stadtplanet

A Culinary Interlude

2008-05-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

There's a scene that comes to mind in the midst of eating guinea pig, as if you're not so much eating the beloved North American pet as you're watching yourself eat it. That scene—for me, at least, not sure how Dacia has chosen to cope with/ understand it, being a vegetarian and all—is from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I imagine myself as the culturally-sensitive Indiana, slurping on the thorax of a large Indian cockroach, smiling, telling his skittish, implacable lady friend, who is audibly pining for “real” food (also me, by the way, just not as adventurous or heroically five-o'clock shadowed), to just eat it, to suck it up, because this is an act of kindness, really, this cultural exchange, this sharing of food and culture, especially food that is considered a specialty and delicious and non-pet-like in this very specific part of the world. When faced with food I'd rather not eat, but would also rather not insult others by refusing, I think of Harrison Ford and his dietary resolve; I think of Doctor Jones.

Andean Highlands

2008-05-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

After researching several options for volunteering in the Cusco area, we discovered an amazing non-profit organization located about an hour southeast of Cusco. The project produces high-quality dolls made by women who come mainly from impoverished areas in the Andean highlands, providing them with fair wages, a harmonious work environment, and teaching them real skills—all in an effort to improve their lives and the lives of their children. So we wrote the directors, went to visit the project's utopic campus in the mountains, and decided, yes, this is where we wanted to spend the next two months or even the next two years of our lives.

In what capacity we would be serving as volunteers, however, was somewhat ambiguous upon arriving, and I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to contribute anything meaningful to the project. We spent the first couple of days getting to know the women and children of the project (there are about 30 women who are steady, full-timers, most of them native speakers of Quechua). After Dacia and I took turns getting food-sick (never in my life have I felt more like a fire hose), we started to figure out how we fit in. I began teaching English to the three women who run the shop in town, which for me is always fun and interesting, and I installed myself as the daily source of entertainment for the children. (They now refer to me as el profesor de trucos, or the teacher of tricks, because I taught them how to do several magic tricks.) Dacia, in addition to learning how to make the dolls, began teaching stretching classes to the women, most of whom suffer from occupational injuries associated with sewing, as well as classes in typing and Internet skills. We've been with the project now for about three weeks and things are going swimmingly.

Aside from my daily English classes and teaching children how to pull off their thumbs, I've been busy putting into motion a project I'd come up early on: a community puppet theater. Since we are essentially living in a doll factory, there are all the necessary materials for creating quality puppets. I came up with four characters and a loose series of stories. Once the theater and puppets are finished, I see us putting on a show every friday night (with popcorn, of course). The shows will be episodic in nature and will have some English mixed in as one of the characters, dare I reveal, is a non-Spanish speaking Gringo. There is also a boy (the protagonist) who is a precocious story-teller, an alpaca (the boy's best friend) who thinks for sure he's a dog, and a woman from the Peruvian highlands.

[Edit: As the dimensions of my puppet are not compatible with Waldorf standards, its photo (previously displayed) has been removed, willingly, so that it's not to be confused for and/or associated with the products of the aforementioned, and later redacted, organization. For the odd clicker-by who happens upon this blog, observes its photos and words, thank you, but please be aware that everything contained under this otherwise auricularly known, not-that-public web address does not constitute official news in the sense of pubicly disseminated information concerning anything/anyone but myself (such as where I am/what I'm doing/ etc, and mainly, though unrestrictedly, for friends and family at home), lest it be grossly misinterpreted by others as a highly-frequented, journalistically-efficacious site that is disrespectively misrepresentative, and possibly damaging, to the branding of one's product; in this regard, please note, that my blog is not in any way a part of/ subject to/ an example of/ in association with this organization, nor are the puppets, nor the puppet theater.]

Cusco and its customers

2008-05-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

Like Prague or Paris, Cusco is beautiful in a very unfortunate way.

We learned this little factoid about twenty minutes or so into our week-long stay. Everywhere you turn you're offered massages and/or finger puppets; excursions to Machu Picchu and/or shoe shines. It's really exhausting. And yet, while the amount of solicitation is overwhelming, it’s also completely understandable: look down any one of Cusco's streets and you'll find herded upon its squamous stones anglo-aggregates of safari khaki and convertible pants. They move in droves, with their cameras slung like fruit and their faces bathed in SPF 40. The galaxy that separates the local population from these brigades of travelers-born-again, with their bus fortresses and irrigating capital, is obvious on many levels. And if you're anything like me, you inevitably become self-conscious of your similar-ish appearance to the latter; how such an appearance signifies money and a certain inclination for taking (and maybe paying for) photos of one's Alpaca. Inevitably, you tire of repeating the motto No, gracias, No, gracias and begin to avoid all eye-contact, becoming a devout scholar of the ground as you pass on from one mercantile insurgency to another.

But still, Cusco is beautiful, and no form of empire—neither the Spanish nor Old Navy—could have ever made it otherwise. (Pictures to come)

Remembrance of Things Unblogged (Part 2)

2008-04-11T23:53:00.000-07:00

“Never sure how to begin these things. It's always so awkward.”

“You could start by telling everyone that you've shamelessly abandoned your blog. Again.”

“I guess there's no way to be clever about it. I'm lazy.”

“Don't worry. Everybody knows.”

“But it's not like Buenos Aires anymore. I'm in Peru. I wake up around 9 am now.”

“Well, well. No longer outsourcing your mornings to mid-western time-zones? I think you actually flirted with the idea a couple of unwritten posts ago. Something about your 'living ambiguously' in Argentina, waking up around lunch time (Breakfast in Texas) after a night of reading and beef-eating, but the parameters of that lifestyle turned out to be a bit too ambiguous.”

“I need structure.”

“You need to write more.”

“I admire industrious people. Like the lovely couple we rented from in Buenos Aires. They were film-makers. Julia, a Porteña, wrote and directed a bunch of movies. Even co-directed a movie called the “The Motorcycle Diaries.”

“Impressive.”

“Yeah. And her partner, John, a native New Yorker, was an equally prolific photographer. Super cool. They had a great library in their Palermo apartment.”

“How'd you come across it?”

“We lucked out. Answered an ad on Craig's list. Such an amazing space. Right next to the botanical garden. Two bedrooms, balcony, great living room, lots of light. They were leaving for six weeks to shoot a film in a town called Urdinarrain.”

“Your spell-checker didn't like that name.”

“Yeah, it's Guaraní for something, I forget though. Urdi, as locals mercifully call it, is a four hour bus ride north of Buenos Aires. One of those old German settlements. Beautiful countryside town full of blond haired, blue eyed Argentines.”

“Hmm. I heard of those.”

“As far as we could tell, they weren't Nazis. Dacia actually has a sub-cutaneous Nazi-detector embedded in her left arm, so I was relieved when it failed to go off.”

“So you guys went up there?”

“Yeah, for a weekend. We wanted to check out 'the shoot' and see how the whole process went down. We also had vague hopes of being extras, but the weather wasn't all that cooperative and they ended up only shooting one scene the entire weekend. That is, one scene without us. I'm not sure if the film's going to make it.”

On Set

“Right. You forgot to write that post on vanity by the way. We're all curious if you have a mullet.”

