SAVE THE BABIES
The tyre was still rolling past us down the deserted street when the police collared them. Pulled their car round in a U, and waded out of it the way fat men do. Three boys, non-specific adolescent age. Mara pulled me over to a good spot right next to them to watch. I was appalled- in England we usually just emulate the badly traumatised and deeply sociopathic; edging by looking slanted up through furtive eyes to decipher what's happening. 'Are we just going to watch!' I asked with the thrill of the fairground. 'We have to support them,' she said. Two more people had marched up and taken position as well, the dreadlocked woman standing defiant arms folded. I realised we weren't watching but taking part.
Bizarre really, for me anyway. I'm usually on the side of the adults in England, despite barely being one myself. Can that be true? After all my youth work? But in Argentina with its tender wounds of military junta and highly corrupt police force, we had to be there to look out for the kids.
The Officer McClusky figure sidled up to 'You cannot mess with me' dreadlocked woman and attempted to justify himself.
'Did you see what happened?'
'I just got here.'
'They were rolling a tyre down the road, it could have caused an accident.'
'They're just children, leave them alone.'
Four more police cars appeared, presumably out of boredom. Mara called out 'Hey - they're just kids playing!' A warning and the kids were sent on their way through the chaos of the squadron cars. Before they went they turned to us and saluted. 'Ciao chicos!' People power against the draconian security forces. I felt like a Paris student in 1968, it was breathtaking.
END OF THE WORLD AND SUPERPANCHO WONDERLAND
In its favour it has jazz chequered flooring, an ingenious mural showing a continuation of the room into a parlour filled with sophisticated cocktail-drinking silhouettes, and a free pool table. Against it, the bathrooms are an enduring symbol of urban squalor, the kitchen a theme park for cockroaches where the cutlery drawer typically contains just one dirty teaspoon and there is no cosy lounge area. On the first day I arrived with a trio of Ozzie girls I'd met in Santiago, I intended to leave the hostel at once.
I had a nap at 5pm and woke up at midnight to the sound of severe racousness echoing in the gymhall acoustics of Downstairs. Drawn like a dung beetle to a pile of steaming ordure, I happened down to find an exuberant and chatty mélange of Israelis, French-Canadians, Chileans, the inevitable English and many more. Before long I'd been introduced to the local 24 hour shop where decent wine can be bought for 50 English pence and large bottles of beer for 80p. Soon after that I brought down my guitar and unwittingly lit a powder keg of enthusiasm. I decided to stay at the End of the World for a while.
Another night I found myself at a festival of Balkan music at the Armenian Institute, and then all of a sudden (in the immortal words of Jonathan Richman) I was dancing in a lesbian bar . We emerged into the sunshine and dined extravagantly on Superpancho hotdogs (effectively free at 1 peso 25 each) and beer at our local 24h pancho house. Opera Bay is a superclub built to emulate the Sydney Opera House, with a wide open portion overlooking the spectacular mouth of the estuary, betoothed with sparkling skyscrapers. And when Susannah the brazileña tried to make me understand the word 'tile' in Portuguese as we walked down the street, I turned to look at her mime on a wall. I began to walk again and collided forcefully with a large metal box. For a few days one cheek was permanently rouged and my nose resembled that of Robert de Niro in Raging Bull.
The hostel is situated in San Telmo, a neighbourhood of Buenos Aires close to Downtown whose mention inspires a look of disgust on the faces of middle aged Jewish women (naturally I am beginning to insinuate myself into the network). It is an historic area with narrow cobbled streets and good bars peeking out from behind enormous piles of festering rubbish.
SANTIAGO IN A BLUR
I had flown straight from New Zealand to Santiago, Chile. I found a converted mansion in which to stay, called the Casa Roja. I played much guitar with large groups of Argentians, and met a lovely Uruguaya called Evelyn with a killer wrist on the ping pong table. 4 hours Spanish lessons with an española called Ahinoa ['Hey what's that girl's name?' 'Ahinoa.' 'Yes, I know that's why I asked you.' etc] fed me some much hungered for culinary vocabulary and pulled me through some juicy prepositions.
The culture shock was thrumming on the streets. Not only had I jumped from Western to Latino, from 1st world to 3rd, but from depopulated NZ with its vistas and mountains and inalienable relationship with the land, to a big dirty South American city with curtains of smog and millions of people. I loved it, of course. Everywhere were people lounging and chatting. Everywhere were couples really going for it in the street. Everywhere were stupendously gorgeous and exotic looking women. I could live with this, I decided.
