipping, and sometimes this can be viewed as showing off, rather than being understood as carrying out an American habit of leaving an inflationary amount for service because we know wait staff in the US have to get by on tips rather than salary.

The boy was young, maybe 12 or 13 at most--and this made me hesitate doing more as well. Being an older man seen giving a young boy cash, would there be the perception that I was expecting something for my money, either by the others around me or the boy himself? I recalled urban legends from visiting Puerto Vallarta years ago, a city with a big gay vacation scene, that young men of unknown age might entice you as part of a sting, with the police nearby, ready to swoop in for a bribe to "help" you avoid jail time and embarrassment. This was not the same situation at all. Nevertheless, on the trip down, I'd also seen posters all over the Atlanta airport about human trafficking and the sex trade. Suddenly the topic felt very real, very present. 

I debated what to do: Give him a generous amount of cash, buy him a meal, offer him a smaller amount along with my fries, or something else entirely (up to and including walking away). I ended up making what I perceived to be the least ostentatious gesture: I gave him about $30 pesos, not even one whole Canadian dollar, my fries, and wished him well.

I'm glad I respected the boy's pride, his "space," and I'm glad I didn't do anything that would appear compromising to him, to me, or to others. But was playing it safe the best I could do? Did respecting someone's pride outweigh momentarily alleviating their very real need--hunger? Should avoiding confusion, embarrassment, and, yes, the appearance of criminality, take precedence over helping combat someone's hunger or destitution?

***

I didn't know then, and I don't know now, and I will likely never know.

I do know, though, that I skipped having any ice cream that evening. Suddenly I was no longer hungry. Instead, I felt ever so slightly more melancholy for the comforts of home.

Argentina, te quiero

Oh, don't mind me. I'm just stuck at home with an apres-trip head cold, feeling melancholy, with too much music on my hands ....

El día que me quieras

I've been traveling again. Can we guess where?

Star quality!

Elena Roger and Ricky Martin perform "What's New, Buenos Aires?" from the 2012 Broadway revival of Evita.

Fin del Mundo

Fin del Mundo? Bring it on, Señor!

Twin screw steel steam cruisers

RMS Oceanic (1870). Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

So in getting ready for another trip to Argentina in a month's time (aka Down Argentine Way Round 2), I've been re-reading Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia. Which is a bit funny in that I should have re-read this a year ago when I was actually going to Patagonia. Instead, this time I'm going to Buenos Aires and Argentina's Andean northwest (Salta, Jujuy, Purmamarca, Tilcara, Humahuaca, etc.).

I'll skip the critique of the book, for the most part. There are parts I remember reading way back when (mid-'80s), and there are parts I don't remember at all. (Which leads me to think that perhaps I never finished the book?) In some of the narrative, Chatwin comes across as very, "oh look at me, a Brit traveling the world, and passing judgment on the odd unfortunates I meet." To be expected perhaps, but we can't all be as woke as we are today. (Heavy sarcasm.)

But other parts, specifically the history of seafaring around Cape Horn, including that of a family relation of humble origin who rose to the rank of captain for a New Zealand shipping line, have been oddly fascinating.

In one part of the story, the engine fails on a ship his great-uncle (I think) is commandeering. It is a hybrid vessel: A steamship but one that has sails, which, after the engine fails, allows them to limp slowly toward Cape Horn with the hope of arriving eventually in port at Punta Arenas, Chile. But they have to be careful as they move to the cape for fear of catching a current that will set them adrift in the South Atlantic--not to mention the worry over smashing into the rocky coast of southern South America.
 
Chatwin remarks that the ship had no radio. According to my quick research at 3 am Sunday, ship-to-shore communication apparently didn't exist until the last few years of the 1890s, thanks to the pioneering "wireless telegraphy" inventions of Guglielmo Marconi. Further, such communication wasn't in common use until the early part of the 20th century. Thus there was no way to communicate what was happening on board, even as the ship moved closer and closer to shore.

