asuncionautics.

despite the two-hour delay into the illustrious capital, my cavalcade remained faithful to the apogee of our ship's arrival. it had been many a moon since we last convened, yet there was little confusion as to whom was whom. 'look at you - you dirty, bearded, bohemian bastard!' was the general reception amongst my female companions. 'you have changed, evancho,' another took great pains to remind me. 'you aren't the gangster to which you used to aspire,' she would later seem to lament. if paraguayans share one thing in common with their human counterparts in the 16e arrondissement, tis that socio-aesthetic experimentation is a big no-no. here, as in the chic-er quarters of parigi-town, one dresses within one's class from the cradle to the grave & with no margin of error. perhaps the ability to do so is the defining characteristic of the postmodern, middle-class, petitbourgeois american condition: we can rock jordans in 3rd grade, sambas in 5th, vans in 7th, '95 air max our freshman year and go on to graduate in birks (i.e. about as white as not-dancing to the postal service on a portland's summer eve.) somewhat akin to doing art history before going on to law school. enough cynicism, however, and on to more important matters.

it was a gorgeous, breezy day and we stopped off for a bite at classic downtown dive in the heart of the sunny, sleepy capital. we had mantioca empanadas and pints of pilsen, one of two household national brews - the other being 'bavaria' - if that gives you an idea of who runs this land. while we're at it, it shall be noted that the country's most recent dictator, alfredo stroessner, who ruled the dominion with an iron fist from 1954-1989, was also the son of a purported bavarian brewmaster. here, at left, he lies in all his imperial splendor in a portrait from the museum of memory commemorating the ten-thousand people detained and tortured in a downtown corner rowhouse up til the end of his reign. odd, you may wonder, they should display him in what looks to be his prime. memories do have a way of running away from us, i suppose. in any case, he's unlikely to enter their paraguayan pantheon anytime soon (these things usually take several generations to heal, do they not?) - which was just across the street, so we paid the bill and ambled on over.

two soldiers, poised and positioned to stare into each other's souls for entire minutes on end, stood erect at the top of the steps as we saluted our way into the holiest of military shrines. there within a matter of meters lied the remains of doctor gaspar de francia and francisco solano lopez - two of modernity's most destructively creative, if not ill-forgotten, minds. the former is celebrated as the country's first successful doctoral candidate (theology at cordoba) and with his intellectual prowess monopolized the country's post-independence political platform from 1814-1840, during which time he managed to successfully seal the country off from the world - which isn't to say he didn't have his more illuminated aspects. though an avid admirer of robespierre and many of the Revolution's 'modernizing' tendencies, he applied drastic measures against the movement of peoples and goods in an effort to prevent the accumulation of national debt and foreign peddling in domestic affairs. at one point, the only things that got through customs scathe-free were books and munitions - an inquiring despot, if nothing else. when the pope excommunicated him for expropriating church lands, he responded in kind: "If the Holy Father himself should come to Paraguay I would make him my private chaplain."

francisco solano lopez, for his part, was no stranger to adversity, either. after making an irish prostitute he picked off the street in paris the empress of paraguay, he returned to the 'island surrounded by land' to embark upon the most disastrous war in the continent's history. though it is still highly disputed as to whom is ultimately to blame for the ensuing genocide - solano's madness, british capital, bourgeois argentine expansionism, etc - the former remains a national hero in what then became the 'land of women.' indeed, in a country where upwards of 75% of the male population is said to have perished, whereas the bulk of maimed survivors remained impotent, it comes as no surprise that paraguayan settlement would become a tempting option for your mid-late 19th century morman castaway (don't worry, my sources tell me they've yet to leave). at one point, so the all-too-frighteningly-probable legend goes, things became so drastic that there was only one paraguayan boy to fend off every five brazilians, argentines and uruguayans. in attempts to simultaneously allude the enemy as to their real age and inspire a sense of fear, they would paint themselves and plaster yerba mate to their faces to resemble beards. i met an art historian, leftist militant and campesino activist in a national reserve last week who told me of a certain town outside of asuncion where nearly everyone has the same surname to this day, ozuna (check the phone book once you're down here). though certain conquistadors were said to have more than had their way with the 16th century female population - especially in and around the future sight of asuncion, where the native women had established the only self-sufficient sedentary civilization of sorts within hundreds of miles - the abundance of ozunas owes itself entirely to the grande guerra, as the paraguayans simply refer to what we in the north call the war of the triple alliance. in this particular town, the war had wiped out the entire male population - bar one survivor with no arms or legs that lived in a basket. desperate to repopulate their devastated population (without considering a number of other factors), the women would pick him up and pass him around the village, each having a go before returning him to his basket.

