More Graffiti - and general muralistic stuff from Buenos - these from San Telmo barrio

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I started out hating the defacement.  

Now I get excited when I see a cluster of graffiti ahead of me. 

Antonio Tapies - ring a bell? Check him out

What does it mean? 

Nothing and everything.  

Why is it there?  

Because humans make a mark. 

Here are some images - click on to reveal higher res.

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Coral Reef - the Sequel

Pope Francis, like his sainted namesake, loves the birds and beasts.

When I travel – especially in cities - I am constantly reminded of coral reefs.  I suppose there are a few analogs: cities are accretive, there’s a lot of deconstruction and reconstruction continuously going on, and they are environments for a whole host of species – many of whom are just taking advantage of the niches that present themselves in the neglected spaces created by some of the hosts. They are sites for both dead and living. They are layered – painted and changed by unconscious action over time – a canvas of circumstance and accident whose image will never be finalized.

Graffiti in San Telmo, Buenos Aires. 2015

The graffiti images I am collecting in photographs are inspiring and they completely connect (to me) to more conscious artistic endeavours we see in museums.  Sometimes it’s hard to determine what is art and what is defacement. We went to an exhibit at the MAMBA here in San Telmo – actually a series of exhibits.  For me they had a few things in common – they featured South American, mostly Argentinian artists –  density and chaos; which evoked the richness and complexity of life and language and the rich stew that exists in the human mind – the logical and irrational hemispheres that contribute to creative thought and scientific revelation – but that density and complexity in the exhibits also served as a means of obscuring dangerous, seditious messages.  Much of the imagery was abstract but created from found items.  Collages of imagery taken from improbably different sources.  One artist, Leon Ferrari, created dense tonal canvasses.  The tone was created by reams of written words.  The content of the words was probably seditious but they were so layered upon each other that it was difficult to ‘prove’ what the message was.  It was as if a crowd was whispering and one could discern occasional words – words of discontent, revolution, anti-religious sentiment – but who was whispering those words?  One couldn’t be sure what the precise message was but, too, one knew what was implicit.  Ferrari japed religion by combining classical images of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden with explicit images from the Kama Sutra and Japanese 19^th century woodcuts depicting graphic sex – all lacquered together in raunchy collages. Pornographic Monty Python stuff. Was this reflective of the artist’s need to obscure his message to survive through all the political turmoil of the past decades?  Hiding in plain sight – camouflaged by an overabundance of visual information. Very crafty.

Leon Ferrari . MAMBA- Buenos Aires

Leon Ferrari - Buenos Aires artist

And the graffiti.  It is an accretion of the actions of different humans with different intents and agendas, all using one common surface for anonymous expression.  The graffiti often contains ideas of revolution, oppression, political action.  Who wrote what, when? So the graffiti ends up being a fantastic kluge of ideas, funny images, threat, call-to-arms.  Abstract but also meaningful and potent with anger, humour and banalities. Often, I think, the random, potent emotion of the graffiti is more powerful than the more intellectual stuff that is framed and curated in glass and marble halls.

Graffiti in San Telmo, Buenos Aires. 2015

Of course a tour of Buenos Aires wouldn’t be complete without a diorama of a life-like, full-size Pope Francis blessing an acre or so of sizzling meat on a massive parilla. These bizarre juxtapositions provoke strong sentiments of how upside down – literally – the culture here is.  Religion and politics are both more tangible and more abstracted – they are pervasive yet, for me, unintelligible because of their unfamiliar associations and different social context.

I hear and read the language, I understand snippets of it but I am never sure what I am receiving and how to respond – what fits where. Always learning.  Siempre. I sense the verbs and nouns, like coral fauna, populating and navigating the coral of my pre-frontal cortex.  It’s kind of wonderful and it’s a complete mess.

I haven’t fallen off the underside of the planet yet.  I’ve been hanging by my toes for nearly three weeks now.

Milonga

I’ll try to keep the hyperbole and blather out of this blog.  We went to a milonga a few nights past.

