Rain-Tango-Wa-lee-why-chu

Thunder claps. Cars trapped. Rain pounds the street in a torrent of swirling water. The wind comes in gusts. You are thrown flat against the glass of darkened shop windows. Water droplets lit by the lights of the signs above move left and right in slow motion- visually peaceful like snow falling seemingly defying gravity. Until, stepping out of the dance-trance, you realize that the heavens have literally opened up above and you are soaked, standing in 10 inches of fast moving water. It was a horrible day to be out. It all occurred in 10 minutes.

This of course occurs when Kozi arrives and so we had to amuse ourselves indoors with a little tango.


The next day we traveled to Gualeguaychu to see Argentina's version of carnival. You know- tall busty amazonian women half naked save for some pasties and lots of feathers shaking to the beat my heart. It was a noble journey. I think the men were supposed to be good looking as well, but lets not talk about them. But that damn rain! It got rained out! We contented ourselves walking around that sleepy town stepping over puddles, eating beef, and drinking beer.

Tourist

Every time George W Bush says, "Terrorist" in that trained truncated back-of-the-throat folksy accent of his, I like to trick myself into hearing "Tourist". He does'nt talk much about terrorists these days, but if he does: see if you can hear him saying "Tourist". Sometimes these two words seem interchangeable and George actually feels prophetic.

Since moving to Buenos Aires we have tried to blend in, but now that Kozi is here we want to do all of that touristy stuff and blame it to our consciences on him. So off to the Pink House we go. The Pink House is the Argentine version of the White House. And yes its pink. Imagine if ours was pink! Would we still have Manifest Destiny? The Monroe Doctrine- meddling in everyone's business, or would we be a bit more subdued? Ahh...a bit of introspection. I guess that makes me more of a tourist than George's alternative.

But lets talk about the really important stuff. Who in the Argentine tourist circuits seem to be Carlos Gardel, Evita, and Diego Maradona. To really be famous here it seems that you need to die tragically very young, or at least complete your greatness early and then spend the rest of your days debauching. In Boca, home of the Boca Juniors and Diego Maradona we visited the stadium and roamed the multicolored buildings. A Diego look-a-like was on hand for pictures for a few pesos sitting in a lawn chair with a tall-boy-Quilmes. It all is quite fantastic and of course incredibly fun. And out of all the options for Argentine greatness, Diego certainly picked the best one...

River Plate vs. Mexico

Kozi was on Argentinian soil for no more than 5 hours before we put him in a soccer stadium and we all enjoyed the best team in Argentina (currently) River Plate go toe to toe with the best team in Mexico. We sat in the popular section, known for its hooliganism, but we steered clear of any particular craziness. That section spent the entire game on its feet, on each other's shoulders, shouting and throwing bits of newspaper everywhere. The videotron oddly did not show the time or even highlights of the game, it just focused on cute girls in the stadium for an uncomfortably long time. Dad's with RP tattoos held up little sons high above their head. Everyone sang Vamo, vamo, River Plate!

Despite the support Mexico quickly scored and even though RP had more possession time than Mexico they could never convert. It was like this for the entire game. Great ball handling, but nothing except for the cute girls on the videotron blushing at the attention and the guys next to them beaming with pride. By the time the second half was winding down RP had managed to tie it up, but everyone was tired. Kozi explained that if Mexico ties its good for them because it is an away game and through some other witchcraft cooked up by fifa a tie is good for their continental standing. Nevertheless Mexico is getting cocky with a tie. Tempers start to ignite. The RP coach somehow gets evicted from the game. The fans are getting despondent. Hisako asks if its safer for us if they win or loose. Kozi says definitely win, as he eyes the crowd to see if anything nasty is about to happen. Just then two players get into a fight on the field, some guys even jump off the bench and run onto the field. Its looking like a melee. We are looking side to side if its going to spread to the crowd. The pile up on the field is untangled and two players, one from each team are thrown out. Its looking really bad.

