Tristeliz

2007-07-16T09:55:00.000-03:00

the Brazilian un-Barbie

It's impossible not to note the female bodies in Brazil since beaches abound and less is more with Brazilian bikinis. So since arriving in Brazil, or rather since first stepping foot on the beach in Rio, I noticed a difference between the apparent female body image here versus that in the States. In the states, the skinny girls cringe at the thought of baring it in a bikini and the more formidable ones don't dare take off that tee. Yet the beaches in Brazil are filled with women of all shapes and sizes wearing little more than some lycra strings. Granted there are an overwhelming number of women prancing around with the "perfect" bodies, but moreover there are females of all shapes and ages out their enjoying themselves all the same.

The point that I wanted to make when I decided to search for articles regarding body image in Brazil, was that although body-conscious in Brazil, the image is healthier than that of the States, where women are more often found hiding themselves if they fail to bare a strong resemblance to Kate Moss. Yet what I found instead was a bit more the contrary, stating that "of the 160 million people in Brazil, a quarter of a million go under the knife each year." Granted I didn't take the time to look up the number in the states (this is a blog, not a report, people!), but this number is enough to show that Brazilian women are indeed very aware of their bodies. I therefore decided to add the article here, describing this consequent BAD body image. As a sidenote, Brazilian women, it states, contrary to both Barbie and women of the U.S., want small breasts and a large behind. (who knew I was coming to the right place for my own figure!!!!)

Although this large number of sliced and sculpted Brazilians exists, I still stick to my point that there are plenty more women of all shapes in Brazil willing to bare it at the beach than in the states. So learn something from this my fellow female compatriots and break free from your over-sized tees and over-priced cutesy swimsuit cover-ups!

2007-07-14T11:14:00.000-03:00

In an attempt to maintain contact with my dwindling average of 2.1 readers(mom, dad, and the sporadic die-hard friend, as it can't possibly be more than that at this point!)I will turn my mushy, feely blog into an updated travel log. Here goes...

Adoro Brasil

and why do I adore Brazil?

After spending a week in Rio de Janeiro I have concluded that not only should Christ the Redeemer be included in the new 7 wonders of the world, but rather the WHOLE city of Rio! Now take this with a salt cube because it is my subjective opinion, however, in addition to breathtaking sights of cliffs interlaced with ocean and favelas (ghetto neighborhoods), the city buzzes with beach energy year-round (I assume, since I am here in the heart of winter!) The cariocas, or Rio de Janeiro natives, don't take for granted their homeland either, and this consequent passion for the city could be what leads to the thick aura present.

In addition to the aesthetic and intangible attraction, Rio also has all the little things I need, or at least so love. Sandwich and juice bars literally pack the streets, satisfying both the carnivore and the vegetarian simultaneously. Every kind of fresh fruit I've ever wanted and special types with untranslatable portuguese names because they are unique to brazil abound. On the beach it seemed as though my favorite foods and drinks were following me, as the vendors constantly wander around with their grilled shrimp, seafood empadas, fruit juices, kebabed cheese, sweet biscuits... I think if Rio were safe to walk the streets at night I'd have to make a mass apology to my loved ones at home, because they'd have to fly south to see me.

My ode to Rio is far from done, but since I've already left and headed up here to Bahia where I will park it for the next month, I'll stop now so that I can start soaking up all the samba-reggae.

2007-05-25T13:02:00.001-03:00

Club Los Amigos has indeed become a group of my closest lately. Los Amigos in this case being my friendly video rental place down the street. I´m not going to sugarcoat it. I like the foreign films and can´t get my filthy hands on enough of them. So in the spirit of sharing I´m going to give a little and just wait for my turn to TAKE. ok? Here I give... and then you all give to me... your favorite movie recommendations, that is. (Preferably dark and/or Spanish or Portuguese language films that I have not yet seen)

you MUST I repeat see the following
NOTES ON A SCANDAL (or Escándulo if you´re looking at the Spanish-speaking vid club... a bad title translation as always)
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND
SEX AND LUCÍA (be forewarned, it was voted the most erotic of the year in which it was produced and therefore has potential for being shockingly or beautifully sexual)
NACIDO Y CRIADO (this will not be entirely easy or possible for many since it is a rather obscure Argentine film recently released on video, but take note all the same)
RUSSIAN DOLLS (the less-well known sequel to my personal favorite intl. comedy, Spanish Apartment)
...and I do realize that this entry lacks an overall synopsis of the films, but as I do not pretend nor care to be a film critic I am choosing to ignore the two-dimensional nature of my writing today.

great! now I´ll just let karma take hold and wait for the movie recommendations to flood in from all two corners of the world! (2.6 readers does not allow full global coverage by any means)

2007-05-20T13:15:00.001-03:00

Life has the overwhelming ability to normalize itself within a surprisingly short amount of time. Although I had long coveted this Buenos Aires life before coming, it quickly lost its exotic glimmer and became my day-to-day. For fear of triteness I will avoid using any reference to a self-inflicted bodily pinch that would interrupt the dream and push it into reality. Yet basically I am forced to remind myself that this much anticipated life was just that from my previous undergraduate standpoint.

Through the relatively quick normalization process my writing and emails have in turn become vague and lack the characteristic shiny detail that they previously possessed. Peering through the rosy panes of nostalgia in years to come, I recognize that my life is nothing but extraordinary. (How can I even dare to entertain the idea that this life is as normal as that which I lived in Madison, Wisconsin? Well here comes the beauty because that is the bouyant ability we possess to dream and conquer and move on. Rather than sounding brutish it is beautiful living the dream, not meaning the dream as such, but the constantly changing dream.) I like to think of myself as that cat that pounces after the catnip the owner so masterfully keeps dragging away. Does the cat even want that nip? Would that make it the happy cat it thinks it could be? Of course not. And I don´t want the nip either. Or perhaps I get the nip nearly every time and just have the advantage of chasing after it again.

Now as I am undoubtedly living in the now (as described in the former post as you may well know, dear reader) I have decided to post pictures of myself chasing the nip throughout the city, trying not to anticipate where it will take me next. Here you will see a whole slew of Argentinities with the primal purpose being to push the present tenses on myself.

Here I am visiting Evita, copying the most expensive drink in BA in the comfort of my own kitchen, making "empanadas as big as your head", learning tango, wandering the streets in search of the vintage rags I deem worthy or Argentine enough to clothe my body, studying Portuguese with a bunch of argentines, frequenting my favorite cafes in the hood, and basking in all the Malbec wine with my friends here.

