Your name is so regal

Buenos Aires is not an easy city. The name is confusing, false, a denial: "good air" supposes friendships and sweet rides, easy rides. As they say 'no hay aca': not here, there isn't.

But it is not a hard city either. Tonnes of drunks, transvestites, prostitutes, hostelers, backpackers, journalists, police, cabbies, art-deco mansions, clubs playing Oasis, nexus, plexus, rich ones, poor ones . . . spirals, stone, tall buildings, all of it. And so on. Is it really 7:48 a.m.? Is it really Thursday! Of course, of course it is. Two days ago I watched the sun come up, as I have several times this trip, with a few odd travelers, and I thought that this, this was something: "no one sees these things, no sees the city so naked, not like this..."

But today I saw the same sun come up - this time it looked more Tang and neon - today, and realized that maybe these nights aren't so special. Half the city sees this sun... but I can't decide if this is something to write home about or not. My roommates and I watched a man water the drive as the sun came up, through the rust and green paint terrace, we watched him three stories up, the sun reflecting off the puddles.

But who cares?

Anyway: no one sees the city so naked, not even us.

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Spanish lessons and Tango. Living here in the Palermo Soho, Edificio de Burges y Armenia. A small maids room with a trundle bed and a private shower - where I sleep and make the bed each morning. So far the drill is wake up make coffee and read, then chess or read in the Parque Japonesa down the street. I am getting better at chess - play aggressive! like life! - and worse at reading: Miller is coming slowly, anxiously to an end.Let me just say, that if you pick up any of his books, you must give it time. . . the moments he paints are like amber trapped mosquitos: precious icons of time gone and beauty past, all of that.. etc etc... He makes art out of the pure human, (whats that word?) moment... What is that word....? The word starts with an "H". (Means takes joy from fruits and love, makes gods out of pleasure...what is that word???)

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Sorry for all the stream of consciousness. I am tired and it is 7:57 a.m. I want to assure you that this is a perfectly respectable bed time for anyone here in the city of easy air, of beautiful air... and plus, there's a holiday tomorrow to commemorate the soldiers who died for the Falkland Isles. No one works tomorrow, except for: the taxi drivers, the waiter (mozos), the waitresses (mozas), the cell phone companies, the McDonalds, the lawyers, the tax men, the government, the police, the kiosko men, the carniceria men, the carniceria women (if there are any), the dude who makes emapanadas two blocks up Borges (God hope so), and finally, me. I work tomorrow. Must sleep.

Buenos.

Txo



ps: the word I couldn't remember was: HEDONISTIC.