Moving. In the last three months the closest I got to a travel situation was moving. Moving things from one home to another, like nomads, like biblical tales, from one place to another, though not crossing deserts in the search of Jerusalem, but putting stuff in boxes from the old home box to another home which doesn’t feel like home and will be for the next few years home, my home, our home sweet home. Moving from home to home.

English language has these things that drive me peculiarly mad, one same word meaning two different significant, I move my ass or I move to a new home, and the word ‘move’ starring in both phrases.

It is indeed a new way of travelling, not only from one spot to another, but also in time. Clothes we will never wear appear, books that we will never read, a box of old letters (when I was young we used to post letters, you, e-mail generation), tapes, CDs, USOs (unidentified static objects), and many boxes containing your past, souvenirs, coins from diverse countries, stones (I have many many stones from all around the Americas), and so on.

At this point of life, 37-year-old, about to be a father of two little girls, for the first time (wife pregnant of twins) this sort of things move things inside your frigid barricades invading the sensible ruins. Moving to another home moves you inside, if you know what I mean in this movement.

Beside that sensible matters, that appear considerably without noticing them (memories from your childhood, and a particular feeling of offering that old childhood to these new two creatures feeding from wife’s guts) the new home offers in this case, more space to move, new sounds, new neighbours and a new integrant in my life, which I’ve seen before but spent three years without: Television.

What a thing, another box in this new box shaped home full of boxes, definitely a stranger, and a stranger that we are ready to know and discover. I’ve spent my first two weeks here, immersed in that race of television news, in the fight to captivate audiences by trying to show what no other channels show, inventing, changing reality, informing reality, sucking blood from a man’s phrase, debating for hours about a two-second fragment recorded, and keeping us captive, and over-informed and overdosed with multiple perspectives of a single fact – which obviously means politics.

Victims. As in nature, the rain humid the earth and the grass grows and is eaten by a cow which will be eaten by men who will be eaten by worms, modern civilization and contemporary era has a singular chain of victims, predators and recycling methods.

Farmers go to the roads, to complain against unfair law, a journalist has to spend a month or even 102 days by the road covering every single word from farmers, the cameraman captures the phrases and the journalists incisive methods to create a scandal with farmer’s opinions, after a month of asking the scandal appears, the images blow to your screens at home (or new home ‘theatre’), the panelists and leading journalist at the TV studio transform, then deform, and reform, the words during an hour, the other channel which you chose during the ads is talking about the same thing, but now has the word of scandal from a minister in defence of the government which irritates the television audience and make some crowds go out to the streets to scream in revenge, then the government makes you see by television their point of view, reflecting their power, and the journalist at the road with the farmers ask them what they think about this and the cycle commences as your eyes are red of so much exposure to the screen. A drug, that’s what television is, and that makes us addicts, and that makes my new home somewhere that I will have to study, cut the wire, don’t pay the cable, read a book, be a father, or travel.

I could spend many more words in this thesis, but I think I will leave my thoughts for the future.

Moving is definitely a relative to travelling, though in the same city, the sense of change, which is the main ingredient in this matter, appears in every step, in every move you make.

Throw away your television, read this paper for example: the movement you need is in your shoulder.

As in an instant of the most extreme happiness, that happiness may vanish and become a sublime chaos that will transform into sadness: good wines may be acid, and good trips in the mind may become bad ribs in your spine.

All that glitters is not gold, not all devils were angels and not all spots connect lines. This is not philosophy; it’s a simple status against statutes, orders, desire, and most of all principles and religion.

The road is done, the cars are done, the body is done, but we decide, we turn, we appreciate, we want and we need while every single thing is evolution. A dream is just a vague index for desire, milk for our egos. The sun is only the closest star, but what without it?

Argentina in a newspaper, a map in a paper, ecography, pollution, Stephen Spielberg, karaoke and you and me, refracting shadows, intercepting the sun, rays of light directly proportional to force and gravity, in straight lines and diagonals, while the planetarium visible clock of rocks, just goes round and round.

So where are we standing or sleeping or sitting or going or leaving? We are (whatever we are doing) eating from our carrot, immersed in conflicts of survival, of love matters, of contradictions, and in very few moments, maybe just in vacations (ugly word, meaning and weakness) we have the guts to stand in front of the ocean and realise that we breathe air and that we don’t shit coins. The other times when we get connected is with loss, dead beloveds, and finally when we kiss, when we kiss with love and for love.

