What I'm thinking now

13 June 2010

I don't know if anyone actually reads this…I make Fredd read it so I know he does.  I'm not being a good travelogue writer, but I will put up some more pictures—the contrast between San Telmo and Belgrano is great.  And this is such an interesting time to be here—not only did we have the Bicentenerio but now the Mundial de Futbol (which only happens every four years).  It is so cool that the whole country is behind a team.  I hope that the U.S. does well but I cannot imagine the same across-all-states fervor that is in the air here now.   

I have different days and nights now that I've moved to Belgrano but some of the same conversations and concerns.  First, I should say in case anyone has been to Belgrano and wonders what I'm talking about, Belgrano, like Palermo, is very spread out, not compact like San Telmo (which simply had amorphous boundaries).  Where I'm living is officially Belgrano, but it is the transitional Belgrano.  I'm surrounded by spaces left empty or under construction.  There is a block by block difference in era and feel.  The very first day I walked around the block and determined that one street might make me feel a little uncomfortable late at night because the only businesses were auto repair related and thus dark at night.  I did not then know that across the street from that spot is a secondary make up school by which I mean a place where people who did not graduate from secondary school can go and finish up.  During breaks small groups congregate—one in front of the darkened auto repair shop, the other directly in front of the school.  They drink out of liter bottles of beer, smoke cigarettes and pot, and cluster aside the wide sidewalk so that everyone else has to walk in the street.  So the street is not uncomfortable for the reason I had intuited, but merely inconvenient.

On my side of Belgrano, the outlook is still far different than what I have been exposed to thus far.  Things may be down, but this is still a middle to upper-middle class neighborhood.  On this side.  Yesterday I discovered  that seems like one of those remarkable things that a marrying couple should put on their wish list:  something that looks like half a square Victorian birdcage with the top lopped off, atop a pole that stops waist high.  And in it, householders can place their nightly bag of garbage.  That doesn’t mean that the contents won't be spilt on the street by the carteneros because they might, but at least there is a chance that the garbage will not hit the street.

I got a huge X drawn through a response I wrote for Spanish class.  I was supposed to respond, using pronouns, to the statement "something you take off at night." Or at least that is what I took from the 7 definitions of the verb.  And the something had to be singular feminine and after a lot of class I wrote 'la ropa' meaning the clothes.  But I'd misread the verb and the statement really was "something you take out at night."  I still didn't have an answer, and my frustrated teacher finally said:  "the garbage."  "But I don't take it out every night," I said.  "I take it out once a week.."  "What do you do with it in the meantime?"  "Put it in a garbage can."  "Huh…..?"  And so ensued a discussion, each of us not fully appreciating how strange it must seem, our method of doing things.  When I brought the homework here to Else, Romi, and Vicky's house, playing it for a laugh, I got the same confused looks.  Inconceivable that you would not have the garbage picked up every night.  It seems like a good idea if you separate out the recyclables so that no one has cause to open up the bags but it would take a much larger work force, I think, or maybe not since the bags are so small.

Anyway, there isn't the huge mess every night that there was in San Telmo because I think that the apartment buildings must only put out one bag or have another method of doing things.  Dog poop is less apparent on my side of Belgrano but it still bears an open eye.  As does the sidewalk, some of which rival those of San Telmo in their state of disrepair.

But today on a two hour walk I roamed around the other side of Belgrano where there were entire blocks of perfectly stable, no-tiles-missing sidewalks in front of very fancy apartment houses.  No sign of garbage, not even the wrought iron container things.  I had visions of one of the doormen running out with a can of garbage just before the garbage truck rolled down the street, late, and quiet.  And that someone had the job of scooping up the dog poop as soon as it hit the ground.  This is not the Buenos Aires I know, but it must be what people told me I'd see.  Much more personality than Puerto Madera, but no graffiti except on a few metal doors.  Either no one bothered, or it was painted over regularly.  My side of Belgrano does have some graffiti but it is all slogans…nothing colorful like San Telmo and La Boca.

