good airs

The bus-- el autobus. The driver-- forget it. Please-- por favor. To need-- necesitar. To get off-- shit. Address? I know that. I know that one. Jesus. I can probably muster something close to it. He will understand me. Maybe. God, I thought I was better than this. OK. Este or es? Who cares. He will understand. OK. Go.

"Senor, necesito bajarse de acqui (I am pointing to my hostel address on a piece of paper but promptly stop this as I realize I may become responsible for the bus to promptly crash as a result of a severely sidetracked driver. The news headline would read: "American Crashes Argentine Bus." This would be terrible. I think about all this and immediately retract my piece of paper and pointing method). Uhhh, bajo de Avenida de Mayo 1385"-- Sir, I need to get off here. Uhhh, I need to get off at 1385 Mayo Avenue.

Yes, of course I struggled with getting the numbers out. I could barely keep my eyes open at this point from not getting much sleep on the eighteen hour plane ride over.

He nodded looking at me calmly, "cinco minutos amigo"-- five minutes, friend.

OK, OK, OK. This is good or so I keep thinking. Back to the headphones with My Morning Jacket blasting my membranes and the general confusion of freshly arriving in a completely foreign city. The bus rumbled along. Scenes collided side by side as I gazed out the window to a busy universe around me. That clashing, that madness, that boisterous activity-- it somehow left me in a calm place as I looked out from the confines of that 8-wheel megabus.

Do buses have eight wheels? This is probably a good Wiki project. I have had many Wiki projects lately-- one of which has me trying to determine how many American cities end with ´ville. I know, this will be difficult and likely pointless information to have, but it is equally as interesting as approaching Wikipedia to answer questions about how many wheels a bus has.

"Amigo! Estas acqui"-- Friend! You are here. I think that is what he said. Pretty sure.

I made it. We always do. Patience. It was only hour three in Buenos Aires and I had managed to get off the plane, collect my bags and take the bus in to the city.

Awesome.

It´s been a long time since I have written. I know.

The last month has been a whirlwind of events indeed. I did a nice little roundabout circuit of travel in the US-- New York City, Austin-town Texas and an Americana road trip installment with Mr. Miguelito Sack through the mid-south (Tennessee and North Carolina). I returned home and ate about 28 home cooked meals. This was good. My grandma passed away shortly thereafter and this was tough for all the obvious reasons. She is certainly in a good place now though. And then, it was time for the grandiose departure that I have become quite good at-- another international adventure.

South America.

The last month has left me with more miles under my belt and a growing list of questions. Questions that are to some extent rhetorical, answered and unanswered. The questions seem to pile up to roughly 14 feet in height, and I, like usual, kill myself over the answers. We cant know them all-- all the answers that is-- I guess.

Theres beauty in the unknown! This, as a particular friend Kate would point out, is the essence of daily life.

Well, Kate. I agree.

Patience. With the unknown.

OK.

It was morning, way early morning on day two in Good Airs-- ehh, Buenos Aires. The cold air was bursting through the crack in my enormous window that was approximately 12 feet from my bed. My sleep patterns were still fucked from old habits-- night owl tendancies when I was home and an 18 hour plane journey to be precise. The night before I had walked to the point of partial leg failure so that could have played a role. And I went to bed at 8:30 to the sounds of everyone hitting the town for a big night.

OK. I figured it out.

ANYWAY, its morning and I approach the kitchen for some coffee. Everyone always jumps on the case of naive Americans traveling, so I will take this opportunity to be immature and share a casually tongue-in-cheek anecdote. The only reason, of course, is for the lead in to where this manifesto is going.

See, everything has its purpose.

So I go to get the coffee, something I should consider NOT doing because I have been getting heartburn lately-- this makes me question the validity of my 25 years of age... BUT I just cant veer myself from drinking the black magic. I was pouring a cup and looked to my left and saw an Aussie couple I had met on day one happily enjoying breakfast amongst themselves. I broke in to the conversation, rudely perhaps, and we talked for a few minutes. I spilled coffee on my hand while trying to simultaneously talk with hand gestures and stand on my two feet. This happens more times than not.

The conversation was on auto-pilot when suddenly I realized the Aussie girl´s shirt read "Happiness is Lake Erie" across the front with a outline of the state of Michigan to the left. I freaked out. Actually, I burst in to laughter spilling more coffee and probably scaring people around me because I tend to laugh louder than is generally acceptable. This, of course, gets magnified 40 times when you are outside the confines of the United States where everyone does everything just a little louder than necessary. They looked at me confused. I continued to laugh. This happens a lot.

So the laughter subsided and the couple was desperately trying to piece the puzzle together. I explained the oddity of the situation and mentioned her t-shirt. She looked back at me as if I had shot her with a BB gun right there. She had no clue. I mentioned LAKE ERIE, I mentioned MICHIGAN. Nothing. It was just a silly shirt from a trip to the US. But NO NO NO, it was not just a silly shirt. It was home. It was home! I explained the beauty of Lake Erie and the Great Lakes to a rather confused crowd of two Aussies. They were eventually on board, but still very very very very very very confused I was making such a big deal out of this.