2007-05-06T16:26:00.000-03:00

“Oh won´t you stay. We´ll put on the day. And we´ll talk in present tenses.” -Joni Mitchell

How often do we talk in present tenses? Or upon paraphrasing, how often do we find ourselves talking in those of the past and future? Buenos Aires is a city that lives in its past, reveling in all the glorious richness it has previously enjoyed and attempting to transplant it into present times. Simultaneously I am struck by the overwhelming amount of future talk that the foreigners here engage in.

The city is filled with foreigners (ahem, yours truly) in search of beautiful people, art, style, adventures, Spanish, and any of the other picturesque aspects that characterize BsAs. Perhaps most of all we just want to find ourselves in the context of this aesthetic. Since I am a clear example of this group of foreigners and it turns out that the wide majority of my friends are European, we fit the profile, that is, guilty of indulgent adventures and plagued by long wine-filled talks of the future. Aside from the fact that we are living a portion of our own dreams as we speak, we are tremendously tortured by the next step. I hardly escape the solitude of my (tiny) twin bed and I am faced with infinite “where-to´s?” (not meaning the next restaurant!!)

I am brought to the question section and begin by asking myself if human nature is innately focused on the next step? Is it therefore unnatural to fight the looming future and “talk in present tenses”? I´m led to believe that it could rather be a privilege of the people I am surrounded by, meaning our predisposition for avoiding the metaphorical path combined with our economic status as well.

I want more than anything to stop looking forward and to use all my senses (five plus) to live here for however long that may be. My deep belief in fate may come to my aid in this respect. Since everything happens for a reason in my world I can live in the present knowing that the time will come when the next step is clear to me. Although I need no justification for living here because I know it is right, living abroad naturally provokes the constant peek behind into home and whether or not you should be back there. The constant tension between missing your life there and owing that life a return date so that it does not crumble into a period of grieving for losing a loved one, seems to be the perfect recipe for taking the time to at least talk to myself in present tenses.

2007-04-27T20:10:00.000-03:00

ya volvííí... I´m sure that I´ve retained an average of 2.6 readers, so I´ll keep this first entry to a painless account of the void that has been my last two months.

I was fortunate enough to travel down to Bariloche, the Argentine chocolate heaven (does it really require a more specific name than that?), cross the border to Chile and work my way up to Santiago through some long coveted seafood (otherwise known as nowhere-to-be-seen-in-Argentine-cuisine) and Pisco Sours, a cocktail not to be taken lightly. Other than my gastronomic highlights, my favorite part of the trip turned out to be visiting two of Pablo Neruda´s three houses in Chile. I was apparently not inspired enough to take any really exquisite photos for the sharing, but as predicted have found myself deep into a Neruda book ("Confieso que he vivido", for my many Neruda fan friends!) After plenty of nights spent buzzed off of the one Pisco Sour that it took to do the job, I headed back to Buenos Aires to meet my best friends who came to visit.

I was lucky enough to have spent the following two red wine-hazed weeks exploring Argentine cuisine and Uruguayan hostels with the best travel partners I could have asked for. I renewed my appreciation for Buenos Aires through the enthusiasm that my friends showed for empanadas, wine, mate, dulce de leche, provoleta, parrillas, and the always later than all hell nightlife. I guess I also carved out a new place in my heart for my Palermo apartment, more specifically my balcony, which the guys couldn´t seem to get out of their heads... and off of which we couldn´t seem to budge them.

I also rejuvenated my forceful passion for Uruguay, this time not only enjoying Montevideo to the fullest at my favorite hostel (Red Hostel, to squeak in my marketing plug), but also escaping to one of the most amazing places I´ve been, Cabo Polonio. I could write an entire post just on this surfer´s paradise which due to its status as a protected nature reserve does not allow cars into the peninsula and lacks electricity entirely. We rented a cabin, warmed ourselves by our hand-made fire, and gathered water with a bucket from the well. Needless to say we were relaxed as peach pits, and had a hard time leaving.

There´s so much to say about my trip that I guess I´ve cleared the problem right up by saying nothing at all. I´ll add some pictures and just say that I love all of my friends more than they will ever know. oh and the same goes for Uruguay as well.

2007-02-06T22:45:00.002-03:00

After writing the last entry over a week ago, I´ve pondered that perhaps temporarily misplaced will to write is more rooted in the telephone.

In the midst of my constant daily tribulations in Buenos Aires my friends often reminded me that my biggest problem was communication, more specifically, my many phone problems. As could be expected in my simple life that underfloweth with modern technological conveniences, we had no land line (teléfono fijo) in my apartment and I therefore had bought an Argentine cell phone.

For the general population in Argentina monthly phone “plans” and contracts do not apply. One merely pops into the store to buy the cell and receive a phone number. From that point on it is up to the user to purchase his or her own minutes through phone cards that are sold in drug stores sprinkled throughout the streets. This sounds fairly straight forward, but in reality one must first CHOOSE the cell phone company from which he or she would like to purchase the phone. There exist various companies and multiple opinions as to which is recommendable. I am telling you that CTI Móvil is not one of such. One of the most common phrases uttered between my friends and I when greeting one another (after the standard kiss and hello!) was “CTI es una mierda!” meaning “CTI is a piece of shit!” This customary outburst was rooted in longstanding communication troubles between our friends. Perhaps that´s why we became so close, we´d overcome a lot just to spend time together each day.

Now I realize that this entry is getting long (I uphold that I am generally long-winded), but believe me, this is entry could carry on in much greater depth and with examples abounding.

Let me just sum it up to say that using a cell phone in Buenos Aires involves incessant texting between friends, because speaking for just a total of 4 minutes could necessitate a new card, and to point out the obvious, buying a new calling card every 4 minutes of talk gets old. So as a general rule people text to make plans, schedule dates, chat, flirt, and to check in. It seemed ok at first, because talking on the phone is quite possibly the most nerve-racking part of speaking a second language. I was, therefore, more than happy to text rather than talk over the city noises that inevitably invaded cell conversations. Happy, that is until I started doubting friendships over the dubious arrival of my text messages and the subsequently missing responses.

The most drastic of these situations took place with my Jeroen. Since we had become such close friends, I was nothing less than bewildered when I stopped receiving replies to my text messages. I was brought to tears after a string of events during which I had convinced myself Jeroen was ignoring me in an attempt to drop me as a friend. Throughout the long, gory process of my increasingly hopeless attempts at messaging Jeroen, Philipp tore his hair out, repeatedly urging a ( quite possibly more hysterical and less rational) me to simply ask Jeroen why he wasn´t responding (or whether he even received the messages as Philipp intuitively hypothesized.)

In a rare case where male intuition trumped female, Jeroen had indeed been texting me and as none of our messages had arrived to one another he had suffered the same doubts regarding my non-response.

CTI Móvil-1
Jeroen and Anna-0

Nearly as soon as I got through the rough patch with Jeroen, my messages began arriving to some friends in multiple parts, to others as unreadable codes, and yet to others not at all.