My classes now are in a part of Palermo called Soho Palermo.  I think.  It's the same neighborhood where Natalie used to live and I think we decided it was within the boundaries of that part of the map.  My new teacher is named Ceci and she either meets me at a café called El Pinguino (as in Penguin) or her place.  I can either take the subte or colectivo to get there or, as I discovered on Wednesday, walk if I'm willing to take three hours (I might talk about that adventure later).  The sidewalks are about in the shape of Belgrano with the same thing being true in both places—the main commercial streets are in better shape than the side streets.  And I walk down a side street to get to either El Pinguino or Ceci's place.  And once again like an idiot I tripped and fell flat, somehow in between two cars as I went down at an angle.  Unlike the situation in San Cristobal where I had those three men helping me up, all the busy people walked by me but when I finally stood myself up a man came over to ask if I was okay.  But all these people had stopped and were looking at me—this part of the city is more city than neighborhood-y and it just had that feel that it would be very inconvenient to stop (and do anything but look).  This time, I just have to whine for a second because one of my knees is now really banged up from the second fall.  You never think that you might use your knees to get into bed at night but now I know.

I had another one of those misconceptions later transformed by going to Ceci's house.  From the front it appeared like most apartment buildings and I pushed the button 'F' for hers.  But when she opened that front door it wasn't to a hallway but a long concrete corridor open to the elements with, apparently, different residences along the sidewalk.  Hers was all the way to the end.  (Else told me that this is a very old style Italian house…members of a large family would have different rooms one after another, all on the same floor essentially, instead of building up.  So I followed Ceci into her place and I was taken aback by the relatively miniscule size of everything.  A cooking kitchen you could just barely turn around in, a living room with room enough for a sofa for a person and a half and a straight back chair, a table space area that could seat four—this was the class area and it also included a wall of books in several languages, floor to ceiling, a bedroom which actually could be huge but I don't know, and an odd bathroom with the universal silhouette of both a man and a woman on the door.  I used the bathroom and it was rather small but had the requisite bidet.  The toilet flushing lever, was high over the toilet, which is not unusual, but the plate that covered it was half off.  Which is better than the bathroom at El Pinguino where the plate is entirely off, the external lever is missing, and you have to use force to push down the exposed trip lever if you want to flush.  Ceci's lever was connected to the trip but the unfortunate thing was that when I flushed, water started seeping out from where the toilet met the floor and into a drain on the floor.  Such drains are very common, so I think something or other overflows regularly and it is just the way it is.  For example, in my little bathroom now, there is no differentiation between the floor and the shower...or apparently there is an imperceptible slope, but the design includes the fact that the water will just run all over the floor and eventually make its way into the drain or be absorbed by the bath mats or something.  It still seems wrong to leave the entire floor wet, and I'm glad I don't dry my hair.

At Ceci's—and this was my misconception—I had an idea that she might have fallen on bad times.  She alternates clothing like I do, but I'm living out of a suitcase.  And her teaching materials are old and a bit yellowed.  She does have a new kittie (which thrills me to no end because I miss the feeling of fur and I haven't had a furball to play with since January), so there is lots of good juju in the place.  Several pictures of Che, of course,  and always an offer of tea.  Still, I had this impression, the same way I have had with my new family and through all my interviews of people—not that I started out to interview people, but I guess what is happening is that we are all conversing about how much further apart the upper and lower classes became after the economic downturn, and how all levels of middle went lower.  So that's what I thought had happened with Ceci who also has a mysterious son who calls on the telephone but never appears and I'm not sure where he'd sleep.

Then on Thursday, during the conversational part of our lesson at El Pinguino, we started talking about reverse culture shock, something a friend had just suggested I might want to consider before my return to the U.S.  Ceci then told a story about taking a twelve day trip to Cuba, and how what she saw there compelled her to come back to Buenos Aires, quit her lucrative University position (as a professor professor), sell her house and most of her possessions, and live this life of teaching Spanish as a second language to foreigners, learning about their culture, living happily with her books, living happier now that she has far less than she did when she had much more.  She knew the exact turning point.  She was buying a book in a bookstore and in conversation the woman asked her if she was buying it for a class and Ceci said no, she was buying it because she wanted to.  And much as my conversation about bags of garbage went, each side thinking the other way alien, Ceci and this woman realized a difference—the ability to buy something for want of not just for need of.

So she didn't end up with that leaky toilet after the crash—she chose it—and she advocated the same for me.  That if I've lived with less whatever in Buenos Aires, that I continue the life in the U.S.  I'm not buying a lot because of want right now just because that's how I'm living but the point is that I can.  I'm hoping that when I go home, I still mostly won't see the cause to.