A submarine in a desert, a small hatch that opens, a man in a golden outfit, with a white feather on its hair and a plastic spoon in the ear is more realistic than a twin baby couple coming out from a belly after a natural cloning process, after a sensitive physical chemical mixture between two opposite sexes after a sexual relation.

Life is around us, and we are part of it, a small infinite particle, surrounded by cabs, and cops, and cups, and clubs and thousands and millions of people in this tangoing city, so I recommend an exercise: visualise yourself where you are, but from three metres high in a vertical sense, now send your humanity and sense to that marked point, as in google maps, in slow motion, begin to get higher, you may see the block were you are (were) the 20 blocks around you, the neighbourhood, the surrounding neighbourhoods, then appears the river on one side, also the density of concrete at the  other side is less, and now you see the whole city surrounded by green, keep it on and more till you may see the whole province of Buenos Aires, with its weird P shape, now STOP and hold on.

Breathe.

Safe levity, silent, smooth wind…now look down and around and see the whole country without thinking of people, it must be beautiful, the flat Pampa, the vertical vertebra of the Andes, the lakes the rivers, the humid dark green of the jungle, the arid yellows of the north, the Atlantic coast and the triangle of Patagonia.

Breathe in the air.

Float as a gas, as smoke, as a prophet…we are immaculate.

So… yes, you have to come back, as always, to the claxon of the train, to the sound of the radio, to people, to relatives, to the urban jungle, to the next article on this page, to the city.

I know, we can keep it cool, we have our job, dog, girl, boy, goals, but in a way this is not reality, or do you think it actually is? Maybe I am wrong, but, if I listen to that song, the one that says ‘Get back to where you once belong’ I think that the place were I belong is up there, ‘that’ spot in the air, where I can see and feel and float. That is my spot (that’s me in the spot, like…), where I belong, and from there I try to decide, where shall I come down next: mountain? Ocean? City? Routine or extravaganza? That is my other home, so in a way, when I write this column, I just look down from there and choose a place in the country to write about, but as sometimes, the routine in which I am immersed too, doesn’t allow me to travel and write about that travel and I am afraid that when that happens, you have to read my thoughts from that personal bubble in the sky, and my only wish is that what you read may entertain you.

Let it breathe…

Given the situation of no last memorable trips or sights since last episodes at Mendoza, I have no other chance than starting to create another column without sense of focus, idea or content, therefore I suggest to read any other neighbour columnist or article, unless you are ready to be in a taxi without destiny, like in movies, after a murderer or after dismissing your persecutors.

As a matter of fact, I will act like this taxi driver, and will speak to you, while we go around the city, while the clock is ‘clicking’, talking about Buenos Aires politics and weather.

“Where are we going sir?”

“Just drive please.”

I would start telling you how I can’t stand our former presidential couple, their threatening attitude and methods against my farmer brothers, the way they corrupt some big media informers such as Infobae, who act like sycophantic pupils flattering the strict headmistress and her surrounding moustache retinue. I do not trust them. I am certain they are conspiring, I am certain they live in a constant paranoia, I am certain that she sleeps with a light turned on, and that her only real concern is which of her 500 dresses (of 2,000 used) she will wear tomorrow. She talks about the poor as if she was one of them, she isn’t even close to their reality and even less to doing something to help them.

“You know who I voted for sir?”

…no answer…

“I voted for Raúl Castells [I actually did!], do you know why?”

“…mmm, no…” (while you are watching at a five-year-old boy juggling with three old tennis balls)

“He is the only man on the whole political scene who is coherent and really concerned about the poor. I wonder how the whole Peronist platform can actually walk and smile to their relatives at home.

“Please imagine this scene. Sunday lunch, at the table, Mr Hugo Moyano, Aníbal Fernández, Cristina Fernández and husband and Luis D’Elia. I cannot imagine any deep conversation or any trivial chat. I can just imagine them playing TEG, distributing their money (did I say ‘their money’?) I can imagine them laughing loudly, remembering the millions of dollars they control and distribute, the thousands of acres they signed for their own, feeling fabulous and smart, laughing in our honour and the ten million poor they ‘defend’ while they give each other their part of the assault.”

