Maybe Plaza Italia

There is a wrought iron gate across the entrance. And it has a thick chain fastening its two sides together. A shiny brass lock as big as an open hand hangs heavily from the chain. Is all of this to keep me out? Or to keep me in? I have no idea. There’s nobody around to ask. So I search for a hole in the fence. Or a tunnel. Or an easy way to climb over the top. Or a tree or bush that can help me scale the wall. Or a hidden or dropped key. I’m patient. I know I will find my way in. Or is it out? I stand there searching for it. I’m content. I am trying to get to the other side.

When I wake up, interrupting the dream, I know that the gate and the fence will reappear, and the search will resume as soon as I fall asleep again. So I ask myself in a clueless, sleepy voice, “Well, what’s on the other side anyway? What are you looking for?” Of course, there’s no answer. How could there be? But the question delights me. What am I looking for? I have no idea. What’s on the other side? I don’t know. It’s a puzzle. As I fall asleep again I yawn happily, “Well, I hope I find out.” This always brings a smile. I like the idea of smiling in my sleep at my persistent search for something unknown.

I should add, though I’m not sure that it really matters, that I am wearing a brown raincoat and a hat with a narrow brim and that I am standing in a late Fall, afternoon rain. My glasses are foggy. And the hat is dripping. Maybe I am in Palermo. Maybe the street is Las Heras. I don't know. I have the impression that people are nearby, sitting in cafes drinking coffee and watching the rainfall on the streets. And others are nearby riding buses and subways home. I am sure that my adventure, if that is what this is, is not in their thoughts. This is exactly how it should be.

Song For Today

From Buenos Aires. h/t to Cass and blues from down below:

In the three weeks that I have discovered the lovely Sofía Viola, a day hasn´t passed without listening to “Me han robado el mar” (They Stole the Sea from Me) at least once. Only a few nights ago did she celebrate her 22nd and already she has a collection of more than 300 songs - and they are incredible, a little bit of North Andean folklore, mixed with some 1970s American soul, some fierce jazz for good measure, all delivered with a stage presence that is absolutely electric. An essential in order to understand what´s growing in the Argentine music scene.

Graffiti

Graffiti in Palermo, Buenos Aires, November, 2010

How very wonderful. Today I found Julio Cortzar's story, Graffiti. What a masterful short story. It's a love story of sorts. I will not spoil it. It's about drawing graffiti on the walls of Buenos Aires during the military government, and the government's effort to suppress that form of expression. That's all I'll tell here. Except that it is a wonderful story, which was made into a short movie in 2005 by Pako Gonzalez.

I've raved about Cortazar here before, and in fact, in 2006, I posted this, which bears repetition here. It's a blurb written by Pablo Neruda which I at the time pronounced the world's greatest blurb. I still stand by that assessment. It's about Cortazar:

Anyone who doesn't read Cortazar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder... and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair."

Graffiti is a story worth this kind of hype. Do not miss reading it.

An Itinerary For A Digression

Macedonio Fernandez (1874-1952)

Macedonio Fernandez’s great work, Museo de la Novela de la Eterna, The Museum of Eterna’s Novel, was first published in Spanish in 1967, fifteen years after his death. He started working on it in 1925 and continued working on it for his entire life in five different versions. He never published it himself. And it wasn’t translated into English until 2010.

Museo is an experimental novel beginning with 50 prologues, and it is a difficult, perplexing but often touching and funny read. There can be no spoiler here. Macedonio seeks to transform the reader into fiction. He seeks to overcome impermanence. That’s his intention. Here, there can only be the announcement of my embarkation on the book. And my good intentions somehow to write about the journey. Or perhaps send a postcard. Or a photo.

Already the book has brought a small, quite unintended, very coincidental surprise. A gift. The kind of digression that makes reading on a rainy, windy April Sunday such a pleasure. I share that here. I hope my not filling in all the blanks can be easily forgiven.

In the Translator’s Introduction to the English volume, Margaret Schwartz writes,

In his classic book of Buenos Aires essays, The Man Who Is Alone and Waits (El hombre que esta solo y espera), Raul Scalabrini Ortiz writes: “Buenos Aires’s first metaphysician and its only authentic philosopher is Macedonia Fernandez.”

