So, a week ago I sat down to update the site. Got into a flow, wrote for 2 hours straight, stopping only to take pulls off my Baggio, multi-frutal juice-in-a-tetra-pack box. I was on a roll. When I finished I pressed the “post” button to send all those unique (however slightly) groupings of words and ideas through the ether and to some huge data storage unit buried in the basement of some nondescript Cleveland, Ohio brick building. The only problem is that the internet crashed in this little mountain town (el chaltén argentina) just as I pressed that button…and just like that, 2 hours of writing and a liter of sugary juice went to waste, disappeared into the digital nothingness of the nothing (well, not the juice, that burbled and roiled in my stomach while I used every swear word in my repertoire just barely under my breath)
And it’s taken me till now, 7 days later to crank up the courage and energy to try again…
Landed in Buenos Aires somewhere back there in mid january, the flight nothing special, except for the fact that I was trying to sneak a new laptop into the country that manuela asked me to buy for her.
In argentina if you enter the country with high tech stuff you mean to sell or “gift” to someone you have to claim it. And if you claim it you have to pay a tax on it, and if you pay the tax on it you’re paying, in my case, 300 bucks, and if you’re paying 300 bucks and you’re me, then you’re spending cash you really don’t have a hell of a lot of, and if you’re spending cash you don’t have a hell of a lot of then you’ll be broke again before you know it and have to stand under a falling tree to have a good excuse to come home and work as a substitute teacher for a while in some wealthy suburb about 12 miles south of Portland, Oregon, USA just to scrape enough cash together to walk a bit further, which you haven’t done in too fucking long anyway, and in the meantime, some friend of yours down in South America is going to ask you to pick up a computer, digital camera, ipod, or some other high techy thing and you’ll find yourself, if you’re me, anyway, in the same position I was in as I sat on the plane realizing that sneaking high tech into argentina is considered trafficking in contraband and that means that if you get caught you have to pay 3 times the worth of the item you unsuccessfully tried to sneak in, which would turn out in my case to be somewhere around 1800 bucks, which would really fuck up my already crappy financial situation…and so on.
And if you’re wondering why I didn’t just pretend that the computer was mine for personal use, while getting grilled by Argentine customs dudes…well, I did…but you see, I also had my laptop with me, and entering the country with 2 laptops smells very much of slightly-out-of-date anchovie paste…fishy that is.
And so, In Buenos Aires, as I did the get-off-the-plane shuffle in those super-narrow aluminiarly (my own word, like it or not) avian aisles, I frantically tore the plastic-seal bags off of the backup cds, cables, users manual and other bricabrac stuff that made manu’s computer a sitting duck for reaming me out of 1800 dollars of high tech trafficking fines and shoved a couple items from my dirt-cheap carrying bag into her dirt cheap carrying bag (a mouse and headphones, if you were curious) and steeled myself to believe in the backstory I’d created in case the Argentine customs dudes (and dudettes it turns out) started asking questions…which, it turns out, they did.
Earlier: I tried to sleep as we hurtled along all pell mell in that big winged cigar tube, but I couldn’t. The seats were all pokey in the wrong places, as was the fuselage under the window, as were the armrests. I just couldn’t find the magic sleep zone/position/thing that is essential for any in flight/on road/passenger seat travel. Somewhere in the middle of my 45th attempt and 70th contortionist position to find the “sleep zone” I realized the whole “computer stuff conspicuously wrapped in shiny plastic” gaffe and got up to retrieve the offending machine and de-plastify it. But the aryan nation-like steward-ASS caught me before I could take a step and told me that I couldn’t “walk around the cabin because of the turbulance”, pointing to the “fasten seatbelts” sign to emphasize her message. And as my luck would have it we bucked and yawed through air pockets all the way to buenos aires (good airs…not). A fact that gave me little time to de-plastify but plenty in which to concoct a backstory.