EL ACENTO PORTEÑO
I am learning Spanish, but inevitably the Buenos Aires bastard of the Argentine variant. 'LL' and 'Y' are pronounced 'SH' instead of 'Y' in Spain-Spanish, and there's a different groovy informal 'you' form. It's quite a sexy little spin off, also used in Montevideo, as Evelyn the Uruguaya taught me. The pronunciation is Italianate and highly dramatic. All sorts of plosive squirting noises are employed as conversational enhancers. Taxi drivers are hilarious. An affectionate BA greeting:
¡Che boludo! - Hey asshole! (use with discretion)
OVERTURES OF GREASE AND HANDSLAPS
I am putting out mucilaginous tentacles to find food. I have put up signs offering lecciones privadas con profesor recibido en la universidad de Cambridge. In life I have barely started to abuse my Educational Privilege. I attended a meeting of the Jewish gay, lesbian and transexual club to find contacts. The room was full of men ranging from upper youth to lower old age. I brought Itai and Jeanette from my hostel; Jeanette was thrilled to be the only female, and not Jewish at that. We mingled and watched 3 fairly arresting Israeli short films on gay themes. In one a scorned woman fakes a coma to stop her lover leaving the country. Another had a large-eared teenage boy exploring his sexuality by orchestrating meetings between other men on his computer. I chatted voraciously, working the room with an empanada in one hand and a plastic cup of diet coke in the other. Received a few potential leads. Then I attended Conversation Club at Hillel House, Jewish student hangout and pulled out a bunch of flyers. I searched myself for shame and found none.
BA OVERVIEW
There is a glut of dogs in prime pedigree, being walked ten at a time by dog walkers who are some of the highest paid workers in the city. I saw someone tie up a bundle of dogs outside his flat and go inside, presumably for a nap or to watch TV for a few hours. Cushy work. An enormous muzzled hound cocked his head at me to say 'I could do this man's work, and you'd only have to pay me marrowbone.' Or he might have been assessing my nutritional value.
I have made good friends round the pool table. I am platonically sharing a room with a crazy Portia from Blackpool. There are some people, like the camp and ebullient Pablo & Ivan double act from Chile, who appear to live at the hostel indefinitely. I might have sunk into that state of being, at least for now. My boss (for my 4-6 hours teaching a week) is a loquacious entity named Sandy 'La Teacher', who talked continuously through my interview without inhalation only to say after an hour 'so you didn't ask about money' not that I hadn't been waiting for a nanosecond pause to introduce the subject.
The coffee is excellent, and the unbridled carnivorousness of the nation is only matched by how eagerly they all smoke in every space, public, private, children and old people welcome. I experienced an election, when the whole city was closed down. My private lessons were a good opportunity to grill a variety of people about politics. The broad leftist only-credible-option Peron party got in again, but there were significant gains from a pro-business magnate called Macri.
Graffiti is more political. Music is more political. People have more style and finesse, even those working in McDonalds. People my age are forced by financial necessity to live either with their parents or in bunkbedded dorms. But food and drink is cheap and plentiful, and music crashes into the smog refracted sunlight of each new day.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Friday, October 14, 2005
Newly Zealous and the Penetration of the West
LIVING ON MY OWN
My campervan weeks passed in a dream of endless valleys, rushing ice rivers and various Germans. I read and thought a lot, drank cups of tea out of plastic cup with van perched atop vertiginous point after point. I skydove in Queenstown.
New Zealand has carved a touristic niche for itself in the arena of extreme sports and gymnastic pasttimes (not to mention Lord of the bloody Rings). Queenstown is a whole town built upon the obscene money travellers spend hurling themselves off cliffs tied to elastic, canyon swings, gliders, parachutes. Cross the bridge and be undershot by dozens of jetboats and rafts in a space of minutes. Hear screams from the surrounding sky. The town looks to a cliff up which scales a cable car. Naturally there is a bungy jump from the cable car.
I decided to spend much of my remaining cash on a skydive. I was driven out to the N-Zone skydive ranch. The van was full of Swede, with a pinch of Ozzie and English. We sat in the blinding sun as two ladles of Swede went up and came down.
Then it was us: myself, Mr. Xtreem Sportz Ozzie, and English girl. We donned our suits and were taught how to hang out of the plane door before jumping (make yourself into banana, open arms when tapped). We were introduced to the people who would strap themselves to us for the jump. I was thrilled to receive an enormous Serb by the name of Sasa. We all crammed into a tiny metal tube with wings. I sat between Sasa´s legs, according to ancient custom.
The plane flew up through mountains dusted with icing sugar. All around a vague cloud layer the sky was brilliant blue blinding. I felt fear for the first time, and grateful to be enveloped by titanic Serbian limbs. Sasa attached us together and I put on hat, gloves and goggles. The door opened and I was suddenly hanging out. Then it was chaos.