CTI Móvil-2
Trygve, Philipp, Hugo, and Anna-0

I soon became a scrappy communicator, shortening my texts, making calls that didn´t exceed 10 seconds, and using email to ask my friends to dinner. In no way was an actual phone CONVERSATION an option. I´d like to say that I beat CTI (or the Argentine cell system in general), but I must admit that my phone usage was sketchy at best.

Now that I am back in the states on break, despite my avoidance of TV, I´ve been back on the phone wagon, talking my way through the day. Is it this easy means of communication that has dulled my senses and put a damper on my creative writing? Must I blame the media and the TV when it is just my own personal usage of the convenience? I don´t look forward to the continued miscommunications between friends, but I´ll venture to say that I do greatly anticipate the revival of my more primitive senses and the renewal of my more creative self. In fact it would be more wholly accurate for me to say that it was not the city of Buenos Aires that inspired me, but the abundant melancholy that dwells in a city lacking the complacency of smooth-running technology. This porteño life offers me the opportunity of not only dealing with crises but reveling in them through my writing.

2007-02-06T01:56:00.002-03:00

I feel guilty, yet it is the guilt of a newfound lack of motivation and perhaps even numbness to my current state of events. I trace the guilt back into other feelings relating to the absence of a creative outlet, which I most commonly find in my writing. I notice that I become complacent in both my thoughts and past times here at home and have to guess that it is due to both my specific routine (the rut of reading) and modern conveniences (ode to the TV).

I have never been one to outwardly take a stand against TV and its brain-numbing characteristics, but perhaps this is simply because I´d never lived a life without any TV until moving to Argentina. Now that I´m back for break, I realize just how small the presence of pre-packaged entertainment was in my life in Buenos Aires the past six months. Here I will set aside the topic of my time spent reading novels in both countries, because I find no problem with it other than the fact that I read here in Wisconsin, while I was doing a dozen other more engaging activities in Argentina. It turns out that these activities which I will soon name were infinitely more thought-provoking than the reading itself. I´d estimate my viewing at an average of one television program (or 1 hour of TV) and 1 movie every 3 weeks or so (sounds random, but it´s a rough estimate!) Furthermore, I was without a telephone on which I could talk, and internet during the evenings.

So what did I do instead in Buenos Aires? I wrote. I wrote a lot. I made collages. I studied Portuguese. I drank mate and talked for hours with Camilo. I drank wine and Quilmes with Hugo and Maxime. I ate long, carefully prepared dinners with Philipp and Trygve. I walked for hours on end, finding every vintage store in Buenos Aires, spending uncannily low sums of pesos while expanding my collection of unique antique clothing. I practiced obscure Spanish vocabulary and word usage with Danielle.

Oddly enough, least of all I read books, my most common activity here in Wisconsin. I was basically interacting with my surroundings in every free minute and barely recall a moment in which I was merely a passive passenger. Did I enclose myself in a book as I often do here? Did I think about TV and miss it? No. In fact I was only reminded of TV when I was told from time to time that I was missing out on a telling part of the porteño culture. Even then I only pondered the absence of TV momentarily before realizing that I had instead become more observant and sensitive to my surroundings in a sort of sub-conscious effort to combat the missing cultural window (or glowing screen?) I was bright-eyed at all times, reading magazines and dailies and witnessing vain consumers on the trendiest streets or the tattered vendors on the most decrepit avenues. I was more alive and aware than I´d ever been, taking in preconceptions and turning them into realities through my own daily blunders.

I was often privy to rush home and write, recounting all of my daily horrors and humours and of course my ever-pressing emotional updates. Yet here I am at home, struggling through situations of health and relationship that I never thought I´d be dealt and I am numb, lacking the drive to write, something that so comforted and excited me just one month prior. Is this a consequence of habit from my prior life at home in Wisconsin or merely complacency that can be traced back to the TV and the current convenience of entertainment? Either way I suppose I´m contradicting myself as I climb my way out of the self-described guilt of routine by writing this very entry.

2006-12-15T19:42:00.000-03:00

What ever happened to San Telmo Tuesdays?

I miss my friends here and I haven’t even left. Why has time slipped away and now I’m struggling to embrace my lovely life here before I leave for Christmas vacation and come back to a new era characterized by a lack of both Philipp and my roommates whom have shaped my existence in these beautifully rocky months?

Further on the nostalgia kick, I can already feel my longing for the little things that run abundant in my life now, similar to how I missed the details of home when I arrived nearly six months ago.

What do I miss already? (And what will I really miss when my holiday hiatus comes?)
Mate (cocido with camilo, and mate mate in the office)
The mustard (it´s the best “common yellow” mustard I´ve set my lips on)
The skim milk (though strange, and somewhat obscure, is quite delicious with a distinctive taste and texture different than that in the States)
The markets and cheap vintage finds
Delivery absolutely everything
The accent, che (and all the boludos that I speak it with)
My Palermo walks
My friends… (the most! And hence came my photographic mini-ode)

To have these realizations before leaving the country is refreshing and I´ve entitled myself to drink as much mate as my stomach can handle and wander the antique markets until I re-injure my once fractured foot (sounds hypochondriac and farfetched, but is already proving true). My subsequent return is not far and spending a month at home will be a dream that passes far too quickly, but yet I worry… will I constantly bother every one describing what I had in Buenos Aires, only to return to BA and miss home again? Being stuck between the misses is actually quite a lucky place to be.

2006-12-15T19:36:00.000-03:00

Delivery culture…

A very apparent difference between Buenos Aires and the States (at least where I lived in the great state of Wisconsin) is the abundance of delivery EVERYTHING. For years I had been yearning for a coffee shop that could deliver to the research lab so that I could quell my caffeine addiction at work without walking the 30 minutes there and back (uphill both ways). Upon arriving here my shock was immeasurable at finding the rarity of a café that does not deliver and that any thing a heart living in the city desires is just a ring a ling away.

Example… to the dismay of a co-worker last week, nobody in the office had aspirin to soothe her headache. She picked up the phone, called the local pharmacy and ordered aspirin, which in turn arrived at our fourth floor door promptly on a silver platter- delivery free of charge obviously.

I, therefore, fully commit to the statement that anything you crave, but don´t want to get off your lazy legs and go out to buy, can be dropped off at your door… ice cream, fresh fruit salad, a coca-cola light, your clean laundry that you recently dropped off at the laudromat, beer and wine after the stores are legally required to stop selling it at night, medicine, band-aids.... oh and the normal things such as sushi, Chinese food, pizza, salads, sandwiches… (or the argentine staples- medialunas, lomitos, milanesa, empanadas, tartas…)

Wait, so do you think that condoms could also be delivered in the heat of the moment? Perhaps that could stop a lot of unexpected and dreaded situations…

Even further, the service industry here is also amazingly low-priced. Beauty services such as body waxing and manicures are dirt cheap and therefore extremely common. I wouldn´t normally be one to head to the salon for a good bikini wax, but when it costs a mere $3.50 compared to a whopping $45 minimum in the States, how can I resist?

