the coriolis effect

Sé que digo lo que tengo para decir
Solamente si soy enteramente quien yo soy
-Pedro Aznar

I`m not sure what this means, even though I`ve stared at it a lot. And at the moment....I just spent 14 hours one on one in spanish (with the exception of a few words in french with a girl we met). on tigre, very valdivia esque. and I`m exhausted, but totally, completely, exhausted like no other. even though half the time I didn´t say anything, because I didn´t know how.

US Today I put on the fuzzy warm jacket, put on the scarf, grabbed my stuff for the library (visions of 7 hours reading newspapers in my head), walked out the front door of my building. looked right, looked left, looked up, turned around and returned to my room.

it wa a sunny, blue, 80 degrees day. incredible.

so changed into a t-shirt, and went to the riverside with american/porteños instead. so I`m really really behind on newpapers now (I was supposed to spend all tomorrow by the river, at the Tigre delta, too!). but there are blue days and blue days, and today it was just stunningly great. because it is, after all, winter here. allegedly:)

although someone told me that every year, without fail, either the 30 or 31 of August it just pours rain. we`ll see...

"the grass is so high/I can`t see over"
sort of how I feel sometimes, buried deep in periodicals. and only a week left so sad. argentina beat paraguay last night in the world cup soccer finals. didn`t know which way to cheer, but stayed up til 6 to watch the end. I love argentina. have I said that already? (multiple times?)

so much news....four weddings and a funeral. so far away from it all. we`re all grown up.

TWO libraries in the world have El Clarin (that are on worldcat, that is) and one of them is UMass Amherst. I sense fieldtrip....(the other one, however, is UC San Diego. a tempting alternative). but whats funny is I clicked on the "spanish" button and it turned everything on the page spanish, and I didn´t even notice:)

all I have is 85 cents. or a undred peso bill. this is a desperate situation. I couldn´t even afford to check email at the first place I went to (granted it was really expensive)
sitting in the library, waiting for books....a dog ambles past, and behind the desk. so random.
as were all the librarians takin g a tour (an international library convention) and taking photos of the pretty empty reading room. woohoo. or maybe I´m bitter- I spent 8 hours there today, until hunger drove me out. at least I can buy food with a credit card...
one of the best concerts ever yesterday, botafogo. and in the midle of one song he holds his guitar out to the audience, and a couple of kids took him up on the challenge and played- awesomely. like muddy waters handing his guitar out.
but hey, I´m with the band. and was all cool after when got to meet everyone, in between other poeple snapping photographs and getting autographs and stuff.
hehe...makes up for rambling research (why was I copying ad prices from the 1980s today? no idea).

never have I ever....seen dancing empanadas. until yesterday. 6 of them, shimmying on the corner of corrientes and florida. poor people- at least someone cheered when they finished.

then I got to sit in on a prog rock radio show, el returno de gigante, and my name crossed the airwaves, in brief....

on other news, its finally sunny again, in time for me to feel totally guilty about work and not enjoy it. in time for me to get sort of sick....its sad being sick in a country where the only juices are orange and sometimes grapefruit. on a continent that has no word for cranberry....

nonetheless, off to see Tirador Laser. and...and....I only have two weeks left:(

Biblioteca del Congreso. New libraries are always intimidating, but this was ok, aside from being colder than a meat locker. But the general elusiveness of sources continues. I feel like my paper should say sponsored by...Expreso. because, knowing the people who worked on it, I can get all the issues. but everything else....shadows out of the corner of my eye, and all that.
A return to Catedral on friday night with the whole expat gang, after a trip to la plata and marveling at the accent of someone from Bogota. It sang......and I realized how accostumed I´ve become to all the idiosyncracies of argentinean spanish.
plaza serrano has the best weekend feria, all said.
and yesterday I had pizza with fish on it, for I believe the first time. weird. like the guy who saw my us passport today at the library and was like, my parents live near chevy chase pavilion! (after I said I was from maryland.). he took classes at MC. small world.....good (but sad) thing I can now pull the I`m leaving soon line.

