South, and then North again...

November 23rd

In May Jimmy and I left our home near the Pacific ocean and began a journey toward a life far from the sea. In the months since, on the road and here in Buenos Aires, there has been much we’ve missed. We both miss having a home with a place to put our things and to settle in to. We miss most of our things which still live in storage as our apartment here nears completion. We miss our friends the most. We miss the ease with which we knew how to get things done in San Diego, a town familiar to both of us. This week we got to spend some time with one of the things we have missed a great deal, the ocean.

Our friend Gabriel allowed us to use his family’s beach place. We were very grateful as we otherwise couldn’t have gotten away at this time and the quiet outside the city was a gift to both of our souls. Gabriel and his family have a small vacation apartment in a town five hours south called San Bernardo and it’s most compelling feature is being a block from the Atlantic ocean. Gabriel met us at the bus station, having spent a few days there himself before us. He got us settled in and then headed back to the city to begin his work week. We stayed for three nights and did mostly nothing but soak up the silence and enjoy the time to be at rest. And we walked on the beach.




San Bernardo is a small beach town that lives for January and February, the summer vacation months in Argentina. Most of the year it is almost deserted, it’s occupants on hold for the two months when their entire annual income is created. It is not easy for a town to make do on two months a year, even two really good months. Most of the town is in a state of disrepair and it seems a place that can’t quite keep up with the cruelty of nature and time. Buildings are crumbling, some that were never finished to begin with. It is obvious that some of the buildings we saw were in progress when the economic crash hit Argentina in 2000 and maybe some got frozen in time, half completed, in other crashes years before that. Never finished these buildings slowly succumb to wind and rain, sun and vandalism and plain old gravity. Other places such as the place we stayed, have sustained damage from poor construction or years of neglect. The walls, floors and ceilings are warped from water damage no one has money to repair. The furniture is falling apart. The windows are cracked but wont be replaced until they actually break. Old broken things fill every space as if it is better to have a lamp that hasn’t worked in years than to have no lamp at all.



It is still cold in San Bernardo now, further south than Buenos Aires the sea winds are strong and they bite a little. As we walked the windy streets snuggled in fleece we found few people. The locals are there, as always and they are busy, gearing up for the season. The few other visitors in town seemed to be owners of vacation rentals coming before the season to spend some time in their places and make sure everything is ready for the first renters. There is no on going care of most places during the year so the owners come in, pay the taxes and other bills, fire the property managers (who’ve clearly been remiss), clean things up a bit and spend some time on the beach. Restaurants are starting to open but without their full menus available. Often the fresher choices and the varieties of things that tourists expect were not there yet. Not enough people yet, we were told, in a couple of weeks they’ll have those things.

There was a feeling that the town was holding it’s collective breath and bracing for the two month storm that will blow through leaving money and disarray in it’s loud and vibrant wake. We heard more than once that during January and February you can scarcely walk down the sidewalks or find a seat in a restaurant for the mobs who roll into town. Prices are higher too then and the service, nothing to write home about in Argentina anyway, goes south.

Not all the buildings in San Bernardo were crumbling. Just as we decided the town was lost to time we would round a corner and find a sparkling clean building in good repair with a well trimmed lawn and flowers in front. A smiling man would be clipping or cleaning or painting something. The best I could figure is that some of the owners are smart enough to find a hard working handyman who wants to retire by the sea and give him a place in their building in exchange for keeping it up. These were the exception. I made mention to one of these hard working gentlemen that his building was the best kept, the cleanest, the prettiest. He smiled widely, proud of his work, proud it had been noticed. I spent a lot of time in the shiny new coffee shop, trying hard to be like Starbuck’s. They had WiFi and comfy couches but are better than Starbuck’s because they sell beer. It’s nice to sit in the evening with a beer and read email and the news. Starbuck’s should consider that. They could have their own special brands. Some of the restaurants were being painted, stores stocked, arcade halls readied. It wasn’t all crumbling. No, San Bernardo will put on it’s lipstick and get up and dance again this year, sore feet and all, because that is what people do, they carry on.

My favorite parts of visiting San Bernardo, a place I will never see again, were fresh seafood pulled out the water in front of the restaurant where we ate lunch, the warm, warm, soft sand under my feet and between my toes (even in the face of the cold wind) and the big puppy who befriended us on the beach for our first walk there. He reminded me of Buster, not because he looked anything like him but because of the way he’d be jumping on me one minute, sand in his big paws, and lying next to my feet resting the next, content to be with me. He was a bit of charm in a place that is trying hard to be charming but can’t quite pull it off.



We spent the six hour bus ride back to the city mostly in silence. We sat on the second deck right in front, floor to ceiling glass and the long road stretching out in front of us. We passed dusty little towns with big concrete arches at the entrances. We passed some big concrete arches that didn’t go anywhere, just sitting out there alongside the highway looking forlorn like some entranceway to a lost world. We passed cows, dead and alive, oh so many cows. My favorite part of the bus ride both ways was passing by a big lake with hundreds of trumpeter swans. Having flown south for the winter, they were paddling around the warm lake waters of South America, waiting until it is time to head North again....