“I don't. Sorry. But I grew a beard.”

“A beard, wow, how unattractive, and yet so...so South-American-Traveler.”

“Well, I have a theory about travel beards..."

Bearded I travel

“...It's never really a conscious decision or anything, the travel beard. It just happens. A kind of masculine sloppiness that gathers legitimacy after a while and begins to resemble a concerted effort. And that effort, facilitated by the passage of time and puberty, is rather common down here: Why are so many of these 20-something gringos bearded? Are beard-curious backpackers these days just razor shy or is there a more deeply-rooted tradition of travel behind the bristle?”

“You know I can't handle such suspense without feeling too mouthpiece-ish.”

“So I did my research. It turns out that Moses and Odysseus, some of antiquity's greatest travelers, both had serious, food-filtering beards. (Come to think of it, after revisiting Tierra Santa on Good Friday, that religious theme park, it seems that God has one too.) And the Age of Exploration, which entrusted this continent with centuries of identity-issues, was quite a whiskered lot as well. As most pogonologists (those who study beards) would likely venture: there is something definitively itinerant about facial hair.”

“I think you lost a couple of readers there.”

“Not the bearded ones.”

“But they're probably all out hunting or fixing their cars or something.”

“Now you're mixing your mullets with beards.”

“And you're mixing your blog-writing with cheeky, contrived dialogue.”

“But didn't Plato, who I believe was very bearded, do it all the time?”

“Now you're even losing the bearded ones.”

“...And speaking of Plato, whose method was marinated with such interrogative irony: after our six weeks in that wonderful apartment we sallied forth and visited the Jesuit missions in Northeastern Argentina.”

“Might I ask the relevance, dear Grad student?”

“It all begins, just as it does in the bible, with God (bearded).”

“Go on.”

“In the seventeenth century, Jesuit priests from Spain and Italy set up close to forty missions in what is now known as Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. Tolerated for a while by the Spanish crown, who wasn't all that impressed by the Jesuit's willingness to integrate with the indigenous tribes, learn their language and provide a certain amount of protection from the culture-swallowing of the Old World, the Jesuits envisioned a social project that fashioned their missions on Plato's city in The Republic. Since adopting the political theory of an ancient Hellenic heretic wasn't going to win points with the church, the influence was unofficial, but for those in-the-know, it was undeniable.

Church facade at the Jesuit mission in San Ignacio

“Everyone in the mission had a craft. Be it medicine or pottery, citizens of the mission all had a trade and its practice was a life-long endeavor. You could say that mission life revolved around the need for self-expression. Mastering one's craft, one's 'techne,' was not only self-fulfilling for the natives, but also it became the way the Jesuits evangelized. I was surprised to learn they did this not in Latin, but in Guaraní. Not only were the Jesuits a tad more culturally sensitive than their colleagues, adapting as best as they could to their cultural mores and traditions while inserting their own, but their missions were more or less successful, lasting for three hundred years, and only after the Spanish crown deemed them no longer useful in holding their parking spot in the north. They were expelled from their missions and replaced by the Franciscans.”

“Aren't we snoringly historical?”

“I thought it was interesting. At least it comes with a picture.”

“Speaking of pictures, share with us what the hell these things are:”

Mysterious Herbivores!

“Well, I guess I kind of rushed into the whole Jesuit-Plato thing. Before we visited San Ignacio, we took a bus to a village called Mercedes, which was dusty, quiet, and didn't have any of the afore-pictured animals. We went there because it was the only way to get to the Argentinian wetlands, Esteros de Iberá, which we had read about in a local paper in Buenos Aires. The Esteros are accessed from a small town called Carlos Pelligrini, which is about three hours of bumpy dirt road from Mercedes. The Esteros are special because they have a bunch amazing animals in residence: Cayman, Piraná, and yes, the biggest rodent in the world, the Capybara (above). After arranging an excursion from our ranch, which was already teeming with tarantulas and bats (fortunately not in our room, but also unfortunately for the late-night pee-er, not not in the men's bathroom), we took a boat through this pristine reserve.

Smiling cayman

“After that, and after the missions, we went to Iguazú Falls, which felt like a Gringo convention. But I guess for good reason: they (the falls, that is) are absolutely beautiful. We stayed in your average hostel, which down here meant it's 80% full with post-military service Israelis, and bummed around, marveling at the tropical scenery. The falls form the tri-border zone of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Since I didn't have a Brazilian visa, we stayed on the Argentinian side and were quite content.

Gravity at work. Iguazú Falls

“After that, being the international jet-setters we are, we took a bus to Buenos Aires, a plane to Miami, met up with my family in the Florida Keys for 5 days, then took a plane to Lima, then another to Cusco, where I'm currently typing and Dacia is sleeping, both of us plump with several layers. It's cold and I'm tired being gimmicky. I will return later with news of our Peruvian adventures, which will most likely concern volunteering in the outlying area of Cusco. It will also be much shorter than this post. Till then."

I already have the aviator sunglasses...

2008-02-29T22:41:00.000-08:00

The other day, I thought of an interesting business opportunity for me here in Buenos Aires. I'm contemplating putting it up on craigslist just to see what happens. Hopefully I won't get arrested:

When people travel they like to take pictures of themselves. These pictures usually consist of them posing in the foreground with something noteworthy in the background. While many photos are taken this way, the final result can appear artificial and look-where-I've-been-ish. Enter Gringo Paparazzi. Gringo Paparazzi will follow you around and take pictures of you unawares so your trip is authentically documented. Your covert photographer is given a rough itinerary of your plans in advance, and told how, where, and when you want to be photographed. No more asking strangers if they can take your photo; it's already been taken. Although having a GP agent follow you around doesn't prevent you from taking your own pictures, it will provide you with a perspective otherwise lost—(that is, of course, if you're already under surveillance, in which case, you probably wouldn't see those photos anyway...)

In the end you are given a cd or jump drive of your photos.

After reading what I just wrote, I'm not sure for whose benefit it would serve: the narcissistic tourist or the aspiring clandestine operative. Either way, I'm curious to hear any comments or suggestions.

Flora and fauna

2008-02-09T11:05:00.001-08:00

I won't lie to you: the other night, while preparing a lovely green salad, Dacia discovered a frog in our lettuce. It was smallish, about the size of quarter, and clinging stubbornly to the inside of the lettuce bag. I don't know if frogs believe in cryogenics (really, I study literature, not science) but this guy had been living in our refrigerator for about two odd days, since the time we brought him home from the grocery. But it was fine. After we recovered from fact a frog was in our lettuce, we were fine too, and it all turned out to be a very National Geographic moment.

Outside the apartment, there was a guy sitting on a bike, starring at me as I dangled the plastic bag over the bushes. It was too dark for him to really see what I was doing, my little service to nature and all, and I imagine instead of witnessing this heart-felt repatriation, he saw only the unfathomable workings of some gringo. I tried to think of the Spanish equivalent of “hey, it's not what it seems, buddy, it's just a frog,” but I couldn't remember the word for frog, which was crucial. So after a successful bag-to-bush download, I went back inside.