once having imbibed the lion-hearted airs that house the patria's national heroes, we went for a pedestrian jaunt around the city's center, starting with the abandoned railway (above) and skimming the edge of the city's most notorious slum towards the presidential palace a 1/2 mile down the road. our eco-tour in modern urbanism began in the plaza uruguaya, a peaceful though dirt-trodden park just across from the train station that now serves as make-shift temporary housing for what seem to be new arrivals to capital from the campo (right). at times tolerated - others arbitrarily expelled with arielsharonesque compassion - i am told they perennially come and go: tents pitched and fires stoked one day, tattered public grounds abandoned to the lonesome dirt the next. from here we descend westward along the avenida presidente franco toward the plaza housing parliament, an uber-modern glass and steel structure of sharp angles and sleek metal that's managed to retain several small, interspersed portions of original red brick that housed the previous structure - somewhat akin to what DC zoning regulations required of new construction in foggy bottom 20 years ago (ex: the uruguayan embassy). despite the lovely day, the neatly-kept plaza is mostly abandoned, save the odd taiwanese tourist. a small, half empty parking lot is scattered with shiny S-class benzinos of various colors, while a smattering of soldiers patrol the grounds. in the middle of the plaza stands the statue of 30-foot copper tree whose limbs have all been hacked away (or, rather, never granted by the artist). assuming it to be an allegory of sorts for human rights abuses of previous regimes, i didn't expect the following heading: "Asuncion - Capital of American Culture, 2009."

parliament's sleek new headquarters have the advantage of being perched at the edge of a minor precipice overlooking a bay that gives way to the rio paraguay, beyond whose natural frontier lies the interminable chaco desert, a vast expanse of arid weeds, chalked soil and stunted palm trees that consumes nearly 2/3 of the national territory. the only disadvantage of such a locale is that it is also gives way to the largest slum the city lays claim to. the sprawling shanty-principality begins literally 100 feet from where the steps of parliament leave off and quietly descends into the bay, embracing the verdant chaos of an environmentally precarious existence squeezed between a peacefully sclerotic and quasi-crumbling semi-civilization to one side and an encroaching body of water on the other. tisn't even that their presence is an aesthetic blight upon the city's good name; characteristic of so many contradictions, they blend rather nicely into the sleepy, semi-urban landscape that fades into the earth as it approaches the river. nor does the material contrast it provokes stun the observer as might first be imagined. not only is the observer not offended - what's most striking about the whole affair is precisely how natural the whole thing feels. as though our sensitivities had been shat through a mustard-colored kaleidoscope and we forget to take our 1-D glasses off. this is the world as it is, could, should and shall be, the natural order of the ontological puzzle as each piece carelessly falls into place. there is an eerie peace that reigns over everything - an accord unattained from plato to nozick alike. keep in mind that neither the moral ambiguity of great wealth nor abject poverty is in question here - merely the ease with which they're peacefully accepted, internalized and forgotten - and then subsequently reproduced.

career fairy-syzing.

i sat in my room sipping mate, pondering subsequent moves. i'd been sick for what seemed far too long a time and was aching to snag a one-ticket - the shortest path to freedom for any foresight-forsaken fool. or perhaps not. my roommate had recommended a bus service that promised milk, honey and whiskey, and i sprung at the opportunity. who knows, he said, you might even be able to get a ticket online and save the trip to the dante's-bottom-drawer-that-is-Retiro. after filling out several simple details regarding height, weight, political views and marital status, i reached a drop-down button labeled 'occupation.' oddly enough, the only profession listed before clicking was that of 'actor.' something about beginning with an 'A,' i imagine - surely there there can't be many more.

