I walk past the San Telmo Dorrego Square, a lovely plaza filled with tables and street musicians hawking their talent for the café goers. San Telmo is an old Buenos Aires neighborhood, taken over by Italian immigrants over a century ago after a yellow fever epidemic. It is now inhabited by a mixed population of artists, tourists, and a range of working class and wealthy Porteños, (the local term for residents of this charming, run-down European-style city). Today the square is louder than usual, as a boisterous and vengeful crowd of old ladies are staging a protest here, waving their arms madly (in the spirit of their beloved Che) against their current enemy: the collectivo bus. The old women wander into the square from near and far, their pilgrimage growing quickly in number, led by a crossed-eyed bearded male agitator from the neighborhood. They stand tall against the passing buses, yelling insults at the metallic armor as the complacent drivers attempt to turn the tiny corners of San Telmo without crushing members of the rebellion. The women are here to banish the buses from San Telmo in order to protect their turn of the century, avant-garde buildings from the vibrations, cracking and noise pollution caused by the mammoth bus-y weight. As I make my way through the crowd, a TV camera magically appears and the horde, led by the aggressive beard, surges toward the lens. My path is cleared.

I love Argentina. Although I have been here for only a month, I am attracted to its lackadaisical yet neurotic South American-style fixation with Europe. I relish the idea that there might be another culture in the Americas as confused and hung-up on irrational self-obsession and yearning as my own, the US. Maybe here, in the mixed neighborhood of San Telmo, in the southern-most country of the Western hemisphere, I have found my parallel universe. Have I finally found a place on the map that I might tentatively call home?

One year ago, we three semi-strangers from three distinct cultures began the long road in a semi-cushy jalopy. We bought the little motorhome for $2000 from a hippie down the street and began the arduous process of giving things up: houses, jobs, friends, kitchenware, garden statues, computer hardware, vehicles and massive bags of clothing that no one seemed to want – all vestiges of the comfortable life. The getting rid of took almost as long as the getting on with. The reign of Bush and the 30-day Biblical December rainfest in Oregon that preceded our voyage only helped spur the mental and spiritual momentum for our quest. We floated our life’s belongings into the Goodwill truck, onto the flatbed of the Vietnam Vets of America, into my parents’ back bedroom, onto the sidewalk, out the door. We said our goodbyes, ignoring the warnings and concern, until finally, suddenly, the departure day came. So it was that our motley crüe sputtered out of my dubious yet tolerant friend Anne’s driveway one soggy morning, heading due south through a freeway of water and into our fog of a plan: Get in the motorhome, turn it on, drive to the freeway and do not stop until the tires no longer hydroplane and the back of the seat is covered in sweat.

18,000 miles, a couple forged rivers, fistfuls of bribes and fourteen million pot holes later, I am fighting my way through angry, anti-public transport old ladies in the neighborhood I am finally contemplating calling home. I am wondering both how I managed to end up here and reveling at the fact that, yes, we made it. Damn it, we did it. Our motorhome now sits in a campground outside of Buenos Aires, a bit worse for wear but intact and functional as ever - eleven countries without a breakdown or a flat tire. After a year I have finally parked the car, ceased the bumpy forward motion of constant travel, and chosen a place to settle. On this day, this one-year anniversary of our departure from our lives, I wonder where this new chapter will take me. I wonder if I am ready for it.

After wading through the community protest, I wander through the Sunday San Telmo street fair, rubbing elbows with blond tourists haggling uselessly with scruffy bohemians over hemp jewelry or sipping espresso and snapping pictures at the sidewalk cafes. I stop for a moment to appreciate the paintings of tango and cafes, for sale on the borders of the sidewalk. Although most certainly stylistically influenced by the European sidewalk artists of Florence or Paris, these paintings are conducted with the vivid, bright colors and new world ingenuity of Latin America. Here the artists are not afraid to use canary yellow, hot pants red and Amazonian green to depict their lives. Regardless of the obvious Argentinean yearning for Europe, their hearts are solidly planted in South America. I realize as I wander through the fair that the vast majority of voices passing by are Argentinean. Although this market has become primarily a tourist venue, the Porteños will never miss out on a Buenos Aires gathering. Simply put, they love their city.

I make my way to the covered market down the street from Dorrego Square. Stalls crowd together inside, housing bizarre old knick knacks – dusty, colored bottles, dolls glaring from 50 year-old eye sockets, sepia photos of anonymous grandmothers posing in grumpy splendor and torn posters of the Argentinean soccer God, Maradona. I keep moving, past the sacred junk aisles, to the produce and meat section where men in white coats, splattered in juice, hoist huge hunks of beef onto silver counters.