Speaking of resilient species, this guy had a mullet —more accurately, he had a South American Soccer Mullet (mulleto futbolicus), which is everywhere down here. As those who don't play hockey or drive camaros already know, this hairstyle has been officially banished since the 80's. But down here, as if crossing the equator inverts certain northern truths, it's just the opposite. Mullets are worn with such authority and gravitas you feel as if you're observing an alternative path of history—a parallel dimension where the business-bangs and party vines only grew more legitimate with time, more rooted in the social norm. I won't go so far as to quote Michel Foucault, but the mullet definitely harbors power here, and those without them, that follically aberrant company of lesser men, they are sent beggarly to the Porteño periphery, in contempt of all things stylish.

A confession: although I remain mullet-less at the moment, I'm really just a few snips away from having one of my own (see picture). All that really stands between me and my mane of manhood is that cauterized shame brought on by Bon Jovi and his crimped ilk. But I must say, I've felt a remote desire to blend in, to go culture chameleon and upgrade my Argentinity to the level of fashion paragon. As long as I keep my mouth shut, sequestering my fragile Spanish as best I can, I think this foray into dilettantism would go more or less undetected. The only downside—and that may or may not be a mullet metaphor!—would be Dacia having the unenviable task of looking at me and my raccoon hat everyday. But it sure would be interesting. And journalistically speaking, a mullet would grant me unparalleled access to the cabal of porteño vanity—a topic which, in the spirit of brevity and procrastination, I will discuss at length in a later post. Bis dann.

To mullet or not to mullet?

Luis

2007-12-14T20:15:00.000-08:00

As far as intensive language classes go, my courses here in Buenos Aires were pretty standard. We met for three hours a day, five days a week, learned the minutiae of the subjunctive, and had the occasional excursion. It was exactly what I needed. I got placed into a level four (out of six), which was awesome, giving me the chance to advance quicker. The class was made up predominantly of Americans, with some Europeans and Chinese thrown into the mix. And although I broke some new ground with my Spanish, the most memorable part of the experience by far was a guy named Luis.

Luis, whose real name we never learned, was from Hong Kong. Like many Chinese students at the school, Luis assumed a western name to help others refer to things he’d say during conversations. The only problem was that Luis never spoke. When called upon by the teacher, he would just smile and shake his head—every time, no variation, the same exact way. As English speakers, we have a tremendous advantage over those from China when learning Spanish, I know this, but Luis didn’t even pretend to try. When we formed groups, it was a hazardous roll of the dice for those who cared: whoever got stuck with him was busy talking to a statue for ten minutes. Nobody wanted to work with him.

But this isn’t why Luis is blog-worthy.

As the course started to come to a close, we learned that an oral exam was required for the successful completion of level four. It was to last ten minutes and would take the form of a speech concerning a ‘social problem’ of our choosing. This meant that after a month of malingering, Luis—if he even came to the test—would have to speak in Spanish, uninterrupted, for ten minutes. It had all the mounting tension you’d come to expect from some 80’s movie, where a marginalized, misunderstood character rises above all odds in the end to flummox all the nay-sayers (read: Bill and Ted; Daniel-san; Willow; innumerable others.) I wanted this to happen. I wanted the class to burst into applause, tinker tape everywhere, metal ballads abound. I wanted to like Luis.

His chosen topic was how homosexuality is a social disease and that its sufferers should perish. We were flabbergasted. He had been writing this speech while others we giving theirs, frantically flipping through his dictionary for the right words. When it came time for him to go, there was a hush of curiosity. Some of us never heard him speak before. When he began, we weren’t entirely sure what he was saying because he mumbled. So we shut off the air-conditioner and readied ourselves, our heads down, concentrating. We heard the peppering of opinion here and there, but it was still unclear what he was really talking about. Like his namesake, Luis was still an encrypted discourse for us.

But then little by little we found the signposts, polysyllabic billboards like homosexualidad and enfermidad, and one by one our heads began to bob up in shock. Javier, our teacher, interrupted Luis for fear his speech was being grossly misunderstood, but Luis confirmed it wasn’t. Here was a guy who didn’t utter more than a few words the whole month, and now this. Luis wasn’t winning anyone over.

The Americans gave him the hardest time, leafing through their pocket-sized dictionaries, just as he did, but now with added purpose. Someone, without a dictionary, chimed in. Do you know anybody who is gay? What if I were gay? Would you think I’m sick? Luis responded with the same robotic arguments, reading them from his notes. Four weeks of learning the subjunctive prepared us for this moment. You could say that, grammatically, it was a subjunctive bloodbath: we were inundating Luis with our opinions, our derisive judgments—everything our level four Spanish had to offer. If his speech weren’t for real, it would have been the perfect test. (And if it had been a hoax, and Luis—a fluent speaker of Spanish—was in cahoots with the language school, then that’s quite a pedagogical approach.) It provoked us to use all the linguistic tools at our disposal, to make ourselves clear, to expose and challenge such intolerance. But Luis was unmoved, if not confused by our protest. And in the end there was no enlightenment—just a heavy, humid silence. So after some diplomatic remarks from Javier, it was over, and the class ended.

But now for the most awkward part: It being the last day and all, we parted ways with Javier the Argentine way: with a kiss on the cheek. For those of you who don’t know, in Argentina it’s universally accepted and customary for men to kiss other men when saying goodbye. So we were all lined up, kissing Javier, thanking him, wishing him the best, and then, at the end of the line, came Luis. Not knowing what to do, Javier forwent the beso with a nervous chuckle, and shook Luis’ hand instead. Pretending not to watch, I think we were all hoping for that kiss.

Simulacra and salvation

2007-12-11T16:36:00.000-08:00

Besides my lifelong hobby of motion sickness, I have many reasons for not attending theme parks—long lines, expensive food, pushy people, etc. But this all changed last week. In Buenos Aires, Ladies and Gentleman, I found hope.

Tierra Santa, or Holy Land, is a Judeo-Christian theme park set in the image of ancient Jerusalem. The park has no rides and hardly any lines. It hasn’t height requirements or ominous warnings for epileptics. Instead, its main attraction is a forty-foot animatronic Jesus that resurrects, every hour, to a crowd of emotional Argentines.

And this was all I needed to know.

Visually, the park is one part Disney’s Aladdin, one part Gladiator—with a cartoonish display of fake palm trees, diminutive minarets, and faux-limestone colonnades. But don’t let that fool you: Tierra Santa is taken quite seriously by its guests, many of whom are nuns and priests and other god-fearing gentry. Visitors of the park can witness some of the Bible’s greatest moments in little over an hour; milestones such as The Last Supper—housed in an intimate, chapel-like setting—and The Birth of Christ, which takes place in the iconic manger, alongside sedate cows and fly-by cherubs. The main event, however, is the Godzilla-sized Christ rising from the calvary mound. With Halleluiah blasting from the PA system, the rotating Savior greets Jerusalem and its guests like any proper emcee. Many are visibly stirred by this. They cry; they sing; they shower Him in bursts of digital flash like some ecumenical paparazzi. Others, such as myself, are quietly incredulous, wondering if this is for real.

