A literary revelation

When we were leaving San Francisco, Mike (who is subletting our apartment) gave me this book, Rayuela (Hopscotch - in translation), by Julio Cortazar. I almost left it behind in LA X: I'd never heard of Cortazar, and the book was large, dense, and lacking in all but the outlines of a narrative structure. But there were certain little moments that kept me going. Even though I didn't like the somewhat nihilistic protagonist very much, I liked the way his mind worked and the fun he had with language (ie Cortazar). I also liked the fact that he was writing about places I was walking through in Buenos Aires. This morning I finished the book - as this usually sunny loft few blocks from Plaza Cortazar was plastered in rain and shaken by donner and blitzen (odd that the Norse/German words for thunder and lightning have now become cute cartoons on spindly legs - but I enjoy the image of these enraged reindeeritos flying into the window).
Here are a couple things I liked from the book:

"Explanation is a well-dressed mistake."
The main character says this -- he's joking around (well, it's hard to tell when he is ever serious) -- all the same I like it because it captures an idea in a few words that Thomas Kuhn spun into a whole book (published the year before actually).

This next one takes a bit more explanation: A character (Traveler) is reading the works of a (fictional I hope) Uruguayan philosopher name Ceferino who has this Utopian vision for reorganizing the world. According to his scheme each country gets 45 national corporations (like the EPA, FBI, FCC, that sort of thing). Number 25 is the National Corporation of Hospitals and Related Houses, and includes, "all hospitals of all types, workshops for repairs and adjustments, houses for the curing of hides, stables for the curing of horses, dental clinics, barber shops, houses for the pruning of plants, houses for the arrangement of intricate legal forms, etc. ...
"There is is," Traveler said. "A break that proves Ceferino's perfect central healthiness ... there's no reason to accept the order of things the way daddy hands them to us. Cefe thinks that the fact that something is being repaired unites a dentist and intricate legal forms; accidents are just as valuable as essences ... But it's pure poetry, boy. Cefe is breaking the mental crust, as somebody or other said, and he's beginning to see the world from a different angle. Of course this is what they call being batty."
Beth helpfully suggested (when I told her about this business with the mental crust) that whenever one is tempted to say "paradigm shift" you should instead say "breaking the mental crust." It's a metaphor you can actually visualize. Incidentally, Kuhn was the one that popularized the term paradigm  and it's shiftiness.

Mystery solved...

Trip to the pharmacy

I just walked into a pharmacy because I successfully cleaned up my toenails by taking pills for six months (at some gastric expense) and I wanted to see if there was an anti-fungal paint I could use to prevent a relapse. I was able to explain what I was looking for by saying that I had "mushrooms." Again, the guy was so nice. Apparently you can't buy anything for that here over the counter -- unlike the US where they are quite happy to sell you any number of snake oils.

A few select moments from the past days

1. We are walking down the street and Beth, who has a physical reaction to certain species of poop etc. cringes away from a suspicious looking pile then sighs in relief. "There's nothing better then realizing that what you think is last night's puke is just someone's discarded mate," she says.

2. We are walking around the Feria at Mataderos when we come across a man with a grubby white llama and a sign that reads: "Vende llama que llama." We puzzle over this for a while. Is this a sale of a llama that makes telephone calls (llamar)? And Beth, being bold, and determined to use her Castellano asks the fellow:
(Translated)
What does it mean, llama que llama?
I am selling my llama.
Is it a llama that talks?
No no no! (big grin revealing more gaps than teeth) This... is a llama. It, is an animal.
Right, claro.
Where are you from?
The United States.
You don't have llamas in your country?
(Me chiming in - excited to use the word I learned the night before) Yes, a little, but only for pets (mascotas!)
Well, I'm selling my llama. It is a good llama.
(Beth) Well, good luck.
Perhaps - Beth muses - the translation is something like: "Llama -- what a llama!"

3. We go swing dancing - it is incredibly fun. The teacher has just visited San Francisco and danced at the place where we were going a few blocks from our house. He knows Nathan Diaz, one of our teachers back home.

4. I eat the most amazing gnocchi I have ever had, with eggplant and tomato, in this tiny packed restaurant run by a group of young skaters. The chef is my age and wears a "I'd rather be fishing" trucker cap.

An email from one of my Language Exchange partners

FromPablo Bustamante to me

Wood !! Beth, I think what you can´t undertend me but, is very wood !!! congratulation.. I talk very much Argentino language! you know..
See your later ok?

Un beso .

Beautiful weather!

The last couple of days have been glorious: Pure blue skies, sun that's never more than pleasantly warm, and light breezes. It's spring! At least for the moment. I think it's because I couldn't stand the cold any longer and went out and bought a heavy wool sweater. That will do it.
Beth's social outreach is yielding huge benefits for me: The other day we had a Svenja (German) and Pablo (Porteno) people over for dinner, and Beth made this amazing succulent roast chicken (with carmelized fennel), and apple crumble for postre. All that with out measuring cups or familiar ingredients. Svenja and Pablo are lovely and funny. Pablo is about as good in English as I am in Spanish so we were alternating languages for the slower menfolk (nevermind that neither is native for Svenja).
Last night, after writing, I met Beth at Vos (where we have taken Spanish classes) and watched the totally wrenching "Chronicle of an Escape" about prisoners in the dirty war. Made me angry all over again that my own government has been taking people into custody based on hearsay evidence and torturing them (there really is no other word for it).

Tango toes

This glowing couple are the winners of the 2010 Tango Mundial. They are the best tango dancers in the world. Shes 29 and hes 18. Theyre from Buenos Aires.

When Nate and I ventured to our first tango event last night -- a beginners class in a community center that seemed better suited for wrestling mats than high heeled shoes -- who had showed up to guest teach the class? The best tango dancers in the world. Though I left the lesson with permanent dents in the toes of my flats, getting to watch this pair glide together across the floor demonstrating, uh -- well, to be honest, I have no idea exactly what they were demonstrating. Triple axles? -- was absolutely worth the toe pain and my 2 dance partners who tactfully moved on to the next partner as quickly as possible.

Tango is strange. Nate and I decided that it is the opposite of swing dancing. Its a free form dance with few dictated steps, and even limited relationship with the music, but it requires a poise and posture that people take years to master. Partners lean in together, chest the chest, and often forehead to forehead. The woman can (or so they tell me) follow the mans lead so precisely with this kind of contact that it appears as though the steps are choreographed. Nate had a lovely partner, a patient woman in her 60s, with large busoms who kept pulling him in, saying, "Contacto! Contacto!"

Nate and I are not sure how we will proceed with this new activity. One response: Nate stayed up late finding swing dancing classes in Buenos Aires.

Settling into a routine

It's starting to feel like home here - routine is helpful for me in getting anything done. But I keep mixing it up. Today, despite the cold and rain (it's been pouring, I suppose these are the equivalent of March showers) I got up early, wrapped myself up with my sleeping bag and wrote while Beth went off to school. After an hour alternating between freezing (but alert), and warm (but dozy) - I walked across the street to Clasico for a coffee. I threw caution to the wind and instead of asking for a chico, went for grande. In short order the world assumed a bright and cheery new patina. Writing became ridiculously easy - the coffee was delicious! The rain was beautiful! The people were friendly!
The people really are friendly though. Last night a perfect stranger started talking with me as we waited for our empanadas to warm up - he didn't seem to mind the fact that I could only say about 4 broken phrases (one of which is - lo siento, mi Castellano no es bueno). It seems like the perfect place to learn the language though: Everyone wants to chat, a lot of people don't speak any English, and they don't seem to mind that their barrio is overrun with foreigners.