A Brie Grows in Brooklyn

Poet Of The Week: Pablo Neruda

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Poet of the Week post. In fact, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything worthwhile on this blog. I feel ashamed about it. I feel like I’ve forgotten about humility.

It’s been a long few weeks, with lots of work. Yesterday, I finished the first wave of it. Today, there’s a lull, and I’m having a hard time dealing with it. The air is getting cooler, and the clouds, as I was driving over the Manhattan bridge this morning, descended gray, not stormy. Soon, I’ll feel better being indoors most of the time, because it will be cold, and sweetly lonely.

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When Your Second to Last Day Is Your Most Beautiful

I’m leaving Buenos Aires in 2 days, and it’s making me all melancholy and bleary-eyed. I took so many pictures today that my retinal nerve is literally hurling expletives at me.

But the weather has really shown up for my departure. It was 18 °C and sunny today (if you really want to give yourself a headache, try to convert that into Farenheit without the help of Google), and all of the elegant old ladies were out in the parks with their lawn chairs. 

People were lazy and happy, taking naps in the sun, and eating outdoors. I ran 5 miles and then walked 6 more, to justify eating a spectacular three-course lunch. Then I walked 6 miles home, so that I can repeat my gastronomical feat at dinner, if my legs stop aching long enough to carry me to Caseros.

I chose to eat at Croque Madame Cafe for my 5th final meal, on a patio outside of the Museo de Arte Decorativo. For these last 48 hours, I’m alone, again, and relishing in it. When you’re eating with someone else, you can’t concentrate on details in the same self-conscious way: the drifting of a crooner from a hidden speaker in the garden, the sounds of gravel under shifted chairs, the empty champagne bottle at the table in front of you, the chill of your hands.

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Tigre

Today I went to Tigre, a delta city about an hour outside of Buenos Aires. I must say, I’ve almost never been more bored in my entire life.

It’s not to say that Tigre doesn’t have it’s charms if you like wooden houses on stilts, glimpses into extreme poverty, mediocre amusement parks, accidentally sunken ships and overpriced boat tours.

If you’re in the US, and can’t afford to go to Venice, Malaysia, the Everglades or even Fire Island, locations superior but vaguely similar, you most definitely cannot afford to go to Tigre. A plane ticket to Buenos Aires is f-ing expensive. So in other words, don’t waste your time.

Fortunately for me, alone on the deck of a floating restaurant trying not to freeze to death, a pair of lovely gentleman rescued me from my ennui. Un-detered by my initial “no habla español,” which I find is my best weapon when facing un-welcome advances by Argentinian men, they began speaking to me in English. Ruben is a Porteño who has lived in Los Angeles. Andres is a Colombian who sang to me the merits of Bogotá. We quickly became bosom buddies, especially after they loosened my tongue with a can of Quilmés.

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The Streets of San Telmo

I shouldn’t be taken pictures with my iPhone because someone tried to mug me a few days ago, in full daylight, on the streets of San Telmo.

But there’s something incredibly beautiful about the grit here, if your mind is clear and you’re really looking. All of the buildings are crumbling and old, and even the garages have plants growing in the wooden rot that cover their roofs. 

I’m beginning to fear my ability to be alone, all of my romantic notions of what it means. The way that I shy away from conversation and retreat behind the lens of my camera. My facade of incomprehension.

I don’t desire the company of others. I don’t even think about returning home. I exist in the solace of my imagination, the black flatness of my memory.

Last night I dreamt in sepia, and tonight I’ll dream in color. I know this because I just said it out loud, to no one, so I’m the only one who will remember it when I fall asleep.

The Ghost Writer

I’ve taken to going to movies here in Buenos Aires, because I’ve heard rumors that if you buy a special ticket at a special theater, you can watch the movie in a lounge chair with a blanket. Remove the popcorn and all of the people, and you have my ideal space of existence. But I can’t figure out how to order the special tickets, or what movie theaters offer them. “Luxury box, please, for the rich people,” is a phrase I have yet to learn in español.

So I’ve spent many a night this past week watching English language movies with commoners, in strange musty old theaters dotted throughout the city, with packages of Argentinian chocolate that tastes vaguely of citrus and wax. 

The other night I saw The Ghost Writer. It fulfilled all of my expectations, which were extremely low. Meaning that I found the movie to be on the dark side of mediocre, with an enjoyment factor elevated only by my eagerness to justify my disgust with Roman Polanski through his work. “See,” I thought. “This is what happens when you rape young girls and refuse to face justice. Polanski.”

Anyway, here are some uninformed observations:

1. I still can’t figure out if the movie is supposed to be a comic rip on noir, or if the screenplay was just bad. The overdone drama, the complete lack of real suspense. The war crimes, the involvement of the CIA, the sleeping with the boss’ wife. It’s like Polanski made a comic book version of a noir film in the 1970s, and set it in the year 2010.

2. Is it just me, or is Pierce Brosnan not the best of actors? Or is he in on the joke? It kind of seems like he’s winking at the audience. I would love to see the outtakes of the scene on the plane, when he starts screaming at Ewan McGregor. The cameras stop rolling, and Brosnan and McGregor just explode with laughter. “Did you see that,” Brosnan shouts to the crew. “Do you see Ewan try to hold it together?”

3. Yes, the American government is bad, Polanski. I applaud you for making that clear in your movie. Yes, they want to extradite you for drugging and raping a 13 year old. It might be unfair, and perhaps the justice of it is tainted, but hey, no one likes a pedophile! If you had been a man and faced up to it when it happened 30 years ago, you’d be able to go wherever you wanted today. And jail’s not even that bad for a celebrity. Who do you think you are, Lindsay Lohan?

4. The cinematography on the film is beautiful, and it made me want to go to Nantucket in August with my family. In order to translate how much I was affected, let’s just say that the last time I went to the island with my mom, I threatened to attach bags of sand to my ankles and drown myself in the ocean. So in other words, I want to make a suicide joke and the film was also pretty lovely.

5. Watching Ewan McGregor not write made me so anxious that I ate an entire bag of dried figs, an entire bag of walnuts, and a quinoa energy bar. That’s the most heathy I’ve eaten in at least 3 months.

As a final word of advice, skip The Ghost Writer, and watch Brick instead. You can thank me with a lock of Yoann Gourcuff’s hair.