when one fills out the questionnaire in missouri public middle schools intended to help rebellious, insecure and pimply 13 year-olds predict their five most likely future career options, they usually ask things like "do you like movies that take place in outer space?" - or - "do you like playing with fire" - or - "do you know how to operate a firearm and haven't the slightest inhibition from doing so?" - or - "are you better at catching or throwing?" ...by the end of the afternoon, everyone thinks they have a rough idea of who's going to be the veterinarian, the janitor, the nurse and the one-gram-possessing convict ironing out mississippi license plates til kingdom come. nonetheless, however socio-economically imaginative our teachers are taught to teach us, there must be some epistemological limits to the construction of the american dream. limits within which the dream can simmer, if you will. aim to be an astronaut, my dear, not a peddler of poems. dreams, as drifters will remind us, trade in different currency - and we do still live in the age of the nation-state. so when i clicked to fill out the paraguayan bus line's option under 'occupation,' little did i know to what range of professions their population could theoretically, in terms of bus transportation, aspire.

in the 'A's alone, we've any number of enticing life-commitments apart from acting (remember we're translating from the spanish) - and once you've gotten the tenth-grade broadway bug out of your system you're finally free to choose between astrologist, traffic cop, anthropologist, artisan, referee and astronomer. 'B's can rest assured they've both ballerinas and biologists in their court, whereas the 'C's will attest to the number of caddies, boat captains, cartographers, commentators and composers they've sent second class on the bus from Bs As to Asuncion. dandies dressed in 'D' will delight in the hordes of diplomats, book binders, private detectives and DJ's that are lining up for the hell of it, whereas 'E's must content themselves with excavationists, ethnographers, engineers trained in explosives and escape artists. oh, fret not, dear reader, there's more. our trusty conductor is also expecting an appearance from a certain hydrologist, another lithographer, an expert ice cream man and an regionally renowned maker of fine cheeses. the miner shall sit next to the model, whereas the urban landscape gardener will have to make due next to the shepherd's bucolic stench. of course, we'll leave the geneticist to fend off the philosopher, behind whom we'll cram the nutritionist with our cantankerously corpulent opera singer. meanwhile, the notary public's playing cards with the pizza delivery boy as the painter makes faces behind the pilot's back (that luckily only the doorman can see). the radiographer's taken to the toilet - and only time will tell when the supreme court judge and the sociologist will finally come to blows. the shoemaker's tossed in the towel and sought a well-earned siesta - which wasn't easy as the wet-whistled welder noisily weaned the gravedigger off his gargling gourd. have it as you will, there wasn't a peep out of the vigilante - who sat peacefully at the back of the bus, pondering his subsequent move.

frolicking all the way to the frontera.

i packed my rucksack and set off for the subway in the mid-afternoon bonairense sun. in true late-sabbath-day fashion, everything was illuminated, traffic was little, the pedestrian presence light. helios was smiling upon the cafe just across the way and a slight southern breeze tickled my hind-side as i made for the avenida san juan. in short, a perfect day to set sail for other shores. your host has given you its blessing, you have its temporal authority to depart.

on roughly an hour's sleep, i'd made the eventual early-to-mid morning transfer from quilmes to yerba mate only hours before setting off. had been another late, though pleasantly un-rambunctious evening in and out of corner dives and bodegas, scribbling on napkins and smoking in the cold, watching the endless sea of cabbies whisk by as you wait for your compañera to show. a few hours' transfer of tales later, we were ambling along the empty city streets, making our way for congress and whatever tales the early morning avenue had to tell. we ducked into a cafe for the latter au lait and a medialuna or two, just as the sun began to lift its wintry head - and squinted in awe as it briskly brightened the haussmannian edifice kitty corner from our groundfloor perch. little is more glorious than the cold and sunny arousal of a sleeping metropolis on a sunday morning. you've no other task but to find a newspaper and carelessly count your blessings.