They say you never remember the first ten seconds. The brain can´t understand what is happening - and who can blame it? The world was everwhere, mountains flashing and jerking lake. Rolling and diving and my face making an elastic bid to return to the plane. Sasa tapped me several times before I realised what that meant and splayed my arms, hugging the mass of air below me. Exhileration, rush, narcotic! I screamed for a bit before deciding there was no point. Freefall was 50 seconds but passed in a triangular vortex. Then the cord went and we were yanked frozen still.
Nothing can replicate the silence and peace then. After the psychotic scream of air, we were stationary hanging in the sky. The bulging meniscus of the world curved up around in a wall-eyed oval. A plumline in a snowglobe. The harness was giving me a groinal heimlich manoeuvre but all I could do was gibber:
This is ins-ane. This iss ins-ane. Unh. It´s beauti...ful. Ins-ane.
The lake stretched blue, the mountains bobbed. Tiny white dots grazed in the field. Our shadow became apparent, drawing circles on the green. Everything grew larger. We lifted legs and swooped in, hit the ground running. Absurd and wonderful; epiphanic. I stuttered with adrenaline. Cut a sun-starched slice of that moment.
ABBA´S DEATH DAY AND SHANA TOVA
Before I left Wellington Miri thoughtfully gave me a yahtzeit memorial candle to commemorate my dad´s Hebrew death date. 2 lunar years on I sat on the beach near Nelson with a wide angle of sea and sky. I chatted to something resembling my father and looked at my life through his eyes. I sensed pride and vicarious enjoyment of my adventuring, with a definite underlay of career-related concern. I thought about his life and his aspirations, thoughts and feelings, all now residing purely in the memory of others. Vicarious is the word. I ate cheese and Thai red curry paste sandwiches; I´m sure he wouldn´t have objected to food at his own memorial service.
Rosh Hashana followed soon after and was saturated with memories of him and years of standing by him in Shul. He was always so happy to have Renato and me next to him in Shul. It was perhaps his high point of fatherhood, the time when he felt he had succeeded, when so often he thought he´d failed. It made me sad because I am not a Jew in his ideal. He was hardly Mr. Halacha but he tried, and crucially, believed it was right to do so. I can´t believe that, at least not now. He felt it so strongly, beating his chest during Avinu Malkeinu his passion was tangible. My Judaism will always be symbolised by the image of my father, I think it is often the way - God of my fathers. But I am pulled away from appeasing his memory by my confusion. This gives me a profound sense of guilt at this time of the year. I don´t want this to detract from using the memory of my father as a source of love and joy. Perhaps that takes time.
I went to a shul in Christchurch (ironically) containing approximately 15 people, most of whom were octagenarians. On the request of the Rabbi I attempted to blow the shofar on the bimah but all that emerged was a pathetic squeak. A 75 year old shoved me aside and trumpeted energetically. Despite all my best intentions, I failed to secure a lunch invitation.
BOOKS
Amused and elated by absurdity of The Master and Margarita. Been drinking Margaritas to enter the holy spirit.
Blown away by family interrelations in The Corrections.
Book of Fame by Lloyd Jones chronicles lyrically the rabidly successful tour of the UK by the 1905 New Zealand rugby team: the first All Blacks. I´m no rugby fan but they were legends. Poetic exploration of their knowledge of space and national selfhood.
JAEGER BOMBS
Simply take a glass of red bull and a shot glass filled with jaegermeister. Add the jaeger, glass n all, to the red bull. Neck immediately. Highly popular in NZ. Drives you mental. I was treated to several of these by an American firefighter called Mike who was about to go to Antartica and was spending up his US government money. Thank you Uncle Sam. A Tanzanian called Messenjah with his name on his jacket was also part of our troupe, along with a couple of Icelandic females. Messenjah had effusive theories about positive attitude, cf. Stand up for your Rights.
NZ CHIPS
come in binbag size portions. I used a litre of vinegar.
RIGGERS
of ale are 2 litre bottles that are obscenely cheap and refillable. God bless New Zealand.
SQUANDOR: THE LAST INDIAN LAWYER
On my last night in the van I slept by the sea with wild wind buffeting and a demonic spread of stars. I woke up to seals basking on the rocks.
