Argentina II — Buenos Aires — Good Air / Fair Winds
Buenos Aires
Good Air / Fair Winds
Still trying to understand how a city can feel both exhausted and fully alive at exactly the same time.
Nobody seems to hurry here.
Not really.
Even traffic somehow moves emotionally.
Tango keeps leaking out of doorways everywhere.
Maybe that’s why everybody walks like they’re remembering something.
I slept maybe three hours.
Could not stop walking.
Bookstores.
Cafés.
Old stone buildings with cracked balconies.
Tiny dogs asleep directly in the middle of sidewalks like they own the republic.
Nobody bothers them.
At one café I sat beside two old men arguing loudly about what I think was Sarmiento, the soccer team for nearby Junin, for nearly an hour.
One kept pounding the table every time he said one of the player's name.
Nobody here seems afraid of conversation.
University students marching again today.
Drums through the side streets all afternoon.
Entire avenues vibrating.
Everybody chanting:
“¡Milei, cumplí la ley!”
Police vans parked nearby watching quietly.
The strange thing is:
the atmosphere did not feel violent.
Heavy maybe.
Emotional.
Tired.
But also proud somehow.
Outside the university:
EDUCACIÓN
PÚBLICA
GRATUITA
FEDERAL
The words are everywhere now.
On walls.
Windows.
Flyers.
Backpacks.
People say them like they are defending something older than politics.
Something inherited.
A woman at the bookstore helped me find maps of southern Argentina.
Patagonia.
Tierra del Fuego.
The cold parts.
She circled places I should see.
Then crossed one out immediately.
“Too much wind,” she said.
Then after a pause:
“Maybe good for you.”
Still not sure what she meant.
The city comes alive very late.
At 10:45 PM entire families are only beginning dinner.
Wine everywhere.
Music drifting through apartment windows.
People lingering at tables for hours without anybody rushing them away.
California suddenly feels extremely nervous in retrospect.
A band called Estelares is playing Gran Rex Theater tonight.
Tried getting tickets two hours before the show.
Entirely impossible apparently.
Girl at the counter laughed sympathetically before I even finished trying to ask. "Impossible, amor."
Everybody talks about prices here.
Coffee.
Bread.
Rent.
Bus fare.
The café owner this morning apologized before telling me what breakfast cost.
Then shrugged.
“Argentina.”
Same shrug as yesterday.
Different café.
I keep thinking about plants even here.
Funny maybe.
No towering cactus forests yet.
No impossible Euphorbias.
Still:
everything already feels connected somehow.
The weather.
The architecture.
The conversations.
The exhaustion.
The dust.
The music.
The plants are part of all this too.
They come from weather.
And weather shapes everything eventually. I just remembered why Chicago is called "The Windy City."
Tomorrow:
more walking.
Possibly Recoleta.
Possibly getting lost again.
Probably both.
And somewhere south of all this:
the unknown.
I can already feel Patagonia waiting.