Milonga – Noun  (plural milongas)

1.       A form of music originating in Argentina, Uruguay and Southern Brazil

2.       A dance which accompanies this music

Origin

From Spanish milonga

Attached images will tell a better story than I can. Suffice to say that we were plunged into a rich stew of sound, vocal expostulation, light and movement that was intoxicating.  If you travel to Buenos Aires Do. This. One. Thing: Café Vinilo in Palermo on a Monday night. It’s on Gorriti near Bulnes. I'll add some audio and video links to this when I have easier access to them.

You have to ring a bell at the front door to gain entrance (I have no idea who they would exclude if they let the grey pilgrims from winterland in). Like all evening fare in Argentina it starts pretty late-ish – 10pm.  There was a bit of terpsichoric skirmishing on the dance floor just as we found our seats along the wall – young couples dancing arrythmically (it seemed to me) to recorded tango music.  It was the first time I had seen tango dancing live (almost true – I’d seen it at the Dovercourt House but there is no comparison in terms of technique or timing). After each piece the audience would applaud.  I thought more people would jump into the fray but for the most part there were usually only one or two couples dancing.  The few dozen looking on – were they expectant? Judgmental? Curious? I can’t read Portenos (that;s what they call themselves). I think that if we had stayed around after the musical performance there might have been more going on but we ancients need our 20.5hours/day of rest or we turn into calabasas.

At 11 or so we plunge into black – like a power shortage.  No dimmer.  Complete void, an expectant vacuum of noise..  A moment later a sudden blare of ruby and amber lights burst above the raised dais illuminating a wide plume of smoke, the glint of a bass sax, a gleaming cello, bass; an ancient piano stands off stage left – its operator crouched like a vulture over the keys.  The Orquestra Victoria.  A dozen or so musicians begin to play a most stirring, romantic, sad and haunting music.  Sitting on a wooden box center stage a young man directs while playing his bandoleon – he swings his neck rapidly to indicate the beginning of a phrase or detaches his right hand from the keys and slices the smoky air – CRASH! delicious.  It was like being plunged naked into black coffee! The lights are beautifully choreographed to the music – sometimes a single spot ekes out a face, floating in inky space, sometimes the musicians are wholly backlit like a black row of scarecrows. We sat transfixed for an hour, being battered and torn and dragged across heart’s half acre by a language we barely understood.  Wow! The musicianship was superb and the singer, who emerged now and again to plunge his hand into our chests and hold our living, beating hearts, mercilessly, in front of us, was stunning.

heart-rending vocalization

As suddenly as it begins, it ends. We settle up.  A pittance for a fantastic evening. Walking home; the streets are dark.  The trees brood. The air is dense, humid. There are few people on the streets but it feels safe though otherworldly. Again the pervasive smell of diesel and unburnt fuel. The tenor whine of a motorbike that coughs and stutters into a downshift.  The sidewalks….ok Colin, if you mention the fucking sidewalks one more time I’m going to fly down there and make you eat one!….were…..ok. Can I mention the dogshit again?

Sorry about the hyperbole and blather.  Seems to be part of the package.

All Problems are Design Problems

Waah! Waah!  Waah! This is probably just me getting older and more crotchety.  Crotchety – what the hell does that mean? What happens in old peoples crotches – or does it refer to crocheting????

adj.

1825, from crotchet "whim or fancy" + -y (2). But the sense evolution is obscure.

Crotchety?  Oh yeah, design. Well I guess it’s a good enough departure point. I always thought it meant grouchy but it also means fussy and eccentric. Fussy – yup.  Eccentric – now that I have one leg an inch or so shorter than the other I am definitely eccentric.  I walk in circles, head slightly tilted to the west. My legs work like one of them old locomotive cranks and I wobble and bobble along if unassisted by my cane. My structure is Tower-of-Pisa-like, every step produces a click and a pop in my neck so simply walking is now a percussive experience. Makes me cranky, crotchety. And so my newfound structural eccentricity makes me fussier and more crotchety.

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But my current infirmity really has rent open my sensitivity to what offends the body and what doesn’t.  My main focus is, of course, related to ambulatory matters but since (almost) everything in my present life is informed by my eccentricity I am rediscovering ‘environment’ – or at least I am being given the opportunity to examine the world from a shifted perspective.  So a city like Buenos Aires, which has a cornucopia of design issues, is ripe for my assessment and critique and inspires this tract.