a 14-peso coffee and several heavy-eyed articles into the freshly minted august edition of le monde diplomatique later, i was aboard my earth-faring beauty, the ever-so-amply noted crucero del norte, amidst who's arms i would reach the calm, ocean-less shores of the paraguayan capital within 20 hours. as i'd both hoped and feared, our lovely butler brought around a tray of chocolates and whiskey within moments of hitting the highway. being in no position to either read my paper or lean over the middle-aged women to my right to hopelessly divine what hugo mortensen was whispering in subtitles on the stunted screen, i peered into the future in a sleep-deprived, tipsifying daze as we sailed down the highway into the outlying ends of the early evening northern sprawl. there is truly no experience like sitting front-row, second-story of a double-decker bus thrusting its way into the horizon. it is the closest thing thing to feel-riding the future i've ever felt - especially when in the middle of the pampa at the crack of dawn. you're at the cusp of the earthly condition, always a mili-second ahead of the rest of humanity - where time and distance furiously make love and you're their first born, peering through the looking-glass of the massive windshield as you pass the world by (and not the other way around). apart, of course, from the conductor directly below you, himself responsible for steering our fabled time-ship.

i awoke bright and early and went below to get a black coffee from one of the sugar-and-caffeine dispensers these 'cama con/servicio' bus routes are known for. minutes later, we happened upon an all-too-recent road block of sorts. paraguay, as i've recently come to learn from tendentious personal experience, is notoriously full of police checks along its principle thoroughfares; that being said, we were still 10km south of the border and couldn't make out any authoritative intervention up ahead - nor did it appear to be an accident. all i could make out was a non-vehicular obstacle and a small congregation of fellow human-folk some 100m ahead. after 15 minutes of inactivity and the mid-morning sun ominously beating upon my stinken and poorly-rested brow, i decided to (pretend to) investigate the cause of our delay. it was already shaping up to be a beautiful day as i walked toward the source of our minor morning troubles. truck drivers and traveling salesmen were leaning against their respective modes of transportation, sipping mate - or terere - depending from which side of the border they hailed, looking generally uninterested in the cause of our collective standstill. something about patience being the father of pragmatism, i suppose - it does help to take such struggles in stride on this side of things.

as i reached the cause of commotion on foot, i neared a group of 20-25 adults huddled together in the middle of the road. to their right, several bedraggled children ground a dirty, empty plastic bottle further into the pebbled dirt with ineffectual blows of the foot. they'd constructed barriers of branch and twig and adorned their humble barricade with a poorly crafted and illegible script of various colors. there were 3-4 maimed and mangled tents awkwardly pitched in the grass along each side of the shoulder, whose temporary inhabitants huddled over thermoses of mate. all in all, they'd managed to blockade a 30 meter stretch of road with nothing more than sticks, stones and the general goodwill of not-passers-by - in addition to their own fiery, if uninspiring, resolution, of course. from what i could tell, they were a landless indigenous group of sorts resorting to moderately more pressing measures after months, if not years and generations, of a condescendingly cold government shoulder. this, at least, was what i picked up from the audio recording played by one of the protesters - a tool he passively played when pressed for information by curious onlookers. apart from this languid display of third-party input, they exerted no further communicative effort; furthermore, it was never even quite clear if they spoke spanish, either. nonetheless, it was an impressive display - however despondent its agents appeared at first (and second) sight: several sadly clad, crestfallen peons and their downtrodden offspring that had managed to peacefully cut off international travel between two repressive, militaristic quasi-republics for three hours on a busy monday morning without the slightest trace of turmoil; a noble tooth and nail attempt, however feeble, not to be swept under the doormat of history's bitter, indifferent breeze.

leaning against a rail that lined the route, a paraguayan chap from my bus approached me to strike up a friendly chat: "and to think that i'll get to tell my friends the state of things in argentina. in paraguay, they'd have pummeled these poor souls into the earth within minutes. you can't block the highway in my country. it's the law," he mused with a shrug. at noon, the protesters peacefully dissembled as previously planned and we all got back into the bus. "what did those bolivians want?!" the woman next to me demanded. "i couldn't quite tell you."

chesterton on the french revolution

It is not a flippancy, it is a very sacred truth, to say that when men really understand
that they are brothers they instantly begin to fight.

merendando con cortazar.