“This is the same all over the world, the US and their wars, China and their communist politics, etc…” (I can hear you reply).

If you reached to this point I am lucky you did. I completely agree with my theoretically taxi driver. I am afraid of this world, but in short, I am afraid of this country. Are they politics in France still discussing about De Gaulle and Petain, are they in the UK about Chamberlain or Winston? God save Evita!

We have no focus, just like me today in this column, Argentina is the party for the Peronist circus who takes control, and all the other political parties can just complain, and also have no capacity to govern or being an honourable opposition.

I wonder if at some point we will survive as a rational nation and I am instantly certain we wont.

At this point in my micro novel, you must have jumped out of the taxi, after my apocalyptic political views, and I don’t blame you. Thank God, we have deserts, and Jungle, and Andes mountains of all colours and shapes, and we have a vast ocean and pampa, and we still have indigenous people who understand our land, and farm working class heroes who bless our bread and fruits and vegetables with their jobs.

I sincerely detest our politKs, I honestly don’t trust them.

Till next edition, and sorry for making a political column out of a travel column, but after all this is also part of my country.    

The appointment was for the VI Rally of the Wineries in Mendoza, the excuse was perfect to make another visit to this town and amazing surrounding areas. The taste, now, three days later is neutral – a mix: a little bit disappointed by men (again) and always with superation of expectations in terms of nature.

What’s wrong between me and men, as if I wouldn’t be part of the hood? Honestly I don’t know, but in this case, I was expecting a more friendly atmosphere, in the side of the racers, drivers who run the rally, friendship and camaraderie codes were missing, I expected, a bunch of 50-year-old people laughing about their present and telling stories about their past, their cars, and behind that I just found drivers in a freezer, who during the prize ceremony (to give you an idea) would clap the winners as someone who says amen at church after a boring mass.

Mendoza is the capital city of the homonym province and has the peculiar characteristic of not being very Argentine, compared with the rest of the country. I must say that this city has many differences, people are colder, things work out almost properly, it’s a clean and organised urbe. Not in vain, Mendoza city is in the same line as Santiago de Chile, and (putting all the people I like in this city against me) in my opinion Mendoza looks more Chilean than Argentine. Offering a very close example, last festival of the vendimia (wine harvest) to me it looked like the transandean festival of Viña del Mar.

The importance of Mendoza in political destiny of South America was huge, General San Martín chose this province to settle during a couple of years of his life as governor, but mainly preparing the apolyptic and legendary crossing of the Andes in the beginning of XIX century, to free Chile and Peru from the Spanish dyslectic greed and remote control power.

Mendoza’s dry soil and air, supplied Argentine souls with wine for centuries, and now this supply emerged frontiers, providing Argentina of a new icon comparable to tango, polo and beef: Argentina’s – or shall I say Mendoza’s – Malbec.

The Rally of the Wineries, which I mentioned, is a classic cars race, which by the way were fantastic: amazing cars from the 20s, 30s, 50s, 60s and 70s, in perfect conditions and completely original. Some pilots were very keen in competition, some others more relaxed and enjoying the whole experience; pilot and co-pilot were in some cases old friends, in others father and son, girlfriends, or even neighbours. The race was three stages a day, and each stop was in a winery or a special place. The roads, and environment were, how can I say, superb, beyond beauty patterns. The mountains look so close, and though you advance they are still far, and the strange dusty and ingravid transparency and density of the air, makes an ethereal optic illusion of the beyond giant rocks, of the beyond Andes mountains. Valle the Uco and Uspallata are two fabulous examples of this optical overdose. I insist, mountains always look close, and though you advance they are still ‘over there’.

Mendoza has a ‘strategy’. It’s 11am and you already have a glass of wine in your hand, and the people at the wineries offer it as if they were offering candy to a two-year-old identical baby twin. So at 1pm you find yourself making 1am jokes and having great ideas and funny discussions under a perfectly pale blue sky, breathing the perfect dry air when Mendoza’s second strategy appears…food!

Food is always good and necessary wherever you are, but becomes more important than the usual at Mendoza, as otherwise things may get double, so the time for multiplying bread, or shall I say meat, is more than welcome. Most of the wineries now have a restaurant, and most of them are brilliant. Some favourites: La Bourgone, Ruca Malen and Andeluna.