Chatwin also mentions that another ship around the time had broken a propeller and, as a result, had been set adrift in the South Atlantic for four months before it was discovered. (This event served as the basis for Falk, a novella written by Joseph Conrad, which I'm now trying to track down for a hopefully quick read.)

While 125 or so years ago now seems like a long time ago, when Chatwin was writing his book, the events had taken place less than a hundred years before.

My points here are probably rather mundane:

• We're not as old, advanced, or as conscious as we think we are. 
• A lot has happened in the last century or two, so no wonder sometimes we feel like we're enduring cultural whiplash, a harsh and frightful spin on a carnival ride that is designed to thrill but ends up hurting as much as it satisfies. 
• These events put into perspective any flight delays we may have or any gastrointestinal illness we may have caught on board a cruise ship. 

Not that the latter aren't frustrating, awful, and even occasionally life-threatening, but the problems we experience now somewhat pale in comparison to never knowing if you are going to make it home despite "modern" (then steamship) technology at your disposal.

Maybe our ancestors were just a lot more used to risk and danger then. Maybe in some respects and in their own way they were braver, smarter, cleverer than us, even if they didn't know the same things we know now. Maybe this will make me less anxious about taking the small risks I take in life, which, while significant to me, seem quite tame. And that's OK. I'm a relatively tame guy.

Maybe, too, pondering what my ancestors endured and how I have benefited from it will make me whine less about the momentary discomforts of modern life.

But I doubt it.

Grass clippings with a twist

Mate and bombilla in a calabaza.
Source: Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 2.5

One of the things I forgot to do when I visited Argentina last year was drink the traditional beverage-- mate (pronounced "mah-teh"), or yerba mate, which, in theory, is sort of like a green tea, one of indigenous origin, existing prior to the settlement of South America by the Spanish and the Portuguese.

It's a popular beverage. I even saw someone on the Buenos Aires subway drinking it in the traditional way. There's a whole thing to it--a calabaza or gourd, a bombilla or silver or metal straw with one end serving as a sieve for the tea, and a traditional process for making it. You're supposed to pour the dry mate into the gourd, shake it to loosen the small bits, make a well in the calabaza with the bombilla, then slowly pour in warm water (not boiling). Next you let it brew a bit, then sip It through the bombilla. It has a social aspect, too, with people passing around the beverage to share.

The guy I saw drinking it was holding the gourd in one hand and had a Thermos tucked under his arm. He loosened the lid of the Thermos with his free hand and poured hot water into the gourd, all while perfectly balanced, without holding on to a subway strap or a pole. Impressive.

I've had mate before, years ago, in San Antonio, but I'd never had it done the proper way. So after the fact, I wanted to give it a try, and, figuring it might be a long while before I get back to Buenos Aires, I ordered a bombilla, calabaza, and mate through Amazon.

It took a couple of weeks to arrive. There's a whole post in the making about the complexities of Canadian customs and duties and what Amazon.ca and other retailers have to do to get your merch to you. Amazon.ca works well, generally, and is affordable, generally, but for other retailers based in the States (and let's face it, most retailers are based in the States) is more complicated and costly to get what you want in a timely manner.

Understandably, Amazon doesn't have warehouses full of mate, calabazas, and bombillas at their Greater Toronto Area distribution center in Brampton. (If there were an Amazon.ar, I'm sure they would.) So the mate had something of an arduous, roundabout journey to get here: The mate was packaged in Argentina for the Spanish market (and then perhaps further distributed to Syria and Lebanon, where the drink apparently is popular), then sold by a German online retailer, to some guy with weird tastes in Canada.

Thus mate is a global drink--or at least one that tastes like something that's been shifted around the world in an old container ship for several years. A container ship repurposed from an oil tanker that, in turn, had been repurposed from a fish trawler.

Sorry, Argentina, I love you, and I know mate is your national beverage and all that, but this is the most disgusting thing I've had in a long while--and I grew up on collards, pot likker, and Cheerwine.