Design Problems. I wanted to invite discussion re: a more considered cultural shift to attending to human factors – i.e. how humans navigate and engage with the man-made. I suppose at the root of it all I am pleading for an awakening.  I desire a world where things aren’t lumpy and cranky and discordant and pain-producing. And I want a world where human structural aberrations (mine for instance – but also addressing issues for all the senses, infirmities, diminishing capacities and intellectual deficiencies etc.) are thoughtfully managed and compensated for.  Certainly that’s where my ideas regarding smarter, customizable canes and cheaply produced prosthetics are emerging from.  But, at every turn, every moment of every day I am confronted with lousy design. We need more people attacking and resolving these problems – at least so we don’t continue to iterate lousiness.  I want to live in a smarter world.  Hah!

Here’s a simple design problem for instance – sidewalks.  In Canada it’s a shameful cliché that two weeks after a new stretch of concrete sidewalk is laid down that a utility company or other jackhammers the crap out of portions of it, refills it with asphalt that heaves and crumbles, leaving it looking like a satanic  tetris game – ultimately to be patched with concrete that will shift and subside or rise tectonically to create a frickin obstacle course.  What about a modular approach to sidewalk construction? In fact they have tiled sidewalks in BA.  Unfortunately the tiles are not maintained to any standard.  They appear to be the responsibility of the property owner whose edifice they front which means that they are well or poorly maintained or entirely fucked over.  They rise, drop or shift subtly in height to confound people such as I.  So standards would be important –  and frost is a huge consideration in Canada whereas it is not in this part of Argentina.  But a modular sidewalk would, hypothetically, provide a more consistent, more replaceable, manipulable surface – they could even be designed to be rougher on slopes and smoother on flats. In Tokyo there are little rows of flat pimples on yellow tiles that are inserted like marquetry along the perfect, graphite grey, gum-free asphalt sidewalks.  I couldn’t figure out what they were for until I recognized that they were integrated with the crosswalks and even in malls where they led to washroom facilities and emergency stations that had motion-activated automatic recorded information.  They were ‘trail-braille’ for visually impaired.  Now that is a country that pays a lot of attention to design.  Should I reprise my ‘Ode to a Bidet’?  Not now, but man the Japanese think a lot about functions!  All kinds of functions.  Recently Sophie read a report to me that Japanese women would prefer to order fresh meat from a machine because it is uncomfortable talking to a human about meat.  Talk about sensitive!  Let’s go ROBOTS! “Piece of rump roast please”, or ‘PRESS A4’.

I often used to be inspired to conceive of simple ways of improving things. I remember visiting my beloved Auntie Gen in the seniors home just before she passed.  I was horrified by how almost everything in that place was poorly designed for an infirm person.  Not only the physical design of the place but proportions, colours, surfaces, textures, acoustics  – doorknobs, doors, taps, faucets, showers, tubs, handrails, lighting, clothing – it goes on.  How was it possible that nobody was paying attention to those things?  What would it take to improve them? I recognize that there is much more attention being paid these days to many of those issues. But nowadays I am constantly, literally, overwhelmed by the ‘problems; that need to be addressed. Once one has been whelmed, one is very sensitive to being under and over the whelm.  It’s nautical.

I have great hope for open-source culture and for 3D printing – particularly for prototyping.  I believe those two aspects of modern technology alone will provide huge gains in the way we engage with the man-made.  Lower cost and greater efficacy will be driven rapidly by sharing and testing new ideas instantaneously. BTW – in addition to cheap 3D printers we need good, cheap, high resolution 3D scanners. Secretly I am also pretty excited about robots – because they will reduce a huge amount of human suffering. It might be impolitic to be pro-robot because they will certainly put a LOT of humans out of semi-skilled and menial work.  I’m totally for robots keeping our subway platforms and passageways clean. I love Evan’s little roomba – kluge on a scrub brush and some gum-dissolving GM bacteria and let ‘er rip! And, if you robots are already listening and watching – hey! I’m all about recognizing the rights of robots.  I’m ready to negotiate. Iamnotarobot.

