Improvisado Arte

(From earlier today.)

I love this day. I am sitting at an outdoor table on Av. San Juan, drinking a cerveza, eating olives, and waiting for my lunch to arrive.

I love these times of solo dining. I eat peacefully, without worry of what to say. Sounds antisocial, I guess. I like people, but people take a lot out of me. I prefer watching, observing to talking, conversing.

There´s no fast food here. If you want to eat, you are forced to sit down for at least twenty minutes and be at the whim of a restaurant. There´s no running into a deli for a wrap with turkey lettuce tomato mustard to take back and eat at your desk. There´s really not even any to-go coffee (and this is painful for me). It´s nice, to slow down for a few minutes, to take the time to feed myself and relax. It´s sad that back home, we can´t give more time to self-nourishment, even this most basic kind. I think it´s a necessity.

I´ve spent the past few hours wandering around the San Telmo Sunday markets. There are blocks and blocks of vendor booths, selling jewelry, souvenirs, books, art, leather, and many items in the "junk" category. It´s the same stuff, booth after booth, but I think I could - and will - browse all day.

It´s a gorgeous day here - maybe high 70s and sunny - and there´s something about being in the center of the action on a beautiful day that I really enjoy. Overhearing conversations (even if I can´t understand them), watching the tourists be tourists and the vendors be vendors, just absorbing it all.

I wandered out of the crowded market into a small art gallery (because I dream of being an art collector someday and having a house full of special pieces - something from Argentina, perhaps?). Some of the paintings were what I´d call impressionistic and others were more modern - all were simple splashes of color, some just more distinctly resembling real life/objects than others. One piece immediately pulled me in - I can´t explain what it was about this one, but it had a soothing power. The blend of colors just felt right. I don´t know. This is what I love about art. I find it fascinating that someone can spew colors out of their brain and have them make sense to me. I stared at the painting for a long minute or two and then glanced down at the small white card next to it and read the name of the piece, "Improvisado". Coincidence? I think I have to have it, but transporting art may be complicated, so we´ll see.

There are many musicians out on the streets today. I´ve seen several huge antique pianos - very much like the behemoth rescued from Texas that lives in the childhood playroom of my parents´house. Perhaps encouragement to fix that thing up?? It was really cool to see these pianos actually played. They make a sound that´s unlike a new piano. Not nearly as crisp - much darker. You can just hear the age of the thing. Like how a 50 year old opera singer sounds much richer than a 25 year old one. Or how a man who´s been a smoker half his life sounds compared to his non-smoker counterpart.

Anyway, for a long while, I sat and watched this guy play one of these pianos, along with a small ensemble. There were three accordions, the piano, a bass, a cello, and three violins, and they were playing classic tango music. I must tell you that I am beginning to really like this tango music. Rosa plays it in the house all the time, and it´s just sort of sad and nostalgic and beautiful. Makes me feel the same way the music in that French movie I just saw...can´t think of the name...the Edith Piaf story? Anyway, it´s beautiful. And classic. And totally unique to this place.

Of all the street performers and musicians, though, the absolute best was the drum lady. She´s at least 70 - probably a bit older - and had a home-made drumset, made of I do not know what. The main drums sounded a bit like plastic - they looked a bit to me like the tops of cooking spray cans - and the cymbals, the *ching* of the ba dum bum *ching*, looked like they had been stolen from a disassembled tambourine. They were that small. She had little tap tappers on the bottoms of her shoes (my guess is tacs, being an expert at the impromptu tap dance in high school), and she just really went for it. She was getting the beats from whatever music was feeding into her ears from her headphones (the audience couldn´t hear that, of course), and best, I believe she was scatting. It was fantastic. Made me really giggle.

****

It´s been a good, restful weekend. Friday night, I had a pretty low key evening with some new friends - drinks and dinner, and last night, I stayed in with Rosa. Lots of good talks. She is full of advice for me. You know how someone that´s much older orders their advice at you, whereas someone that´s your own age suggests advice? She definitely orders. You do this, you do that. And I feel like I have to do it! But she sort of refreshed my perspective on my trip - not that it really needed refreshing, but I guess after being here for three weeks, the novelty of it has worn off a bit, and it´s like, yeah, I´m in South America...okay. So she renewed my sense of how unique this experience is and how lucky I am to be where I am.

I´m going to meet some folks to watch the Super Bowl tonight. I had to call Rosa a few hours ago to let her know I wasn´t coming home for dinner (house rule is that I must call by 5 PM), and I had to leave a message on her answering machine because I guess she was out. Usually she answers, so in my fumbling and mumbling, I at least can get some confirmation from her that she understands what I have said. But the answering machine is something else altogether. Terrible. I started laughing when I hung up the phone, thinking of what she must think when she listens to that message. I basically said, "I no go to the dinner in your house tonight. I´m sorry. I hope is not late." I was trying to say that I hoped I wasn´t calling too late (because it was a few minutes after five), but then in the middle of the sentence, I realized I didn´t know the word for "too". She´ll get the gist, I´m sure.

Mis amigos, I am missing you all. Three weeks here today, and while I´m not homesick, I do feel sort of sick for something. I wrote a friend this sentiment earlier today (two references, you lucky SOB!) and didn´t really think I´d put it in here, but omitting things like this from the blog makes the blog feel pointless. It´s part of the experience. It´s the downs that go with every up.

I think if I didn´t have this blog to talk to all the time, none of this would quite be real. I´m not lying when I say I like to eat by myself or do things by myself. I´m enjoying my alone time in a way I sometimes think I shouldn´t. But it is weird to experience something and not have someone to turn to and say, "Hey, that was neat. What did you think about it?" So I pour it all in here, to cement it, to make it mine. So funny how important it is to have people to tell your stories to, isn´t it? Oh, mama, that´s the little historian in me!

But now it IS social time, game time! Necesito ir a la bar ahora para mirar el "Super Bowl". Chau, my dears! (That IS how they spell it here - isn´t that weird?)