Yesterday after Irin and I ate about half a cow (moo....but sort of actually- I had steak and Irin had a selection of the random interior bits) she, Max and I went to Catedral. Tango for normal folks- it sort of reminded me in spirit of Maestra Viva, except it was a huge warehouse with tables, couches, a dance floor, woman doing acrobatics from ropes dangling from the ceiling. And people gathering round and sitting on the floor to listen to live music.
Mostly we people watched, but after retreating to a corner to avoid an awkward situation with some americans the others knew, an affable lisping argentine (whose family hailed from county cork, from all places) came over and invited me to attempt dancing. he`s just started taking lessons, so it wasn`t too disastrous. then we both headed back to the corner, where he plopped down and started chatting with Irin and Max while he started rolling a joint. The kicker was at 3 am the music changed abruptly from tango to the beatles "love me do". whereupon rayfus from country cork via argentina, joint in hand, whipped out a harmonica and started playing along.

today....perhaps the best unbirthday present of the year. Went to a journalist I`d interviewed house, where there was tea and the sweetest birthday cake ever, a gray cat with iridescent blue eyes. and left with 39 books on rock nacional loaned me, plus 14 cds. if only historiography were easy....

What to do when I miss Washington? Remind myself why its probably a good thing I`ve spent nearly a quarter of Bush`s presidency overseas.
Fahrenheit 9-11. Half-moon of truths. I disliked its cynicism, its manipulation, the lacing of leading questions throughout it all. Especially the leading questions. But there were facts, and footage.
Especially the footage.
The March 18, 2004 issue of the Clarin (one of Buenos Aire`s largest dailies) featured on its cover a large "war in iraq" type heading, and a photo of bodies being carted away. Bloody legs sticking out from a shroud. It´s the type of photo that would never show up on the Washington Post´s cover, or the Times, or the New York Times´. Its the type of photo that even after the US government stopped censoring photos in World War Two, for homefront morale and all that, would never ever show up in a newspaper. Sensationalistic? yes. Real? yes.
So maybe its shock value, but maybe thats all thats left. But with the structure of the movie, (if any republicans see it ever, or fencesitters (ah, the mugwumps:) it may not be effective in the way I would want to be.
All I know is that I`m been to 6 countries on 4 continents in the past 2 or so years, and (given a sampling probably biased against blue bloods) I`ve never met anyone overseas who likes Bush.

Winthrop housing pulled through again. we may have the worst senior suite known to woman (one of the closets being in the common room, aside from the walkthrough) but at least its with friends...

"There is was, something beautiful...."
Rainy day, holiday day, the first in a while. So melancholy and missing people and all the sad songs on rotation on MTV. And Gomez, reminding me of summer. Went shopping, which is always fun in theory, but always a big stress in fact.
But yesterday...set out for a music festival without quite knowing the address. Got to the general vicinity and trailed people...6 hours. the first four I sat on a pillar and relentlessly people watched. and the last two...Pedro Aznar, and Spinetta, and then Pedro with Charly Garcia and it was awesome and incredibly great (and relevant to the work and free....12 hours of free music this weekend!)
and....as I sit in this internet place, on comes the song by Jet which has been slaying me these days (see above). oh why.....is webmail not downloading.....

Last night (after wishingIhad aphotocopierfor6hours of expreso the spacebaris broken.....) I got to wear a shiny "invitados"pass and see a show for free andfeel all special....goodtimes.
badtimes is trying to get in touch withANYONe ina city where the cell phone and landline networks are hopelessly divided. its expensive, che.
so instead I`m going to see a show with the musicians I saw playlast night...instead, of the expat scene. butmaybeI canswingboth, hey.
thisis a mess. darnspacebar!
weather so nice...buthoping everyoneinhurricane`swayisok...

library update: well, the national library does have some copies of expreso, which makes me very happy. what is bad is that periodicals over 5 years old can´t be photocopied. at all. which makes for a lot of cramped handwriting:) at 1 magazine every 2 hours....

comments lately on how argentina is stuck in the 70s. it feels so....true. maybe thats why I like it, here in my jeans and corderoy jacket.