"memories only change the least interesting part of the past"

- Gregorovius

streeting in hues of sabiduria.

when all is said and done, the writing's already on the wall. there's no need to fret over the socio-national origins of public education or the post-war bourgeois role of the state in constituting a perpetual domination of the masses through the manufacture of historiographical heresies by way of chauvinistically fraudulent curriculum; at least, that is, not in buenos aires:

one of the advantages of having a large, unorganized and fractured left is the occasional cynicism it inspires (whether deserved or not) - and the politico-historical imagination, shall we say, that springs from such disillusionment. not that a fractured base is necessary to question given political situations, however pernicious they may be; indeed, only through well-structured opposition can one dismantle - and eventually construct - one's own historiographical haven, be it ideological-communal, regional or national in scope. what advantages, then, can possibly be said to exist in a highly politicized yet simultaneously marginalized political ambiance? the imagination, my friend, the imagination - as well as the nerve.












more than a few people have remarked the extent to which buenos aires street art is overwhelmingly political in nature. perhaps this is somewhat akin to when john adams said that "i must study politics and war so that my sons may study mathematics and philosophy, natural history and naval architecture, in order to give their children the right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, tapestry and porcelain." (i might scrap the last two for something slightly more gumptious, but that's just me). whereas berlin and new york street artists can busy themselves with expressing the oddities of the modern, pre/post-yuppie condition, the boys in Bs As are must first address the contradictions that escape their politicians (how we could all learn a lesson or two from them). whence such a cosmopolitan vision? i would like to know. the socially, politically, economically and ethnically marginalized in the u.s. do not take to paint as ofter as their counterparts elsewhere; when they do, tis less to expose the geo-social contradictions into which they were born than an immediate yearning for communal attention, or so i suspect. such attention, however, if and when it is obtained, is rarely communal in scope - and when it is, is more often met with contempt than solidarity.

i interviewed an aging former guerrilla and life-long militant yesterday evening who had many an interesting thing to say. amongst a number of gramscian truisms, there were several that stood out in particular: for one, he took great pains to remind me that repressive, bourgeois military rule is always a sign a weakness rather than strength. the real trick is getting people to ignore the root/s (and manifestations!) of their socio-existential malaise as they stare them in the face and consequently not act thereupon (in concerted fashion). none of this is new, of course, as any functionally well-read and semi-critical observer will note. nonetheless, it begs an important question: what is more pernicious - a semi-functioning confederacy of well-oiled, oligarcho-populist spin-doctors whose constituents know, fear and condemn them in the streets - through art if nothing else - or a highly efficient, quasi-democratic though faux-representative ethnocratic political culture that even encourages vandalism, so long as it's neither political nor artistic in scope? at times, it is hard to distinguish between the two (the former ostensibly emblematic of tina-land, the latter of the states). at this point, we only ask that the citizen-artist make the attempt.

una gota con otra se hace aguacero.

yesterday i made my first visit to a buenairense hospital. one can learn a great deal about any campo, county, capital or country from the waiting room of its public health facilities - and not only based on services rendered (or lack thereof). as any astute observer will remark, hospitals betray a remarkable trove of socio-political orientation. indeed, they're a demographic portrait of a given class or society frozen in a single frame: economically, ethnically, aesthetically. we all have an image of the american waiting room - however different its urban, suburban, outer-sprawl or rural variants may prove. (in two words - sadness and obesity - if we're being honest.) though i've yet to studiously wile away the afternoon in a recoleta plastic surgery clinic, one has little trouble picturing their clientèle, either (if not cosmo, perhaps they'll have the new yorker?). to begin with, i made the mistake of seeking medical attention during the mid-morning rush; not that things were hectic - on the contrary - they were almost too calm, considering the number of people seeking care for gunshot wounds and paco overdoses at 10am on a brisk monday in july (ok, bad joke). without trying to speak for the sub-altern, i must say that everyone there seemed to carry themselves with an uncanny dignity; silent without being morose, reserved without being dejected, they diligently waited their turn. from the 'guardia' bureau where you receive your initial slip, you advance to the preliminary line (ventanilla) - whence they schedule you the fatal appointment, often within the same day. luckily enough, i lived within 8-9 stone's throws away and went home to lay in bed, drink mate and pity my poor condition before returning for an afternoon bout with the general practitioner.

