the misadventures of la ciudad de la furia

Anonymous asked: great writing... i'm sure many can relate!

here’s to hoping! thank you!

Latin American Lethargy, Part One

I sometimes wonder what I’m doing here.

For the sake of being honest, for not writing this world over as something different just to perpetuate el sueño sudamericano, that’s how I’ll begin this (long-overdue) blog update. 

I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised. There’s an unavoidable period post-graduation where the collective American consciousness is screaming at 22 year olds: GET YOUR GODDAMN LIFE FIGURED OUT! We’re supposed to know something. We’re supposed to have had some grand revelation as soon as they handed us (or, in my case, so impersonally mailed to us) those big white envelopes. We’re supposed to say, oh yes, it was great, it’s so much more than the paper, you know, and now I know, I just know what I want to do. We spent four years getting hammer-drunk and eating sticky Chinese noodles for breakfast and making the perfect number of mistakes so that knowing where not to fuck up would be easier later. But somehow, someone forgot to tell us that not fucking up isn’t actually what it’s about. It’s about the feeling you get, stepping out the front door of your apartment building and onto the street, when you realize - there is nothing making me do anything anymore. 

Try and pretend like anything is more terrifying than that.

I’ve lived in Buenos Aires for close to two months now, and on the scientific scale of adjustment and cultural shockability, I would say that I’ve successfully manuevered my way out of the ever-so-petrifying foreign waters. I don’t have to quadruple-check my Guida-T every time I want to take a bus somewhere. I know how to read menus, how to flirt with the boys who work at the kiosko across the street, how to add pesos to my phone and my sube card. I can hold a conversation in Spanish, which is one conversation more than I could have had two months ago. In all the small, countable ways, I’ve established something here. But adjustment has left a strange, unnegotiable space. Suddenly, I have the emotional capacity to care about other things. I get angry when the subte is running late instead of in permanent awe over the mechanics of South America’s first subway system. I’ve begun to see the flaws in the line of work I chose: the unappreciated, underpaid underbelly of teaching English as a second language. When I spend a Tuesday evening at home, watching re-runs of “Six Feet Under” on Cuevana, I feel the familiar nagging voice coming back, the remnants of a society that raised me to demand better, the so what exactly are you doing now, Suzanne?

I’m watching “Six Feet Under,” dammit! I missed it when it was on HBO ten years ago and it’s very good!

Meanwhile, the curse of living in a place so interesting is that any moment not spent exploring a new museo, barrio, villa, avenida, any moment not spent staying out until 7 am half-drunk and half-stoned, or trying exotic new food, or traveling outside Capital Federal on a rickity, death-defying bus - essentially, any moment spent in washing dishes or sleeping in or being totally fucking basic - feels like some kind of failure. 

The problem is that nothing is making me do anything anymore. With the newfound power college graduation gives, there’s also an almost paralyzing danger of lethargy. I don’t have to wake up to take a test to get a grade to graduate so I can move to South America. I already did that. I spent my college years dreaming of something bigger, of the beautiful possibilities of an even more beautiful world, and I’m inside of it now, walking the streets I used to scour the internet for pictures of. But even though I walk by el obelisco twice a week and uncontrollably smile up at it each time, the dreaming hasn’t stopped. Perhaps I’m terrified of being completely happy somewhere because it means I’ve given up on wanting more out of life. Perhaps the disconnect between Expectations and Reality is simply an unavoidable part of growing up. Perhaps I’m just not ready to be an adult. 

I’d like to end this with some grandiose, wisdom-soaked piece of advice for everyone out there who tells me how jealous they are of the life I’ve picked for myself, but the truth is that I don’t have anything for you. I labeled this “Part One” for a reason. Someday - maybe next week, maybe next month, maybe years and years after I move away from Argentina - I will write Part Two.

Because everything in life has a meaning if you want it badly enough.

Death Cab for Suzi

It lurks on a side street, quietly shuddering underneath a single street lamp. Smoke curls out of the open driver’s window. The sign says, in bright, inviting green, “Radio Taxi,” which means that it’s safe, but of course it’s safe, we’re in Belgrano, one of the nicest barrios in Buenos Aires, and my Argentine friend hails him over without a second thought anyway. But in my half-drunken state, wobbling down the road in heels, the stage seems set for a twisted tango of sorts. 

It’s fitting that the first poem I wrote about Buenos Aires is about cars. In some ways, their presence defines everything I’ve yet come to understand about this city. The way they clamor to be ahead of one another, disregarding traffic laws partially or completely; the way they fit themselves into any available space; the collectivos and subte cars filled to the windows with people; the way the road looks as it curves around the obelisco and stretches out to touch every edge of the city. I sometimes imagine looking down on the city from the sky, and in my imagination, it is a fluid being, breathing and moving like us.

My understanding of Buenos Aires is one of opportunity. A friend described the country’s collective feeling as a sort of “lost glory” - once Argentina was the 6th wealthiest country in the world, now it struggles with the aftermath of the 2001 financial crisis, years of political corruption and mismanagement, and most importantly, a feeling that it could be so much more. So many Argentinians are opportunistic. If you can walk in front of the oncoming cars and make it to the other side of the street without being splattered, you cross. If there’s a spot in between the 110 bus, the 15, and the other 110, you squeeze in. If you can make it turning left by speeding around the other cars also trying to turn left, you go for it. There are traffic laws, but like many laws, they are often ignored. The cars and buses push up against one another like a herd of impatient buffalo, honking if someone lingers a second too long and speeding into the intersection at the red and yellow lights ahead of the green one. Roads here are a study in taking chances.