Our Colleges and Universities are not, in my opinion, accepting the mantle of responsibility in DESIGNING  good courseware that will provide knowledge and skills to Canadian students for exploiting the new and emerging technologies.  Integrated study in human factors (ergonomics), product design and 3D modelling should be curriculum in every post-secondary institution.  Design in general is embarrassingly poorly taught in Canada.  We should be a country of great designers – we have that wonderful Nordic gene stuff – from the Danes and Finns – Poles, Germans and French all have emigrated in droves to our shores – their native design is remarkable in so many ways.  First nations people came up with some pretty wonderful design.  The tipi and igloo are amazingly beautiful and appropriate expressions of materials and environmental dictates.  Their decorative traditions are pretty amazing too. Where are our fantastic design heroes given this endowment? We don’t celebrate and revere great designers like the French, Spanish, Japanese do.  Take a designer to lunch today.

There is a plethora of design problems that want to be addressed.  I’ve no doubt that there are at least two plethorae. Look around you. If you have designer DNA – and every human does though many don’t express it – you can probably conceive of how many objects and devices in your immediate environment could be made to be more accessible, simpler to operate, more ‘tuned’ to your needs; smarter, more supportive.  Almost everything is possible these days with the possible exception of time-travel and getting a good piece of cheese at a moment’s notice.  I hesitate to kvetch about being unable to get a reasonably good bottle of Malbec in Ontario because I am (farily) confident that our enlightened Premier will soon license corner stores.  Rise up!  Vote for a politician who will put more energy into better design practices and more accessible wine.  Because All Problems are Design Problems. 

In fact we could start by designing a better political system in Canada.  Let’s overhaul the Senate – make it elected or perhaps consensual. Let’s insist on lots more oversight and real teeth in Government.  Let’s outlaw omnibus bullshit and allow maximum two terms as Prime Minister. Ooops.  No more politics.

Amendment of public facilities and wayfinding (signage both explicit and implicit) should be crowdsourced.  Together we could all improve and smooth most aspects of living if we could contribute, like water smoothing stone, to making iterative adjustments in the design of all things. Do you know that they are experimenting with slime moulds – using them to design maximum efficiency in integrated circuit and highway design?  The moulds choose the path of least resistance but can also be ‘programmed’ to observe topography and geography – even geopolitical borders. Crowdsourcing could be like that. Check it out.

One last thought.  Think of one thing that bugs you and DESIGN a better form of it (in words or as a drawing).  Send it to me.  We’ll start a list.  There is a company I am working with (3D printer manufacturer) that is interested in helping to develop products that promote a better designed living experience.  If there is merit in it perhaps I can get the idea in front of a student designer at OCADU or Seneca, where I have contacts.

Note: All ideas will be open-source therefore free to any and all interested parties so no one will profit monetarily, only through betterment of living and social amelioration.

Back to Buenos in my next rant!

Spray Balm

I am beginning to see the charm in what initially struck me as awful.  The shock of seeing graffiti on EVERYTHING was huge at first.  The night we landed Soph and I took a walk around Palermo. I was concerned that we had been lured into a desperately dangerous part of town because of the general appearance of the streets – littered, dumpsters overflowing with trash every 50m or so, cracked and uneven sidewalks desperately in need of repair, archipelagos of dog shit and graffiti.  All surfaces from .5m to 2m above grade have been tagged.  Not only is there spray paint, there are stencils and posters which are all super-tagged.  In Canada those are the hallmarks of a broken neighbourhood.  That was my immediate response. But if I can set aside my prejudice about graffiti and try to regard it as part of the cultural norm and not an indicator of societal cancer then I begin to appreciate the random artfulness of it.  Prejudices die hard but I am beginning to be reconciled to it.