What does mate taste like? Well, how to describe ... here are some possibilities:

• It's like drinking smoky yard waste that have the appearance of existing in a state somewhere between liquid and solid. 
• It's like you put a metal pipe into a storm drain near a golf course and thought, wow, I bet this will taste good. 
• It's like you fell face first into a bayou down stream from an alpaca rendering plant and thought, well, come to think of it, I am thirsty .... 
• It's like you gathered together a bunch of moldy, used chamomile tea bags, then repeatedly shot them out of a cannon, then hosed them down with a cocktail made from rancid Lilac Vegetal and Jean Naté cologne, and then made a tea out of it.
• It's like Walt Whitman traveled to Argentina and then wrote an ode to the beverage, entitling it "Leaves of Ass." 
• It's like the Grassy Knoll was made into a beverage that assassinates your tastebuds over and over again.

Most people I gather drink it straight, but others add a little sugar or honey, and others add lemon or orange peel. Some like it hot (or at least warm), and some like it cold. But even some sugar wouldn't fix this lukewarm mess. Dumping the entire yield of the Caribbean sugar crop and the Florida citrus crop wouldn't mask or erase that unmistakable taste of a beverage that I am guessing was originally proposed as a dare or revenge. And neither rain, nor snow, nor heat, nor gloom of night could make mate taste like anything other than the grass fire it is.

History tells us that the beverage originated among the Guaraní peoples of South America. I can only assume it was offered to the Spanish as revenge for smallpox. It seems like a fair if somewhat passive-aggressive exchange--an "I hate you but not quite enough to kill you" approach to the problem of the European conquest.

Hours later I couldn't un-taste the mate.

I think back to the guy on the subway with the calabaza and bombilla. He was at most thirty-something and attractive in that dirty blond German-meets-the Global South way (which I already have a weakness for), wearing a tanktop and jeans. I must admit that he had a slightly earthy, slightly peculiar, slightly funky aroma about him--which, months later, I realize was the odor emanating from the mate and not the man.

Apologies to Argentines, Paraguayans, Brazilians, Uruguayans, Syrians, Lebanese, and anyone else who imbibes mate and might be offended by this review. I know mate is a cultural thing. I know I should be less judgmental and "Western" in my thinking. Perhaps it's an acquired taste.

A taste acquired after a steady diet of Liquid Smoke, kale juice, and the sweat from Diego Maradona's jockstrap. Or mulch, napalm, and the runoff from a 19th-century gaucho's bathhouse. Or roadside weeds, singed hair, and the overflow from the mop bucket used at Eva Perón's mother's boarding house.

Thank goodness all those Italians moved to Argentina and brought with them their espresso makers, wine, sparkling water, and fancy sodas. 

Mate, me mata--Mate, you're killing me. And I'm not quite ready to die just yet.

¿Qué vas a hacer?

"¿Qué vas a hacer?" a beautiful, romantic ballad by Ricardo Montaner. Which also happens to be the theme song for Campanas en la noche. What a coincidence!

Ring my bells

Campanas en la noche

So ... I discovered I can order à la carte on cable an Argentine TV channel, Telefe Internacional. Although I'm fairly certain I watched some of its programming while I was in Patagonia and Buenos Aires last year, all this time I thought Telefe was a religious channel--"fé" means "faith" in Spanish but in this case "fe" is short for "federal".

So not a religious channel. Not in the least it would seem.

Two nights ago, I started watching the telenovela Campanas en la noche (Bells in the night)--anything to avoid the 24-hour speculation-à-go-go on MSNBC and CNN regarding a certain report by a certain special counsel that finally has been sent to a certain attorney general who may or may not decide to disclose its contents. Ay, por Dios. And you thought there were no ridiculous plot twists in real life.

The story so far goes like so: The lead female character, Luciana (played by what I'm assuming is Argentina's answer to The 'It' Girl, Calu Rivero) is married to a possessive, abusive husband (Vito played by what I'm assuming is Argentina's answer to The 'It' Boy, Esteban Lamothe) while secretly in love with Luis (played by vintage galán Federico Amador), a man in the adult education class she teaches who she knew from years ago. Luis fled Patagonia with his daughter after being falsely accused of murdering his first wife, and Luciana apparently witnessed his escape.