To dig a little deeper, the existence of such a lavish lifestyle here in Buenos Aires is a consequence of the widening gap that grew considerably after the economic crises. The middle class has been stretched out strikingly thin, and the difference is not between putting dinner on the table or not, but is rather between heading to the salon for a routine professional hair washing and heading to the streets with a cup in hand.

As a result, more people are willing to DO the bikini waxes, deliver the coffees, and clean the apartments in order to get off the streets, earning what they can in a manner clearly considered significantly better than begging on the crowded corner. Is this cheap labor a benefit of Buenos Aires, or is this what I am here working to change in the realm of social responsibility? Obviously the latter, but the people here embrace the low-cost services with such ease and expectancy that it´s often difficult to look past the comfortable convenience.

2006-11-24T14:50:00.000-03:00

On this fine US holiday, which has dwindled from a massacre-induced commemoration to an awe-inspiring turkey dinner and a time to give grace it appears to be the perfect time for me to give my thanks.

Now that you´re all scared I´m on the verge of melting into a flowery description of my beautiful life here in Argentina and yet how I miss and love everyone at home. Fear not, you´re spared. At least until someone asks me how I feel about Uruguay when I might spontaneously flush out tears of joy, love, and eternal beauty. (perhaps it was my soul recognizing it´s counter point in Montevideo?) basta! enough, I know…

I merely want to use this space to thank everyone who continues to read my blog despite the painstaking emotional trek that it has turned into. What began as an innocent means of communication through which I could convey a bit about my life from afar, quickly took a violent turn for the emotional somewhere in between Mendoza and my natural hormonal tendencies. Thank you for searching through the emotions to find the occasional insight that I may or may not be offering.

Furthermore, I will be heading home for the holidays only to return and continue my life here with more confidence and stability in nearly all areas of my life and self, so hold your breath and expect more grounded blogs in months to come.

… HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

On a separate note since I´m clearly long-winded and therefore couldn´t stop myself after the above paragraphs I also offer up some ongoing racial observations here in Buenos Aires in reference to the quasi-genocidal origins of thanksgiving …

“Most Argentines, if you ask, will tell you: ‘In Argentina there are no black people.’”

After my first weeks in Buenos Aires, I would have concluded the same for the city. Skipping over the obvious European genetic dominance and rampant whiteness of faces on the streets, even more striking is the lack of black people in the city.

The “whitewashing of the Argentine self-image” pushed what remained of the black population into the outskirts of the city, meaning that though it does exist, a person (most likely a foreigner) could conceivably live weeks in various Buenos Aires neighborhoods without crossing a single black person.

Historically, the seemingly small black population here dates back to genocidal state policies that drafted black people into the most perilous positions in the army, sentencing them more or less systematically to death, and quarantined them during the various cholera epidemics. These racist policies worked to diminish the black population, however African blood spread throughout the Argentine population leaving traces in Argentines that today simply prefer to consider themselves white.

So as the black population of Buenos Aires can often appear non-existent, traces of the African blood are common and after delving deeper into the nooks of the city (ie working in the neighborhood Once, in which resides the city´s greatest number of black people) I understand that in recent years the population has been growing due to an increase in immigration. On the other hand though the population fortifies, the socially stratified system here (to which I refer above) continues full force, meaning that discrimination rages and it is more common to see black people selling gold jewelry on the street than holding high-level jobs here in Buenos Aires.

*quotes taken from “Afroargentines” an Argentine documentary released in 2002

2006-11-01T15:27:00.000-03:00

twas the cake, my lains, and the tick that did me

Did it take chocolate cake, my best friend, and a ticket home to remind me of what I have? As I´ve discovered, it´s dismally easy to accustom to surroundings, initial awe and joy dissolving into daily routine, becoming part of the grind. So in true human fashion, thanks to a great deal of stress and weeks of working nonstop, I´d quickly become a head case here in BA, filled to the brim with worry and work and basically the lack of desire to embrace fully my life here. I sadly spent more than a week wasting away, basking in personal pity and self-importance, and above all mistaking my overstated stress for real serious problems.

Upon reading my own recent blog entry about the surprising cake sitch and thereafter receiving an email containing an article about the beauty of Argentina that my bestie had come across, I had to take a step back into reflection upon my life and my self here in Buenos Aires. Apart from needing to aggressively tell my boss no(!) at work and subsequently learn how to handle my bouts of stress, separating the workday from my personal time, I faced an existential crisis, realizing that this is my life and I had not been living it right. Hindsight proves instrumental for articulating regret, but I do not want to wait until I head home for the holidays to grasp what I have here from a distant vantage point. I therefore dared myself to surge into the present and overcome my daily tribulations.

As I commenced to quit basking in the rift between my job stress and nightly mental freedom (inching closer to the latter), I was soon faced with another heavy hit of reality- the arrival of my ticket home for Christmas. I carried the embodiment of my familial visit back to my apartment and was subsequently greeted with a hard, yet much appreciated reaction from my roommate. Juan frankly reminded me that we have little more than one month left living together the four of us in our apartment before our lives hurry us away from one another. Verging on tears, we discussed all that we have yet to do and I re-faced my reality, which transformed into a clear necessity… life, fuller, now.

It was not me and my constant self-analysis that brought on the change, but rather twas the cake, my lains, and the ticket that did me in, urging me to realize what I have here. In honor and gratitude I´ll be posting a bitty photo ode to Argentina and all the beauty I´m lucky to feel at my fingertips.

2006-10-27T13:55:00.000-03:00

Eating my torta too

Last night I ate the cake of my life outside of the club at 5am. (me ending my night and the argentine adolescents just beginning, as per norm, since the late late night culture commencing to club at 4am does not agree with my lifelong conditioning of bars closing at 2am)

∞ The sweet girls gently laughed, alerting me that I accidentally eaten the spoon. Yet I dug deeper with all fingers eagerly eating the scrumptious chocolate with creamy dreamy dulce de leche center. Happy birthday to the newly 23-year old argentina to whom the cake was gifted. And happy night to me for renewing my faith in the open kindness of the people here

∞ I thought to myself that these girls were the beautiful, hipster argentines I would normally assume to be closed to random acts of kindness to a stranger, yet they more than encouraged me to share their celebratory tort. With no reason other than benevolence for their friendly offer, we laughed and chatted and suckled the delectable chocolate until they were bustled into the club, and hurriedly urged me to grab more cake for the road.
Confusion hit as I pounded the pavement in search of a taxi, trying to avoid my own quick judgments and objectionable attitude yet understanding that the niceness took me by surprise.