What came first, the graffiti, the broken sidewalks, the lack of consistency in street wayfinding and pedestrian cues? I suppose it’s all of a piece.  What does it indicate? That’s where I would get in over my head.  I’d be tempted to say that Argentineans have suffered such a devastating series of blows to their societal structure over the past century through governmental strife that they have lost a pride of place or a strong sense of communal ideals.  But I don’t know enough about the people, whether it was ever a well-functioning, clean, orderly, safe society.  One thing is certain – Buenos Aires, at one time – or more than one time, had an abundance of remarkably beautiful buildings and homes.  The style of many structures is very elegant and appealing – a modern (early 20th century) fusion of Romanesque details, beautifully crafted doors and portcullises, lovely proportions that suggest stability, security and elegance. It’s mostly a muddle now.  Street-fighters teeth.  The lovely canines which are those classically beautiful examples of modern architecture still exist at most street corners but the incisors and bicuspids that form the rest of the smile have been knocked out and replaced with cheap monstrosities, gorgeous monoliths (there is still a strong culture of excellent design and design thinking alive in Argentina) or just plain, recklessly unconsidered infill. Regardless of their provenance or date-of-birth they are all smeared with graffiti – or nearly all – some residents must fight a relentless and enduring war by continuously restoring to original what the spray bombs have sought to mutate to the standard.

It appears that the middle class is thriving here.  In Palermo, a leafy goulash of old and new, there are pockets of robust dining and shopping.  The urban patterns are different here – commerce and residence are all of a piece as is true in most large European cities – apartments in two and three storey buildings above bodegas, tiendas, bars, restaurants.  Interestingly, bars often share space with nifty little clothes boutiques.  Would you like a beer with that bra? There is a lot of urban artwork – this Latin country shares a quirky sensibility of rich, passionate imagery and vulgar (in the nicest sense of the word (?)) cartoony muralization (had to make it up I think) with Mexico, Spain (those come to mind). (Who the hell is Mafalda?) The artwork is often witty, meaningful and ironic.  There is a strong graphic sense in much of the work.  While typography is not noticeably impeccable here the accidental stuff (packing crates) and the remains from historic buildings (shattered neon) are very rich (to me).  It’s Easter weekend and the streets of Palermo are overflowing with young couples, prams, hyper-cool dudes and dudettes.  Clothing is relatively conservative – lots of jeans.  Platform shoes are very popular – at least in the windows of zapateriae – not so much in practice.  The spoor of grilled beef is pervasive and whiffs pizza and empanadas provide the strings to meat’s rich bass.  Helado forms the anchor on every corner it seems and mornings are apparently incomplete without an espresso and a medialune dulce. Cafe Martin’s coffee (a chain of coffee shops here) equals anything I tasted in Italy – and it’s hard to get a bad cup of coffee.

The anticipated music is not very present on the streets – we did see a bit of a Tango demo in San Telmo – a slightly seamier, older part of town closer to the center – last week.  Ambient music is often classic American 60’s, Gangsta rap (our taxi driver?), Ameri-pop and romantic Latin ballads. Behind doors though we have listened to some fantastic jazz and Argentinian work.  I hope to get out a lot more in the couple of weeks remaining to us but I find I am very tired most evenings.  More siestas might be in order.

That’s enough I think.  I tend to ramble.  Later, friends.  I miss my friends and family and look forward to meals, laughter and music with you all.

Apologies for these crappy pictures.  I don't have my Adobe Lightroom on this laptop and can only do minor edits in Picasa.

Tangoville

While it’s true that one’s imagination can never be fitted over the reality of a place one visits – the reality is more dense, more physically striking and often disappointing compared to the imagined. Personally, I am always confronted with two realities – I suppose I am a comparative soul and new sensations are always rubbing against my prejudices of the familiar signs and tokens of my home. What was I expectiing of Buenos Aires?  I suppose I imagined narrower streets with elaborate building facades, laundry hanging here and there, cobbled streets in places, harder acoustics - but I think that is just Barcelona Gottika or parts of Rome - not this place.  Streets are wide, traffic is often light but constant, sidewalks are generous but ... well I have already described them.  No pongi stakes at least.

I am reminded of the Jewish folktale of the long-suffering but devout man who is offered the opportunity to select any other life he chooses by his generous G_d. In a nutshell, after endless searching for a life that would suit him better he decides that he prefers his present life despite his challenges. Somehow, regardless of the richness, variety or sweetness of another existence one always wants to return to the familiar.  I wouldn’t give up being a Canadian living in this time and place - regardless of travails, pain, discomfort and uncertainty (Harper,Ford, Canadian Senate, Winter) - for anything.

