Struggling Against Familiarity

On the first visit, a new city in a new country is an exotic destination. Every sight, every sound, every smell is strange and entrancing. On the second and third visits, the excitement is more subdued but there's still a thrill in revisiting famous places and resampling favorite foods. By the sixth visit, it's like being home again and the main concerns center around the daily routine: do we get our groceries at Disco (closer but more expensive) or Carrefour (an extra block away)? Steak for lunch at La Cholita or steak for dinner at Restaurante Melo? One piece of toast or two for breakfast?

We walk down the same streets and see the same buildings. Buenos Aires is a big city, however: just yesterday we were re-familiarizing ourselves with the neighborhood, walking along a nearby street, and saw several shops and restaurants we had never noticed before. Ah, a new place for lunch, perhaps.

I have identified the problem, and it is not Buenos Aires. My brain, dulled by familiarity, has trouble seeing new things to photograph and to write about.

On our first trip, when all was new, one of my favorite (in)activities was to stand on the balcony, glass of malbec in hand, and watch the traffic roar by. On this, the sixth trip, I still stand on the balcony, relishing that glass of wine and the sounds of the city. Perhaps the familiar is not so dull after all.

I am starting to post a few snapshots of this trip.

To the escape pods! ¡Nos vamos!

I hate the Texas summer. Every year seems hotter and this has been the hottest: day after day over 100°, made even worse by the record-setting lows in the mid-80s. The relentless heat is more than my brain can handle: I'm sour, lethargic, and indifferent. I don't smile, I can't think, I don't want to do anything.

But at last, this Friday, we escape.

For the sixth straight year, we're leaving for a month in Buenos Aires, where it's late winter. For the fourth straight year, we're renting the same one-bedroom apartment in a high-rise near the corner of Callao and Pacheco de Melo. For the first time in months, I'll wear long pants, real shoes, and a coat.

We arrive Saturday morning, when it is forecast to be about 50° and overcast.

Imagining a Photograph

When we're traveling, I post travel reports.  When we're not traveling, I make stuff up.  Like this.

An instant of light — a hundredth of a second, maybe more, perhaps less — is all it took to freeze forever that moment. Days months years pass, but I can hold the photograph in my hand, look again at the face looking at me, ponder that smile, wonder what happened to her.

I stare at the print, my eyes’ attention darting from center to edge and back, from detail to detail. From somewhere within my consciousness her smell comes to mind, uninvited yet not unwelcome, then the sound of her laugh, the feel of her shoulder, even the taste of her tongue. That moment so long ago, our laughter and happiness, the warmth of a spring sun, comes alive again. All the complexity of our world, our hopes and fears and expectations and the tension between what was and what would be, was distilled into these colors onto this small rectangle of paper.

That moment was followed by other moments not photographed. Spring turned into a scorching summer, laughter faded to tedium, and there was less feeling of shoulders and tasting of tongues. We endured thousands upon thousands of instants of light and even long bouts of darkness but none captured in a camera.

She smiles still, in that frozen moment. The mouth hasn’t yet voiced goodbye, the body hasn’t turned to walk away. I put the photograph away, back into the dusty box. The memories fade as quickly as they came and I return to the present, the now of years later, where she is long gone and mostly forgotten and entirely imaginary.