But then with this kind of pissed of vigor turned productive a RP players breaks free, passes to another, a quick fake, then another, a shot and goooooooooool! The whole stadium erupts. Its ballistic. People are everywhere shouting, throwing paper, waving flags, hugging each other. Literally 30 second later the whistle is blown and its over. RP runs the field; Mexico in their yellow jerseys just lay on the ground like crushed dandelions. Its fantastic. So many emotions. Everyone spills out of the stadium. They sing something about the polizia. Which maybe is not the best idea, but what the hell! Blah-blah-blah POLIZIA!!

Living at Arenales

Before the arrival of the crazy bearded yugo known as Kozi, i thought i would describe a typical day at 2901 Arenales. The day starts late since at night it gets dark at about 10:00 pm and we go to bed around 2:00am. Everyone is out quite late keeping hours typical to Spain. School is still out and everyone makes the most of the summer break, so the cafes are full of families and teenagers well into the night. Open the doors to the balcony- shower-turn on computer-breakfast-coffee. There is a bakery down the street and so we often pick up a few mini sweet glazed croissants, called medialunas, some bread for lunch, and sweeter confections for afternoon tea. In the mornings we work on the Utah project. Currently we are detailing these large 20 foot sliding doors on either side of the dining room. When open the dining room will truly feel as one with the wetland. This goes on for about 4 hours. Phone calls to the manufacturer are made on skype and essentially free.


Lunch is sandwiches. There is a meat and cheese shop with delicious proscuitto; tomatoes and lettuce come from a local supermercado. Hisako makes the sandwiches and we have them with mate tea. Mate, which the locals drink constantly, tastes somewhere between asian green tea and english black tea. It is very nice. Mate is bitter if mixed with very hot water and so the water is tepid. Without the hot requirement you can sip and sip mate all day long adding water when you feel like it. The tea leaf takes a very long time to loose potency. The locals just pour the loose leaf into a gourd of warm water, sipping through a metal straw with a perforated end shaped like a fat spoon. Someone described it as an Argentine iron lung, which i thought was funny and accurate to its shape and importance within the culture. During the afternoon we work on developing our business, which right now means designing and posting things to the website. We are interested in so many things it is difficult to represent them without seeming crazy. But its getting there.


In the late afternoon, when it is not so hot we pick a destination on the map and just start walking through Retiro or along Sante Fe to some place like Puerto Madero or San Telmo. We can cover a pretty large distance and it is good training for our planned camping trip in Patagonia. While Buenos Aires is a huge city, the places that we would want to go are not that far- maybe the size of Manhattan. Along the way we talk and roam occasionally taking a photo (mostly of holes in the ground-Chako's Dimple-Pimples). Buenos Aires has amazing Dimple-Pimples by the way- they must be constantly putting up and and taking out poles (check out Chako's blog).


Before it gets dark we meander back to our house. Sometimes we go out to eat, other times we will make pasta at home. Argentinian wine is very good and i particularly like their pinot noirs from Patagonia, which has a similar microclimate to Oregon and the Burgundy coast. There is a wine shop with a very friendly and talkative owner, who looks lot like Paul Giamatti, and recommends this and that. If we eat at home we will visit him. If we eat out the restaurants begin to fill up around 10:00pm and it is fun to be part of the late night summer dinner rush. The local parilla (grilled/smoked meat restaurant) is always good. Other options include a very cheap pasta place, an expensive pasta place, pizza/empanada's and other parillas. Actually the food options where we live are not so diverse. But they are tasty and nothing is really that expensive. If we eat out then the entire day i described is about $35 for the two of us. Staying in is substantially less.

Maybe around 1:00 am we will go for an ice cream and a cafe before reading some, or studing some Spanish, then going to bed.

Hopscotch

I am reading a book called, "Hopscotch" by Julio Cortazar. It has this great passage that i am going to write here. I like how it builds a scene full of humanity. It is a bit critical at the end. The character's voice not so much mine, but i agree with his observations and the point he strives to make. It is set in Paris. The scene begins after the main character has witnessed a man being hit by a car and is carried off by an ambulance. A crowd watching the commotion has fled to a cafe after it started to rain.