The race itself was tranquil, though long and exhausting, the ambient was amateur and sometimes friendly; there was a spark of competition of course, but the main fire was made of a good excuse to drive your brand old car and see other beautiful ones, and as there are all antique cars, there is also a subliminal message or other sparks, of a timeless sensation, of laughter about technology and i-things and plasmas, a special snobbish feeling of unique vintage masterpiece supremacy, of immortal survival of what mortal fingers created, and I’m not talking about gods, I’m talking about clever human hands, which long ago before mousses and pads, used to exist to create useful things and not only things to be controlled by remote, as my ancient Spanish relatives did with South American territory.

Alfonso recommends…USE YOUR HANDS!

Last written pictures of a four-night five-day trip, without maps, with awakened instinct, with open windows, without structures, within a spell, without a clue, careless and joyful, willing and able. 

Wire-haired street dog and me, he with a face that says ‘take me with you patron’, me with a smile that says ‘I’ll take you out of this pueblo‘.

Two minutes later, dog and human disputing the idea.

Me giving a mean-eyed look, to a dumb New Yorker (I love NY), who’s throwing a coin into the Iguazú Fall, as if he was in La Fontana di Trevi (if each of the one million visitors to the falls acted as stupid as this non-velvet underground fellow, we would be able to buy lots of books for poor schools or fill the pickets of a non-velvet underground deputy, by putting a net in the velvet underwater and bringing it up once a year).

Waiter reminding me after dinner that breakfast at the ‘anrique’ hotel in the lost city of El Dorado, Misiones, was from 7am to 10am. Writer of this column arriving for breakfast at twenty past ten. 

Orange plastic boat for 20 passengers, lucky and opportunistic columnist, on it, alone, just rower and me, 30 minutes of peace, clear water, dark bottom, monkeys, turtles and alligators, the Disney Falls people disappeared, vanished, the sound of ripples hitting softly ‘my’ boat, peace on water!

Erratic chat with the chef at Puerto Valle, midnight, everyone else asleep, convincing him about how snakes are always aware somehow of their presence to humans before they are stood on. 

Asking the editor of this paper by phone to postpone my deadline for this column. 

I must say that the two most visited destinations in this country, Iguazú and Calafate, are by far not of my fancy. What is the problem? PEOPLE! Both of them have catwalks, to see the beauty, which actually is super beautiful, but, and I am not a social-phobic person, people here really spoil the party, thousands, hundreds, millions a year, is like watching ‘Gone with the Wind’ surrounded by monkeys, and you being one of them. 

Yes, walking on ice or getting fresh in a speedboat under the fall is a unique sensation, but man, this is not experience, this is not communion. And then we have to add the people behind the scenes, the absolutely dramatic people who run hotels, prices for popular non-stylish excursions, ridiculous costs for transfers, for beds, for food, for matches. 

Yes, you should know both of them, but try not to go during Argentina’s holidays, try to go in low season, there’s always a way to act differently, but honestly, that water and that ice look like a lion in its cage in a central zoo of any capital city in the world… they look dead, spoilt, sad. 

Am I exaggerating? YES. But honestly it is very like this. Go, yes, but once, and then go to the surrounding areas: Moconá, Andrecity, El Soberbio, experience Ciudad del Este (Paraguay) and Foz do Iguazu (Brazil) – you have the chance to see three Latin American cultures in one or two days; or when south in the glaciers, go to El Chalten, or across to the Atlantic or the Pacific – you are close to both. 

It is possible that age makes man want to be further away from its relative human kind fellows, it’s possible that selfish characters such as mine want all the cake for themselves, but honestly for the third time in this column, there are times when I wish I was living in another past century, and maybe end up being eaten by cannibals, but after a three-hour non-stop cross-legged yoga experience facing the falls on my own, without Blackberrys, i-phones or aspirin or planes or jetlag… and absolutely (and in this part I have goosebumps) without people!

…and my favourite song writer once said in a song ‘power to the people‘.

Next time I shall write about Malbecdoza.

I-Guazu, in Guaraní, means masses of water.