And it is. Everywhere you turn there are life-sized effigies of Jesus, The Virgin Mary, Pontius Pilot, and dozens of nameless Roman soldiers—all staging important and surprisingly photogenic chapters from the Good Book. There is also a Wailing Wall, with its cracks and crevices packed tight with written prayers, and a laser show detailing the Pink-Floydish workings of creation. Although Islam is understandably absent, as its laws strictly forbid these forms of representationalism, the park does allow for other players in the piety market such as Gandhi and Martin Luther, who have their own corners in J-town. It seems that the park has something for everyone—even those who just want to chow down on some baklava and catch a quick belly dancing show (we did both). In a way, Tierra Santa is the praying-man’s equivalent to one-stop shopping, an all-you-can-believe buffet of religious iconography—and it will only cost you about five US dollars.

But the park is more than just the sum of its parts. Tierra Santa is officially holy. Having received endorsement from the Roman Catholic Church, the theme park is not only promoting fun, but also promulgating faith. In its quest for verisimilitude, Tierra Santa has its employees dress in Middle Eastern-like attire: Palestinian headscarves, genie pants, rustic sandals, and the occasional sword. This makes for a strangely immersive experience—you feel as if you are navigating the collective imaginary of Christianity, with a little Indiana Jones mixed in for adventure.

But clearly, historical accuracy isn’t one of the park’s virtues—and I’d venture to say that Tierra Santa isn’t all that popular amongst biblical archeologists. The park’s secular neighbors are an airport, a water park, and a driving range. Planes come tearing through the sky at apocalyptic decibels, seconds away from landing;[1] splashing and screaming can be heard from the pools just beyond the creation cave; and large, golf ball-catching nets line Jerusalem’s eastern border. After a short hike up Golgotha, the centerpiece of the park, you’re treated to a panorama of ancient Jerusalem and these anachronistic hinterlands. It makes you think this gravel-strewn city[2] is under siege by the encroachment of time, and that you stand on one of its last dogmatic strongholds. And although Noah’s ark is sadly missing from the park’s exhibitions, at that height, overlooking the churning madness of Buenos Aires, you begin to feel that Tierra Santa is the ark itself, adrift in some other world, bent on its own preservation.

While it didn’t make me more or less a believer, Tierra Santa did give me a lot to think about—and just in time for the holiday season! I’ve never seen any quite like it and don’t think I will ever again. That said, whether its miniature golf or God, we all have our fixes, right? Some just prefer it with a little extra kitsch on top.

[1] While writing this I realized that theoretically, with the right seat and timing, it’s possible to be greeted by a towering Jesus when landing in Buenos Aires. Now that’s just amazing.
[2] This may or may not be the park’s most high-concept exhibit, challenging at every step the would-be, blog-writing heckler—the heckler who is without sin, who is without his own quixotic flaws—to cast the first stone at Tierra Santa.

In search of the authentic

2007-12-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

However broadly you define it, traveling is a consumerist activity. It takes things like time and money to make happen, and sadly, the more you travel this world—especially where your currency is disproportionately strong—the more aware you are of people who cannot. These are people who for one reason or another are too busy making ends meet than to labor over the existential reimbursements of travel. And yet for those willing and able, the question of travel isn’t why, but how: How are we to spend our time and money in way that is meaningful? What makes for a meaningful travel experience and what does not?

While combing the internet for ideas on where to stay in Buenos Aires, I came across this in a travel forum. I paraphrase: I’m moving to Buenos Aires next month and looking for a place to live. Which neighborhood will offer me the more authentic porteño experience: Palermo (Borges’ old haunt) or San Telmo (the edgier, more bohemian cousin)? As it were, both are extremely popular neighborhoods for travelers and expats in Buenos Aires, offering much in the way of local attractions and culture—and both happened to be the neighborhoods Dacia and I were most interested in. Suffice it to say, one of those internet debates followed, with forum-goers championing their neighborhood as the finer, more 'accurate' reflection of porteño life. (Mind you all these commentators were, at least as far as could tell, not originally from Buenos Aires.) Despite the questionable assumptions made—which we’ll return to—what interested me was the sheer regularity of these questions on the internet and their demands for authenticity. What does it mean to have an authentic experience abroad? Is this, strictly speaking, even possible?

On the one hand it’s completely understandable. We all want something unique from our travels, and most of us would prefer, when we can, to avoid the peristaltic squeeze of tourist traps. Perhaps for this reason we begin to associate the genuine with the untailored, the meaningful with the unmediated. But on the other hand, it’s rather spurious to say that a place is more or less authentic when it is irreducibly itself. Both Palermo and San Telmo, despite their demographic differences, are equally parts of Buenos Aires and its bewildering, smothering plurality. For Palermo’s detractors, it was the barrio’s vanity—its upscale high-rises, its poodle dogs and Pilates studios—that became the mark of its cultural artifice, its waning porteño-tude.[1] San Telmo, however, was preferred by many—the majority in fact—because of its honesty. Its buildings were preserved in beautiful states of ruin, the parlor of history raw and crumbling. Its cobblestoned streets, not yet gentrified, not yet poodle-worthy, were full of artists and local merchants. Like its deteriorating facades, San Telmo seemed to expose a deeper truth that Palermo only covered up and made shiny, more expensive. Whether or not these are accurate characterizations is really a matter of perspective and preference, but what remained uncontested by forum-goers was if our presence as foreigners precluded the very possibility of a place being ‘authentic.’

Consider the ever popular Sunday fair in San Telmo, which is a great place to take inventory of all the tourists in Buenos Aires. Supposedly, in addition to its local artisan handicrafts (which are sometimes mass-produced and available everywhere down here), it’s a great place to catch authentic, porteño tango. It would seem that all of Buenos Aires is a musical just waiting to happen when you’re there, as local musicians and dancers are seemingly everywhere, ready to ambush you with their authenticity. But it’s like that tree falling in the forest phenomenon: would these musicians and dancers still be there if we weren’t?—meaning if San Telmo wasn’t such a heavy draw for travelers? It has all the trappings of a riddle, or a joke: How much Gore-Tex and hand sanitizer does it take until the chemistry of a place is forever changed?

If we speak of an authentic travel experience, we must already have some idea of what it is—and it’s this kind of essentialism, like that of art, that challenges us to give it form. It could be traversing Patagonia on foot or simply connecting with people from different cultural backgrounds. Regardless, the shape our experience takes depends largely on the way we choose to understand that experience: i.e., as immersive, as humanitarian, as adventurous, as personal, etc. And yet there is something about traveling that’s always approximating the idea of itself—an arresting image, an impression that at the time we don’t entirely understand, but it sends us gallivanting across the globe in search of it. In this regard, maybe all those gap-year backpackers have it only half right: it’s not that if you travel long enough you’ll find yourself, but rather, travel long enough and you’ll find out why you’re traveling.

[1] Speciously enough, a similar attack could have been launched against the people of Buenos Aires themselves for not being completely authentic, as a good amount—men and women alike—receive some form of plastic surgery during their lifetimes. But nobody risked such a polemic.

Remembrance of Things Unblogged (Part 1)

2007-11-25T17:03:00.000-08:00

Having not updated in a while, I've decided to split this post up into several posts. I hope to return to the present soon, and with pictures.