In the cafe protected by the cold (a matter of going in and having a glass of wine), a group of bricklayers were talking with the man behind the bar. Two students were reading and writing at one table and Oliveira saw them look up and look at the bricklayers, go back to their books or notebooks, look up again. From one glass cage to another, look, withdraw, look: that's all there was to it. Up above the sidewalk section of the cafe, which was closed, a young woman on the second floor seemed to be sewing or cutting out a dress by the window. Her upswept hair was moving in time to what she was doing and Oliveira tried to picture her thoughts, her shears, her children who would be coming back from school any moment now, her husband finishing work in am office or in a bank. The bricklayers, the students, the woman, now a bum turned the corner of the street with a bottle of red wine sticking out of his pocket, pushing a baby carriage filled with old newspapers, tin cans, torn and dirty cloths, a headless doll, a package with a fishtail sticking out. The bricklayers, the students, the woman, the bum, and in a booth looking like someone condemned to the pillory, LOTERIE NATIONALE, an old woman with unrepatriated bits of straggly hair popping out from underneath a kind of gray bonnet, blue mittens on her hands, TIRAGE MERCREDI, waiting but not in wait for customers, a charcoal brazier by her feet, ecased in her vertical coffin, motionless, half-frozen, offering good fortune and God knows what, clots of ideas, senile commonplaces, the teacher who used to give her candy when she was a girl, a husband killed on the Somme, a traveling-salesman son, at night her garret without running water, a three-day soup, beouf bourguignon which is cheaper than a cut of meat, TIRAGE MERCREDI. The bricklayers, the students, the woman, the bum, the lottery woman, every group, everybody in his glass cage, but let an old man fall under a car and right away there is a general running to the scene of the accident, an animated exchange of opinion, of criticism, disparities and coincidences until it starts to rain again and the bricklayers go back to the bar, the students to their table, the X's to X and the Z's to the Z.
"Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity," repeated Oliviera. "But Jesus, I'm going to get soaked, I've got to get someplace."

A List of Velocities

It is true; life seems to have slowed down for us since moving here. But sometimes when you are really moving and satisfied, you find that you are taking really tiny steps. And other times you look down and you realize that you've got someone else's shoes on!

It is not always about speed. Sometimes when i am moving really slow something good creeps up on me from behind and swallows me whole. Other times just getting up a good hard pant and maybe a bit of sweat in the pits is enough to feel all right. There are lots of ways of moving toward something:

Fog moving over the ocean.
Up a down escalator.
Hit by a bus.
Straight.
Without brakes.
Like an Albatross.
On the shoulders of others.
Spinning with eyes wide shut/open.
Holding your breath till stars come dancing.

Villa Curutchet

But of course we arrived in la plata just fine. After the tall grass and broken down cars- buildings appeared and we rolled into the train station. The last on the line. We had come to La Plata to see a Le Corbusier building- the only one in Argentina. There are not many in the US either and he along with a few other people- Eames, Atelier Bow Wow- Hisako and i constantly refer to because we like the way they work. They strive, they invent, they look like they have a good time. I keep trying to get Hisako to wear that crazy skirt Ray would wear...

So Villa Curutchet was made for a doctor with a pseudo-detached clinic from which he worked. Its got the 5 points.

I got very excited seeing the house. I mean the guy really gets it. He planted the tree back in 1935 when the house was built. The tree and the brise soleils do much in blocking the northern sun. The ramp and stair both give the house and clinic a dignified entry and the sequences of spaces plotted by the circulation are very cinematic. Its very interesting how conscience he is of programming.

-The first floor with the bulk of the massing and house hovering above is very open consisting of mostly ramps, stairs, car park, and entry. While all of that may seem busy its not since the inner courtyard with the tree opens to the sky and a gravel sculpture garden at grade is very peaceful.
-The second floor is dedicated to the living spaces, kitchen, dining, and roof garden which projects out as an extension to the living space. This plan on this level is very open and rectilinear allowing the sun to filtering through the roof garden full access into the living spaces.
-The third floor is solely for sleeping and a private reading area and is interesting because he floats oval shaped bathrooms and large cherry cabinetry blocks in a free plan to divide the spaces. The effect is very organic and fluid feeling, something that perhaps he thought soothes the soul where you sleep and relax.