a friend from sau paulo visited last week and made a number of interesting remarks about the city i'd only subliminally noted at best. any number of stereotypical balloons are bound to be popped when trading in reputations as inflationary as menem's sense of propriety - and buenos aires is no exception. hailed as the 'paris of the south' or latin america's 'greenwich village,' among other geo-cultural impertinences, some are disappointed when they arrive in the city of good airs only to discover that it neither rains women nor sprouts t-bones from the cracks of the sidewalk pavement (at least my fare saint louis only has to live up to a fervent obsession with baseball, toasted ravioli, frozen custard, blues and high murder rates). that is not to say it isn't sublime, upon slightly deeper reflection, for in many respects it is. judging by the surface, however, is a more delicate affair. for one, as my dear friend remarked, the bustling metropolis is full of old folk. tis true, Bs As must have the highest median age of any capital outside of moscow and minsk - for reasons i've thus far failed to grasp. perhaps it's because the kirchner government reinstated government-backed pensions; maybe it was the junta's systematic near-liquidation of an entire generation in the late 1970's and their would-be 20 somethings that were sterilized or never born - one can only surmise. there was an article in the times a few weeks back focusing on the city's efforts to render itself more senior-friendly (slow news cycle, anyone?). the mayor's spokesman said they were extending the 'go' sign at crosswalks by a full four seconds (and yet the germans still don't take them up on the offer when the blinking red men rears his head) - the rest of the details slip my mind (why not enlarge the numbers on the lotto tickets for those with poor sight - an alternative countermeasure to republican repeals of the death tax, anyone?).

the point of all this is that Bs As is older, quieter and more tranquil than it's often made out to be in popular northamerican and european imagination. some of this is the winter talking. or the fact that i've lacked for either fortune or health for the better part of my stay (which need not be a bad thing, either, if one can learn to properly reflect upon such states of being. read orwell's down and out in paris and london in case you're looking for inspiration). the fact is, for all the politicization of public life and vitriolic memory, the argies are a kind and gentle bunch. racist, yes. authoritarian at times - from what i've heard. arrogant, perhaps a tad in Bs As (though nothing compared to what they've been made out to be. they couldn't hold a candle to parisians if they tried). on the whole, however, at least from the perspective of a young, white, northern male, they're as welcoming as a lukewarm pint on a autumn evening's park bench overlooking the city. that's to say, more friendly, kind and helpful than not. just don't mention your leftist-guerrilla research project in the northern dives. you might just get a reaction.

back to the hospital. a plethora of almost-middle-aged women and their late-adolescent daughters filled the corridors. do men simply not get sick? tis difficult to dictate symptoms, though it has been done (a 'western' female friend of mine once paid a visit to the doc in india, accompanied by a male companion, as is customary in certain places; before she could explain her condition, however, the doctor made very clear that he would only address his male counterpart, giving way to her first three-party, uni-lingual information transfer at point blank.) a low murmor drifted through the air, the rhythmic hullabaloo of which paled in comparison to the average playground chatter of two american joes. i'm always in awe of people that can simply go about their business - or lack thereof - in what appears to be clear and present resignation. is there a thought-attainment brain state to which we mind-fidgeters are not privy? in any case, half the room was in line while the other half conscious-slumbered in the waiting chairs, awaiting their eventual go at the state-ordained healer.

i returned for my scheduled appointment at 4:40, five minutes ahead of schedule. both brain and body had taken a lackadaisically unpleasant beating the two previous weeks and i'd figured i give antibiotics a go. you needn't a prescription for this sort of thing down south, but i couldn't surmise any reasonable dosage upon request and the pharmacist sent me packing to get one from the doc. when i returned to the hospital that afternoon things had quieted down quite a bit. there was a security guard with a sign-in desk posted at the front entrance, to whom i smiled and nodded before contining upstairs to the assigned room on the appointment stub. the second floor hallway was well illuminated by the afternoon sun, and for a moment i was almost glad to be there. in fits of extended fever, one's memory and perceptive abilities have a way of dislodging positive and negative connotations; was this warm, sun-light hallway reminiscent of bouts through the hallowed halls of brittany woods middle school? the nurses' trailer at summer camp in southern missouri? the central prefect's detox station from that one night in paris with ultan the irishman? none of the aforementioned proffer particularly illuminating encounters; why they come to mind, you'll have to ask my psychoanalyst (they say Bs As has got the second most per capita in the world after parigi.) nonetheless, it was not an unwelcoming sight. miniature card board signs protruded from the doors at horizontal angles, indicating each room's number. when i got to mine, the top half of the door, which disconnected from the bottom, was propped open, such that an observer of 3 or more feet could lean into the office to announce his arrival. within in a number of seconds, a small, bearded man approached and asked me for my stub.

