Argentina: Two Months Later

"This happens with many events and anecdotes in my life: it seems I have lived them, but when I write them down in the clear light of logic, they seem unlikely. That really doesn't disturb me, however. What does it matter if these events happened or if I imagined them? Life is, after all, a dream." (From "My Invented Country" by Isabel Allende)



I arrived in Buenos Aires alone and without a laptop, so my attention to writing about it suffered miserably as a result. It all happened as beautifully as it did in Chile, however, and all of those happenings are tucked neatly away in memory.

Meg lives in BA and has weaseled her way into the nicest group of friends - gorgeous, wealthy friends I should add - who showed me what a good night out in BA looks like. Fernet and all.

Patrick showed up a few days after I arrived and thanks to our accustomed ways of instant communication being cut off, we had to hope we would cross at just the right window of time on a corner in San Telmo during the street fair. I was sipping an espresso when I saw him with his hands in his pockets and shoulders shrugged up from cold in the Sunday crowd of antique shoppers. When I yelled out to him, everyone turned their heads to witness our reuniting embrace.

The three of us managed to eat enough for six in the time we were together - Meg knew Palermo restaurants like the back of her hand. I am now convinced there is such a thing as death by lomo, and suffered meat sweats thanks to my previous 40 days of vegetarianism.



I saw beautiful things - things that made me feel life so fully that it had to spill out into my eyes. Trained tango dancers on the street and groups of locals following alongside. The puente de la mujer. The floralis generica. The thinker statue. And death never looking more lovely than in the Recoleta cemetery.



I woke up each morning to tango music drifting up through my floor from the studio below and talked to Leti for hours over coffee as dancers stretched around us before their class began. In my desperation to find an soda bottle like the ones they used in old tango salons, I ended up in a winsome conversation with two old men in a dusty antique shop where I only understood every third word but all the good natured gestures they offered.

Argentina has felt like an unlikely and imagined dream in the light of what I came back to that characterized the two months since. But its continued proof that O'Henry had it right when he said "that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating." Fortunately, they do not predominate my life too often.