Taken floor by floor each level has a very specific programmatic function and has a very definite plan diagram attached to it. Ramp-Rectilinear-Organic. No one has more books written about him than Corb, but they all say the same thing- to see his buildings really is something. He is even better than the hype but not for the reasons you think. Its funny- the same thing happened to me at the Barcelona Pavilion.

(for the non architects- the five points- very influential in formalizing modern architecture)
- Pilotis (columns) elevating the mass off the ground
- A free plan, achieved through the separation of the load-bearing columns from the walls subdividing the space
- A free facade, the result of the free plan in the vertical plane,
- A long horizontal sliding window and finally
- A roof garden, restoring, supposedly, the area of ground covered by the house

on the way to la plata

The train was a metal box with metal seats with tiny windows-names carved into the paint. Only if they removed the seats could it be simpler, but it got us to La Plata. While we were still close to Buenos Aires vendors walked the aisle selling pens, phone cards, superpanchos (hot dogs), musica romantica on shoulder held boom boxes; when the shanties appeared outside the downtrodden walked the aisles asking for money because they had cancer or too many children and no work; when there was nothing out the window no one walked the aisle and we were at peace with the locomotion. When the tall grass and broken down cars arrived outside of the window, I thought someone might board the train and rob us. A great train heist without horses or bandanas or dust- alone in that tin box they would just walk right in and point and we with no cushions to crawl under...

Near Buenos Aires Leo played.

Tigre

In the stale, humid, hot summer months the residents of Buenos Aires flock en masse to Tigre, a river delta area just north of the city where water the color of dulce de leche laps onto vibrant green, perfectly manicured lawns. The contrast is beautiful. A boat takes you past summer homes standing high above the flood plain, through the lattice work of waterways deep into the delta, the sound of electric fans and the tinkling of ice in glasses mixes with the laughter of friends and family relaxing wherever the breeze is greatest.

We ate at a restaurant in front of the local boat gas station. It provided us with a cross section of the neighborhood. They all got gas, beer/water, and ice.

Doctor in white scrubs in a short tuggish boat
Older man and mistress in a long red cigarette boat
Barge kicking up a ton of deisel bringing tears to your eyes
Ice Cream boat the jingle is always the same
Teenagers fixing up stalled jet ski
Bare chested crew skull (how argentine's love their chest hair!)
Family in a classic wood boat
Teenagers in a tricked out wakeboarding boat argentine metal playing
Landscapers in canoe paddling with a rake

Andy

I am reading "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)"
What an amazing cat that guy was. At one point in the book he is musing about restaurants in New York whose food gets worse and worse but the prices go up and they get trendy. They don't sell food anymore they sell "atmosphere". Wow thats true! And he loves America so much. No wonder.

For we are the greatest in the world at selling atmosphere and it always amazes me when i leave the US at how that atmosphere so finely crafted back home is everywhere and for every occasion. On Santa Fe a retail mall plays John Mayer in the concourse, but in the jean shop its Q-tip with his hip-hop light. Something for every occasion. I am fine with this. Everyone seems happy with it around here as well. I mean-i am glad that they are not making up some phony mash-up of Argentinian indigenous culture (whatever that is). What do you want- those Peruvian pan flutists you see on street corners all over the world. Those guys!

Even if in Buenos Aires they name their neighborhoods Palermo Soho, Palermo Hollywood, and i heard that Palermo Brooklyn is where all the expat artists are, they are striving for something and i am glad that the US gets it right when they put IT all together and make that THING that everyone wants. It always looks better on the other side of the fence. Everyone needs a passport.

Maybe its better when the most aspirational atmosphere you can dream of is not in your own back yard. Maybe thats why immigrants in the US work so hard, push their kids to read books, and make a grab at the real thing even if its only an atmosphere, an illusion. Barbie, Hello Titty, 100 Marilyns in different Crayola Colors, Campbell Soup- just a wig and a little cosmetic sugery and you're almost there...