In the past months I often found myself pondering the general “coldness” of the Buenos Aires folk, wondering if indeed the people living in the city use their European descent as an excuse for a more closed manner of living than other Latinos. I, however, do like the people here and I have been presumptuous in passing many off as often non-latino and therefore not as warm and open. I´ve submitted the city to harsh comparisons due to my recent travels in Colombia, meeting a plethora of other latinos who all happened to be the nicest and most affectionate in the land. I treasured my time in Colombia and longed for a life in Latino America, yet I begin to think that deep down I may belong more here in Buenos Aires than I do in the other countries of the region. I´ve submitted Buenos Aires to deep scrutiny in regards to the rest of Argentina and the rest of Latin America, since here the people are not Moreno nor as warm and energetic, but the truth is that neither am I. I´ve been described as passionate and possessing a deep energy, but this does not translate into a highly energetic person as I am also pensive and serene. So this eclectic city fits my eclectic self and though I do not carry this realization with me at all times, I most likely will after leaving for a bit. Always looking ahead to the future (inescapable human nature), dreaming of Brazil, Costa Rica, and Panama, also pondering my return to Mexico, I know that I am neither beachy enough (Wisconsin upbringing and inherent love of snow and the seasons to blame) nor negra enough to last too long in these countries. Here I am to stay and only need to work on my own problem of realizing what I have whilst I have it and not afterwards.

So after such a strict comparison between countries sharing a general region, yet not geographical proximity, history, nor heritage, I realize that porteños are indeed exquisitely complicated, with varying degrees of warmth and niceness that cannot be so quickly generalized.

Yes, the people here in Buenos Aires are a bit cheto, a bit artsy, cold, warm, a tad ahead, behind, latino, euro, and a whole mix of confusing inconsistencies. My style and I find them just nice and open enough for my tastes, however, at the moment so closed and cold, just don´t let me say it again.

To each culture (or city or country) its own and to here, in this unique mix of bloods, I´m finding that I don´t know it all and I really shouldn´t open my big mouth when my thoughts aren´t deeply or properly rooted. My reward right now is a pleasant reaffirmation of why I love this city of contradictions and surprises that constantly proves me wrong, pushing my own thoughts, perceptions, and realities.

I clearly need these sweet cake reminders that I best not make such swift generalizations, as I truly don´t interact enough of society to say.

2006-10-20T18:25:00.000-03:00

Hiatus over

I´m posting my words from during the mac-less weeks. They´re as recent as it´s gonna get for now since my life has taken a turn for the busy and as far as we´re all concerned these events occurred yesterday and the feelings continue today.

Life is constant emotional chaos in such a good way since I clearly cannot escape myself even here in BA, BA my boo. I know that I´m content and then I take another step and understand that I am not. Like I say, I am still myself even here. I live for tomorrow with the anguish inherent in the inability to live only for today. And so I worry unnecessarily, basking in the space between understanding that my preoccupations are minor and yet not being able to break free from them. I love my life here and I also long for more, looking ahead as always. It has become clear that some personality traits are inescapable and I therefore simply chalk mine up to genetics, and then go ahead and change the title of my blog. (For “Tristeliz” I must give thanks to dear Devendra for coining this term, which merely combines ·sad· and ·happy· (sadappy if you will?) into one eloquently fitting descriptor that embodies the constant assortment of emotions that form me, the basket case of insightful confusion.

I question my present and past thoughts and opinions of Argentines (and Argentina???). I´ve discovered tangible creativity and splendor in the fashion here and admire the style of my argentine girlfriends more than they know. Sameness for some, crazy beauty for others. I attended a modern dance show that blew my creative mind. I could not even begin to understand where our choreographer began creating such abstraction and ingenuity. Since I´ve seen my fair share, also dancing the majority of my two-legged life, that´s a compliment and a raw observation. I have been blessed with meeting some of the most interesting people of my life, listening in pure rapture to their memories of hitchhiking across South America or traveling Africa by foot, discussing values and ideals and realities. Moreover and summarily, the argentines have thrown my judgments off the deep end turning me both gladly bemused and definitively inspired.

2006-09-21T15:04:00.000-03:00

cuts and claims, or justifications

And now for another entry addendum, however one that just gently brushes the surface. I have begun to take it as a truism that you can spot an argentine (or a foreigner for that matter) by hair length here in BA. There are absolutely no girls with boy-cuts and furthermore I venture that there are only about 14 argentinas with mid-length cuts in this city of over 4 and a half million inhabitants. Hair is worn long, unbelievably long for someone from the Midwest of the U.S., and if you don´t have this long hair, you must be foreign unless crazy. Bangs are common, mullets are the word, highlights are often seen, waves, curls, straight locks exist, but the truth is that every girl indeed has hair down to there. This for me was another facet of commonality between the argentine beauties. I love the long hair, for me it is mysterious and a goal to be achieved, because as I just alluded, where I come from it is neither common nor easy to grown hair so long. Yet here it is customary, as every girl has this dramatically endless hair. I critique the culture of sameness, yet I find myself gazing gleefully at my own growing do… yes, I must admit, my hair is growing and I dare not cut it. And, further, if I even chance to say it… my own hair has been branded a mullet no fewer than two times of late. Am I a sheep in my new habitat right now? Or if I managed to bring my Cons over from the states, am I another link to be lost in the crowd here? I fear not, yet further I claim not, because for me the style is yet novel, foreign, picturesque, and I am merely allowing myself an aspect in which I assert roman because I am in rome.

2006-09-21T14:31:00.000-03:00

correction, clarification, continuation...

Why did I compare Buenos Aires with New York City? Faced with this question from my close French friend yesterday, I was left speechless, wondering why I had been comparing two cities that are so unbelievably different? I suppose it is highly personal since these were the two cities in which I had always wanted to reside. Yet my own inner motives were confirmed as I recently happened upon some outside commentary describing the two as the best cities in the world (of course another severely subjective opinion). However it only aided to progress my own ongoing analysis of the two. Upon reflection I see that my dear friend was right that they are not comparable and I now wonder just how ego-centric I was to even trot down this road of mistaken comparison. Why not compare Beijing and Buenos Aires? Or the more commonly attempted relation of Paris and BA? Well quite frankly the answer is short and simple. I cannot compare those to which I have not been. So in terms of big cities I face limitation (yet while on the topic why did I not compare with Madrid? Or London?)