Our sojourn to the States, which was to be quick and easy, ended up mutating into three weeks of travel drama. Shortly after leaving Chile, we discovered that American Airlines—my mother’s former employer; she’s now retired—had revoked our standby privileges while we were in the air. Given the fact that this is the only way we can afford to use words such as “sojourn,” we were a little worried. After some research and problem-solving, it turned out that Texas was to blame. Yes, Texas, where American (airlines) corporate is metonymically headquartered. Through some random, but extremely inconveniently untimely act of homeland bureaucracy, a mistake was made, we were erased, and they were sorry. So we cancelled our jaunt to Germany—no problem, really—went to Newport, Rhode Island instead, visited the Newportian version of Oktoberfest (as good as it sounds), and then, after things were finally sorted out with Texas, began the lengthy process of leaving for Argentina.

I have to say though that, after several weeks of understanding everything everybody said to me, I felt a tad spoiled by my upgraded level of discourse. In Chile I had become accustomed to the role of village idiot, to that awkward status as a sentient, but incredibly hard-to-communicate-with lifeform. In New York everything was guiltily comprehendible—myself included—and I feared that what little Spanish I had pocketed in Chile was fading. But this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, I guess. Chilean Spanish is notoriously idiosyncratic; not only does its lexicon contain words virtually unknown and/or unrecognized by other Spanish speakers, but it has a rapidly receding phonology: sounds, like the sound of “s” for instance, just simply disappear mid-word, leaving the learner of Spanish a Wheel of Fortune puzzle to _olve every conver_ation...

So, fast-fowarding: Since all the flights were too heavy in New York—literally, they exceeded their weight capacity and wouldn’t let any standbys fly—we flew back to Chile via Dallas. After landing in Santiago, we took a bus through the Andes to Mendoza, the heart of Argentina’s wine country. Mendoza was nice enough—and it broke up the 20+ hour bus ride to Buenos Aires, so we stayed two days at some family-run hostel, drinking the free Malbec wine and listening to Australian backpackers play foosball/get publicly naked all night.

Mendoza is shouldered to the west by the Andean corridor and the dusty, desolate Pampas to the east. The weather was warm and strikingly clear—you could see the peaks in the distance, still sugary with snow. Shortly after arriving in this lovely town, we discovered how rough our Rough Guide to Argentina really was. As it turned out, the guide was an inventory of error from the very first page, repeatedly sending us to imaginary addresses with its faulty, fictional maps. It was questionable as to whether the authors ever bothered visiting Mendoza to begin with—it was that bad. Anyway, we learned quickly enough to leave it behind and rely on locals for info.

We caught a night bus to Buenos Aires. There are many options when traveling by night bus in Argentina, with your seat and its permutations of comfort determining how much you will pay. We chose the “semi-cama,” which in Spanish means “semi-bed,” which in reality means you’re getting a night of "semi-sleep." Sitting was fine—a spongy throne for eating dinner, a lazy-boy for watching all those Eighties music videos—fine, but if you’re a finicky sleeper like me, the semi-bed transforms into a chiropractic experiment at night. But whatever. Dacia didn’t get much sleep either, so we arrived in Buenos Aires with our eye-shades half-drawn and our tolerance for each other waning.

To be continued. Thanks for reading.

update

2007-09-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

I’ve tried not to dwell too much on how comically unfit the conditions are here for teaching, and I’ve been able to do this, at least blog-wise, by not posting anything at all. (My apologies if you’ve been checking in; things should be picking up soon.) That said, it’s been a challenge: in past weeks I’ve had to come to terms with many of my own cultural mores; things I once considered standard--matters of professional responsibility, mutual respect, whatnot--have all been frustrating indications of my lack of cultural fluency. The whole ceremony of indirectness, the excuses that are childishly transparent—I’ve come to accept this as just the way people operate down here, and by doing so, I’ve been able to appreciate them all the more. This, if anything, is what cultural exchange is truly about.

Valparíso

Our tenure with English Opens Doors comes to an end this Friday, coinciding with the Chilean day of independence. Flags have popped up all over the place, which has made Dacia grumble anti-patriotically. After ten weeks of being proverbial door-openers and occasional door-mats, we are excited to travel again, anxious to celebrate a little independence of our own. The next stop will be Buenos Aires, where I’ll take some Spanish classes and enjoy coffee again. (For those who don’t know: Chileans only drink instant coffee, which is just coffee-flavored kool-aide that you choose to warm up.) Before Argentina, however, we’ll be spending some time with my family in New York, then a quick visit to Germany. But more on that later.

Pacific, near Cón Cón

As complicated as my experience has been, I’ll be sad to leave. I’ve had the chance to meet some really amazingly people and connect with them, more or less, in my Village Elder Spanish (one-word profundities organized by an avant garde grammar). One thing, though, that has really made an impression on me is the relationship people here have to their music. We’ve met many people who have dedicated their lives to creating music, and you can see how it provides them with an outlet, a sanctuary from otherwise undesirable conditions. The most poignant example of this would be Esteban. Last Saturday Dacia and I were invited to his house for dinner and it turned out to be quite a moving experience. Esteban is a soft spoken man in his early forties, always smiling and without an ounce of vanity in his body. You'd never know it by his pleasant demenor, but he has the absolute worst job at Dacia’s school, where he spends ten to twelve hours a day performing menial tasks like photocopying tests (which is an extremely complicated and stressful thing here) and taking the brunt of everybody’s anger. That night, though, we were treated to hours of the most heart-wrenching music. Sitting in his living room we watched Esteban transform. He'd just pull out guitar after guitar—all of them different sizes, different personalities—and without saying a word, he'd begin. Song after song, the sound of Estéban took shape; it articulated who he really was, what he really wanted in life, and how there was nothing complicated about this.

Esteban

Thanks for reading. Check out Dacia's blog if you get a chance:
http://daciachristin.blogspot.com

Chilean Suburbs and Skinheads

2007-07-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

We’re living in the fifth region of Chile, which is located smack dab in the middle of the country. Out of all other regions, the fifth has the highest population density. Our town, Villa Alemana, isn’t necessarily the most popular tourist destination on the map—it’s a dusty working-class suburb connected by metro to Valparaiso and Viña del Mar. One nice thing, though, is that it seldom rains here. Since arriving we’ve enjoyed many ocean-blue days.

The weirdest and by far most unsettling thing about this town, however, is that it’s known mainly for its Neo-Nazis. And these aren’t those aging exiles from the Vaterland you sometimes hear about down here—these are kids, sadly misinformed high school kids that really have no clue what the NS party was, what they stood for, or how they did what they did. They only know its symbols—boots, skinheads, swastikas, etc.—symbols they’ve adopted in the name of some anti-leftist militancy bent on eliminating their sworn rivals, “the punks.” I’m not sure what’s worse: the mindless violence that goes on between these skinheads and punks or the vulgar display of ignorance that gives it a wardrobe. In any case, it’s bizarre; not what I would’ve expected of llama-loving Chile. But I’ll let Dacia write more about this later in her blog (when she actually starts it). Being in an elementary school, I’m only conversant in local soccer rivalries. She has some skinheads in a couple of her classes, so maybe she’ll have pictures.

Hola

2007-07-15T09:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, here it is. Welcome.