Esplendor y Miseria del Mundo...

November 15th 2008

There are extraordinary happenings afoot on the planet. The ice caps are melting, the tide is rising, the world financial markets (inextricably connected no matter what protectionist nonsense politicians may espouse) are quaking. At the same time the United States of America has just elected an intelligent, youthful, black man to lead us forward into the massive changes we must make to get our nation back on track. Splendorous change is upon us. Miserable things are moving amongst us. Maybe these two things are always true in tandem. In my work with couples I have often said that huge upheaval in relationship should be celebrated because it often signals something new is trying to happen. For us as a planet this is a perspective that can help us to feel positive about where we find ourselves. It is meaningful to note that doesn’t mean pretending nothing is wrong, it just means that when things go wrong there is always a way of seeing it as an opportunity to create and even celebrate change. I found myself thinking about that a lot today.

Our personal situation has been deeply impacted by the shift in world economies and we have found ourselves in a holding pattern, waiting to see if the pendulum will swing back the other way, find a middle ground. We don’t expect to be left unscathed and yet we continue to hope that we’ll land on our feet. Jimmy and I are discovering in our adventures here that staying flexible and taking deep breaths both help as we navigate new information, requiring new positions and new plans - I notice as I write this that is sounds a lot like the foundation of a strong yoga practice.

We hold firmly to the things that matter most and let go of the things don’t, sometimes with reluctance, always with the certainty that acting from our deepest values will take us where we want to go. Funny thing about a plan, it can be a wonderful tool to keep one focused on the path, yet can also, if held to over tightly, cause one to walk blindly into disaster. Holding firmly to what one deeply values will never lead you astray.

Jimmy and I arrived in Buenos Aires in July intent on opening a yoga and art studio. The fascinating process of doing business in this city and the learning curve held us back initially but we held things loosely and kept moving forward in the direction of that plan. All at once we looked up, having been intently moving forward along the path, to discover that our path had a road block. Without the wherewithal to complete the project as planned at this time we have spent the past few days taking some deep breaths, and trying to stay flexible, deciding what moving forward looks like from this vantage point.

A good friend asked me to list 5 things that are really important about our life here and then to ask myself which 2 I would let go of if I had to. In listing 5 things owning a yoga studio didn’t even make the list. That is a means to an end, or 2, or 3. I want to practice yoga in a school and I want to teach, and to build a community of like minded souls. I can do that when a yoga studio opens here, which will likely happen without my doing it. for Jimmy, he wants to be a working artist and to take his art to the world. Running a gallery was never a part of the spirit of his hopes, it was a means to that end.

In the next few weeks we will be watching the world and hoping that we are all breathing, staying flexible, moving forward, but not holding too firmly to any one plan in case the moment calls for change. When you think of us here below the equator and hold hopes for us, hope that we are well, hope that we are calm, hope that we are strong and hope that our dreams come true, no matter what form that truth takes.

Peace Brothers and Sisters

Shopping List...

November 9th, 2008

Sunday evening in Buenos Aires is a quiet time. I rarely go anywhere on Sunday but this morning we were out of groceries and had to go out. Jimmy went with me and we found ourselves in Jumbo, the hypermercado, which looks like a big Safeway in the states but with electronics, household goods, clothes and other various necessities in addition to groceries. Our experience this morning was so different from our first trip there 4 months ago. That day it took us 2+ hours to find our way through the aisles of different looking choices and figure out how to put a meal together from what was available. Now we are in and out in under an hour and home again. Savvy enough to know when the taxi driver is taking us the long way around and grounded enough to call him on it (he cut the meter so we only paid the fair amount) we have found our footing. It is good to have found a groove here.

When we go to Jumbo we always buy sushi. So far, it’s the best sushi in BsAs. I swear. That isn’t because it’s so good. It’s because sushi is new to Argentina and so they don’t do it well yet in general. There isn’t a supply chain for good, fresh fish. There aren’t any Japanese sushi chefs. There aren’t a lot of the supplies available to sushi restaurants in the states and there are people here running sushi restaurants who’ve never had sushi anywhere but here so they don’t have any reference point. Sushi restaurants in BsAs have 2 kinds of fish, salmon and something white. That’s it. All the rolls have one of the two kinds of fish and sometimes they put other things in too. I get super excited about one place we go because they put chives in some of the rolls and vegetables in sushi are a real treat. Most rolls have cream cheese. I’m almost used to it. The sushi at Jumbo is always fresh and they have the best sticky rice I’ve had yet. Time is changing Buenos Aires, slowly.

That’s why the other thing I do when I go to Jumbo is walk a little more slowly up and down each aisle because they are always bringing new things in. I found foil sealed tuna a couple of weeks ago and had to explain why it was better than canned in my sorry Spanish to a woman who wanted to know why I was buying it. Every time I go I find some other thing that they never had here before. One week when I bought frozen blueberries the check out girl spent a couple of minutes trying to figure out what they were. They were packaged in Spanish, she had simply never seen a blueberry before. The closest she could come was raisins. I gave up after a while. How do you explain a blueberry? In a second language?