Two weeks later, I can still see when I close my eyes the suicidal waters jumping to the abyss as in slow motion, I can even feel the instant of ingravity before the drastic and inevitable fall, and again, as in human perspectives, after the big crash and divided in hundreds of pieces, little by little, the puzzle begins to fit, and waters flow again by the calm river under the sky.

As some of you may have read last edition, I started a written photo album, in order to capture scenes of a four-day trip I made on my own from Resistencia in Chaco and to Iguazú in Misiones, in order to make this tale a bit more interesting for the reader’s universe.

Many things happen when you travel on your own, yes, much more than when you travel in couple or in a group, alone there’s a constant chain of situations that happen as if you were the only person attending a play, whilst with other people, things happen to you and to the rest too, so you may miss many, as the play may become slightly popular then.

Before writing the last ‘photos’ I wrote for this column, I will share with you a simple example of the strength of the Iguazú Falls, I mean the physical strength.

In the national park there’s only one hotel which is unbelievably a Sheraton hotel, mmm…, yes, Starwood co-starring the jungle star. There is an old building too, which was the old hotel, which is very nice I must say, kind of an English estancia which is abandoned and trespass for tourists is forbidden. While I was walking inside the building there was a long gallery to which all the doors of the former hotel go. While I was walking by the 4th or 5th door, I heard the sound of an animal trying to push the door from inside the building in order to get out. He was trapped. I looked around and started to think which king of animal could it be, and if the salvation process could be at some point dangerous. After a couple of seconds I tried to open the door but it was completely locked. The animal was still scratching and pushing the door. I grabbed the door handle and started to pull strongly when a strange pale man appeared from nowhere by my side asking me the evident question: What are you doing? I said, that there is an animal inside the building and I wanted to free him. Silence. The scratched and the pushing started again, so I went: You see? Listen! The man gave me a friendly smile and told me the noise was no funny animal, and explained me that those vibrations were the vibes from the falls 1km away, we were silent again, and the vibration in the door obviously continued and he was obviously right. After a dizzy explanation of what was I doing there my day continued.

So, let’s continue with more photo fragments.

Me at the local pub called ‘El Dorado’, which was actually a house of hookers, inciting a 20-year-old Paraguayan girl to change her job.

In a taxi going to Aeroparque, taxi driver telling me the story of when he used to be a long distance bus driver, and how he stayed in Misiones for two years living with a girl she met there.

Same taxi driver telling me how one day he woke up and felt the ‘mystical?’ call from the city and dumped the best two years of his life and possibly an also perfect future and came back to Buenos Aires without even saying goodbye.

Buying a bus ticket from El Dorado to Iguazú (hard night’s day).

Me in that bus, travelling stand up, the bus completely packed (I was never warned of the possibility) while two teenage girls were laughing at me. I don’t know why, though I thought many fundamental possible reasons.

Staring at a monkey, monkey staring at me while I whistle.

Motorboat in a channel, night already, lightening in the search of the two red eyes of a Yacaré, a caiman which when light hits his eyes at night, the eyes go red.

Paraguayan senator saying: “If Argentina sneezes Paraguay gets a cold” (Remember there’s a triple frontier in the area: tango, bossa and Guaranía)

More narrated photos for next edition…

A four day trip is enough to fill the blank of this page. Argentina is endless, there’s a paradise on every corner, yes people and nature… and yes, mainly nature.

Arrived at Resistencia in Chaco province after an hour and a half flight, and ended 48 x 2 hours later flying back from Iguazú.

The trip was considerably eclectic, as a rough synopsis, arrived at Chaco, a friend called Valeria fetched us from the airport, we traveled the 20 minutes between Resistencia and Corrientes, she gave us the most qualified improvised city tour I’ve heard in my life, and we had a great family dinner. Next day morning in Corrientes, we visited the soon-to-open hotel called ‘La Alondra’.

Bus from Corrientes city to Puerto Valle 200km north east, in the northern side of the Esteros del Ibera by the Paraná river, a super and beautiful old Estancia that became a luxury lodge received me with open arms, activities, great dinner and great sleep. Next morning a four-hour horse ride, it was Sunday, and I decided to hitchhike for the first time in my life (a pending issue for a 36-year-old solid, never late dude) after nine hours, part in an old bus converted to truck, part in a car with a lady who wanted me to marry her daughter who was in the back seat, and the main part beside the road under the 40 oC sun I finally arrived at an absolutely non-touristy town called El Dorado, Misiones. I downgraded to worst hotel you may imagine, but really that was part of the plan, getting to know the Mesopotamian idiosyncrasy and be more in contact with reality.