Perhaps I was merely relating the feelings that were stirred inside of me in both places, in two places that pushed me to my own existential limits. I was passionate and inspired when I lived in New York. The city lit something inside of me that the diversity fomented. Now Buenos Aires has uprooted feelings of deep emotional intensity and personal awareness, feelings that have grown much stronger than those of the past maybe because I am older, farther away, without a return ticket or a return plan. Here it is the culture that augments my passion and my thoughts. I am faced with cultural differences (perhaps even shock as I carefully admit with reluctance) every step of the way and I can only offer the explanation in regards to my former post that it is human to compare personal experiences. I therefore took BA and attempted to paste and integrate it into the New York page in my internal album. I want to say that I can compare apples and oranges in this fashion with a degree of success, but it does not mean that it is necessarily correct nor common. And thanks to my friends and outside insight (keep it coming) I can perhaps even try apples with apples. Or just continue with the oranges and hope that my intuition is at one moment understandable.

2006-09-14T15:37:00.000-03:00

We can´t compare big apples, but in both the arts are high

I live in the city where the women are often said to be the most beautiful in the world. And I want to enthusiastically add my certainty that the men can also be categorized as such. Yet I am forced to analyze my surprise at the type of beauty that runs rampant here, since it is one for the masses. Porteños possess a special grace and style, yet it lacks the imagination and innovation that I associate with big, cosmopolitan cities. For instance the hipster look is overtly popular here, young porteños putting forth much effort to dress alternatively, with a look embodied in Converse sneakers and Levi´s (pronounced levee´s, since we are in argentina, of course). So in true BA contradiction, the desired result is to appear alternative, commonly meaning outside of the norm, yet the outcome takes shape through conformity. Is it that in order to be alternative in BA you have to consign to this look and if you don’t have the Cons, you´re simply something else?

Conformity is common and key in BA, whether a person is aiming to look alternative or just plain fashionable. I arrived idolizing these good´looking people, oogling argentines with awe at their shared beauty and style, and now after time and analysis, I healthily admire them with an eager curiosity for understanding why conformity rules the land. I find that everyone shares the same fashion sense and to be outside of this sense is to be nearly outside of beauty as defined here. I have a hard time signing onto this way of thinking, and therefore find myself stuck pondering why uniformity is the norm, or why there are norms at all in a city so sought-after, artsy, alive.

I´ve known all along that Buenos Aires, the big apple of SA, is truly one of the best cities in the world, with high fashion, beauty, culture, everything a big city offers, and so I find myself subjected to constant subconscious comparison with my analogous love of the big apple up north.

In NYC diversity is the word, characterizing the city, with people of every race and color stomping rhythmically down the crowded avenues. Fashion screams diversity through any and all statements ranging from runway to repulsive to cutting-edge to… imagination simply runs wild in every corner in NYC and to be normal is to be out of the norm, because there are no norms, and the mere word normal is a non-existent descriptor. The people can be generalized as beautiful due to utter variety and outrageousness, in a style very contrary to the classic beauty of Buenos Aires. This latter type, beauty owed to the criollo blood, proves stunning, yet is nearly incomparable with the unique aesthetic available in New York. Despite the undeniable presence of many foreigners and travelers in BA, there exists a definite lack of diversity, as the abundance of latinos (more often with, but also many without European descent) characterizes the population. It is definitely difficult to spot an African or Asian when flitting around town. Does this lack of diversity lead to a lack of innovation and individuality, and create a trend of uniformity? Is the conformity a result of historical events as well, and is therefore ingrained deeply into the culture?

There exists no definition of beauty as it is subject to observation, I however, recognize that Argentines are indeed contenders for most beautiful in the world in a classic sense of the word. Yet for those that crave a bit more of the outrageous, the rock me shock me, striking, look on, because beauty here does not submit to such notions. Take note that I am discussing beauty, the aesthetic of the persona, and I ponder that though porteños may dress and appear alike, they may just be leaving the outrageous for the rest. More specifically I refer to the ever-popular studies of cine, art, photography, design, and architecture, which fully utilize creativity and originality. These studies are rampant here in Buenos Aires and it is impossible to enter a social situation without meeting one or more who study the aforementioned areas. There is an abundance of the arts here, lending to much creativity and imagination. Appearances aside, the culture here is high and thus many porteños and foreigners study arts here for good reason.

2006-09-06T14:42:00.000-03:00

Angela´s return

Angela (our good friend from Montreal) just changed her flight, deciding to remain in Buenos Aires instead of heading home to ¨start her life¨ in Canada. What happened and will it happen to the rest of us?

The two months that Angela spent here were to culminate with a weeklong trip to Rio, yet ended up as two weeks in Rio and a return flight to Buenos Aires. As she unexpectedly met us for brunch (for Ølsen´s brunch, nonetheless… keep posted for an entry on this weekly orgasmic experience) she gleefully reported that after watching the movie Click (try not to lose yourself in confusion as it truly was an Adam Sandler movie to which she owed her decision) she received a huge shock, realizing she was not ready to return to Canada and the gargantuan shopping arenas. So she granted herself two more months in Buenos Aires to seek out a job and attempt a more permanent move here. What happened inside our friend to make her change her structured plans so drastically, especially when she has a boyfriend waiting for her in Montreal? Had she already started her life here the minute she arrived in Buenos Aires without realizing it? Was it not the actual shock of viewing mass consumerism in the first world, but an ongoing change that had been occurring since she arrived? Is this happening to me as well?

During a late-night talk on Saturday, my roommate chanced upon asking me how I truly feel here right now. The answer was clear to me that I am content, very content, perhaps content to the point of stirring up apprehension. I am finally fully accustomed to my life here and I realize that it is, indeed, here in Buenos Aires where my life exists. My friends and I have graduated, transporting to new phases, new lives, and now maintain relationships characterized by distance.

Furthermore, my time in my parent´s house ended years ago and therefore my life is truly here right now and if I were to leave, I would begin again in another locale as there are no pieces to pick up from my former chapter. So here I live and here I love to live. Will I want to leave in a year? If I do, will it be a border-jump to Brazil and not the lengthy journey through millions of kilometers and gads of culture change back up north to my homeland? The decision is clear right now after only two months, but I clearly cannot determine the events, thoughts, and changes that will come in the next ten. This uncertainty is beautiful, yet certainly daunting.

Above all, am I changing or am I just realizing who I am without the distractions of the path-dependent life that I´ve always led? What happens when people move abroad for six months, a year, are speaking a new language and have left behind friends and boy/girlfriends? Are the personal changes incurred for us irreparable or are lives often easily resumed to continue at least somewhat fluidly? What does it take to return home to continue relationships and past regularity? When does regularity become irregular and unwanted? Why is it possible for some to maintain self and feelings through millions of miles and not for others?

