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.

Mere Mirror

I wrote this ditty around 40 years ago and recently rediscovered it.  The questions remain but answers are elusive.  I still get a funny feeling when I look in the mirror.

          Mere mirror on the wall
         
          Who is he      
         
          Looking back at me?  
         
          And also, tell me true,
         
          What does he ask of you?

At First Sight

In January 1999, Terri and I were married by Travis County Justice of the Peace Scott Davis in his office in a strip mall off South Lamar.  A few hours later we were headed to Italy for our honeymoon, my first ever trip to Europe.  We've been traveling ever since.

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Finish stuffing more things in our suitcases then drive over to the JP's office. Wait in line behind someone paying off a traffic ticket, noisily and reluctantly.  I do, she does, we're married.  Rush back home.  You have the passports?  The cab's here.  Off on a honeymoon:  Austin to Chicago, Chicago to Milan, Milan to Florence.  Almost 50 years old and at last I would see Europe.

On the flight across the Atlantic, free Champagne, Chablis, claret, port, Italian beer, grappa.  Delay at Malpensa.  Too much booze.  Too little sleep. Too much excitement. Everyone speaking Italian.  Weird bathrooms.  Don’t understand the food.

For almost fifty years, thinking about Europe, longing for Europe, desiring Europe, craving Europe, the center of my universe, literature, art, music, philosophy, history, everything led back to Europe.  At last to replace countless imaginings of Europe for the simple physical sensation of walking down a cobblestone street.

Tired, hungry, hung over, disoriented, but I was in Florence, of all places.  My first meal of real Tuscan food, at Mama Gina’s in the Oltrarno.  Then sleep, not sleep more like passing out, in our hotel off the north end of the Ponte Vecchio.  No more dreams of Europe, no more anticipation of what it might be — look out the window and see it there below, open the window and hear it and smell it.

The first morning, in the hotel breakfast room.  The coffee is different, different food, how does one eat this? and all around us are windows and beyond the windows are red-tiled roofs and steeples and television antennas and laundry hanging out to dry.

After breakfast, out into the streets, awake now and not hung over and marveling childishly at every sign, every passerby, every moto speeding past, the food in shop windows, fragments of conversations in another language.  People going to work, greeting friends, talking on cell phones, setting up stalls in the markets, narrow streets and narrower sidewalks, and here I am in Europe stepping around puddles from last night’s rain.

We went into a tabbachi to get stamps and postcards.  Ten minutes, so many cards, we must tell others about this place, how many stamps?  Oh look at this one.  How about this for Momma?  Your parents would like this one.  Here’s one for the kids.  Fumbling with lira, how many thousands?  Thank you, grazie, and back out into the street.

Still fumbling with the bag of cards and stamps and change, oddly shaped brightly colored bills each one with a bit of Italian history engraved thereon.  Stop for a moment, crowds jostling by, let’s stand here for a bit until we get it all put away.  Look up again, turn the corner to the right, and there it is.  I stop.

The Duomo.  I see it with piercing clarity, my mind willingly, forcefully ignoring all else.  Awestruck, speechless, I stand and stare, trying to take it all in, wanting to stop my life and the world then and there, freeze this second, forever be here facing the Duomo in this exact moment.

But the world does not cooperate.  The sidewalk is crowded, someone needs to get by, a tour bus pulls up and blocks the view, we must start thinking about lunch, the moment is gone.  Or is it?

Scenes from My Playlist

While YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT, it's also true that YOU CAN GET IT IF YOU REALLY WANT.  Me, I WANT IT ALL NOW but I'd settle for ALL I NEED.

I admit, I'm ADDICTED, but at least I'm ADDICTED TO LOVE.  Really, every time I turn around I'm BACK IN LOVE AGAIN.  DO YOU LOVE ME?  GIMME SOME LOVIN'!  WILL YOU LOVE ME TOMORROW?  If not, where I can find some LOVE FOR SALE?

I'M A MAN.  Since I'M THE MAN, I'd be lying if I said I'M A WOMAN.  I'M TOO SEXY.  AIN'T THAT PECULIAR?  I guess I was BORN THIS WAY.

The animal trainer boasted to the circus audience, "I can make this BABY ELEPHANT WALK!" but they were not impressed.

COME AS YOU ARE when you COME AND GET IT.  Afterwards, you can COME GO WITH ME.  Or DON'T GO, whatever.

SHAKE YOUR GROOVE THING, SHAKE YOUR MONEY-MAKER, SHAKE IT UP.  If we can GET THE PARTY STARTED there will be a WHOLE LOTTA SHAKIN GOIN ON.  When I was younger, I could SHAKE IT ALL NIGHT but now for my SAFETY DANCE is not such a good idea.

I love DANCING IN THE STREET but unfortunately I'm usually DANCING WITH MYSELF.

TAKE ME TO THE MOUNTAINS or TAKE ME TO THE RIVER, we can even DRIVE MY CAR, just get ON THE ROAD AGAIN and take me to the LAND OF 1000 DANCES.

Excuse me, the phone, it's LONDON CALLING.  HELLO IT'S ME.  MY NAME IS JACK.

STAY.  STAY AWAKE.  STAY UP LATE.

MY BABY.  MY GIRL.  MY WIFE.  MY GUITAR WANTS TO KILL YOUR MAMA.

WALK HARD.  WALK LIKE A MAN.  WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN.

LIVING DISASTER.  LIVING FOR THE CITY.  LIVING IN A MOVIE.  LIVING IN THE U.S.A.

WORD UP!

If you'd like to leave a comment, please incorporate titles from your own playlist -- thanks!

Hello Esther Mae

July 27, 1945: Wiley is in the Army and far from his Galveston home, training in Chicago but sorely missing his girlfriend Esther Mae, his sweetheart from high school. He goes to the Chicago Servicemen's Center to make a record to surprise her, titling the finished disk with a simple handwritten "I LOVE YOU." After the war and service with the occupation forces in Japan, Wiley marries Esther Mae.

It so happens that Esther Mae had two older sisters. One of them was my mother; Wiley and Esther Mae are my uncle and aunt. In the late 1950s, a group of us cousins found this record in their closet and played it. And played it, and played it, and played it, to our endless entertainment. Even after hearing it so many times over the last 50 years, I still smile every time I listen to it.

A lot of things have changed in the 66 years since this record was made, but Wiley and Esther are still sweethearts, still making the best of it.




Announcer: This record is coming to you from the Chicago Servicemen's Center.

Hello Esther Mae,

I told you that I was going to try to get you a record and so I finally found one. I'm at the Chicago Servicemen's Center, in Chicago, and on the way home.

I, uh, you ought to appreciate this thing 'cause I ran up seven flights of steps for this! And this place was closing, too.

I didn't tell you about me coming home because I wanted to surprise you. But, uh, even though everybody teased me, they said I was going to be sorry, because you'd be out with Otto or somebody. But I told 'em that you wouldn't.

When I get home I'm going to have ten days and ten nights, so, uh, we, make the best of it, huh?

[long pause]

I just about ran out of things to say. I just wanted to make you a record before I went home. I hope that you haven't found out about this already, because I told my mother but I didn't want you to know about it.

That's enough.

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Many thanks to Radio Dismuke for excellently digitizing the original record.