In a taxi today, my nieces by my side, rolling to the sunday street fair in San Telmo.  The Light hit the grimy windows of the cab, shattered into a hazy glow.  My oldest niece was telling me a story, her face tilted up to look at me as she talked.  The diffused light seemed to settle on her, almost as if she had become its source.  Every detail of her skin was highlighted, every feature of her face.  The tiny freckles, the blond lashes, the curve of nose, fine hair on the upper lip.  Not a wrinkle.  Not even an incipient line, like the stillest pool of water.  The pale blue tracings of veins at her temples.  Eyes at full glitter, unbloodied by life and by choices made and doubted.  Unencumbered by the painful memories we secrete away in the distant pinpoint of our gaze.  She looked, in that moment, like Forever.
This afternoon, I studied myself in the mirror.  In the elevator.  Surrounded by reflecting blades of glass.  The crows feet, the loosening skin around jaw and chin, the beginnings of permanent bags under my bloodshot eyes.  A forehead gone fivehead, quickly becoming sixhead.  Gray hair spilling from sideburn into beard. A giant rogue hair coming out of my nose.  “Are my earlobes longer?  They really don’t need to be any longer.  They already look like punching bags.” Under the green-sheen-glare of the fluorescent bulb in the elevator, I looked, for all the world, like Yesterday.

There are two possible youths in our lives.

The physical one is brief.  It is cruel, too, because its exit plays out so visibly in our bodies and our movements.
The other youth, the one that I work to keep a hold of every day, is the one that can carry us through a whole and fascinating life, the one that can keep us wondering and curious. It’s the one that, when we believe in it, can jump from us to others and to yet others, can gain a certain perpetuity, even when we’ve gone dust to dust.  It has nothing to do with our fading looks and our hollowing bones.  It’s an inner shine.

My niece’s face, glowing in the refractions of a late morning sun.

It was the perfect synergy of those two youths:  lighting up Forever, chasing shadows from Yesterday.

I have a bike here in buenos aires.  Beach bike.  Blue.  Big handlebars.  Bitchin’. (it’s time for the revival of that word, by the way.  Make it so)

I love riding the thing.  Here, there, nearly everywhere.  (but that’s another post)

The other day I was flying down Triumvarato, a big avenue.  it cuts out a long diagonal slash across a chunk of the city.  My bitchin’ blue beachbike was taking the cobbled thoroughfare with ease, like riding on a couch with handlebars, that thing.

Biking the major streets here is basically an exercise in picking your poison.  Stay in the right lane and be ready for an unending series of hairraisingly close calls with maniacal bus drivers and heartless, soulless taxi zombies, or scoot over to the far left lane and experience an endless series of hairraisingly close calls with wannabe evel knievels on their barely-street-legal motorcycles and wannabe fastandfuriousers with their tricked out fiats and renaults doing 80 in a 30 (and we’re talking mph here, not the wimpy kmh).

I usually opt for the bus/taxi wing of hell.  It’s like a video game (at least if carcinegenic particulates belched out of your playstation).

So, back to Triumvarato and me flying.  Everything’s great.  Beautiful day.  Blue sky.  On my way to percussion class.  Tire zoom, wind whoosh.  Shake rattle roll.

Suddenly (and I’m not using that as a device, i mean it literally: one second nothing the next second…) a HUGE green and white presence within inches of my left handlebar, roaring, grinding, creaking.

Imagine yourself floating on an air mattress in the calm water of a bay, sipping some sugary cocktail and having a blue whale suddenly breach within two feet of you.  Short of the obvious defects in such a comparison, the general idea is the same:  from tranquility to WTF?!?! in 0.0023 seconds.

Then the bus, Just a few feet after passing me, brakes hard and stops to drop off a passenger.  I swerve to the left to avoid a splat onto the vehicle’s ass end and almost get mowed over by a taxi.  As I pass the bus driver’s window I yell “Sos un gran hijo de puta!” (you’re a huge sonofabitch!) and crank on, quickly sliding back into an appreciation of sun, sky and movement.