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We hit the jackpot last night.  I was beginning to despair that all my preconceptions of Buenos Aires were complete misses.  On the recommendation of our host in Palermo we sauntered up the street a few blocks to catch some music and ‘light fare’.  Cafe Vinilo is a wide-ish hole in the wall.  Unprepossessing from the outside and perhaps more unprepossessing on the inside, yet it was rich with Argentine soul.  We were directed to the crowded nightclub at the rear of the building – it held less than one hundred people.  We sat in near complete darkness at tiny round wooden tables. Service was glacial but when the food and wine arrived – GRROWLLLL! Hamburguesas like we have never tasted; rich and dense beef with minimal dressing. The wine - some sort of Malbec but easily suited to the most discerning vampire.

A smallish group of musicians – pianist, cello, saxophone, flute, acoustic bass, drums – started with a familiar Gabriel Faure piece – ‘Pavane’ (this version is like a neutered dog compared to the one played by La Somnambula – no offense Hammond or Hugo (none taken wags Hugo)) then launched into Piazolla-esque pieces that stirred us deeply.  After each piece there was heavy applause and guttural cries of appreciation – not a north American reaction – almost Baptist church-like in quality but add a liter of gitane.  Throughout each piece (photo above) an artist drew images of magical imagination: crippled men (is that me?) and dark, mysterious women took form, were modified, shifted blurrily – pan to threatening crows on stark limbs.  A woman’s half-naked body is revealed, lying on the grass, dense spikes of leaves appear foreground and background, pan, a young boy stares into a pond where a frog sits half submerged in the water – the artist’s brush worked quickly and unerringly, narrating the wordless music, creating a world of love, loss, danger, suspicion. At one point a figure leaps from a cliff – is caught in mid-air. End of Song.  It was magical.  I once saw a performance at Harbourfront Toronto where Winnipeg’s Christine Fellows delivered her quirky songs.  An illustrator similarly drew images on acetate and joined and animated the images that were projected on a screen – but this was somehow more cinematic and more immediate.  I couldn’t understand the technology he used to created the images – afterwards I went up and saw the rig – an ingenious use of cheap bond paper, india ink, a glass plate, a webcam, a 45 degree front-silvered mirror all run through a simple Mac app and projected behind the performing group. The smeary quality was really just digital lag but it had appeared as an analog artifact.  All through the performance I was flashing on Jane Lowbeer’s work from long ago – mid 90’s?  Even earlier – Crankee Consort days.  

Jane has opened her show at Loop Gallery last weekend.  Don’t miss it. She has returned to painting her rich, investigative painting.  Lovely, figurative work sometimes featuring my friend and troubler of frets, Richard Peachey.

We left sated.  The night was cool and a brief rain had left the streets rich and greasy with smears of semaforo winking.  BA was closed up at midnight, the tumbling sidewalks added to the exotic sense of shift. Or was it the Malbec?

Today we took the Subte (subterranean?) downtown.  Fares are cheap.  We emerged at the last station on the line: Catedral.  We popped up like a jack-in-the-box into a mass of humanity. The streets were a throng.  Observations:  the BA women almost ALL wear their hair long. Except for up-dos the style is universal.  Straight, plain, little intervention of scissor or colour.  Shoes are mostly shabby – not a criticism just an observation – espadrilles and battered, age-ravaged loafers.  Few wore suits even though it was presumably the financial center of the city.  I felt like I might be looking at a Toronto of the future when the 1 percent is the .25 percent and almost all of us are relegated to quasi-poverty – the uber-wealthy nowhere to be seen.  All around young men and women were discretely (or not too discretely) offering money changing service. They obviously recognized us as Ingles because they invariably addressed us in English.  Funnily, wherever we travel the natives regard Sophie as one of them.  It didn’t matter if it was Japan, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Mexico… people would look directly at Sophie and speak to her in their native tongue even though I had asked the question.  (‘Why don’t you tell him’ their expressions said, ‘You are one of us’) and so it was at a cafe where I addressed the waitress in my ersatz Spanish.  She looked directly at Sophie and asked her for the order.  I would answer each question but she waved her hand as if a fly were distracting her from understanding the response from the mute addressee.  Weird.  We always have a laugh about it afterwards.  Sophie has the universal face it seems.