As I wait my turn to purchase a fresh Argentinean steak, the greatest national treasure after Maradona, I watch three old men enjoying their Sunday afternoon at a card table next to the meat vendor. They are fully in their cups, cheering and toasting one another with glasses of red wine. The spirit moves one older gentleman to a serenade; he holds up his glass while crooning a folk song, certainly full of lament, toward the high ceiling of the market. His companions look bored - I have a feeling this is not the fellow’s first tune of the day. I order my beef cut, receive my damp change, juicy from the butcher’s bloody hands, and head home to the apartment that Jonas and I have rented, one block from the San Telmo Dorrego Square. I walk past the elegant cathedral that faces our building, my footfalls keeping time with the gongs of its great bells.

Jonas and I wander up to the disheveled rooftop of our building to enjoy the evening and gaze upon the fat moon, pregnant and one day from delivery, rising over the river to the east. We can see the crackling rooftops of the city, dirty from smog yet still elegant in their crumbling and upright self-importance. Regardless of financial crashes, military dictatorships, lost wars and lack of proper respect from the Western world, Argentina remains through it all a proud and humor-filled culture, holding her head high above the fracas.

From the south side of the building I hear a loudspeaker announcing that the show is about to begin. I peek down over the edge of our rooftop to the enclosed, colonial-style, open-air courtyard of the museum across the street. A crowd has gathered there for the party, drinking wine among the arches, forming a circle around a couple performing the tango. We watch the dancers’ tragic movements of drama and longing from our perch across the street, losing our sense of time as the moon, drunk and heavy on the humid river air, moves slowly higher into the sky behind us.

That night, after a glorious dinner of rich South American beefsteak, Jonas and I sit quietly on the sofa together to read. I am reveling in Sunday evening calm and pondering the events of the day, as well as the year. Suddenly a great beating begins to shake the walls, like the heart of some enormous beast trapped in the nearby square. I smile and watch the window glass rattle ever so slightly to the rhythm. We attempt to ignore the thumping and return to our reading, but it is no use - the deep thudding seems to be coming closer, insisting on our attention. Eventually we give in to curiosity and don jeans, exiting our building to the street just as a troupe of drummers arrives, moving in baby steps down the middle of the narrow cobblestone avenue. They are surrounded by a throbbing procession of sweaty tourists and grinning Porteños, everyone shaking and bobbing and vibrating to the beat of ten or twelve of the biggest Congo drums I have ever seen. The noise is deafening. I look at my watch and realize that the loudest drum circle ever to split my ears is making its way down our little residential street at 10 pm on a Sunday night. I think back to the foggy Sunday evenings in Portland, a time of the week when even an open restaurant is a lucky break, much less a drum procession. I imagine the irate complaints of the quiet Portlanders should a grand backbreaking thumping from the street invade their viewing of ER or awaken the kids. On this Argentine Sunday night, however, the celebration passes unhindered. This acceptance of the unpredictable is why I came here. This is where I have chosen to call home.

The drum procession finally makes its molasses descent down the block and around the corner, disappearing into the night like a break-dancing caterpillar. We fight our way back to the building through the ambulating, grinding crowd. We are almost taken out by a short, sweaty white woman, complete with fanny pack, gesticulating madly, her eyes clenched shut in ecstasy while she grinds unpracticed hips in an almost impossible gyration. We enter the apartment with relief and look at one another in delighted amusement and slight apprehension. Will this be a weekly or, God forbid, nightly occurrence? Does Buenos Aires ever sleep?

That night I awaken to yelling and honking on the street below the house. I glance at the clock: 1:00 am. My sleep-fogged, jaded American mind immediately assumes something ugly is happening outside; my past experience tells me that loud male voices at 1:00 am can mean but one thing. I stand up and poke my head tentatively out the window. Below me on the street are two cars, full of bellowing young men. Is he…? Yes, one of the young men is stark naked, as naked as the day he entered squalling and kicking into this world. I gape. Not only is he naked, but his most prized male possession is tied with a length of clothesline to the trunk of one of the cars. The young man shatters my foggy shock by yelling out to his friends and guffawing loudly as the car to which he is attached begins crawling up the street. He is obviously enjoying this bizarre spectacle.

Perfectly on cue, a group of frantic young women comes racing up the sidewalk in a pack, screaming and waving like South American Beatle fans. The young man shouts out a greeting and waves hello as the car inches along, the string tightening ever so slightly in soft and perilous tugging motions on his attached manhood. I rub my eyes. The gaggle of girls quickly reaches the man and sidles up, suddenly shy, to have their pictures taken with him in front of the trunk of the car. He hesitates only for an awkward second, then, grinning like a rock star, bears himself fully to the camera, hugging the girls to his sides. The flash pops and the final fans, giggling Japanese tourists, move away down the street toward the next unpredictable bit of Sunday night entertainment in Buenos Aires.

