it's been a while, huh?

Some semblance of productivity…

You know those days when you just have a lot to say, well I haven’t felt that way for about a week. I’m working on an essay for my Friday class and I’m trying to talk about this neighborhood Balvanera , colloquially called Once (own-Say), and how it is the heart of the commercial process here in Buenos Aires. Everyone comes to this neighborhood to purchase wholesale, The fabric that is sold two doors away from me here in Palermo… I know where they bought it.

I’ve felt like singing lately. Not singing like choir music, but how I feel… with words, but it doesn’t need to make sense… when I do finally realize I am singing to myself I become hyper-aware of how all the neighbors are really only a wall away,  and how they probably don’t want to be listening to me… and I stop. A sense of repression,  self imposed and society imposed, a desire to just be loud and quite, & simple and intensely honest burns inside of me.  So what do I do, I simply continue, but it is lost. 

I find that I have been losing my ideas lately. I can’t hold on to them as long. I am feeling disappointed and emotionally exhausted, yet optimistic as well. The disappointed part is not over something as little as not remembering things, but because my language classes are over and I had really hoped to be able to continue. Julia decided to go ahead and try to do it all, but I’m feeling a little ‘whelmed’ at what I am proposing for my project in addition to our other classes.  Emotionally exhausted because I spent so much time debating over what I should do, replaying IF sentences in my mind and realizing that in Spanish that would be subjunctive and then realizing that I am pretty much the worlds’ biggest geek. {side note: the song if I had $10000000 would be a super fun way to teach non English speakers that our subjunctive is not grammatical, but contextual.} AHH…

I apologize that I am a bit all over the place this evening. Although, in spite of my not continuing with language classes, I signed up for conversation exchange on www.conversationexchange.com to keep practicing; so, I found two people I can meet at the school cafeteria (where there are lots of people, and it is not sketchy). I will speak in English with them and they in Spanish with me, for a half-hour each perhaps. So I’ve been looking for more opportunities to keep the conversation flowing, you know being proactive (woo).

Yesterday I came home and was watching it rain from the balcony looking up new words on my laptop and Susana, my madre de casa, comes looking for me, quite confused as to why on earth I would be outside while it is raining. We chatted, sort of awkwardly because she is so tall and distracted, and I was sitting on the floor, wishing I hadn’t spread all my stuff on my floor as soon as I walked in… So we talked about the CUI classes, and the program, and about feeling unsatisfied, but okay. When she says, “well you just need to find a boy. Then you’ll be distracted and even if classes aren’t fun you can go to the museums and learn all sorts of different places in the city with an Argentine person.” She continued to tell me I had better hurry up and find one though because I am running out of time.  I laughed, and she repeated her self until I told her that I would start my search today.  It is funny to live with a psychologist…they have know it all complexes… she tells me I have a high level of self- expectation, which I do, but it is just funny to hear her say it in her professional, yet motherly, tone of voice.  Who knows what will happen…I’m only here for two more months.  I feel like it isn’t enough, and I don’t mean not enough to find a boy; I mean enough in general- to get to where I want to be when I leave, I feel like I need more time. 

Last Sunday I went with a few friends to San Isidrio, to a museum called Mansion Ocampo. It was the home of Victoria Ocampo. She was a pretty big deal. She was the granddaughter of Manuel Ocampo an Argentine Aristocrat. He built the mansion as a summer home and only spent 5 summers there before he died. Victoria was the editor of the magazine SUR. It was one of the most important magazines in Latin America. She moved in circles with people like Jorge Luis Borges, and Pablo Picasso… seriously! During the tour we learned that she was also the first woman to wear pants in Argentina, that she was acquainted with Coco Chanel and that why she was so bold as to defy the role of a woman in Argentina… I say it is always easier to push social limits if you are rich. She also knew how to drive a car and she smoked in public, a revolutionary woman for 1920’s/ 30’s. She spoke German, English, French and Spanish… Her library was AMAZING… we weren’t allowed to take pictures in the house but I have a few shots of what it looked like. It was amazing to be there seeing the luxury in which this woman lived and to hear how she went back and forth between Paris and Buenos Aires, like an aristocratic golondrina… for education, not for work- a golondrina is the name used to describe the poor people who would emigrate between Italy and BsAs in that era. So the immigrant communities that formed the colorful neighborhood of Caballito, in La Boca out of necessity, and misery…their lives were continuing on while this lady was living in a house with 20 servants and entertaining a life of social rules and figuring out how to break them. She wanted to be an actress, but that life style was only for the immigrants… like the Tatiana Pavlova in the poem written by Cesar Tiempo ( an Argentine Poet).  An aristocratic woman could never lower herself to that life- so she got married to a dull man and had an affair with his cousin. It was a really interesting day trip. I’m so glad I went. Something I looked up when I got back and never found the answer to was; why the Ocampo family was important- why Manuel Ocampo had so much money in the first place…were they immigrants? Spainards?  Politicians?  I’ll have to ask Roger on Friday.

I suppose I should get back to this essay I’ve been trying to hash out… Man…remember what I said about my ideas… well I’ve been writing them down, but there is this void, this emptiness that makes me feel like it doesn’t work so what I write becomes stream of consciousness… perhaps if I were writing poetry that would be acceptable. I apologize I imagine this blog has been a bit like that…disorganized. emotionally motivated, circularly methodical… do you follow? Alright… pictures will come later!

Buenas Noches!