More Block

On the other side of the street is a small ice cream store open till 2 o'clock in the morning. With each cafe they give you a shot of mineral water and a tiny scoop of ice cream- typically creme de leche. Its very civilized. People are in there all day long sitting for a very long time. Older folks quietly talk, teenage girls talk, sputter, and gawk typically in a pack of four, old ladies seem to muse and stare off into space, couples usually consist of the guy watching soccer on the television (which is always on and always showing soccer) and the girl nudging him occasionally with some bit of talk but all in all content to be out and happy to be eating ice cream. Between the kiosk, the plums ice cream store and an empanada shop whose wood stove takes up almost half the store toasting you along with your empanada- our block is quite convenient and pleasant.

Our Block

Our building enters at 45 degrees onto the street corner and so upon stepping out of the marble lobby you are immediately out, thrust into the hubbub of taxis, people and dogs criss crossing the street. The taxis drive without their lights on and do not heed pedestrians, the people walk indescribably slow and talk side by side gesturing wildly like slow moving windmills, the dogs (all enormous: golden retrievers, labs, shepards, dobermans, and even jesus a great dane or two) come in packs of at least a dozen individually leashed to a dog walker who leads these beasts amazingly well, but cannot be expected to pick up the dog shit. Suffice it to say to walk out of our apartment directly into all of this comes with its fair share of energy and drama.

Despite us being a block away from Santa Fe which is a major thorough fare, our street is fairly quiet after one adjusts to the hazards mentioned before. And on our block we have all the conveniences of urban living. A kiosk on the opposite corner to us sits also at 45 degrees. Its the same guy everyday from early in the morning to about 1 o'clock at night. He must know everything, perched there in the catbird seat and everyone coming and going, like a doorman not satisfied to only watch but helps along 'whatever what may come' by selling you a beer as you pass. Yes, its where i get my beer and when i am finished with my liter of Quilmes. I bring the bottle down, give it to him and he reaches slowly into the frig to pull a fresh cold one out and hands it to me. A nod and 4 pesos ($1.25) later and i am on my way back upstairs. Occasionally in the lobby of our building sitting on the white leather lounge built into the corner two teenagers will be stuck together legs crossing at least twice, toes pointed in some intense pirouette, eyes staring intensely at one anther. Its funny that this space is probably the quietest that they know stuck between the clausterphobia of a small two bedroom apartment upstairs and the taxis, people, and dogs on the street.

Our Building

We live in a 7 story building at the corner of Arenales and Aguero. There are three apartments to each floor. We see our neighbors rarely, but when we do its typically crammed into an elevator that is 30 inches square. In these brief encounters it is too close to really speak, the reason i believe is as much to do with the fear of spitting on one another as our bad spanish, and so we stand quietly and embrace their aroma. Mostly its some nice but somewhat old fashioned scent, other times you can tell they recently stepped in dog piss.

lightness

We live on the 6th floor in a one bedroom apartment. It is fully furnished. Once plugged in everything works and we are both distanced and connected to our previous world at all time. This aspect, the connectivity, is shockingly good. Despite our lack of presence in LA it would be difficult to know that we are not there. Our lack of possessions, the thin but stable tether back to where we came from makes us feel very light.

no ceiling

There is a unique power and excitement in drawing the world with one's own hand. As if you have created it. In some ways you have, for at the end of the day all that you do, did, will do: sight,stories,inventions,geography are what you make of it.

It is this last point-what you make of it- that caused us to draw the map in the first place. We thought of the places we should inhabit. We looked to all of the continents. They all have their charms. We picked Buenos Aires. We packed the house into four 5'x8'x7' boxes. We left at midnight February 5th.

We have:
A backpack with sleeping bag, tent, stove, etc.
Suitcase with clothes, toiletries, stack of books, router, all-in-one printer.
Carry-on with laptop, 330 gig external hardrive, cellphone, camera, bag full of cables.