After bizarre activities that night (which I will develop soon), I woke up, left town in a bus, paid for a ticket, though I ended traveling stand up as seats were occupied. Three hours later Iguazú falls, one night, Iguazú falls and back to Buenos Aires as if I had done a 40-day trip by the Amazon remaking the odyssey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, who, by the way, was the first European to discover the falls.

Except describing this trip chronologically (recommendable by the way), I have decided to do a ‘written photo album’, snapshots of the different scenes I experienced so that each paragraph represents a photo. So, here go the pictures:

Inoffensive dreadlocked youth being caught by 16 policemen in the centre of Puerto Iguazú while looking for a place to buy cigarettes (the cigarettes were Uruguayan and were cheaper than in Uruguay)

Bizarre couple (him with curly hair down to his ass, her a very fat Argentine blonde) cut across a street, where a band of drummers and dancers for next week’s carnival were getting organized. About 20 boys with high school behaviour, ten 15-year-old girls, ten of ten, and ten of five, and one transvestite (still without fake breasts) 42oC, 10pm, complete disorganisation. Great drummers, truly bad dancers.

Me on a Mercedes Benz truck model 1968 after an hour and a half of hitchhiking, an old dirty bus. ‘Double cabin’ front seats with dad and mum, in the back seat a deaf older son, two little brothers and said writer, 55 mandarins on the floor, dirt saint situation, all very “Historias mínimas” (movie). Sounds? Very loud engine noise and a surreal conversation between me and the deaf son. Only phrase from the father: “This truck has been in all the country.”

Puerto Valle, best estancia hotel in Corrientes, amazing menu of activities, guide tells me: we are inventing a new excursion, do you want to test it? My reply “music to my ears, I’m in.” Two hours later, me, two guides and the hotel’s chef under an Hiroshima-shaped cloud, in the middle of a lake, under aggressive rain and lighting bolts, fishing bogas.

Dead Yarará (lethal snake) in the middle of the boiling pavement road, hitchhiker completely sweaty after two-and-a-half hours at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere after deaf-truck-ride experience.

Eating a suspicious sandwich at Corrientes bus station, morning after dinner with number one senator of Paraguay and Pini and wife Valeria, friends and owners and mentors of one the next Top 5 hotels in Argentina called ‘La Alondra’.

Writer on bloody catwalks (at the falls perimeter), surrounded by lots of noise and non-cool human beings of all nationalities and sizes and colours, blaming himself for being part of that obscenity against nature and feng shui, willing to be somewhere else.

Absorbed and open mouthed, watching the beauty and power of the ‘Garganta del Diablo’ (devil’s throat), the biggest of the Iguazú falls. Welcome to the jungle!

Eating a ‘pacu’ fish surrounded by backpackers whilst writing this article.

The next ten snapshots of this short trip are for next edition…

Big house, lonely feeling, and big wind has not decided yet in which direction to blow. It’s nature, and human nature.

Summer has taken its second step. It’s February, and if you read the words two, second, or couple, several times during this article, it may make sense at some point.

Many people decide to begin their holidays during February, as they are the kind of fellows who adore to laugh second, we say: ‘he who laughs last, laughs better’.

I definitely feel captured by the spell of another night, I was trying to sleep, like the other people beneath this ceiling, but I couldn’t.

Crickets again, though they ‘crick’ in another language, the pampa tongue, the Tres Arroyos dialect.

Big house, small dog, big future, small day. Deep dark blue.

Farm life. Family day.

Tiny bats are flying around, using their radars.

Stereotypes are useless, unless you listen. Today has just begun. According to watches: 1am, though this place, the land, agrees with me – we are still living yesterday, the night has yet many sounds to give, the wind has already chosen direction, comes from the south, from the Atlantic, goes to the north, in search of hot heat. It’s cold.

Big sea, small cars, big smile, cold wheat.

Please recommend something!

I recommend the night, alone, outside, in the country, as I am doing here tonight, always, sometimes, two nights a week, two months a year. I think the sound of the wind trespassing through the leaves of a hundred trees has two acoustic synonyms, the sound of the sea from the shore, and the sound of human masses far away claiming for revolution.