I held the coffee cup up to my face during the deliberation to hide my laughter. In the process, I took the world´s longest slug of piping hot black magic that very possibly melted me from mid-chest to pelvis. Or so it felt.

CONFUSION. Or so they felt, but we all get that.

Wherever it is that we all belong (Michigan, Australia, Antarctica), how often do you think about the answer? I can drive myself crazy from time to time in trying to find the superhighway to answer-kingdom. Where do I want to live? How will I get there? Is this going to be a good city? We all want a good city, now don´t we? I mean... shit! What is happiness? Uhhh, candy. Starburst Jelly Beans are happiness-- the fucking grape ones. Oh man. But that gets me nowhere. Jelly beans get me cavities, not answers. Where will I go? Yes, but where do we belong? Me! Where do I belong? Do you feel comfortable where you are? Where you have gone? Where you are going? How you will get there?

Jesus. I mean these thoughts just race through my head.

There´s plenty of young people (and probably old, too) that are wondering aloud these questions-- well, to themselves at least. Some ask those questions too much (maybe like me) and many ask too little, accepting the mediocre at face value. So there´s this happy medium to strive for perhaps, something to work for, something to find, to uncover-- and then to LOVE. A place where the current position puts a smile on my face and the promise of future growth seems a joyful prospect.

I want to talk to this nation state of individuals. Perhaps we can talk over the evening news.

OK.

So Buenos Aires-- a fine place indeed. I managed to circumnavigate the city quite nicely despite the fact that it seems as though it is roughly the size of Vermont. My daily walks have lasted hours, after which I realize I have only moved a couple inches on the map. The pulse of the city beats steadily, it has a vibe to it. My watch still remains on Eastern Standard because the majority of Argentina is just one hour ahead. This provides a nice reminder of home with every casual glance of the time. I think the highlight of this place has little to do with all these THINGS per se. There´s something more to be said about the kinship you feel between people. People embrace each other, and this picks up the slack for any downfalls that come with the bland familiarities that a continental metropolis brings.

Interestingly enough, I am traveling with a cell phone for the first time ever. I have never done this, and given my experience thus far would not recommend against. In doing so, I had my little brush with human Argentine contact-- arguably the highlight of my existence in Buenos Aires.

I walked in to the cell phone store sweating-- obviously-- despite the cool temperature. I started talking with a fellow who I would later find out was named Guillermo. I sat there rattling off my best attempts at espanol churning out about 45 questions related to me having a phone in Argentina. Poor Guillermo must have been frustrated, but he answered all of them. Of course, as part of my standard procedure, I took the answers, had a walk to think about, and then returned to make the purchase an hour later.

Guillermo pushed buttons, entered codes, spoke very very quickly, waved his hands, swore a couple times and banged on his desk twice. He then looked at me and told me there was problem. There was apparently a problem with the activation network and I would need to come back the following day. No problem.

So I returned the following day to no avail. Still did not work.

The following day, still no luck.

Day three. Success. Cell phone in hand. Celebration. Calls are made. We´re in business.

The following day-- day four-- I went back to the store because I had gotten used to chatting over tea or coffee with Guillermo midday. I mean Jesus, in those three prior days we accomplished a lot. He knew about my family, how I got laid off from my previous job, etc. Guillermo was thirty years old and lived about twenty minutes outside of town. He once lived in the US in Council Bluffs, Nebraska of all places. A year ago I saw an 18-wheeler explode on the highway there. This provided arguably the most heated of the discussions because it seemed like Guillermo may have known the driver. No, that is impossible, but that is kind of what his face looked like when I told him. The guy has a fierce love for rock ´n roll. This is clearly evidenced by the voracious lip curl and air guitar tactics demonstrated when anything by The Doors, Metallica or Def Leppard (!) is played. This is probably 95% of why we got along so well.

Day five. Back again. We had lunch.

Day six. The same.

Afternoons with Guillermo became the highlight of Buenos Aires. Clearly.

Today will be my last day hanging with Guillermo. I will walk in to the store and say Hola Amigo! once again. I will get his address and tell him I am going to send him the discography of America´s best rock ´n roll band My Morning Jacket (Miguelito, I am going to need some help executing this). He will laugh and slowly scribble in his awful penmanship (worse than mine) and ask "entiendes?"-- You understand?. I will reply with SI! repeated three times very quickly because this seems to be my habit of affirmatively answering anything in Spanish. We will pause while I construct my next Spanish sentence in my head. Guillermo will then turn the volume up on the boombox that is about two feet from his desk so we can act out the guitar solo to Metallica´s "Enter Sandman." We will laugh almost the whole time as I start to sweat because the legitimacy of both our air-guitarness is really staggering. After the song is done I will leave saying I will see him not tomorrow like usual, but rather "sometime soon." I say this to everyone I take a shine to because I always find my way back.

You´ve got to.