Dempsey was high on life, or possibly something else. We played guitar and drank beer on the ferry to the North Island, and formed a little family with a gym teacher and sex shop attendant, a guy with lots of piercings, and a hoary old singer songwriter from Oz. There was also a heavily tattooed man who hitches up and down NZ on a permanent basis. Positive things that Dempsey repeatedly said:
This is all just a big advincha
Kids are so out there and on to it
It´s so amazing that you just walk into a pub and then walk out in a different place
Life is a great advincha
etc advincha advincha etc
I helped Lissa move by driving a fun bus belonging to Miri´s family. The tyre almost exploded shortly after we almost plummeted off a cliff. Plumes of black smoke rose from the tyre. Lissa limped around on a sprained ankle and fell over a few times.
For my last party night, we ate strips of meat at a Mongolian BBQ. Then I started buying tequilas. The bitterenders, ie. myself, Claire and Sam, bought party pills. Party pills are totally legal herbal highs that people of any age can buy in 24h shops in NZ, and they are extraordinarily good. We danced to Blondie and croony classics in a club called Indigo and babbled to everyone on the smoking balcony. Sam and I swayed for an hour. The barman foolishly served us absinthe. Of course we were there till the bitter end. We were effusively thanking the barman and the DJ for everything when I noticed that only the barman was clear, while the rest of the world was in soft focus. I explained this to him lengthily, drawing comparisons with the presentation of the Love Interest in early episodes of Star Trek. We emerged into the street and sat on a floating jetty watching the sun rise dazzling. The water pink-rippled magnificently. Wellington is a stunning place.
I was very sad to leave Lissa and all my new gorgeous friends. I had fallen in love with Wellington life but the date line beckoned. New Zealand was a lovely warm bath and I was becoming prunelike. I left Wellington at 6pm on Monday and arrived in Santiago at 1pm on the same day. What a head fuck.
My campervan weeks passed in a dream of endless valleys, rushing ice rivers and various Germans. I read and thought a lot, drank cups of tea out of plastic cup with van perched atop vertiginous point after point. I skydove in Queenstown.
New Zealand has carved a touristic niche for itself in the arena of extreme sports and gymnastic pasttimes (not to mention Lord of the bloody Rings). Queenstown is a whole town built upon the obscene money travellers spend hurling themselves off cliffs tied to elastic, canyon swings, gliders, parachutes. Cross the bridge and be undershot by dozens of jetboats and rafts in a space of minutes. Hear screams from the surrounding sky. The town looks to a cliff up which scales a cable car. Naturally there is a bungy jump from the cable car.
I decided to spend much of my remaining cash on a skydive. I was driven out to the N-Zone skydive ranch. The van was full of Swede, with a pinch of Ozzie and English. We sat in the blinding sun as two ladles of Swede went up and came down.
Then it was us: myself, Mr. Xtreem Sportz Ozzie, and English girl. We donned our suits and were taught how to hang out of the plane door before jumping (make yourself into banana, open arms when tapped). We were introduced to the people who would strap themselves to us for the jump. I was thrilled to receive an enormous Serb by the name of Sasa. We all crammed into a tiny metal tube with wings. I sat between Sasa´s legs, according to ancient custom.
The plane flew up through mountains dusted with icing sugar. All around a vague cloud layer the sky was brilliant blue blinding. I felt fear for the first time, and grateful to be enveloped by titanic Serbian limbs. Sasa attached us together and I put on hat, gloves and goggles. The door opened and I was suddenly hanging out. Then it was chaos.
They say you never remember the first ten seconds. The brain can´t understand what is happening - and who can blame it? The world was everwhere, mountains flashing and jerking lake. Rolling and diving and my face making an elastic bid to return to the plane. Sasa tapped me several times before I realised what that meant and splayed my arms, hugging the mass of air below me. Exhileration, rush, narcotic! I screamed for a bit before deciding there was no point. Freefall was 50 seconds but passed in a triangular vortex. Then the cord went and we were yanked frozen still.
Nothing can replicate the silence and peace then. After the psychotic scream of air, we were stationary hanging in the sky. The bulging meniscus of the world curved up around in a wall-eyed oval. A plumline in a snowglobe. The harness was giving me a groinal heimlich manoeuvre but all I could do was gibber:
This is ins-ane. This iss ins-ane. Unh. It´s beauti...ful. Ins-ane.
The lake stretched blue, the mountains bobbed. Tiny white dots grazed in the field. Our shadow became apparent, drawing circles on the green. Everything grew larger. We lifted legs and swooped in, hit the ground running. Absurd and wonderful; epiphanic. I stuttered with adrenaline. Cut a sun-starched slice of that moment.