So, first order of business: I’m in Chile and it’s cold. For speakers of English, this has all the workings of some serious wordplay—the kind of wordplay one might be tempted to dabble with in a blog-post; and I have to admit, ever since leaving the buttery heat of Miami for these brisk latitudes, I’ve labored over this pun, worried how I would handle it here, in front of all of you, without sounding like Bob Saggot. But in the end, after delaying this post for over three weeks, I’ve decided that Chile, which just so happens to be very chilly this time of year, was more than a clever homonym—Chile has a female president and its people sometimes eat horses for godsakes!—so please forgive me and my irrelevance.

Chile is cold in July. To make it even colder, and more remote to my northern hemispherical mind, many buildings down here lack heating, so everybody just wears their jackets inside. It’s kind of like camping, but instead of tents, there are houses. On colder nights, you can see your breath when watching TV. Despite the weather, though, I’ve found the people to be rather warm and kind. For the past three weeks we’ve been living with a generous host family who has taken us into their frosty home, fed us truck-loads of avocados, and nursed my Spanish above caveman level.

We really didn’t know what to expect before arriving. We knew that we would be volunteering for the Ministry of Education, teaching English to children, and living in Villa Alemana, a suburb of Valparaiso. Thankfully, this all turned out to be true. We also knew that we’d be working closely with local English teachers and helping schools with extra-curricular activities. Also true. What they didn’t tell us was that, if you were assigned to an elementary school, as I was, you would also be playing the role of messiah / rockstar—and I wasn’t prepared for this. From the time I arrive in the morning, till the time I leave, the children follow me, asking me questions like how many children I have and if I know anybody in the WWF. Even when I’m walking home from school, trying not to get bit by all the stray dogs, it’s not uncommon for me to hear “Teeeem!” in dolphin-octaves, “Hiilloo, Mister Teeeem!” It’s all very touching and in a pathetic way, ego-boosting.

The teaching is interesting. I’ll dedicate a whole post to it later. Suffice it to say, teaching English to Chilean children is challenging—not because teaching English is difficult, but because the overall lack of infrastructure and teacher competency in the schools makes for a different set of problems. I can’t say that I wasn’t warned, though: the day before leaving for Santiago, I got an email from the project coordinator here asking me not to expect much in the way of “discipline” in Chilean schools. This was sweet of him. The email instantly conjured up scenes from Kindergarten Cop, where I’d be in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s position—¿Cómo se dice “Stop whining!” en español?—but in reality, things are fine, just fine. The teachers are actually more difficult to work with than the kids, but you just have to go with the flow down here; and sometimes going with the flow means singing that stupid Brian Adams song to forty students, by yourself, several times a day, everyday, for two weeks. Again, more about this later.

Anyway, thanks for reading. There’s much to write about and I hope to update this blog at least twice a week from now on. I promise.

Cream Cheese Bagels and Mutual Intelligibility

2006-08-11T07:10:00.000-07:00

So I’m in this trendy German café, a place called Miner’s Coffee, when I begin to feel it: a remote tumbling, a just-what-is-this? commotion in my abdomen. I had just finished my coffee, which could have been better, and was now faced with a choice: Would I leave the café—which I’d been frequenting for the free wireless internet--or find something there to eat? After a weighing of options, I choose to stay and take care of business with the most obvious German cuisine within eating distance: a cream cheese bagel.

I stand up, stretch, and make my way to the register. Even though I already know what I want (after having sighted it from my oversized, albeit very modern seating arrangement in the corner), I still look at the menu to provide some semblance of decision-making. Three seconds suffice. I reestablish eye-contact and let my demands be known.

„Ich hätte gern einen Cream Cheese Bagel.“

The barista, whose angular hair looks as if it had been dried on the Autobahn, squints.

„Bitte?”

Strange, I think. After making a few hold-on sounds that register in neither language, I find it again on the menu, spot it in the glass display, and repeat my order confidently.

„Ich hätte gern einen Cream Cheese Bagel.“

Silence.

Granted the café was loud, and maybe his aspiring guitar-player deafness and my tendency to mumble formed a combined effort of miscomprehension, but his blank stare was disarming me. Loathe to say it again, I resort to the universal language of pointing.

“Das.” I say.

The barista follows my invisible finger laser to the now unfortunate choice of sustenance.

“Ach!” he aspirates very germanly, turning back to me somewhat tickled, “Einen Creeemchezz Beeyghil!”

Years of learning German and avoiding trendy chains such a Miner’s hadn’t prepared me for this moment. Frozen Strawberry Shake. White Chocolate Mocha. Apple Pie Latte... I realize that he misunderstood me not because of my German, which is not always perfect, but because of my English. It was a bit too accurate, a smidgen too native sounding. I clearly ruined things with my flip of the English switch, sounding like that French snob in my Critical Theory class only in reverse. But I couldn’t help it: the menu, prominently displayed above the counter (for easy pointing), is almost completely in English. What else was I going to do?

“Ja, genau,” I confirm, preparing my most authentic German accent. “Einen Creeemcheezz Beeyghil.”

Einen Creemschezz Beeyghil. We finally understood one another and the minor lesson in communication had been learned. Which would be this: there was nothing proprietary about language. It may have been English, the language I grew up speaking, but it was also, for all intents and purposes, German. In Miner’s coffee (pronounced meener’s coffee) I could have played the language prick and corrected everyone I heard ordering a Schnappehl or a sandvich, but that would have been both irrelevant and, by consensus, wrong.

“Danke.”

I collect my change, wade through the smoke and return to my enormously modern chair. The bagel tastes approximately like the floor, but I finish it in a couple of breaths. Although my brief encounter amounted to pretty much nothing in the increasingly bigger picture of cultural ignorance, for the moment, it made me hear the words --so dear to my Long Island upbringing (see below)-- like, totally ueber-differently.

Wrong Island: a rant

2006-08-10T14:24:00.000-07:00

Rising ever so expectantly, so curiously from the lower portion of New York State like a swollen equestrian member is a piece of suburbia I like to call home: Long Island.*

The island is long, yes, (118 miles), and like most islands, surrounded by a substance called water. But unlike most islands, Long Island (which also looks like a deformed lobster claw) is surrounded by a mysterious, phonetic fluid called wawtr.** Alarmingly, this wawtr has penetrated its denizens every vowel, changing words like chocolate (chawklit) and god (gawd) in the most magical, post-apocalyptic way. Ask them where they’re from. Go ahead. They’re all from the Lawn Guyland. Poor bastards.

Like many towns on the island, mine is named after a conquered Indian tribe. Our school team was named in their honor: The Warriors. True to our subjugated brethren, we too knew what it was like to lose, to be the E for Effort underdog. Looking back at it, however, maybe if we had been called the name of some rugged, off-road SUV, we would have won more games. Hindsight...

The place has a certain charm –a passion, even--that blossoms only in the midst of road rage. Every time I’m back for the holidays, I’m reminded of this. No matter how long I’ve been away, I still manage to remember everybody’s name as soon as I’m back on the road. It’s nice to know that fuck truck is still around, cutting people off just like old times, never signaling or parking correctly; always a pleasure to know that tony in his modified Honda civic --with its gloriously low suspension, flagellating mufflers, and anally stimulating bass--doesn’t require my daily presence to reach his full potential. For those who couldn’t bear to move away, I salute your service.

