Cows For All My Senses

Well, I´m coming up on a week here in Argentina . . . and I´m lightyears away from being able to explain it.

I spent my first three nights in downtown Buenos Aires - an airy and spacious mixture of tall office buildings crowned with billboards, colonial-style joints with your standard banks and government buildings, and mounds and mounds of boutique clothing stores. I spent a day walking up and down Av. Florida (the main commercial artery of downtown B.A.) and got lost in the army of immaculately-dressed and straight-faced. Adding to it all is the surreal beauty of the average Argentinean (both male and female): pale skin, black hair, black eyes, well-proportioned faces. It felt like I was in some sort of movie where me, the protagonist, had been caught in some twisted version of my dream-word without my knowing - fascinating and gorgeous, but with an unsettling twinge in my gut.

I wrote some angsty poetry while eating chicken empanadas and danced deliriously to intricate hip-hop beats by myself in a club for three hours and got my camera stolen in the B.A. subway (sorry, guess those pictures and video won´t arrive after all). That´s how I kicked off my trip.

Then, I went from a hostel (where I shared a room with three Californians who wanted to score some Mary) to a Hare Krishna farm on the outskirts of the city. From juicy steaks to the constant company of regal bull brothers (and a strictly vegetarian diet, of course). From a relaxing glass of Quilmes to scientific inquiries into physics´ incapability to understand human consciousness (delivered to me by the farm´s owner, a British man named Mark who inhales oxygen and exhales concepts). I´m here until Thursday, doing various jobs in exchange for food and board, and hopefully by then I´ll be able to better understand the bizarrely intricate and passionate world I stumbled upon while trying to save a few pesos.


I´d love to hear from any of you . . . I hear you have to sign up to post, which is a bummer. So e-mail me instead, I would love to hear how you´re doing or answer any questions you have or the like. Take care, I´ll write again later in the week.