We eat more simply here than we did in the states. We eat a lot of brown rice, fruit, chicken breasts (Supremas), milk, eggs, vegetables in season, they do have Orowheat bread and I found a place that makes fresh whole grain breads as well. We eat lots of sweet potatoes and white tuna (we can buy it frozen). I cook simple foods and we sit together and eat the way people do when there is much to do. We talk and our meals are our breaks from the day. I enjoy cooking and my skills as a cook are more important here. There aren’t many packaged foods to rely on so I have to make what we eat taste good. I don’t have my own spices yet from our storage container and I don’t know how to buy all the things I would like to cook with but my friend Don did bring me some real vanilla extract! I have found that I can get by and make good, healthy, bountiful meals, with much less than I am accustomed to. Still, I daydream sometimes about shopping in fully stocked super markets in a country with a well developed supply chain and taste for variety. It is the taste for variety that Argentines lack. They are satisfied with what they have. A friend told of an Argentine visitor who, upon discovering pears in his salad, refused to eat, explaining that fruit and salad don’t belong together. Having come from a culture that gets excited about new things, different things, I laughed when I heard that story. I still get excited about new things. Not even things I’ve never seen before, just things they’ve not had here before. Following is a list of things I’ll be excited to buy when they finally become available in stores around the city:

Soy Milk
Bottled Salad Dressing
Albacore and Ahi Tuna
White onions
Clean prepped spinach
fresh, sliced cheese in ready made packages
Cranberries
1/2 & 1/2
Big, fat scallops
Lamb chops
Big cereal boxes
OK big boxes of anything
Creamy yogurt with real fruit in it
Cottage cheese
Sour cream
Pecans
Tofu
Chocolate chips
Ziplock baggies - I know, that’s not food
Emergen-C
Oh I could go on....

What a Day to Be Alive...

November 5th 2008

It is 10am and I sit amidst the rubble of a celebration. Last night 40 or so assorted friends came together in our tiny temporary rental in Buenos Aires to watch history unfold. I felt calm all night. There were questions about fairness and funny business at the poles, but I wasn’t worried. I knew that the forces of darkness could not pull off another upset by disenfranchising poor, working class people because we are hip to their game now. We are watching. We were up until 3:30am, determined to see it to the end. We listened to the acceptance speech, speechless.

America is awake and has become clear not only that our way of life is in jeopardy, but that it is our personal responsibility to safe guard it, every one of us. We have walked away from cynicism and into the sunlight of hope. Somehow enough people, tired and angry from years of being led blindly through the darkness, collectively reached out and turned on the lights. No, there has been no change in the fact that Americans see differently on important issues. There is no national consensus for what, exactly, path we should take. This morning though, we have a real leader to guide us and he will not keep us in the dark. Many meaningful things were said last night but among them I was notably moved by President Elect Obama’s promise to work closely with those who disagree with him and to lead us all.

I am many thousands of miles from the tiny Los Angeles house my mother shares with my sister today. Still, there was not a moment last night when my mom was not on my mind. My mother was a “community organizer” who spent my childhood fighting for the rights of the oppressed and the under-served. She fought for equal rights for women and people of color. She fought for the care and education of all children, even those from poor families who’s parents were not likely voters. She fought so that some day, if I wanted to, I could run for president and a black man could vote for me, or vice versa. My mother paved the way for Barack Obama’s victory. Today I am proud to be an American citizen. I stand tall and will use the words “President Obama” with respect and pride as I move through the world. Even more I am proud to be Marie Ory’s daughter. I stand in awe of the people who worked and fought for so long in the face hatred, violence, poverty and ignorance to open the doors to this day.

Some of the things my mother learned in her years as a community organizer and civil rights movement leader have been passed along through the years to others (that’s they way those community organizers work - wink, wink). I would not be surprised to find out that Barack Obama worked in much the same way my mother did. Use the press and churches to get your message out. Help people understand how what you are asking them to do will help them, now. Respect that you are asking much of them. Never forget why you are doing what you do. Work hard. Never give up. Never underestimate the enduring power of a human being’s desire to walk in the sunshine of hope and fairness.

I imagine that President Barack Obama will lead our nation away from the brink in the same manner that he attained the office, calmly, morally, meaningfully, working hard. We will not all be happy. We will not all get everything we want. We will not be automatically protected from the pain of healing our collective selves. This is going to hurt. There will be those who will blame President Obama for the pain. Most of us I pray will simply know that healing and growth can be painful. When small children grow, their bones ache. Broken bones too, ache as they knit, slowly, back together. We are still yet a young nation and we are finally growing out of our childish ways. We are finally becoming the nation our founding fathers envisioned. It has been a long hard road but I believe America always knew where we were headed. There is an artist, Greg Laswell, who sings a beautiful song, “What a day” (http://www.myspace.com/greglaswell), which perfectly describes my feelings on this day when he says simply, “What a day to be alive...”