Downtown is frowsy, lacquered with graffiti and crowded but fascinating.  The streets are often thematic (electronics here, lamps there, musical instruments for these two blocks.  Booksellers EVERYWHERE) – much like older European sectors. I tried out a guitar – Sophie started rolling the old eyeballs, time to move on.

Tomorrow will be less ambitious.  BTW, forget to write my impressions of the famous Cemetario where Evita lies ‘neath stone. Will shoehorn that into a later missive. Death is impressive here.

Buenos Errors

First Depressions

We drop out of dense cloud to over verdant fields arranged like jigsaw pieces - not much evidence of the rectilinear grid that is so familiar to Canadians. 

Taxiing in, the airport looks a bit shabby from the exterior but the interior is all marble and glass – modern and sophisticated. The immigration experience is a little bit un-Canadian: the staff exchange lots of cheek busses (custom here is one kiss, right cheek) during the shift change and seem quite unaware of the horde of impatient travelers. Traffic is poorly managed so the line grows and grows - some booths are constantly busy while others contain officers who languish with no clients – the latter chat merrily with their compatriots while the extranjeros grind their teeth, waiting.  

We chose a shuttle into BA rather that a cab to save a few pesos.  Traveling along the highway, one of the first things that strikes one is that a lot of the marginalia on the highway – the 1/8 hectare counterforms of cloverleafs and highway exits – has vehicles parked on them; we see dad and son kicking a soccer ball or a family sitting on a blanket, surrounded by a scrofula of litter, having a picnic - which strikes one as strange.  We have learned that today is a holiday. Perhaps that explains why those miniscule exurban hinterlands are being exploited as park-space. I was reminded of that striking scene in Mad Men season One when Don and family rise up from their picnic blanket, shake out the boxes, napkins and bottles onto the verdant grass and serenely walk back to the Cadillac – when I saw it then it I had a vivid flashback – most people were insensitive to littering and abuse of public space in the sixties. That has changed - and for so long that it almost seems impossible that we were so negligent of shared spaces.

As in many Latin countries the traffic lanes are more of a concept than a rule. Our driver meandered and weaved, spending most of his time straddling a white line – often a solid one. We transferred from the shuttle bus downtown to a collegial taxi containing 4 passengers who were stuffed into a wee Citroen - we all shared proximate destinations – it’s efficient!

Like many old European cities the streets bend, branch and merge dendritically – perhaps following ghost cowpaths or horse-trails. The car horn is an important tool in Buenos driving and is used liberally for communication purposes. In Costa Rica drivers employ merry little pips in a friendly fashion (I’m here. Go ahead. My Turn. Good to see you!)  Here, as in Athens, it’s all-out nuking; perhaps half a minute to 45 seconds of solid klaxon – why, God, why?!!!!!

Regrettably there is a pervasive smell of diesel in BA.  The cars and trucks are poorly tuned and diesel is still prevalent it seems. The late night streets smell of cigar, cigarette and unburned auto fuel provoke Proustian recollections of decades ago sojourns in foreign cities.  The streets are half-dim with sodium vapour filtering through dense foliage – lots of those charming sycamores here with their distinctive ‘camo’ bark and huge flowering trees I have yet to identify. Buenos Aires has trees lining almost every street.  Ficus and Lemon among them - which feels quite exotic to a Canadian.  It has a lush feel – and that’s just as well because the city is fairly dirty with cracked and uneven sidewalks and scabrous walls covered with grafitti.  My ambulatory experience is very different since acquiring a cane - the pitch and yaw of the crazed walkways threatens.  It’s an unwelcome sensation; making me feel more vulnerable.  I long to abandon my cane and return to normal mobility. Increasingly I am sensitized to the challenges faced by disabled folk.  Much needs to be done.

I had huge expectations of cheap and succulent meals in Argentina.  So far my fantasies have been so much vapour.  Unexpectedly this seems to be a city of pizzerias and little cafes offering supersweet cakes and pastries.  Tonight we will venture out to find music and the culinary el Dorado.

And thus my first blog Buenos Aires post.  Ultra-mundane – hopefully I will discover and report on rare things here, perhaps acquire a sense of humour.