I knew the name, Scalabrini Ortiz, from an avenue in Buenos Aires in the Palermo neighborhood. I had no idea who SO might actually have been.

Scalabrini Ortiz (1898-1959) was an Argentine writer, essayist, and poet. He was also a Marxist. But, it turns out, the name of the Avenue has been changed. Frequently. These changes are emblematic of the past 150 years’ struggles in Argentina. They reflect Argentina’s dramatic history:

In 1867, when this avenue was still a dirt track, it was named El Camino del Ministro Inglés (English Minister's Road), because English diplomat Henry Southern used it to go downtown from the country house where he lived with his family.

A decree on November 27, 1893 changed its name for the first time to Canning, as a tribute to George Canning, former Secretary of Foreign Relations of the United Kingdom.

Another decree, dictated on May 31, 1974 by the government of Juan Domingo Perón, stated that Canning Ave. changed its name into Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz Ave. as a tribute to Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz....

Two years later, during the military dictatorship, the name of this avenue was changed again into Canning Ave.

Finally, with the arrival of democracy, Canning Ave. was renamed again to Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz Ave., on December 29, 1985.

It remains Avenida Scalabrini Ortiz. I wonder in passing about other oscillating changes in the names of streets. In Buenos Aires. In Havana. In New York. And what that says about how history and public remembrance is controlled by its authors.

El Pulmon De La Manzana

An unexpected treat from The New York Times. Maria Kodama describes the view from Borges's window in the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires:

A certain house in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Recoleta has a window that is doubly privileged. It overlooks a courtyard garden of the kind known here as a pulmón de manzana — literally, the lung of a block — which affords it a view of the sky and an expanse of plants, trees and vines that meander along the walls of neighboring houses, marking the passage of the seasons with their colors. In addition, the window shelters the library of my late husband, Jorge Luis Borges. It is a real Library of Babel, full of old books, their endpapers scribbled with notes in his tiny hand.

As afternoon progresses and I look up from my work to gaze out this window, I may be invaded by springtime, or if it’s summer, by the perfume of jasmine or the scent of orange blossom, mingled with the aroma of leather and book paper, which brought Borges such pleasure.

The window has one more surprise. From it, I can see the garden of the house where Borges once lived, and where he wrote one of his best-known short stories, “The Circular Ruins.’’ Here, I can move back and forth between two worlds. Sometimes, following Borges, I wonder which one is real: the world I see from the window, bathed in afternoon splendor or sunset’s soft glow, with the house that once belonged to Borges in the distance, or the world of the Library of Babel, with its shelves full of books once touched by his hands?

It is Winter in New York, but it's Summer in Buenos Aires. And you can buy sweet, aromatic jasmine at the many florist stands on the streets. It's an eminently livable city. I'd like to be sitting in a cafe now, a cafecito steaming nearby, and my notebook open.

Borges's Tiger

Throughout his life, Jorge Luis Borges visited the Buenos Aires zoo to watch the tigers. He wrote about them frequently, about Blue Tigers, about Dream Tigers. So first I visited Borges's childhood home at 2135 Serrano, a street now named for Borges:

And then, I walked the few blocks to the zoo. And here's what I saw:

Borges's tiger.

Buscando Borges

The infinite Aleph of Borges' 1949 story, "The Aleph," is "a small irridescent sphere of almost unbearable brightness" that contains all of universal space without changing its actual size. It is in the basement of Carlos Argentino's family house near the corner of Avenida Garay and Calle Tacuari. Is the house (and the Aleph) still there? The story suggests not. Zurno and Zungi, CA's neighbors were expanding their "enormous cafe" and were going to tear down CA's house in the late 1940's. Maybe, I think, I'll just stroll over there and see whether the building is still standing. What's more, CA's lawyer, Licenciado Zurni has an office at Tacuari near Avenida Caseros which "is one of proverbial sobriety." That is two blocks south of CA's important basement. It's not a long walk.