Luis has remade his life in the big city, but it's not without its complications. Por ejemplo, his current partner just murdered a neighbor, possibly a prostitute, and has disposed of her body ... somewhere.

Another character is from Brazil and practices an indigenous religion in which she has horrific visions--such as one involving her own hand, her boyfriend's mother, and a circular saw. (Trust me, you don't want to know.) I've yet to figure out how she fits into the overall story, but it's a bizarrely entertaining sideplot nonetheless.

It's Argentina, where psychotherapy is common, so the female lead and her abusive husband are in couples therapy, and now the therapist has asked to meet with Luciana separately to get to the truth about her relationship with her husband and why she gave up her passion for photography. (Hint: She is repressed by Vito and her disapproving family.)

I picked up all of this from watching two episodes and reading back story on the web. Language-wise I'm getting maybe 25% (lots of rioplatense accents and grammar--ashá, sho, cómo se shama, y ¿vos entendás? to sift through). As a result, I'm feeling pretty hopeless.

So, in short, María la del Barrio this ain't.

Nevertheless, I'm going to hang on. As my friend Faby would say, "You know how it's going to end!" Yes, indeed. But the journey is nonetheless entertaining and fascinating and the acting quite good. If you've watched Estocolmo on Netflix, you will be familiar with Esteban Lamothe's acting chops (and exceptional hunkiness), and I suspect you may see him and/or Calu Rivero (poorly used) on a North American screen one of these days, should they so desire to make the move upward.

I know people dismiss telenovelas as pop pablum, but this is a cut above the usual, far darker and moodier even when it hauls out a few clichés. In fact, with my ongoing savoring of Argentine culture (with a splash of Chile, Peru, and Colombia on the side), I'm starting to get a very different picture of the Spanish-speaking world, having been mostly exposed to all things tejano and mexicano.

I still adore Mexico, but Mexico is not all there is, nor is Spain. I wish someone had turned me on to the breadth and depth of Argentine and Latin American culture and society much earlier in life, but here we are, at 57 years old,  an American living in Canada, partnered with an Egyptian, working with people from Australia, Britain, Turkey, India, Ukraine, and a host of other nations--and yet pining for another country, Argentina, a Spanish-speaking land that's kind of half-Italian (along with Jewish, German, and Eastern European) in disguise.

Che, esta es mi vida. Welcome to it.

A new Argentina ... obsession

My current musical obsession: Argentine singer-songwriter Marcela Morelo.





¡Disfrútate!

Ayer, hoy, mañana

"Mañana" by Usted Señalemelo. Still dreaming of you, Argentina.

Sin rumbo

"Sin rumbo" or "Aimlessly." If that doesn't describe me in 2019, I don't know what does.

But maybe that's a good thing? I mean, I feel less crazy, more lazy, and still daydreaming about Argentina six months later. Life could be worse, and, thankfully, at the moment, it is not.

Time for a tango

My vacation in Argentina already seems like it took place a hundred years ago. I realize more than ever that I dislike my job, have quickly grown weary from all the sniping on social media, and am tired, tired, tired of the political and cultural drama that my home country keeps exporting to the world.

So let's listen to a tango and forget it all for a while.

I captured this short video of a bandoneón player at the Agüero Subte Station in Buenos Aires on or about 28 August 2018.

Down Argentine Way

"You'll find your life will begin the very moment you're in Argentina."

I'm down Argentine way for the next couple of weeks, a bucket list trip full of wanderlust and worry, risk and reward, excitement and empanadas.

While I'm not quite convinced it will be as effervescently energetic and jaw-droppingly jivin' as a performance by the Nicholas Brothers, I have exceedingly high hopes for my first real vacation in years.

So hasta la vista, baby! But never fear, the gods willing, I'll be back.