In the city of Ché

This bar drew me to it like a moth to a street lamp. The Simpsons
are enormously popular all over Argentina and Chile. As big as they are in the US, which
I find inexplicable due to the show´s Ameri-culturalcentrism.

Once again, it´s been too long, and I send my heartfelt apologies for the harrowing, nail-biting wait. Here I am, smack dab in the middle of my 2 week Tour de Ciudades. First Salta, then Córdoba, now Rosario, and next (the big one!) Buenos Aires. Cities here are really a different animal than in the US, at least in my limited experience. Brimming with people, noise, activity, and living on a 24 hour schedule, Argentine cities are like the cracked out cousin to the suburban attitude of our metropolises (gotta be honest, I had to look up the pluralization of metropolis). They are all nice cities in their own right and offer a great variety of amusements, but I guess I am just a bit nostalgic for the wide open spaces and mountainous horizons of the South. It´s funny, the first thing I do when I get to a city is seek out the largest, shadiest, grassiest park around and set up for a good long chill. However, I am very much looking forward to the world-class cultural landmarks of Buenos Aires, and plan on spending several education-filled days exploring the governmental buildings, the zoo, and the various museums. Also, I´m going to buy a big, fat steak. Yup.

One of the many universities.

Meanwhile, I got a couple more days in Rosario. Only about 4 hours northwest of Buenos Aires, Rosario harbours over a million souls on the banks of the Rio Paraná. The city has a great deal of history and culture, several pedestrian malls, beaches, and (as I found out yesterday for 2 hours) a very confusing bus system. For the majority of gringos, the city is most famous as the birthplace and hometown of Ernesto ¨Ché¨ Guevara. If you´ve lived in a cave underneath the North Pole for the last 50 years, go ahead and Wikipedia his name to get some info on him. Quite a life he had.

Yet another dirt jump bike park. These are in lots of cities, and
I love it. Would like to write article for IMBA when I return. Got some thoughts.

Note: I noticed the blog-censor (I had no idea there was one) will not allow me to publish the last word in the title of the following book, and replaces it with ¨######¨. Facists. The word begins with a ¨W¨and ends with ¨hores¨. FYI.

And lastly, I recently finished Gabriel Garcia Marquez´s ¨Memories of My Melancholy ######¨. I have had some difficulty acquiring books by Latin American authors over the last couple weeks (had to read 2 interim books), but was glad to find this novella by the Colombian master. For a long time I was trying to avoid his books because I have read several of them before and would like to diversify myself as much as possible. This was all I could find after scouring over a dozen book stores in Córdoba, so here is what I thought:

Garcia Marquez erupted on the scene in the 1960s and 70s as the leading figure in the boom era of Latin American literature. Publishing several world-reknown novels and eventually earning the Nobel Prize in 1982, you can understand why this was one of the very few books I could find in English here. At the still vibrant age of 82, Garcia Marquez is still alive and kickin´, and published his most recent book in 2004, ¨Memories of My Melancholy ######¨. In alot of ways, this novella is classic Gabriel Garcia Marquez: romantic, dreamy, slow paced, and gorgeously written in a simplistic, trim, almost Hemingway-esque style with themes of love, history, family, and art. Without exception (at least in my readings of 4 of his books), the author distinguishes himself as the quintessential Latin American voice and can conjure the essence of his culture with ease and unique beauty.
In ¨Memories of My Melancholy ######¨, Garcia Marquez reveals himself to be something of a dirty old man, though with a wink of an eye and an endearing smile, of course. The story centers around a 90 year old bachelor who, on his birthday, finds himself contemplating life, love, sex, and death. A life-long devotee of the ¨world´s oldest profession¨, the man decides to give himself the birthday present of a night with a teenage virgin. You may remember this book for making news because it was banned in Iran (for obvious reasons). After this single night, the man awakens to a love he never felt in his life, and it changes him indefinitely. From here, the book follows the man as he starts to see his life, his experience, and everything around him in a new way. What I like about this book is it gives the reader an elegant insight into aging and death, and what it must be like for Garcia Marquez to look into his past.
When reading Garcia Marquez, I almost feel like he offers a distinct and intangible sensory experience, like he added a extra sense to his quiver. You get the words, their associated images, their sound, and a very peculiar extra sense that I would place somewhere between olfactory and ¨memory¨. How he accomplishes this is the mystery of his art.
Elegant, sexy, powerful, profound, and economical (with its 117 pages), ¨Memories of My Melancholy ######¨ makes for a really pleasant afternoon in the park.

Gotta go. My hammock is-a-callin´. I am finishing Mario Vargas Llosa´s ¨In Praise of the Stepmother¨, so look forward to hearing about that. Next report is likely to come from Buenos Aires. Wish me luck!!