:
--(8th Feb, bus station) Buenos Aires bus station. Afternoon. Feet are dirty and smoke (cigarette) trails into my face from nearby. The speakers shriek announcements in harrowing Spanish, slicing through the hot air. Our white skin draws continual glances; stares even. We are getting used to it. The children are beautiful here; dark dark butter-soft skin and eyes, black that goes on for miles. There are dressed, for the most part, simply and haggardly. Babies abound. It is really almost unbelievable, the amount of new life that is scattered, it seems, everywhere. The mothers are young and tired, but also act almost as if toting fresh children in their arms is not really anything all that significant. I notice, again and again, women walking the streets with a baby (new newNEW) slung casually in one arm. It's like more people than not have babes attached to their bodies from some limb or another, and there is a very casual air surrounding this. I feel like in the setting that I am used to, parents are constantly absorbed fussing and preening and obsessing over their small ones, in a way that seems somehow overwhelming in comparison. I kind of like that children here look perpetually dirt-fringed and disheveled. NOT to minimize at any level the poverty that likely lies behind that visual, but my observation is that I like the fact that these kids don't seem reluctant or at all afraid to get dirty. I have seen countless little bodies already, sprawled out in the middle of a sidewalk, playing hard. I cannot get enough of that. And it seems that in this culture (Buenos Aires at least), everyone is chill with the fact that there may be children rolling underneath your feet as you walk the downtown streets.
--(9th Feb., rooftop terrace) I am reading "The Time Traveler's Wife" in the slowest bites so that it will last. It is so drop-dead good that it almost makes me sort of sick. Here is a taste: "I place my hands over her ears and tip her head back, and kiss her, and try to put my heart into hers, for safekeeping, in case I lose it again."
--(10th Feb., dingy bed) Back at the heart of everything, I drain you off the crevices of my body. You are liquid energy; watery hope. Right now, I still feel the underlayer of trepidation...and so I filter you (reluctantly) off of myself. Where you once may have responded grimly, you seem visibly unaffected by this. I like to think that it is because you know I am near. We are both aware of it; starkly aware. The strange and ironic thing about consequences, though, is our inability to predict them. Like, if I keep him at one hundred arm's lengths and then with time realize that I want him nearer to me than any others...will it have slipped out of my reach? Will he slip away; will you? This is the fear that causes me to fret in my sleep...did I fuck it up too far? I can only stand to believe that the answer to this ugly question is no, adamently no. Even though the past with others has often been unkind...comparisons are ugly; I choose something different.
--(14th Feb, waterside) Just this: "There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross."--Ondaatje, M., "Divisidero". Damnation, soso good.
--(17th Feb., cafe.) I feel an evenness in myself right now. These last weeks have lifted a clinging layer of weight off my chest and shoulders and mind, and that organ that feels so sharply. Perspective is a soothing, cooling thing.
--(18th Feb., night bus) The light thrown from the bus station was pale; grunge-streaked. I peeled wooden limbs from beneath my body and unraveled, stretching so as to feel again. Forehead pressed against the cool window, I noticed his naked back, slick with sweat in the moonlight. He was young, so young, barely more than twelve or even eleven. Amidst the muted tones of whitewashed building and rusted fencing and pavement, the wet sheen of his skin stood out like hot breath against winter air. Running lightly; loosely; with a strange sort of beauty, he reached a long and slender arm down, reeling the stray basketball into his left hand. Hardly faltering, he twisted direction and began to leg his way back to his gang of friends--also shirtless; also sweat-laced. They moved with the restlessness of swarming insects around the nearby field, not pretending to conceal their impatience. I watched as he melted back into their midst, suddenly indecipherable in the thick of twining, darkened bodies. All I was aware of as I averted my eyes was how alive I felt.
--(23rd Feb, bus station) Just a little while back, as I was slouching here forcing myself to eat three lukewarm empanadas, I saw a couple about my age saying goodbye before the girl stepped onto a bus. They pressed their forms together and kissed one another's faces all over, like they meant it--neck, cheekbones, forehead, verging on lips, and finally lips. I wonder how long she is leaving him for...are they in love...is it a smooth or a resentful parting, or rather just the predictable bittersweet. I wonder. They looked like nice people, there was a certain sort of ease in their movements; a happy coolness.