Will I return home happily in a year or two years or will I be inevitably torn between past and present? I suppose I may have already decided and I just have yet to find out. Angela appears entirely confident in her decision to ditch Canada and return here to live in BA for the mean time, and I also trust that my decisions will be entirely apparent when my time comes.

2006-09-01T13:25:00.000-03:00

Cheta alternativa. Che! ¿qué qué? The other night two new acquaintances pondered whether or not I was a ´cheta alternativa´ as I was reminiscent of a past French girlfriend of theirs. To clarify, this phrase basically boils down to a snobby alterna-type. Needless to say I argued against this point claiming to be so very nice, amongst other sweet little self-descriptors. Yet how subjective is personality, or the perception of a person, since I clearly could not decide how others viewed or categorized me?

How do we define ourselves? Is it by what we have done, what we like to do? Or is it by whom we hang out with? Do we create ourselves, molding our look and lives into a perfect vision of whom we want to be, or does it just happen naturally?

Ask me to give the run down on myself and I say fine, but instead just read my damn blog profile, pass your quick judgments, and call it a day whilst I may or may not struggle to defend my true self. However, what happens when you take all these listed activities and things away? I spent my life dancing ballet, snowboarding, making art, and reading. Yet now I cannot dance ballet and I cannot snowboard, so what am I left with, the clothes that I wear and the words that I speak? I like art, reading, writing, coffee, and reggae- great fine and dandy but are these things really relevant to who I am? So where is the line between what we do and who we are? Why are definitions so prevalent in daily life? Am I a ballerina or was I? Am I a snowboarder or was I? Am I an artist? Wow here´s the true pandora´s box between what really constitutes an artist for gaining access into the loop? Is it silly to have to defend ourselves in self-description?

I work for the environment (through improving business) and I prefer to eat organic food, focusing on the veggies and leaving the meat, wanted to be a rastaman from the ripe age of 8, and I adore the ´70s, but as of yet, no one has called me a hippie (to my face!). Is it because I also love high fashion and can´t cut my shopping addiction and preoccupation with the aesthetically pleasing? What´s in a name and why is it so comfortable to categorize people? Isn´t it more fun to be the odd couple rather than walk down the street with your cookie-cutter partner?

Here in BA I have begun anew and can, therefore, focus on being me without the tired distractions of categories that were strung along behind me at home. I do not need to define myself, I merely need to live honestly, doing exactly what I want. In this respect I have found the true beauty of being a foreigner and do not yet carry the previous desire to fit in flawlessly here. If I am also recognized as foreign, so be it, because I am happy to be living the exact life I wanted with only all the time in the world to be me me me undefined. Cheta alternativa or not.

2006-08-29T14:47:00.000-03:00

One is gold and the other´s gold

How do we really make friends? Do we recognize a part of ourselves in someone else or is it the counterpart? Do we befriend those that possess a portion of what we aspire to be? Is it much simpler than this and we simply spend time with those that make us laugh or feel comfortable? And do these feelings result from something much deeper and more complex that is difficult to pinpoint; is it our energy that naturally magnetizes us, a subconscious effect of the universe that brings friendship into existence between souls?

In order to really complicate matters of friendship, move abroad, leaving the friends who´ve been your flesh for years, with the hopes of making new ones in your foreign endeavor. Ok, check. Now surround yourself with only those who do not share your native tongue. Check check. Then meet a shipload of people from all over the world and see which friends become your best and attempt to determine why. I know why I love and appreciate each one of my friends here in Buenos Aires, but if you ask me how the friendship evolved and came to be what it presently is, I can only offer a few situational stories and anecdotes and then leave the rest up to my belief in the energy that is greater than words and actions, and therefore, lies outside of our direct understanding.

This reflection follows a long Saturday night out in Buenos Aires, locked out of my apartment at 7 a.m., with frustration a kilometer high (well as high as it gets in BA, which is miniscule since I´ve learned to relax Latino-style after leaving the US). I was completely alone in the streets except for the friends in my phone. I messaged Trygve (I don´t have the luxury of making expensive calls from my cell whenever I want here) and immediately received the warm and welcoming response that I should, of course, come over. So within minutes I´m cuddling in for a good night´s sleep in Trygve and Philip´s apartment, only to awake to cereal, coffee, and comfort. Then about 8 hours later after a delightful day spent reading the three of us together in the sunny Palermo patio, we moseyed over to my apartment in attempts of figuring out my lock. The whole frustrating process, which involved bothering the ghost-man next door and his whole family (including the oversized horse dog that belongs in a field, probably the plains of Patagonia, not a city apartment) took at least two hours. Yet my friends stayed willingly, without complaint and afterwards the three of us ended the whole drawn out fiasco with movie night. I personally culminate the madness here with my contemplation. (Sidenote- madness, lunacy, ridiculosity all function as descriptors for the weekend since the ghost-neighbor ´n co. stated that they heard someone changing the locks to my apartment at midnight, confirming that I had indeed been kicked out of my apartment and was promptly homeless. Yet after a good 24 hours spent MIA and unreachable by phone, my roommates finally returned home with open beer in hand and opened the door with ease.)

Without my friends, the situation could have turned into a classic scene of a lonely lady wandering through the city streets in frustration. Yet instead it turned into a comical day and night enjoyably passed between friends. Nothing has changed and at the same time my realizations are pivotal. I understand that my friendships in the states have become a true part of me; my being, my essence, my story, and therefore, will never cease. Yet, my homesickness has subsided with the growth of my new friendships here and for these friends I am both grateful and exultant. Above all, the ponderings over why we are friends matter not, as the story I´m sure is often the same, foreigners finding their counterparts with whom they can truly tear their new city apart, delighting in the purity of novel experiences.

2006-08-19T15:01:00.001-03:00

Human nature

NarratingBsAsUnderneath

Living in Buenos Aires for 7 weeks I´ve discovered that the most amazing part is the passion that they city stirs within me.

Each day I fall deeper and deeper for the city with or without realizing it. Through the extreme ups and the constant downs, my love grows. Everyone reading this must know how excited I was to move here for the past year, but nobody can completely understand how wrong I was. All of my preconceptions and expectations crashed when I arrived and have deteriorated entirely as I´ve realized that this is not the city I had wanted at all. It is indescribably and intensely personal what the energy of Buenos Aires does for me and I have been driven to the brink of insanity by my own realizations regarding myself and my own place. I never expected to feel so much for Buenos Aires, despite my overwhelming excitement to move here. And so I post this article which hit a deep note with this quote...

