Esplendor y Miseria del Buenos Aires

Journal Entry: Sunday, July 13, 2008

I have made a choice, dawning on me only now, to move my life, my heart, my world, to another place than the place I have lived for most of my adult life. Here now, the preparations finally over, the journey in the past, I am surprised at my surprise.

Sometime last summer, a day I don’t remember, walking across a bridge in Italy probably, I decided that my time in San Diego was done. I felt a pull to experience something new. A new language, a new culture, a new life. Maybe a new opportunity. In my mind on that day I gave up the idea of “settling” anywhere. I gave up too the idea of having a partner in my life for a time. I had come to understand that the culture gap between me and the men I would meet here was too big and would remain so for some time. I imagined that no one in San Diego would be able or willing to go with me, that there wasn’t time for that. In spite of that, less than a year later, I sit here in a small apartment in Buenos Aires with a man who knows more of my heart than any being on Earth has ever known.

I moved to San Diego 23 years ago, only 21 years old, alone, with a small child. I knew no one. I had no money. I had no job, no house, no prospects.

I don’t remember being scared.

In the years since I have raised a son, married and divorced, married again, buried a husband, built and sold businesses and homes, built a life and a community there. I know where to buy shoes. I know how to find my way home from anywhere in the city. My mother moved there for a time, and my sister. My son lives there still, with his girlfriend, in an apartment I still own. My money still lives there. My friends still live there. I wonder if there will come a day, someday, a long time from now, when nothing connected to me in any meaningful way lives there any longer. I know, I am certain, that I will never live there again.

The place I live now, have lived for all of 7 days, is a place where other than the man on the sofa, nothing connected to me in any meaningful way lives yet. My things are stuck in a cargo container at the port, held by customs because my visa is not clear yet. I don’t own a home. I don’t own a business. I don’t have any friends. I don’t know where to go to buy shoes. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I pass shoe stores on the street every day. I could stop and buy a pair of shoes in any of them. What I don’t know is where to go to buy the kinds of shoes I like at reasonable prices from a sales staff I can relate to. I can’t easily find my way from anywhere in this city, not without a map, or a taxi.

I’m scared this time.

There will be moments of Splendor, joy and celebration, in my discovery of this city and my creation of a life and a community here. There will also be, have been, moments of Misery, fear and aggravation. In this, my first year here in Buenos Aires, I will chronicle these moments. I will put them here where I can look back and remember them. Years from now when this time is only a memory I will look back at the things I chronicled in wonderment, laughing and crying at my vision of the edge I walked on during this year. I will say this, I have rarely felt so alive. The title of my journal comes from a headline in the first newspaper we bought here, an article about the vice presidency in La Nacion. Esplendor y miseria del Vice was the headline. Interesting to notice that the Vice President has his struggles in every country. I tore the word “Vice” off the headline and pasted the rest of it, along with the date and the name of the news paper, into my journal. I loved the sound of the words. Esplendor. Miseria. I said them to myself over and over again. Esplendor. Miseria. They both touched me in ways that already seem meaningful and I have only just begun to get my feet on the ground.

A foot note:
Since this journal entry a major political struggle for Argentina has been decided by the swing vote of the Vice President. He went against the President, voted against her, decided the measure against her, on his own. I like that this story is somehow connected to mine. I am going to be watching this guy. He's a shit disturber.

I speak Spanish. At least, I thought I did, until I decided to move to a Spanish speaking country. Then I realized I had been going around for years making do with my housekeepers and my handymen because they were patient with me and the things we needed to discuss were simple. They were really patient with me. They needed the money. I needed the work done. I don’t speak Spanish well. I make do. That won’t do here. Jimmy (the guy on the sofa) and I have been studying, since we arrived. We didn’t study before we got here. We were busy getting here. My Spanish, which has been learned over 23 years in Southern California, from friends, family, co-workers and employees, is coming in strong. Still, there will be a learning curve. Large amounts of what is said to me I miss. The accent here is different from the Mexican accent I learned in. The people use words and rhythm differently, cadence, facial expression, hand movements, everything is different. It’s, a different culture. That is what I wanted, it is what makes it gorgeous and fun and exciting. It is also exhausting. Listening so hard is exhausting. Trying so hard to hear and understand, to be heard and understood. Jimmy, speaks hardly any at all. In only a week he is picking up speed and in a year threatens to be far beyond me. Right now he must be utterly drained.

There is a disconnect here between me and the people native to my new home. They are warm and friendly, mostly, but I am not one of them and we all know it. We know it because I don’t understand what they say, no matter how hard I try. We know it because I don’t understand how they do business. We know it because, well, because I don’t know where to buy shoes. Last night, emotional, exhausted and anxious about the visa and customs and my stuff, I sat on the floor by the sliding glass window and, palm on the glass, looked across the street at the restaurant where large tables of people were eating, laughing, drinking, talking loudly (really loudly) and I cried. I cried for my friends in San Diego. I cried for my son. I cried for my quiet comfortable condo across the street from good, fresh sushi and a convenient grocery store filled with familiar food. I cried for my yoga studio. I cried for people who speak the same language I do and for Nordstrom, my favorite shoe store of all time, which they don’t have here. I wondered if I had done something I would regret always. I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake. I wondered if I would ever be comfortable enough here, accepted enough, to sit across the street at that restaurant until 1 in the morning laughing and talking and drinking with my friends. I wondered if I should go home.

Jimmy brought me upstairs gently and put me to bed. We fell asleep watching The Point on his computer. It’s a movie about a little boy who lives in the pointed village but was born without a point so is different from everyone else. He goes on a great adventure only to discover that everyone and everything has a point, even if you can’t see it. He is transformed by this adventure and his understanding of it. Hmmm...