Archive for May, 2009

If this is to be called One Month In Buenos Aires – no matter that it be one month or one year or the entire story – it begins this way. It begins with the first days of my third trip to this enigma of a city. How can one have a love/hate relationship with a city? A city that I had no awareness of until only a few years ago. How does a city of this size escape one’s reality for so long? When the traveler is ready the city shall appear: right smack dab underneath the soles of your feet.

What happened to me in this life or a past that I would find myself so comfortable – not only in a city that doesn’t sleep when it’s a pleasurable requirement that I am quite fond of and insist upon partaking on a regular basis – but in the barrios that are down and dirty with people from all over the world who could best be described as Bohemians, Libertines, Seekers . . . and a man who takes me to depths and heights that dizzy me. How did it happen that this has became my life – for today, for a month and maybe for an unknown period of time beyond that?

It started with Tango. Never underestimate the power of the tango to transform your life. It is not just a dance, never just a dance. The tango is a way of life that you either toy with – or you embrace. If you choose the latter you can expect to be absorbed into the dance and become a line from a love song – lost and found; life – joy and despair. Compared to the Tango the Blues are just a color. Although the dance appears graceful, the life of tango has sharp edges and is dangerous – muy peligroso y dulce – amargo – bittersweet.

This is how a middle-aged, middle class, middle of the left side of the road Canadian woman finds herself – first living along the major artery to the heart of Tango in an apartment on Corrientes St. and now in the very bowels of the tango in San Telmo. It is love that brought me here to Buenos Aires and it is love that will chew me up ad spit me out. Transformation by Tango.

I was aware that fleeing back to Buenos Aires was not going to solve my problems (if indeed I really had any problems or just imagined I did) and, more than likely, it would create new ones. It had been over five months since I had returned home for Christmas. During that time I had spent five and a half weeks driving La Ruta Maya through Southern Mexico and Guatemala with my friend Bill. Not a day, nor a location, went by when (and where) I didn’t long to be back in Buenos Aires. According to my original plan I would have to wait another six months. I could no longer come up with any good reason to wait that long.

Buenos Aires gets under your skin, into your veins and rattles your bones. I was like a junkie needing a fix. I had no viable vices to medicate away my tendency for existential angst – except for Tango – and there wasn’t enough of it in Calgary. But did I seriously have to travel 11,000 kilometres to quell my anxiety? Like ‘they’ say – no matter where you go – there you are. In other words – there was no getting away from myself. A change of location was not necessarily the answer. Yet, I was willing to give it a try.

In the moment that the idea was becoming a reality I was nudged from underneath the flannel bedclothes where I had escaped in the middle of the day, to incubate my un-nameable despair, to investigate flights on-line. Why don’t you just go for two weeks? coaxed a tentative voice inside my head, I hadn’t considered that a possibility. Waiting another 5.5 months until the previously intended date of departure in November – and/or leaving pronto for an extended period were both options that were giving me their own version of considerable distress. Going for 2 weeks seemed like a band-aid solution to a wound reopened and losing blood. It was spontaneous; it was rash; it was the best damn solution I could think of.

“You can’t just come for two weeks,” he said, “you’ve got to come for at least a month.” All right, a month it is. I booked my ticket.