metacine

Half-way through Slumdog Millionaire, or Quien Quiere Ser Millonario, Santi leans over and whispers, as if saying something really meaningful, "This must be so strange for you...you're in Aregntina watching a movie about India. Are you okay?" He is being sarcastic, and is talking during the movie that I chose to see because he is both bored and annoyed by the extreme aesthetic and sensationalized portrayal of poverty. We drink a large box of chocolate milk and eat alfajorcitos. When the movie is over we both feel slightly nauseous....

I am on the Internet a lot these days, in the midst of trying to decide where I will be spending the next 2-3 years of my life, what type of environment I want to shape my new world of poetry, creation, and lots of introspection. This is a big deal for me, a decision I do not take lightly. So I am gathering as much information and input as I can, knowing that in the end none of it will matter and that it will not even be a choice but an impulse, a response to my gut.

It is amazing to me that I can be physically in Buenos Aires and mentally feel like I am nowhere, floating in a thought-congested mind, completely consumed by the trinkets of my life, sorting them out, polishing them like an isolated lunatic with a hoarding syndrome. I am in Buenos Aires, but at the moment I could be anywhere, in front of my computer, rummaging through infinite landfills of information, searching for something I know I will never find.

I like to travel because it is another way of losing yourself to the moment, forgetting who you are, dispersing bits of yourself along the way, at the end lighter-- less you-- but really, closer to the truth of who you are. The last (first) time I was in Buenos Aires, I spent two magical weeks wandering around the different neighborhoods, in love and in a trance, merging with the energy of the city, a sparkly darkness that felt both close to death and more alive than any place I'd known. Now I am back and here, kind of making a life. I have an apartment, I go to the market each day to buy meat and vegetables. The cheese shop owner knows me and what kind of goat cheese I prefer. I can tell you how to get somewhere on the subway, or the best place to go running, or which movie theaters are showing what North American films. I feel comfortable here...not home, but something that could become home if I stayed long enough.

I love this, and at the same time I am trying to hold on to that feeling of wonder, how it is when you experience anything for the first time. There is a part of you that remains aware and is processing all of the newness. And then there is the part of you that has lost its compass, existing without any point of reference, dissolving into the landscape until you become part of everything-- the cement facades and bus-sighs and streets full of people that look like you but have a hardness in their eyes, smells of roasting meat, and the promise of another evening to swell your lips and close the night around you like a shiny wound until everything disappears but your heartbeats, a bird shuddering in a paper bag, a handful of seeds, last sip of wine, a giant net on the dark water, what you have lived your whole life trying to name that now palpitates between the two of you as if it's always been there, as if it's about to be born, making a home inside you.