ABBA´S DEATH DAY AND SHANA TOVA
Before I left Wellington Miri thoughtfully gave me a yahtzeit memorial candle to commemorate my dad´s Hebrew death date. 2 lunar years on I sat on the beach near Nelson with a wide angle of sea and sky. I chatted to something resembling my father and looked at my life through his eyes. I sensed pride and vicarious enjoyment of my adventuring, with a definite underlay of career-related concern. I thought about his life and his aspirations, thoughts and feelings, all now residing purely in the memory of others. Vicarious is the word. I ate cheese and Thai red curry paste sandwiches; I´m sure he wouldn´t have objected to food at his own memorial service.
Rosh Hashana followed soon after and was saturated with memories of him and years of standing by him in Shul. He was always so happy to have Renato and me next to him in Shul. It was perhaps his high point of fatherhood, the time when he felt he had succeeded, when so often he thought he´d failed. It made me sad because I am not a Jew in his ideal. He was hardly Mr. Halacha but he tried, and crucially, believed it was right to do so. I can´t believe that, at least not now. He felt it so strongly, beating his chest during Avinu Malkeinu his passion was tangible. My Judaism will always be symbolised by the image of my father, I think it is often the way - God of my fathers. But I am pulled away from appeasing his memory by my confusion. This gives me a profound sense of guilt at this time of the year. I don´t want this to detract from using the memory of my father as a source of love and joy. Perhaps that takes time.
I went to a shul in Christchurch (ironically) containing approximately 15 people, most of whom were octagenarians. On the request of the Rabbi I attempted to blow the shofar on the bimah but all that emerged was a pathetic squeak. A 75 year old shoved me aside and trumpeted energetically. Despite all my best intentions, I failed to secure a lunch invitation.
BOOKS
Amused and elated by absurdity of The Master and Margarita. Been drinking Margaritas to enter the holy spirit.
Blown away by family interrelations in The Corrections.
Book of Fame by Lloyd Jones chronicles lyrically the rabidly successful tour of the UK by the 1905 New Zealand rugby team: the first All Blacks. I´m no rugby fan but they were legends. Poetic exploration of their knowledge of space and national selfhood.
JAEGER BOMBS
Simply take a glass of red bull and a shot glass filled with jaegermeister. Add the jaeger, glass n all, to the red bull. Neck immediately. Highly popular in NZ. Drives you mental. I was treated to several of these by an American firefighter called Mike who was about to go to Antartica and was spending up his US government money. Thank you Uncle Sam. A Tanzanian called Messenjah with his name on his jacket was also part of our troupe, along with a couple of Icelandic females. Messenjah had effusive theories about positive attitude, cf. Stand up for your Rights.
NZ CHIPS
come in binbag size portions. I used a litre of vinegar.
RIGGERS
of ale are 2 litre bottles that are obscenely cheap and refillable. God bless New Zealand.
SQUANDOR: THE LAST INDIAN LAWYER
On my last night in the van I slept by the sea with wild wind buffeting and a demonic spread of stars. I woke up to seals basking on the rocks.
Dempsey was high on life, or possibly something else. We played guitar and drank beer on the ferry to the North Island, and formed a little family with a gym teacher and sex shop attendant, a guy with lots of piercings, and a hoary old singer songwriter from Oz. There was also a heavily tattooed man who hitches up and down NZ on a permanent basis. Positive things that Dempsey repeatedly said:
This is all just a big advincha
Kids are so out there and on to it
It´s so amazing that you just walk into a pub and then walk out in a different place
Life is a great advincha
etc advincha advincha etc
I helped Lissa move by driving a fun bus belonging to Miri´s family. The tyre almost exploded shortly after we almost plummeted off a cliff. Plumes of black smoke rose from the tyre. Lissa limped around on a sprained ankle and fell over a few times.
For my last party night, we ate strips of meat at a Mongolian BBQ. Then I started buying tequilas. The bitterenders, ie. myself, Claire and Sam, bought party pills. Party pills are totally legal herbal highs that people of any age can buy in 24h shops in NZ, and they are extraordinarily good. We danced to Blondie and croony classics in a club called Indigo and babbled to everyone on the smoking balcony. Sam and I swayed for an hour. The barman foolishly served us absinthe. Of course we were there till the bitter end. We were effusively thanking the barman and the DJ for everything when I noticed that only the barman was clear, while the rest of the world was in soft focus. I explained this to him lengthily, drawing comparisons with the presentation of the Love Interest in early episodes of Star Trek. We emerged into the street and sat on a floating jetty watching the sun rise dazzling. The water pink-rippled magnificently. Wellington is a stunning place.
I was very sad to leave Lissa and all my new gorgeous friends. I had fallen in love with Wellington life but the date line beckoned. New Zealand was a lovely warm bath and I was becoming prunelike. I left Wellington at 6pm on Monday and arrived in Santiago at 1pm on the same day. What a head fuck.
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