As I watch their happy skip bouncing away down the block, I feel something within myself finally, quietly let go. The final straw of fear of leaving home and facing life as a foreigner ebbs away into an acceptance of life’s universal and wonderful absurdity. One year to the day that I left my life, at 1:00 am above a street of goofy madness, I truly give it up. Home really is where you hang your hat, I think to myself, and in this case the metaphor seems particularly a propos. Home, for some, might mean comfortable and familiar. For me home has become the place where your foundation shakes, your bones are tickled and your soul never rests. Home should be the place inside that never stops learning, never ceases to grow. I feel full and tipsy on Argentina’s rich and eccentric moments; I grin into the night and wave an unseen goodbye to the naked mystery man.

As the car of revelers reaches the corner of the street, a couple beat cops move toward it from the shadows. They have stood by, patiently awaiting the completion of the photo ops, but now they bend slowly down to the driver, motioning him on. No mention appears to be made of the straggler, nor the clothesline, nor the exposed member. The nude hostage merrily takes a seat in the car’s open trunk, his legs splayed in oblivious male confidence, his calves dangling over the edge. The affixed string drags gently against the stones of the street; I hope for his sake that the line does not get caught on an errant chunk of cobblestone. The fellow appears not to share my worries and shifts his weight, flashing a brilliant smile as he readies himself for the next group of fans in the square. The car blares its horn and turns the corner; the policemen calmly return to their post at the dark edge of the sidewalk.

I hold my head out the window into the night. On the ancient cobblestones below, a slight breeze picks up, stirring the scraps of paper and leaves crumpled in the gutters. Peace has returned to my street. The path to my new home is quiet - for now.

Photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kate.comiskey

The dolphin, which got us here safely and with such style, our home for five months, has now proven to be an enormous block of metal and carpet which we cannot get rid of. In the US it is probably worth around $3-4000 at the most. Here, where car importation taxes are extremely high, it is probably worth $30,000 USD on a dealer’s lot. This, initially, excited us. Of course this only lasted until we found out that although the title is also in Jonas’ name, no one can nationalize a used car in Brazil. Even a Brazilian who has been out of the country for more than a year cannot bring in his own foreign vehicle. The only ones allowed to do this, of course, are high level government officials. We cannot donate the Dolphin either. This idea excited us too – the idea that it might become a traveling clinic for a medical NGO here for rural areas – until we found out that the car cannot stay in Brazil. Period. If it does not leave the country within 6 months of arrival I will be fined $4000 USD and the government will confiscate the car, nationalize it and sell it for their own profit. I also cannot stay in Brazil as a tourist for more than six months out of any 12 month period. If I overstay my visa, I will be charged $7 a day. To get a teaching visa I must find a school willing to sponsor me for a visa, meaning they have to prove to the labor dept of Brazil that I am more qualified for the job than any other Brazilian citizen. Very few schools are willing to go through this hassle. So, after Brazil’s loss at the world cup with a disappointing lack of pizzazz, many brick walls, dead ends and multiple downward spirals, we realized that I cannot stay in Brazil.
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Brazil
Best of:
All you can eat
Hedonism
Clean bathrooms with plenty of paper
Extremely friendly, laid back people - you can sit down to any group of Brazilians as a stranger and will be welcomed with smiles and warmth. You may get made fun of, but, hey, that’s all part of sharing the love
Good roads
Soccer mania – when Brazil plays in the world cup, the schools, government offices and businesses officially shut down for the games
Happy yellow, green and blue everything
Giant wild blue macaws
A drunk, friendly president who never finished high school and has only 9 fingers and the nickname “Squid”
People making out passionately everywhere
No nukes and absolutely no interest in warfare of any kind except when it involves soccer teams
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The next day we departed in the dolphin for Ollyantaytambo, one of the loveliest towns in the Sacred Valley. We passed the edges of Cuzco and entered a long plain. As the afternoon sun scattered itself across the valley, we stopped the car and gazed in wonder at the massive snow capped peaks in the distance. The cotton ball clouds caught their hems on the peaks as they passed, their fabric shredding into cumulus explosions atop the mountains. Yoshi, Jonas and I climbed atop the dolphin, our arms linked and held high, to stare down the Andes and celebrate this moment of accomplishment.

The Sacred Valley of the Incas is not to be taken as a tricky tourist name. This valley, the valley leading to Macchu Picchu, is a place to worship and reflect with awe and humility. Huge crushed velvet mountains lay like a crumpled blanket around the long valley, covered now in the patchwork quilt of the colors of the harvest. The Incans cultivate all possible land, which to them includes steep cliffs 2000 feet above the valley floor. The land is impossible to cultivate with machinery on these cliffs; the work is done by ox or by hand. During this time of the year, the harvest time, one can gaze around at mountains painted in squares of yellow, green and brown, the glaciers on the peaks behind them, the rough river tumbling through the valley and the small clay villages set throughout. It is a place of dreams. To imagine such an incredible vista of power and beauty, one must move past the daily life of humans to the realm of the heavens. This is the place where God goes to think.

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