today

Buenos Aires

all the pictures are up! don´t feel obligated to read all this.I woke up and found that i had pulled a blanket over me in the night, this is a very good sign. The weather was again, gorgeous! Right now there is a thunder storm and really pretty lighting, but it is hot and muggy. They got the air conditioner fixed and I am already addicted to the proccessed air. Last night I watched a local soccer came instead of the superbowl, i really only like the party that surrounds the super bowl and the commercials, not so much the game. I did see a couple minutes of the last quarter but thats as long as it took me to get bored. One of my friends was passed out drunk on the couch when i woke up and upon seeing that i was instantly grateful for not attending the party the previous evening. I eat breakfast and went back to bed for a short nap, then dressed and headed to the park for a walk. The weather was great with a nice breeze. I took my usual route through the park, enjoyed the trees, pretend not to hear women make fun of me being american and ignored the men being gross and inappropriate. While i was walking down a flight of stairs I saw a homeless guy emptying a colostomy bag into the trash, by see i mean, i saw the bag and poo/vomit slosh/drip out and fall like 18in into the trash can, in the middle of the park for everyone to see and smell. Ok moving on i thought, i go back up the steps and see some of the wild cats that live in the park. One was blind in one eye and the other one was crossed, it hobbled really low to the ground and was much dirtier than the other gross animals and it had a lot of bugs in its fur, it was so sad. I finished my walk and headed to find a bench in the shade to relax and read a bit in the book i had picked up off the shelf on my way out the door. I got comfy and a homeless man came up to beg off of me. I didn´t give him anything and i couldnt understand half what he said and he obviously didnt speak spanish but i smiled and laughed and he offered his hand and i took it, he kissed my hand and went off to work someone else. I decided to start reading my book before anyone else came up to bother me. The book was a collection of reviews of other books, but randomly there was one poem in the american book titled Buenos Aires, how odd right? It was published in the 60s and described an american mans visit to the city. The description of the city was bleak and sad. Leaving a reader who had no other knowledge of the city to think it a horrible place to visit. I was glad that times are better here now, the government is more stable and the economy has improved. I do feel bad that the city was portrayed so badly. It was obvious that the author didn´t want to be in the city, he didn´t want to like it. Then i flipped through the rest of the book. It was awful. All these people giving their impression of places, people´s lives, people´s works. Hardly a word of it was nice or even thoughful on an emotional level, nor was it ever objective. What a shit job. I lump the critic into the same category as insurance people and people who work in marketing-bastards. Whatever happened to "if you can´t say anything nice don´t say anything at all"? Sometimes, i think we just need to shut the hell up. So, that is how i have interpreted this happening of this book coming into my life. Anyhow, so this got me pondering the inherant positivity and negativaty in the world and our lives. Then I saw a homeless man, with huntingtons choreah. He was very thin and had the physical ticks, i forgot what they are called. He was trying unsuccessfully to put his shoes on. the heels and toes of his socks were completely open and he had condiment packets in his shoes for cushioning. After a min he gave up on putting on the shoes and decided to use them for a pillow and try for a nap. I watched, wishing there was something I could do to ease his pain, some way I could help. I wondered why he was on the streets what was his childhood and adult life was like. It reminded me of a line in the poem I had read not long before. It said the poor of buenos aires were "invisible". As i remembered this and spun in around in my mind, I noticed the pairs of teenagers making out in the park, the old men playing chess and laughing, the young parents eating on blankets while their babies napped in the shade of a tree, I saw all the dogs off their leashes playing with the other dogs like they were old friends catching up. Speckled in the middle of all this joy and life is a homeless guy emptying his colostomy bag, another with huntingtons choreah, more still airing their blistered feet and fondling their bag that holds all their possessions. Then I saw a pigeon missing two little pigeon toes. Poor little pigoen i thought, but he was walking around, hanging out, didnt seem to miss the little toes. These homeless people weren´t complaining they got to be in the park hanging out in the beautiful weather. You can wallow or find the positive, learn the lesson and move on, or dwell and be miserable. That damn park always does this to me. Buenos Aires puts everything in your face. Luxury and high end living and turn around and its really medically or mentally ill homeless people suffering, or shitty ass parents forcing their kids to beg so they can take the profits and buy drugs and abuse their children, or freaking 9 year olds selling crack, or a 6 year old girl squating and taking a piss in the dirt right in front of everyone! All of this i have seen in this park. It has beautiful trees and lots of stairs good for making exercise. It also has a little playground for kids and on the weekends it has a market full of cool stuff. I am always happy, excited, scared and sad to be there. It is everywhere here. In the states, big cities force out homeless and poor, pay their bus fares to just go somewhere else, take them to a not so nice part of town so they are out of the way. We like that, out of sight out of mind. I guess you can´t make someone want to live in your society the way you want them to, the way that is "acceptable". They say, some people just don´t want help and its true, I have seen this. This method of shipping them out hardly seemed any worse than the learned indiference that is taking place on the streets of the south american towns/cities I have visited. Invisible, was a correct observation. I don´t know where I am going with this anymore. I have a thousand thoughts and they are getting all mixed together as i just freeforall this. I think maybe i just wish I could make everything all better. I don´t want people to suffer. I don´t want anyone to hurt, not even the pigeon or the blind cat. For a long time i didn´t watch the news because it was always bad, murder, death, hate. If i don´t watch it I dont think about it, problem solved. This is not right. Not seeing it doesn´t make it go away. It doesn´t make my world, our world, a better place. It merely creates an alternate plane of existence where you are no longer living and breathing in reality. I think we do this too much. Out of sight out of mind right? We can summarize life as bits of ugly mixed with bits of beauty strung out over the years. You can´t have one with out the other and trying to do so creates something unnatural and unwanted. I think it is important we take every opportunity to learn and grow, it´s not always going to be pretty. I hope that didn´t get ranty or preachy, it was just what i thought about today. I read a book when i got home from the park, the timepiece. Its fiction, which i normally dont´like to read, but i have read all the nonfiction books i have available to me. It was very good and touched on some of these points, i had some really beautiful, straighforward, enlightened quotes. i can´t remember them now, but it got me thinking. I rounded out the evening with a game of skipbo! I played me, a peruvian, a brazilian, a columbian, and dude from the bay area. Everyone really liked it. I taught them, "there are no friends in skipbo". Travelling is awesome, you should all stop what you are doing and go!