--(24th Feb., in the grass) All words from hereon in stolen from "The History of Love", penned by Nicole Krauss (who fast became my idol ten pages after opening this book).
"Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."
"Her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."
"They collected the world in small handfuls."
"The oldest emotion in the world may be that of being moved; but to describe it--just to name it--must have been like trying to catch something invisible."
"Having begun to feel, people's desire to feel grew. They wanted to feel more, feel deeper, despite how much it sometimes hurt. People became addicted to feeling. They struggled to uncover new emotions. It's possible that this is how art was born. New kinds of joy were forged, along with new kinds of sadness..."
--(26th Feb., Bolivian soil) It is hotter; balmier here--that, and also almost frigid. It seems that the air and the sky change often, every few hours or so. Even though we have only left Argentina just behind, already there are significant shifts. This feels barer; simpler and more stripped down. Also more colourful. We are whittling hours away planted outside the train station awaiting our ride to this quaint-looking town called Tupiza. We are draped across a stretch of cracked sidewalk with this Israeli boy who seems to have latched himself onto us. A bit annoying but nevertheless, it is further company. The sky to our East is so ominous right now. The smoky tones are building by the minute, it seems, and it (the sky) has a fierce look about it. I feel as if I want to photograph and/or write about every other person that walks past me on the street--there is so much beauty here. The elderly women especially draw me..their sweeping head wraps and intricately-lined leathery skin. This is the South America that I had envisioned...the one I have been pining for introduction to. I am thankful to be here in the now. Despite how destroyed my body has felt all day, and how frustrating all these legs of transportation have been, there is nowhere else I would rather be.
--(26th Feb., train) Balance. I am interested in balance.
--(6th March, out of doors) Hot hot hot HEAT. I am splayed out, bare-legged and naked-armed on hot stone. It is beginning to hit that time of evening cool, but nevertheless the cement is still throwing insatiable amounts of heat. It feels smooth and lovely. The height of the sun-drenched day is brilliant, but also a bit intolerable. So this fall of evening is always welcomed with a lightened breath.
--(7th March, hammock) My current read is called "What is the What" written by one Dave Eggers. It is heavy as hell, but breath-stopping at the same time. Here you go: "It's odd to say this, but I loved Tabitha most from afar. That is, my love grew for her each time I could watch her from a distance. Perhaps that sounds wrong. I did love her when we were together in my room or on the couch, our legs entwined and her hands in mine, but when I could see her from across a street, or walking toward me, or stepping onto a broken escalator, those are the moments I most remember."
--(9th March, rooftop terrace) It is late Sunday night and I am nursing a (surprisingly delicious) McDonald's coffee. Kate and I are back in Buenos Aires and I am happy, so happy to be here. The last string of days has been seemingly fraught with travel and movement, so a steady stretch of time banked in one place is completely what I have been craving. This is good, yes. My body feels trashed from last night's bus ride, and tonight's installment of vino blanco. Even now as I write, my eyes are falling shut and my fingers are weary; I realize full well that it is time to call it a night. Hello, Rebecca Louise--your body is crying out for some serious sleep. I am off to oblige.
--(14th March, balcony) Saturday morning--heat drips like liquid through the air. It is like a softly knitted web, this heat. It is light and infused with heaviness all at once; it is sensual, almost. You breathe in and it saturates your lungs and down to your limbs like twisting energy...it is extraordinary. It want to hang onto this; the sensation of how it feels. In a week or two, once I am immersed like a shivering creature in Winnipeg wind and ice, I want to draw easily on this memory. I am fairly certain I will be cursing myself for my lack of realization and worship or the warmth and light that is almost a given here. I know that I will dream of it behind lidded eyes, and crave and yearn for it like a woman hungry. It has been a blessing already, though, in so many ways. My body has never felt lighter or smoother...my skin has a sheen to it and my head remains clear. It is refreshing; addicting, almost.
(There are eight hundred thousand more where that came from. I am unemployed, so you will likely find me siphoning them onto here in my endless spare time.)
Amen,
RB.