"and where are you from?" (he asks in spanish). "the united states," i respond in kind. he writes down my nationality and completes the form. a full 28 seconds later, he grins and offers: "ahh! uniiiiiited staaaates! yes, yes, united states!" "why, yes, sir, that's correct - the united states," i muster, trying not to chuckle. "united staaaates!" he reminds me as he gives me a wink. "vas a seguir por alla - hasta la sala 145.. eeet is, yes.. that way! united states!" i amble 40 feet down the hall to the aforementioned room and look around for a seat. the man follows, this time downright beaming. "vos tenes que tocar a la puerta - like diss! bop bop! you see? pero vos hablas castellano - porque te estoy hablando en ingles? jajaja i do not know! why do we do what we do? solo dios sabe!" he enters, momentarily converses with the doctor before coming back out. "sentate, sentate - just one moment please!" i sit down and pull out my paper as he hurries off back down the hall. before i get a paragraph into the article, he's back with a vengeance in english: "you like to read?" - "why, yes, i tell him." "ah! very good!" and he scurries off toward the doctor's office, some 15 feet to my right. i debate whether or not to look up as he passes me on is way back. i crack. "reading very good!" he assures me, as we meet eyes, and goes back to his office. 46 seconds later, he emerges again, sitting next to me. "where you from?" - "st. louis," i tell him, with an unconvincing plea - how will i ever get this one across? "you know, like, tom sawyer and huckleberry finn? mark twain, paddling down the mississippi?" pronouncing each character's name with the argiest of accents i can muster. "ah, writers!" he shrieks in excitement. "why, yes, we've a few of them where i'm from in the states - t.s. eliot, tennessee williams (mi colegio! mi colegio! i keep repeating)." - "yes, yes, now i see, very, very good!" as he pats me on the knee and takes off for the doctor's office once again. on his way back, we exchange yet another cosmological glance. "cortazar! borges!" he offers. "sabato?" i meekly respond. "sabato! yes! sabato!" as he passes me by. before reaching the door he turns to me with a mischievous grin, as though concealing an eternal secret. "and wah wehminh!" i hesitate, feigning comprehension and solidarity with whatever just came out of his mouth. he doesn't take the bait, however mastered it's become. "walt whiiitman!" he repeats, this time radiating. "oh, i don't know, buddy - i think he's ours!" i reply in kind as the man chuckles and scuttles off down the hall.

when i did finally get around to seeing the doctor that day, he recommended that i boil salt in water, add mint leaves and breathe the vapor with a towel over my head. apart from sexual proverbs and an urban guerrilla tactic or two, that was the first thing my roommate nico had taught me in Bs As. "yes, that's been working, but is there any chance you could tell me the suggested amount of antibiotics a person of my age and weight might require? that's really all i need," i beseeched the portly gentleman. "afraid i can't my son - tisn't my specialty. you'll have to see the ear, throat and nose doc for that." - "can i see him this afternoon by any chance?" - "no, twill have to been first thing in the morn.' come by at 6am and you should be ok." dejected, i gathered my possessions, thanked the man and walked across the street. he'd given me a prescription for a decongestant, just as the sinus was getting better and the head throbs worse. "would you like anything else?" the woman behind the desk politely asked. "uuh, why yes, how about a pack of skittles and some penicillin." - "what dosage?" - "oh, you know, something a growing boy of my size would be able to handle," i proffered in return. moments later i clamored out the door, fenoximetilpenicilina potasica in hand, and wandered into the setting evening sun, mate, medicine and medialunas on my mind...