Though, I never really appreciated Long Island until I moved away –and to Germany no less. When meeting and conversing with these Germans, I’m often be asked where I’m from. With a smile, I throw down my ace.

“I’m from New York.”

This would normally be sufficient proof of me being cool. New York City, for many, is a world onto itself; a kingdom in the European imaginary that dissolves any distinction made between the city, the state, or the individual who misleadingly claims to be from there. But the difference between Long Island and NYC is super-sized, galactic. Fearing the worst, I wouldn’t push the precision agenda too far, but sometimes, some of the more discerning conversationalists –most, I assume, with doctorates in Geography—would call my bluff.

“The city?” they’d ask, meaning Manhattan, their eyebrows providing the are-you-really-from-Manhattan? italics.

“Well,” I’d say, clearing my throat, “just outside the city. Really close. Long Island. Minutes away. You know it?”

As I would find out, most knew only of Long Island ice tea, the popular and efficiently volatile drink sold in most German bars. For all they knew, Long Island was a brand name. For all I knew, they weren’t completely wrong.

The island, which I sometimes to refer to as Wrong Irand, has a lot of parking lots: sprawling, consumer-strewn fields of asphalt that constitute, in my opinion, the cultural thesis of the island. Cars are separated by lush, verdant medians, offering small sanctuaries for plastic bags and feral shopping carts. Mountain ranges of yellow speed bumps keep the mood buoyant as you destroy your suspension—ha, ha! the sparks –so pretty!—and teach you that you should pace out life instead of rushing through it like an ambulance. (Remember: you can shop tomorrow, too!). Sure, there are parking lots everywhere the world over, but for some reason it seems that we do them better –with theatrical flair and efficiency. Without parking lots, of course, the economy would crumble; high school kids would have nowhere to drink or discover their sexuality; citizens would have no forum for public debate, would rebel, die of hunger, set fire to historical buildings, or vote improperly. The very health of the State and the individual relies on these labyrinthine, get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way arenas.

But the circuitry of malls and starbucks alone wouldn’t make our Lonely Planet guide any different from most places in the US. What makes Long Island really stand out is its seemingly endless list of luminaries. Lindsay Lohan, Amy Fisher, Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy, the Baldwin brothers, Howard Stern, to name but a few. Yes, that’s right: we are sexy, at times a bit risqué and dangerous, but sexy…and funny, too! We also have The Hamptons –do you have The Hamptons?—which makes everyone on Long Island famous by proxy. In addition to our authority on the red carpet, we enjoy an important literary tradition: Walt Whitman is now the name of a mall and a multi-leveled industrial center located poetically in Huntington (his birthplace). A few minutes away from this gem lies the white-collared hamlet of Melville (named after good old Herman), which –thar she blows!—happens to be home to the island’s most important corporate pasture! Read it and weep.

But our greatest literary references come clearly from the oldest fiction writer Himself, Gawd. The biblical import of Long Island is indisputable. Just look at the names of certain towns –Jericho, Babylon, Islip –just try to deny that it isn’t anything but the chosen land. Wait, you whisper in prayer, just who started all this Holiness? Why, no other than Charton Heston –I mean, Moses –err, I mean, Robert Moses. Yes. Robert Moses. Although Mr. Moses didn’t have the honor of naming these towns (who names towns anyway?), the mogul / evil suburban mastermind did manage to name a lot after himself. After coming down from the mountain (which we will associate here with his ego), he read these Ten Commandments of Urban Planning, changing everything:

Thou shall erect monuments in thy honor.
Such monuments may be identical and exceedingly phallic
Thou shall displace struggling families in order to father a network of highways
Thou shall name two highways after thyself
Thou shall sanction beaches, one named in thy honor
Thou shall charge much to park at these aforementioned beaches
Thou shall build many bridges and give the wretched a chance to escape
Thou shall charge much to escape
Thou shall be responsible for –but not limited to—a future of domestic commonplace, endless commuting, monopolized transportation, easily-delayed and expensive monopolized transportation, high taxes, cell phone bans while driving, bad drivers, soccer moms, little league dads, PTA meetings, bake sales for the Spanish club, heavily-chlorinated tap water, wawtr, gateway drugs, that tight-shirt with gold chain look, real estate prices, really cold supermarkets, bowling alleys, dangerous postal employees, teenage angst, Debbie Gibson, home improvement, and the Mets.
Thou shall inspire the weak to stay, procreate, and never leave.

Long Island’s infrastructure wouldn’t be what it is today without Robert Moses, who I sometimes affectionately call BoMo. And maybe, despite being a racist, immoral, tycoon of impunity, he did do some good for the island. And I admit, there are some good things about the place –my friends and family, for example. But having lived there for most my life, I found it natural to want to write about its ‘challenges,’ to share with the world my painfully common experiences and reflect on my plans for recovery. This post, which I imagine will grow and expand into other things, was a piece of cautious, tough love, optimism at its most handicapped and should only read with a short term memory.

*This may seem a bit crass, I know, and I’m sorry –beginning this way is truly inappropriate, but unfortunately, I was never given the option to be from anywhere else.

**This has been most likely scientifically proven and notarized by several British-sounding linguists as authentic.

Marginalia

2006-08-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

Infidelity isn’t an easy subject to write about. When the real thing happens to you –and not that inbred, chair-flinging fool on Jerry Springer, the consequences can be earth-shattering. You do all the crazy, clichéd things: tell your friends (those who you ditched after things got serious) that you “can’t believe this is happening,” that “you’re better off,” that “[…] never again [!]” Driving alone in your car (you’re now destined to be alone) you ask the steering wheel “what was going through their head?” But the steering wheel has no idea, and neither does your ex-partner. Like most phenomena that attend a guilty shrug, the only explanation is that it...well, it just happened.

This leads me to a reluctant confession: during some of the more questionable times in my otherwise virtuous life, I have been a little less than faithful, a little south of the monogamous border. Let’s say, I’ve dabbled, played the game, seen what’s out there –and I’m not proud of this. But before you begin judge, hear me out: just because I cannot stay true to just one book, read it to the end, without interruption or shameless abandonment, does not make me any less of a reader than you, reader.

I start with all the right intentions. I go to the bookstore with just enough money for one book. After some flirtatious perusing, some cradling and fondling –Can I help you find anything today?—I return all but one to the shelves –No, thank you. Found what I was looking for—and make my way hurriedly to the register. Even Odysseus had to tie himself to a mast. Not sure what he paid, but mine cost only $15.

Later, however, after reaching the twentieth or so page of my new book, I find myself hovering over a word for too long. This is how it begins. My eyes may be starring at the page, dutifully, behaving like good boy scouts, but my mind is elsewhere, frisky and anxious. Then it catches my eye from across the room –a book I started but never finished, bought but never read—and its pages are whispering. I look away ashamed and continue my hovering. This time, I tell myself, will be different.

Hours later, chapters later, I return to the first book racked with guilt. Books are spread and spent on my floor, resembling some kind of crime scene, as I reread the last sentence, softly and tenderly, with promise of change. But it’s no use. I’m distracted again. I’m thinking of those descriptive lines, those delicate metaphors. Before I know it, I’m walking across the room again, bookmarks are falling to the floor, and I’m nose deep in another book. I look to the mirror on the opposite wall and can hardly believe what I see.