Which is exactly what I feel getting into the taxi. The driver grunts loudly and mutters under his breath as we speed down Avienda Del Libertador. He’s speeding around moving cars as if they are immobile nonentities, braking to a quick stop a hair behind a bus in front of us. We’re sitting silently in the back - totally silently. The taxi weaves in and out of lanes, sidling up to cars on either side of us. I grab Tute’s hand and we sit like that for a moment. At a red light, two women pass, dressed for what is, at 2:30, just the beginning of Friday night in Buenos Aires. The driver grunts again, mutters something unintelligible, and spits a little at them before the light changes and we fly around another corner. I look sideways and Tute makes a face like, “oh, well, this is happening…” For a reason I don’t understand, I start to laugh. If I’m going to die, I guess this is as good a way as any.

I couldn’t open that door faster. Paul is smoking a cigarette and waiting for us on an opposite street corner, and I nearly collide into a hug with him, exclaiming, “Oh my god! I almost just died! I almost just died!” Both he and Tute laugh at the expense of my naive gringa ass.

I didn’t die, and maybe that’s the point. Argentinians may be opportunistic, perhaps to a fault at times, but in a world where shit happens on every block, who’s to say that one way of living and coping is better or worse than another? I can only imagine (and possibly later hear) the nervous commentary of my mother after reading this (“you WILL NOT get in a car with ANYONE, you will not cross streets without holding SOMEONE’S hand, I don’t care how weird it is, and you MUST NEVER take a taxi there EVER again!”), but the truth is, I could eat a bad piece of chicken or hit my head on a door-frame and those things could do me in too. Argentinians have learned to deal with change by taking their chances with what they have and what they could have. Whether it’s change sprung from a financial crisis or a train accident in Flores, the opportunity always exists to keep moving.

Besides, this is a country filled with multifaceted faces. It might be a crush to board the subte train during rush hour, but if a pregnant woman pushes through, she will, without a doubt, be offered a seat near the door. If I’m learning anything, it’s that there is always, always more to see, hear, say, and understand.

Late at night in Buenos Aires, on the main streets, the wisest of the city politicians have enacted something called an onda verde. In short, it means that the streetlights align with one another so that the cars will never run into a red light. It involves moving at a certain speed and keeping up with the pack around you, but it’s not difficult to achieve. On Avenida Corrientes, one random night, I find myself in its midst. As we approach a red light, it shifts to green before us. And the next. And the next. Onda verde - the green wave. I have the feeling of coming off the road for a moment and it occurs to me that this is what we, Argentinians and Americans alike, all want, in the end. The opportunity to fly.

Lusting in the City

“No shit!” he says when I tell him I’m from Florida. His voice sings a little on the “shit,” swaying in the Italian lilt porteños are known for. “I’ve been to Florida!”

He’s pulling his foot up to his back, stretching his leg muscles before he joins in the pickup football game that’s starting on the makeshift indoor field next to us. He’s tall, taller than me, with bright blue eyes and a back built for rugby. His name is Fede, and naturally when he introduces himself, I hear something “exotic” – Feli, Fetí, Fede. It takes me a few times. It’s short for Federico, I learn later, but that’s beside the point.

It’s my second day in Buenos Aires and I’ve learned three things: one, Buenos Aires is pronounced bweh-nos-ay-res; two, if you stop for a sandwich, sit near the open door, and pull out your computer for all to see, you will be pleasantly yet embarrassingly admonished by the waitress; three, don’t fall in love here. It might seem easy when all you do is ward off the cat calls and impromptu songs men sing for you on the streets, but just wait.

I’m playing sports photographer and journalist because my friend Tute, the current lifeline in my reckless Argentinian adventure, has invited me to come to a football game between him and his friends. The games are held in what looks like a giant warehouse, filled with half-size fields separated by chain link fences which clang loudly every time they make contact with a ball. It’s late, 10 pm, and the warehouse is cold. Not that that matters to the guys – they’re playing in jerseys and gym shorts, sweating through the fabric, breathing heavily. So not that it matters to me, either.

“Where did you go?” I ask Freddie.

“Miami!” he says excitedly, echoing the common answer. “And Disneyland?” he adds cautiously, pronouncing it deeth-nee-lahhh-nd. We both laugh. I tell him that I lived a few hours away from Miami, but on the West coast.

“Oh, I want to live in Venice Beach so badly,” he says. For a moment, I think he means Venice, Florida, a mere hop away from my home.

“You’ve been to Venice?” I ask incredulously. Venice is tiny, boring, and the community in Florida most known for its retirees and nursing homes – definitely not a stop for Argentine tourists.

“The West coast? California?” he says.

Oh.

The moment passes. We lock eyes once more and I am floored by how beautiful his are, like swimming pools. He looks fierce at first glance, pale with a shaved head, but his smile is completely disarming, and he smiles a lot. I find myself at a loss for words in English or Spanish.

“Fede! Dale, dale!” his friends call from the field. He’s the last one still stretching. He waves at them with a flick of his wrist and jogs onto the field.

“I hope you don’t get too bored watching us!” he calls back to me.

Don’t worry, Fede, my friend. I might not ever see you again, but for the next hour and a half, I definitely won’t be bored.