This is not me, it’s a me, in a trance, it’s an automatic pilot, piloted by another human source, a second victim of another ego.

The plan is to go as far as my fingers wish, let them ‘tric-tric’ on this keyboard full of letters, as I know tomorrow, it’ll be me again.

I enjoy swimming far, when the waters are calm, and being disabled to listen, the sounds of the people at the shore.

Tres Arroyos is located 500km from Bs. As., and where I am now (one more hour south in a car) is 15km from the ocean, where there is a little town called Marisol, stuck in time, a perfectly recommendable place to spend a lost three night weekend by the sea. The place is known as a good spot for fishing, and it’s a peculiar small village with roads made of dirt. The sun sets inside the ocean, a very strange and unique phenomenon, as all Argentina’s coast faces east, though here, as we are in the centre of Buenos Aires province’s bow or belly, we see the sun set as if we were in African Atlantic coast.

The grass is green again, after three months of dry weather here in Tres Arroyos, water fell from the skies five days ago…small sentence, big thing.

The road 1km away brings the sound of engines, it’s not calling, but it’s there, present, present perfect.

The cigarette is finishing, the dogs are asleep beside me, the silence is deep, and it sounds, yes, the sounds of silence… the two boys are coming, similar face and body, same genetic information and parents, two souls, two different characters, two victims of eternity won the race to become flesh against millions of negative probabilities, to threaten the human science, to play music, to laugh and make me laugh, to reveal and change and to add.

Sounds like fantasy literature, but all this is no less than an autobiographic photography.

Big thoughts, small text.

Writer in a coma I know, I know, it’s serious. Two weeks ago I was again on a ferry crossing the river on my way to Punta del Este after missing the 8am ferry and begging the Buquebus front desk guy for a place for me, wife, dog and well-known small green car, before finally we were accepted to the 5pm boat.

Two weeks of people, people in the morning, in the evening and in the nights, and that same people also invade your sleeping, in peculiar situations…dreamworks.  People who look for people. Yes, you have the ocean, that cleans your mind and spirit and renovates your body, but you are always surrounded and it was your choice.

Two weeks days of parties, all branded parties, the Chandon party, the Lacoste party, the Chivas party, etc. This is not a holiday, my liver aches, my stomach is completely disoriented, as all of a sudden, from one day to another he receives, toasts, butter, marmalade, coffee, milk, beef, salad, mushrooms, un-decodable sauce, beer, flan, water, coke, orange juice, aspirin, calamari, caipiroska, another caipiroska, fish, vegetables, white wine, coffee, ice-cream, vodka, champagne, and all in a complete blindness, as he, my stomach, has no idea of were he is and why I make him work so much, from one day to the next and with lapses of 15 hours. Headaches, naps, sun, sea baths, lotions, punctuality requests, assistance to invitations, acting happy, feeling miserable, this is not a holiday. After two weeks in this ‘paradise’ I honestly miss my desk and the sticky heat of the city. I need a holiday from this holiday.

The strange thing is that people choose this place from all around the world, and I come here to ‘work’ as I have clients and business to attend to here (though I still chose this place to work). People from the UK, the US, Germany, Ecuador, thousands of Brazilians, and of course Argies and Urus. I found myself speaking tongues, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and even Italian, and the crazy part is that people understood me, maybe because I’m good with gestures. This is a Fellini movie, a little bit decadent, a simile of Rome’s decadence, so much laughter, forgettable names, beautiful people with a mean smile, as if they were ready to kill you or welcoming you to the gates of hell. Everybody is clean and pure and suntanned outside, but empty and lonely and miserable inside. Everybody? I am tired, and old, and sleepy and negative, sorry, but this moment for this column came like this.

Anyway. Life is beautiful! The crazy Punta del Este circus left the town till next year, now the sands are cleaner, the cars are less, the people look safe after apocalypse, the brands made their work, and the crazy Europeans, went back to their cold latitudes. The wall has felt. Two weeks of 100% bed occupancy, many people here in Uruguay live for one year off this two week massive attack.

Now it is a completely recommendable place for a holiday, a chilled one, there are still people, but the speed is different, the PR orgy has stopped and we are safe.