But again the sudden apparition of green and white.  This time, though, the bus is keeping pace with me.  The driver opens the bus door (we’re doing a cool 18 mph at this point) and yells out “What the fuck’s your problem?”

I’m speechless.  Here’s a fucking city-employed bus driver, his passengers, for who’s wellbeing he’s directly responsible,  staring out through the streaky windows at me, agog with curiosity, as he pulls alongside me like he’s a goddamn riled up business guy in a poor man’s porsche.  He’s half out of his barcaloungeresque driver’s seat and hasn’t looked at the road in what seems to be several minutes.

I pull myself together quickly.  (I love a good road-rage argument just like the next guy) and shout back through the gaping entrance “Me cortaste…carajo!”  (you cut me off, fucker!)

He fires back “I cut you off?  You think I cut you off?  learn how to ride, faggot”

I’m warming up now, launch my own salvo, “la puta que te re parió, imbécil de mierda, cuánto tiempo ahorraste cortandome así?  medio segundo, concha de tu hermana!” (The whore that gave you birth you imbecile of shit, how much time did you save cutting me off like that?  half a second?  the cunt of your sister!)

(these are literal translations…and yes, a common oath here is to say “the cunt of your sister”, or mother or sister or…and my favorite variation on the theme… “la concha de la lora”…”the cunt of the parakeet”…such intimidating words, no?)

He doesn’t hesitate with his reply.  “andá a la mierda” (walk to the shit!”) and “I’ll show you what cutting you off looks like”.  He slams the door shut and proceeds to swerve toward me!  Not once.  Twice!  As if we’re in our own wacky version of mission impossible and he’s trying to run me off some cliffs in the south of france. (I’m ethan hunt/tom cruise in that metaphor, for the record…pre scientology)

I careen out of the way, my big ol’ chopper handlebars nicking the mirror of a parked car.

Now I’m really pissed, and just a wee bit taken aback.  I revert to english.  “You fucking cocksucker, get the fuck back here!”  But he’s gone, blowing through a red light while he’s at it.   And I’m a bit relieved.

Let’s face it.  I still have the sun.  and the sky.  And movement.  and about 400 grams of pure adreniline coursing through my veins.

Because, in the end, buses are just a hell of a lot bigger than bikes.  Frighteningly so.

Hey!  (he shouted into the ether)

That’s right, I’m keeping up my rapid-fire (geologically speaking) blogging with yet another post…once every three months, “sí o sí” as they say in spanish.  Come hell or high water (both options not recommended for children under the age of 8).

A lot has happened since July.

I wish I could remember what it was, exactly.

The last few weeks have been memorable, though.  My sister, bro-n-law and nieces moved down to argentina in early october and it’s been great to help and watch them get settled in.  The girls are going to school and have to wear uniforms (with blazers and ties!), michele and tom have discovered argentinean ice cream (a kilo a day keeps the doctor away) and I’m reveling in the unpredictable, volitile warmth of family.

While trying to update my photo program on the blog I managed to delete all of the pictures I had on the site (not the originals) and have slowly and with astounding laziness, re-uploaded them.  You can find pics from my entire trip on the page tabs at the blog (’03, ‘04…etc)

I’m going to try to blog with more frequency starting…right…NOW!

(in an attempt to keep up with my sister’s blogging prowess…three hours don’t go buy in this place without her chiming to no one in particular but specifically to us, (if you know what I mean)  “just got another couple posts in the pipeline for tomorrow.”

“For TOMORROW??”  I think to myself…that’s crazy talk.  I’m always writing for several months ago… procrastination is the air I breathe.

So with no further ado, here are some pics from the last couple months.  If you checked in and caught this, thanks…and keep checking…this site is gonna explode with writing and photos…er…i hope…well, maybe.

click on the image below to see more pics

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