Ample discouragement of this adventure to Plaza Constitucion arises. Everyone tells me not to show up in that barrio unless I really want to be separated from my wallet. Or my head. A NY Times Article(5/14/06; sorry no link now) seems to confirm this. The author passes the corner shielded in a moving taxi and charitably describes the site as "anonymous." He doesn't stop to get out and look around. A predominantly gray photo on Flickr (sorry no link now) clinches the deal. There is nothing to look at. Walk canceled.

Instead I select a walk on the nearby eponymous street in Palermo Viejo. Number 2135 of the street formerly known as Serrano bears a simple plaque that the building was there JLB lived a century ago (1901-1914) as an infant. It is a two-story, brick home with a sharply pointed, arched entryway. Is the front entrance Romanesque? Norma? Does that have anything to do with JLB's later interest in North European lanuages and myths? I am no expert.

Today the building's first floor is occupied by a hair salon humorously dubbed "Maldito Frizz."I imagine that JLB might be surprised by this development. And by the nearby "Cybrborges" internet store. But maybe not.

These speculations are easily resolved by taking the 3 block walk to the zoo and observing JLB's beloved Tigres. When I arrive, the tiger is lying down. After a while she gets up to stroll the cage and observe the observers. Borges would have been delighted. I certainly was.

Whose Buenos Aires Is This Anyway?

Today's New York Times has an article with slideshow by Maxine Swann about her life in Buenos Aires. She moved there about 10 years ago. The article concentrates on apartments and neighborhoods. It is, after all, in the Home and Garden section. It doesn't mention a single Argentinian writer or poet. I wish it did. If she were writing about my Buenos Aires, she would have to.

At any rate, I don't think of her City at all as Ricardo Piglia's Buenos Aires. Or the Buenos Aires in his novel, The Absent City. Or Borges's. Or Roberto Arlt's. Or the Buenos Aires in Arlt's novel, Mad Toy. And no, this isn't my Buenos Aires either.

In my Buenos Aires in addition to the Obelisk (above) and 9 de Julio, there are many references to and an acknowledgment of the literary canon, the writers. The neighborhoods are remembered by the books they appear in. The streets also. The cafes. The street corners. And there's an aggressive pride in this. Of course, you're supposed to know this stuff. How could you not? You might ask how I, who have read about but never been in these writers' Buenos Aireses, could be excessively proud of these references. You might as well ask whether these writers have been in my Buenos Aires, or if they're just part of its ornamentation, the backdrop for its events.

Buenos Aires Smothered In Smoke

Reuters reports:

A thick cloud of smoke covered Buenos Aires for a fifth day on Saturday, the fallout from field burning by ranchers that has forced the closure of highways, flight delays and traffic congestion.

The smoke started to appear over the Argentine capital more than a week ago, but visibility deteriorated considerably in the city on Friday and Saturday, with an acrid smell pervading homes and causing watery eyes and sore throats among residents.

Visibility downtown was barely 500 yards (meters), and residents' tempers began to fray.

/snip Authorities said ranchers caused the haze by igniting fires across 173,000 acres of pasture. The fires clear vegetation and renew soil nutrients and fresh pasture growth for cattle.

Meanwhile, AP reports that President Christina Fernandez says:

"People must be held responsible for this," Fernandez said after riding in a helicopter Saturday over cattle ranches and farms north of Buenos Aires, where hundreds of firefighters worked with the army to extinguish the fast-moving flames.

And then AP makes the obvious connection to recent farm strikes in Argentina:

Farmers, who dumped soy and grains on highways to protest export taxes levied on their crops in mid-March, insisted that the recent fires were unrelated to their 21-day strike, which was suspended April 2.

No one is known to have died in the flames, but at least seven motorists were killed in pileups on rural routes made hazy with smoke. The fires are raging just 45 miles north of the city and radiate out into the country's Entre Rios and Santa Fe provinces.

Foul-smelling smoke has shrouded the capital's iconic Obelisk and obscured skyscrapers in a crisis unprecedented in Buenos Aires. Residents flocked to doctors with respiratory and eye irritation.

Meanwhile, Buenos Aires, a magical city, appears to be quite unlivable.