I`ve taken to photographing the random graffiti. no a la guerra imperialista and all that. I think i alarmed a flower vendor today, taking a picture of the wall in the dark. he muttered something.

motorcycle diaries was like a retrospective of last year, at least the first part. temuco, valpo, san pedro.....:)
I finally had another interview today, after 3 canceled ones. after trying to dig stuff out of the library. my comments on that prompted the journalist I was interviewing to say, hard writing history in a country without archives, eh?
so, so true....

"next thing I know he was feeding me tuna tartare...."
Thus went the story of Argentine seduction someone who shall remain nameless told me the other day, on our way to Charlie Garcia. Who was, perhaps, high on something and somewhat vocally ravished, but great inspiration for the slow work- nothing like 1000 people jumping up and down and shouting out "me siento mucho mas fuerte sin tu amor"

today was a beautiful blue, if cold day- too bad I woke up at 2. too bad I went to bed at 7 AM- this has got to stop! but I guess it has been ages since I had autumn weather, maybe thats why I`m so nostalgic?

handing over our tickets at Ok, Mr. Tango (courtesy of Irin and the Buenos Aires Herald) the usher, a high school aged guy, heard us speak in english and goes "Vote Kerry". "Yeah Democrats". it paired nicely with the "Bus fascista no pasen" graffiti I saw today. ;)

Wednesday night Max and I went out to a club on the harbor. It was reputedly hiphop 80s (most places here, not that I´ve been, are techno. Max asked someone at his hostel if there were rock hip hop places at all and she apparently said: yes. but the people who go there are ugly.)
it was packed and the crowd, in max`s words was too cool for school (and then there was the richard gere lookalike who kept popping up and giving us a fatherly pat on the shoulder). though the closest we got to nontechno were techno remixes of metallic and pink floyd, and, inexplicably in the middle of it all, Maroon 5`s This Love (the real deal, too).

I`m off to La plata for the night for a houswarming, glad there are 28 days left, but listening to random choir recordings and (gasp) missing harvard....maybe because its been a little drizzly and boston-like.
New apartment, not as snazzy as the last one, but its still my own place, which is still awesome....:)
Charly Garcia tomorrow! sometimes, people say, he´ll play for 4 hours, and other times he´ll break a string, smash his guitar and storm offstage after 15 minutes.

After days of Blogger not working.....(the locutorio guy...you´re going to use hotmail right? (nope) uh, yahoo? (nope)...oh....)
I felt very far from home monday when CNN had all the news about "new terrorist threats" and then blockade things on wall street, and then armed guards in the Metro (MY metro, I thought)...and my phone card didn´t work to call home. and "Catch Me Up" ran through my head, not really related to anything but listening to it a LOT before I left, to preemptively avoid burning out on rock nacional. But far and safe here in this crazy country where at 2 AM people are like, lets go out! though we did go out last night, after housewarming for two of the harvard students, but we get to the packed place downtown and one of the argentineans sort of slumps over in a state of catatonia. end of night, nice walk home in the oh not so cold "winter" air. (it was 70 yesterday).

watching MTV, some random lame show but they were in Bellavista, Santiago looking for a "crazy" time, and, logically enough went to the Crazy Bar- where the med students and fas students went our first night out, so many many moons ago.

parts of Maroon 5`s This Love is censored on MTV, odd only because there are many many worse things that most definitely are NOT.....
everyone seems to know a rock star, if you just ask (I´m sort of serious). but can I delve?

So the past month I was secretly living a porteno lifestyle, bed at 4,up at 12....though now I`m at bars with impossibly beautiful people thinking...I need to buy some clothes. But yeah, first interview tomorrow! AAACKKKKK.and it turns out the line about me meeting rock stars? might, just might happen. here is hoping.
a little forlorn with no answering machine , no cell, sporadic internet...after playing internet tag with a harvard girl for days we realized we were online at the same time and are meeting...really soon. gotta run...:)