¨My love for Buenos Aires only grows stronger each time I leave. It haunts me, lies under the surface of me, a scent I can never escape, one that burns deep within the fabric of my soul.¨

...and which also spurred my interest in the rampant gay scene of the city and the history of gay tango, which is an integral part of the energy and life of Buenos Aires. My appreciation seems boundless for this city with this intriguing history of social and political exclusion and the subsequent acceptance of homosexual lifestyle and culture that was born. It merely adds to the wonder of the high art and culture here found both openly and in the hidden nooks that I so appreciate.

2006-08-18T11:10:00.002-03:00

Happy Planet Map

According to the Happy Planet Index, Colombia is the second happiest country in the world. Need I add another reason to my bank of explanations for why the country is incredible? Yet, I also suppose that it must be true that you can take the Colombians out of Colombia, but you can´t take the Colombia out of Colombians (or the proven happiness for that matter), because my roommates here in Buenos Aires are perfect happiness ambassadors. I´m living with three Colombian guys in my Palermo apartment in Baires and despite the fact that they´ve lived here for between 1 and 3 years, they have maintained their energy, good'natured manner, and warmth. The apartment is like a bubble of intense fun inside a city of often times distant people, so my question is how long can people retain their roots as a foreigner? and how did I get so lucky to live in this delightful apartment here?

Oh and the rest of the happy countries all seem to fall in the Carribbean region... I guess bitter cold winter really IS a downer like my mother and Laina always tell me! I stand my ground as a life-long snow-lover!

2006-08-16T16:22:00.000-03:00

News not just news

After hearing the news about the prevented attacks in Heathrow airport (a bit tardily I might add as I was traveling in Mendoza for the week) I cannot help but feel defensive. These attacks have hit me very personally as my sister has had an open option to move to London for the past months and so traveling in between the US and England is a very real situation for myself and my family. Yet further, as I´ve officially been living in Argentina for six weeks (as of today!) I´ve had exactly six weeks to ponder my American heritage. Every day I am confronted with a situation that blatantly reminds me that I am norteamericano, which for many people is comparable to being an alien or W. himself. Needless to say, I´ve been having an internal crisis about who I am as an American abroad and I´m quite comfortable with my conclusions right now.

For me the American dream is not the same for everyone. It is not the big suburban Desperate Housewives-house with endless money growing on the big Oaks outside on the lawn. The American dream is more abstract in that it instills the ability to craft a life of your choice, which more simply is the option to imagine exactly what you want out of life and to go for it. So the American dream can involve making an aspect of the world better and believing that you will achieve it. Or it could simply be to take pictures for all of your life and to have the option to comfortably support yourself doing so. The American dream is beautiful because it merely lends confidence to people seeking their own distinct happiness, whatever form that may take.

Yet the American dream is perceived as the devil that wants the money, that wears Prada, that lives in the house that could feed half of the Sudan if sold on the market. This deviant dream that totes the market as a way to push down developing countries and demote world religion is perceived in a light that I don´t have the energy to see anymore. Sure it is true of some Americans, but not all Americans should live in fear that a shampoo bottle on board a flight will kill their only sister. I feel personally attacked and very much helpless in light of the recent findings in Heathrow and can´t help but wonder if all of life is luck, because if not a shampoo bottle than surely something else. When is the next 9-11 for us? When will the administration up and change, giving actual hope to Americans that we won´t remain the international rogues for years to come? And finally when can I express to Argentina (or any country) how proud I am to be American without having to give a detailed oral report regarding why this can be a positive attribute?

For now I continue to give my mini speeches about what it means to be an American with an open mind and a big heart in a foreign country where it can be assumed that estadounidense carries with it a big bad stereotype, but I look forward to the day when I can simply be American and be proud without the explanation.

2006-06-25T22:57:00.000-03:00

Cultural Creatives

Cultural Creatives

After a weekend spent camping with the utmost best friends in the craziest manner possible, I am caught reverting back to my faith in cultural creatives. The weekend festivities included nothing less than the normal weirdness that my LaCrosse posse (and the few that dared accompany) exerts. Yet I cannot shake the lingering questions running through my head about being weird and the existence of social norms. What is "weird" other than a subjective observation than the plain bagel within a person forms? When with our friends, what are the norms and do we need them? They clearly differ between friends and therefore cause us to worry when we bring others into the group. This sounds very much like a clique, but on a greater scale of group behavior between cultures and countries, judgment is quickly passed when expected norms are broken. Yet even further, what about when norms are broken willingly, without apology, and with much enjoyment?

Other than for issues of respect and protection, why do we need norms in a society or in a group? Does the world need more "cultural creatives" (see link above) to break norms in a larger sense in order to create a better world? What is "weird" when it is you yourself? Should we embrace a good "shock and awe" if we are not hurting anyone? and furthermore, do more people need to be occasionally offended in order to grow and truly understand who they are themselves?

These ponderings ramble on this page as they ramble in my head, but if I am to make any change in this cookie cutter world of often socially and environmentally damaging norms I may rightly justify embracing my own weirdness with my friends and allowing it to bleed into the bigger picture. Puppet shows, human contact with bats in bad places, and lesbian crossing guard theatre can be creatively transferred into energy towards increasing corporate responsibility if you really want the gory truth of my mental wanderings.

As I face my nearing departure I worry about this important and undeniable characteristic of mine because I do not ever want to truly offend in the typical cultural clash. My nerves cannot slow as I face the path of respectfully shaking people up.

2006-06-06T23:22:00.000-03:00

No problems staying foolish

Here it is. I was going to avoid writing a "first post" altogether and stick to posting pictures and experiences once I've actually moved, but I feel the pressure to perform in this birthday of my blog, so here it is.

If there has been one statement to describe the past year of my life it is this by Thoreau, "Not until we are truly lost do we begin to understand ourselves." I've been lost and the prospect of moving to Buenos Aires after graduation has quelled my anxiety in recent months. Yet now that I have secured the earthly version of my dream job and have been working out the details of my upcoming July move, the only sure thing is my own uncertainty. After redirecting my anxiety onto others by manically sending out "urgent" emails, and obsessing to anyone that will listen, it has become clear that no matter how perfectly things are falling into place, I am suffering typical post-college graduation crisis. My emotional foolishness is rooted in the simple scenario that I stay sane through traveling, yet traveling (and consequent moving plans) is causing my instability and, well, lameness to be quite frank. So here it is, the advice that I've been successfully living lately, from a commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios that he gave to Stanford on June 12, 2005. (Can you blame me for having commencement on the brain?)

"Stay hungry. Stay foolish."

I've certainly been working on accomplishing this through my desire for constant travel and the subsequent misfortunes that have occurred. (To name two recent examples- Chapala, Mexico and a grave online misunderstanding of the Argentine peso exchange rate that would determine my upcoming life budget.) Yet the ability to realize your own ridiculosity is a precious commodity...