I have four more days to rest in peace, to consider my appetite and not invade my mouth with whatever my fingers may intercept. It’s time to enjoy the sun (if it comes out).

Tonight is the first night in two weeks where I have stayed at my rented home, and I am enjoying it. I brought a book that is still waiting for me at the same page I was reading two weeks and 24 hours ago. I still have memorable memories of the past days, memorable conversations, and moments, but I love knowing where they are, in the past. La Barra, Manantiales, El Chorro, Balneario Buenos Aires, Jose Ignacio, are safe, they survived, I survived, people survived, the past is forever photos, forever memories.

Surrounded by noisy crickets and frogs, and the sound of thousands of leaves moving in a soft wind, writer is ready to spend a full day by the beach, looking for seashells, and listening again to his wandering spirit.

This is the end. One more year, one more ring for the tree, a new skin for the snake to drop, an old year is dead and a new year is born.

Birth of a new year is an invitation for a birth of a new mind, of new perceptions, a chance to become a better person, as if in the contract with life, there’s a tiny paragraph in small letters that says that every single human being has the chance to reborn with the new year, to erase the rigid disc and be able to begin from zero again.

Indeed, this is what makes this life stunning, and one of the few things which I understand as a unique characteristic of men, mmm…yes, and women, and that is the capacity to start again, just like starting over or that big phrase in the chest of artists for every square person looking for keys, ‘show must go on’.

We are absolute beginners, and it’s summer, it’s hot, the shores are full of strangers dressing in a strange way, yes, in fashionable underwear, wondering why this race chooses the same beach resort  to get fresh sometimes, finding you a metre away from ten other people who are also one metre away from another 100 and that won’t stop. Why? Why am I here, in underwear, watching girls and guys and the mamas and the papas and grannies in coloured underwear, with sticky lotions on their face and shoulders, feeling my white officinal skin getting pink whilst a burning sensation invades every inch of my skin? Why, I am not in a desert!? So I say to myself… that’s why a new year begins, to change my philosophy, to start taking things more easy, and throw away the old burden, and maybe a good way may be beginning by loving my lotioned co-beach habitués wearing their fashionable coloured underwear or at least not being snob or with complex about esthetical standards. Let it be. This is just the beginning. Baby you can drive my car, and maybe I love you.

So what is the point of this column today? This Year 2007 has come to its end point. So that is the point.

What is the point of this ‘travel’ column today? Enjoy this new beginning, wherever you are, the coast, the mountain, the desert, or even the city, or the pampas or your bathroom wherever you are staying, you have another chance to make your book look better, the book of your own life, forgiveness is at your feet as well as your dreams in the bottom of your stomach desiring to float in the quintessence of nature.

Yes, I know, what is the guy recommending?

This guy, I sincerely don’t know, and I sincerely didn’t choose the title for this column, though thinking this last question better, I definitely recommend Bob Marley & Wailers songs to begin your 8th year of this third millennium since baby Jesus came from immaculate mum’s belly to this planet called by an egocentric baptiser as planet earth, when we now all know that in a democratic environment it must have been called planet Water, as 70% of this planet is filled of it, as well as your body, well… counting caipirinhas as liquid, ergo as water. Maybe planet Agua would sound better.

So let’s start again and insist, this is the beginning, welcome to your new life, your new chapter, your new page, and remember you are not the only one having these thoughts: all the lotioned people around you feel it too, even in other latitudes. A drummer of a big old band is planning a final tour after 20 years of anonymity, even the prince may think this year maybe a good one to try other feet in that shoe, cause last year went wrong with Cinderella, so lets make this world a better thing, at least for a year, at least in this beginning.

Enjoy the sun, enjoy the storms, enjoy the silence and the raving to the joy fantastic, you are clean, you are no longer good or bad, you are a new person, so this is your time to begin reinventing yourself, picking the good fragments of your history and choosing the new steps in your present, step by step, leg to leg. Ain’t that good?

Have a nice time, hope next year is a hit for The Argentimes and for you and for me, I must add too, my thankfulness to this paper for offering me a window to express myself, I want to thank you…and you, reader more than anything, especially if you managed to follow your way to the end of this article. In a way we reached together to this single point.

2007. Just a memory. And it used to mean so much to me.