my scintillating backstory: I’m a freelance (still don’t know how to say that in spanish, glad that such specificity wasn’t required in the end) writer for various outdoor magazines making yet another trip down to Argentina and Patagonia (just look at my passport sir, riddled with entry and exit stamps into and out of chile/argentina in the general patagonia area, sir) to do yet another “hey everyone, come check out and spoil this heretofore unspoiled secret paradise” type of article (examples of which you can find in any number of respectable periodicals fluttering on magazine stands throughout the world) and you see (maybe a conspiratal laugh here) I carry 2 laptop computers with me because one is my work computer, which due to the importance (relative) of the material stored on it, I’m loathe (don’t know that in spanish either, but ended up subbing in the straightforward no me gusta…without disastrous results) to connect it to the internet, thereby exposing it (as you may well know, sir) to an onslaught of pernicious viral infections (of the cybernetic variety, of course) that could very well, and most probably would, compromise all of my hard-typed work…sooo, what I tend to do when I travel to soon-not-to-be-so-unspoiled-or-secret locales, is to carry another computer with me, too, one that I connect at will to the internet in a veritable orgy of downloading, hacking, p2p-ing, cd-burning, ftp-ing, gaming, and illegal music acquisition, not really caring (while certainly not preferring) whether or not it be infected by the latest trojan (love the whole condom [as in std inhibitor] on one hand virus on the other stuff implied by that word) or worm. As you can see, sir, this is one my work computer, much used, and, just let me turn this one real quick, there… right here you can see this file which says “writing”, which, sir means escritura in English (that clause makes sense if your assuming that the conversation is taking place in spanish…I think) this is proof, sir, that I am indeed a writer for a variety of outdoor magazines. Now let’s look at this computer. Well, yes it does look brand new, doesn’t it. It’s because I bought it just a few months ago after my previous game/music/movie/download laptop was fatally infected by any number of trojans an all too common fate for laptops, I’m afraid. And look here, in this side pocket you’ll find accessories that are commonly used with the aforementioned activities…a mouse and these headphones, strong evidence I would say pointing to this machine indeed being one dedicated to the dangerous practice of “going online”. Turn it on, you say, sir? Well, I’d love to, but the battery died on me at the last airport. Plug it in? Wish I could, sir, really do, but notice these plug-in prongs here? They’re the american variety…sorry, the north american…and they just won’t fit in this outlet…see? I was hoping to pick up an adaptor in town later today. No, no, thank you sir, for your time, and for working to keep your country free from contraband activities. hasta luego!
Later:
Now I’m off the plane and in one of those super-twisty lines that take an hour and 300 feet of shuffling to cover what would be about 1.3 seconds and 10 feet of straight line striding, passing, every 10 minutes or so, the now-familiar, drawn, tired, sleepy faces of my planemates with each switchback. I’m nervous. I know I’m not a very good actor because I’ve taken 2 acting classes at 2 very distinct times in my life and neither was what might be called a huge step toward stage or screen success. I’m sweating, too…in part due to the nervousness, in part due to the sticky-humid air in buenos aires, and in part because I’m loaded down with my green Dana Designs umpteen million liter capacity backpack (stuffed to the rim), my canvas Whole Foods paper-or-plastic-bag-alternative canvas shopping bag (also chock full of stuff) and 2, count ‘em, 2 not-anywhere-near lightweight portable computing devices, slowly pulling my arms out of shoulder sockets. I get my passport stamped by those universal, totally interchangeable, utterly bored people who stamp thousands if not millions of passports a day every day, 12 hours a day in their little glass and plastic cubicles the world over and with each step more nervous than the last, I walk toward the big beige beetle-like x-ray machines and the long, dented-tin covered examination tables of the customs area. The wispy mom of two in front of me heaves her luggage and jackets onto the conveyor belt feeding the x-ray machine…”believe, ian…believe” I’m chanting to myself. I hear a voice, a woman’s voice, that woman over there sitting on her high chair looking at the x-rayed baggage of the wispy mom…I set the two (count ‘em) computers on the ever-spinning conveyor just as I realize the highchaired x-ray viewing lady has been talking to me and is in fact waving me on past the whole customs bag check process (as they do at times when the area bottlenecks with several arriving flights at the same time) I reach for the computers, but too late…there they go, sucked into the nether regions of the irradiator. I cringe (hoping that I did so only on the inside) and plod through the metal detector and to the end of the x-ray beetle that expells zapped luggage. I hear, and dread as I hear it, a conversation between the high chair lady and a customs guy who comes up to high chair’s knees. A murmurred, incredulous “dos computadoras?? le voy a hablar.”
shit.
Him: Sir, why do you carry two computers?
Me: Well, sir, because…
and I’m off on my backstory spiel, leaving out the words “freelance” and “loathe” amongst others as I gesture, look innocent, explain, open, turn on, and point out the whole virus-riddled concoction…which amazingly goes nearly by the script, except when the customs guy says, “this computer (manuela’s new one) is very clean. It is new, is it not? Perhaps one week since your purchase of it?”
Me: er…haha, no, no, no, no…I bought it a couple months ago (the fact that I had indeed purchased it just a week before throws me for a loop).
and then another question, “You would not be intending to perhaps sell or give this computer to a friend, no?”
Me again: “er…haha…no, no, no, no…never…I, uh, really like this computer, use it all the time…well, not all the time, that’s why it looks so new…er, but it isn’t really so new…
He gives me one of those looks that must be taught in every police/customs/pistol-carrying organization out there, what with narrowed eyes, brows pulled in and down, lips pursed, doubt and suspicion in every angle and crease of the face…followed by a reluctant “Bueno, Señor, pase.” he obviously doesn’t believe a word I’ve said but has no solid reason to hold me for a full cavity search.
freedom. an official trafficker in high tech contraband…and with a perfect track record…time to retire from the biz.
what’d you say?