Last time it happened, I thought I could handle it. And for I while I could. Organization was key: The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire on Monday; Roth on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings; Thursdays free (a me-day); Friday some Mitchell. (These are generalizations, of course.) But by Saturday I started mixing up protagonists’ names, plots were overlapping, print stains on my hands, unfamiliar paper smells. Just like the week before, I was losing it.

I’m not sure what I actually get out of reading since it’s such a rare ceremony that I finish a book (maybe if I finished that book on Psychoanalysis, I could relate this to a fear of death.) Sometimes, it seems I spend more time in bookstores buying books, or contemplating their purchase, than actually sitting down and reading them. I buy more than I consume. But I’m learning to accept and understand this as my inventory grows. Where books were once my bag of chips before dinner, my empty carbs, they are now a delectable buffet that never ends. They are like wine. Certain words or ways with words may go out of fashion, but ink will never spoil. I’ll break them out at the right time, for the right occasion –maybe even finish them if I’m in the mood. And although I won’t do this at the rate in which they migrate to my shelves, at least I know, despite my textual trysts and promiscuous cross-referencing, that I’ll never be alone.

Some reflections from the World Cup sidelines

2006-07-09T08:06:00.000-07:00

One minute the city was mine –with its apocalyptically barren streets and deserted subways—the next it was Germany’s.

They spewed out of the bars like storm drainage, flooding Berlin in streams of black, gold, and red, singing and pointing like drunken sailors on shore leave. Some point to me, making me feel as if I should reciprocate, to point back, to intone an atonal chant of my own. But unlike them, (and they notice this after an awkward moment), I don’t know any soccer songs, and sadly, my face isn’t painted like a flag. In fact, anybody else walking around that evening could have picked up on the tell-tale clues: I’m just a guy who doesn’t care one bit about soccer, surrounded by a world that apparently does.

Not that Americans are known for being big soccer fans. We have our World Series and Super Bowl, but the World Cup just isn’t our thing. It doesn’t have the same beer commercials, tailgates or homecoming games. It doesn’t even have the same word: what we call soccer, most of the world refers to in some form of foot + ball.[1] Regrettably, for many Americans out there, myself included, soccer is a sport that has been gently banished to the suburban hinterlands; a sport better known for its minivan-driving moms than its riot-inciting hooliganism.

Which makes me think, as I navigate through this Braveheart-sized crowd of screaming Germans, of some alternative universe: one in which this year’s World Cup had been sponsored by Cosmo, and not its three-striped titan, Adidas; where its commentators were no other than ABC’s ‘Desperate Housewives,’ giving play-by-plays that served a double, suggestive life of allegory. I see teams arriving in motorcades of beeping Ford Windstars; their uniforms still warm and staticy from mom’s drier. In this universe, “soccer mom” is no longer a pejorative term, but the title of a popular soccer song. Everybody knows it and loves to sing it ad nasueum. I listen to its lyrics –sung in gloriously high octaves—and hear the celebration of the highest rank of motherhood, the expert in domestic logistics and alchemist of half-time snacks...

But then I’m back in Germany, surrounded by the flags, the Germans, and the unmistakable din of victory. Despite my spoil-sportitude, however, I find myself having fun; not because Germany beat Portugal—I couldn’t have cared less—but because after an important victory, certain things are permissible. For instance, I could yell the word Deutschland! like some hair-band rockstar, and be answered accordingly –applauded even. It didn’t matter if I liked soccer or not. It didn’t even matter if I was German. Behavior like this was not only acceptable, but also encouraged. I felt like I was fourteen again, at some outdoor concert, screaming out "Slayer!" to people in line for the bathroom. Victory, it seems, can be quite cathartic, even for the stubbornly indifferent.

But there were limits. I witnessed one zealous fan run into a Dunkin Donuts at full speed, only to get chased out by the manager. After failing to leap atop the table of his choosing –I assume to declare Germany’s victory to an audience of donut eaters, this fan suddenly found himself at the wrong end of a chair and no outlet for his team spirit. On the sidewalk, he darted left and right, provoking her with colorful German phrases, evading her lunges with methamphetamine-fueled dexterity. Realizing that his efforts were best showcased elsewhere, the shirtless patriot eventually gave up and continued his campaign down the street, disappearing moments later into some drug store, screaming as if on fire...

Everybody around me is bedecked, unsurprisingly, in some kind of patriotic flair. Many are wearing this year’s ever popular Mohawk wig, creating a shark tank effect of German dorsal fins in the crowd. Others wear stupid oversized hats, which evidently come in a variety of national flavors, not just German. But my favorite, by far, are those who go right to the source and wear the flags. These are the fans who know what it’s all about. They could be worn Rocky-style, draped triumphantly over the shoulders, or in superhero fashion, as a cape. Even antiquity has a seat along the World Cup catwalk, with the occasional flag-toga finding its way to the party[2].

When asked by one of my students (one who actually brought a flag with him every class during the games) if I saw the game, I shake my head apologetically, tell him no, and confess my embarrassing secret: I’m a twenty-something male who lives in Germany and does not like soccer. Do I play soccer? Another question I must answer to widespread disappointment. That decisive path to the dark side came in grade school, I tell him, in the form of a flyer. It told me of two options for the fall: I could play football or I could play soccer. The benefits of joining a football league were clearly outlined for my parents: it was social, an after school activity that promoted discipline, fitness, and fun. Written below it, in some gaunt, unsure font, was my second option. Maybe I was too weak or scared of injuring myself after having just begun cello lessons, or maybe I wanted to send out the call for unemployed bullies. Whatever it did say, I forget, but the implications of playing soccer and not football –at least from my 5th grade peers—were somewhat clear: you play football because you’re a man and you play soccer because you couldn’t play football.

Although I chose neither that fateful fall, opting instead for a fresh season in video games, I knew that soccer (or any team sport for that matter) would never be my thing. I left the crowd that night just short of reaching Alexanderplatz. Had I any interest in the sport, I probably would have found myself wading through a sea of bragging rights. But I just don’t care about soccer. Sorry. The World Cup is less about a sport anyway, and more about belonging somewhere, about being German, American, Brazilian, or whatever. And mistakenly, I left my flag and face-paint kit at home.

[1] Theory: Rather than adhere to such stringent, all-too-literal-sounding compounds, we (and Australia) cleverly call it something else –a marketing strategy, perhaps, aimed at diverting potential revenue to our version, which is to be played for the most part –the conspiratorial irony—with our hands.
[2] Given the collective, fraternity-like atmosphere, I began to think of the World Cup not as a trophy or title, but as a cup with some overpriced, multicolored cocktail sloshing around inside, spilling all over, getting on your clothes, reeking of alcohol and a certain I’m-okay-to-drive national pride. Although this was quite easy given the fact that I’ve never seen what this beloved cup actually looks like and furthermore, in big crowds I tend to daydream, I guarantee you reader, drink from this magical cup, and you will transform into a human flag pole.

Spread the world,

2006-06-26T06:12:00.000-07:00

stadtplanet has been cast into egosynchronous orbit!