Rainy day in BA....may have to paint or draw the view out my window or outta me head. Yesterday, walked to Plaza San Martin, scoping out motifs...started a new drawing and worked more on the one from the previous day. Reasonably happy with what I am acomplishing, but still beset by anxiety, which is more or less my normal state. Two quotes from Samuel Johnson are warrring in my mind, but really they are just different sides of the same coin (or the same side of two different coins?) These are the quotes, as best I can remember them (from Boswell´s Life of Johnson): All I ever WANTED to do was NOTHING. The night is coming when we cannot work. At age 54, I finally have set some goals: to master Spanish, to fulfill my potential as a tango dancer, and to paint the painting that exists in my head that I have not painted yet. I also would like to live here for an extended period of time...and get married, but that is the hands of the Almighty. Last night at La Viruta, danced mostly with two Russian women, an Italian, and a chubby girl from Cordoba, a really sweet gordita. I plucked her from a table where she was chattering with her girl friends. She behaved in a very un-porteña-ish sort of way, open, innocent, apologizing for her mistakes, etc. The equivalent would be perhaps if you were dancing in New York City, and you met some girls from Buffalo, say, in town for a big night and nervous and jittery. I should have danced with all of them, it would have been like that scene from The Catcher in the Rye where Holden dances with the three tourists from Seattle. I assume deep familiarity with this book on the part of readers of my posts.... I also saw at an outdoor book stall in Plaza Lavalle, the face of Borges staring from the cover of a book, and the woman minding the stall looked exactly like him! Tired, careworn, deep creases in her face, sad baggy eyes. It is a face one sees alot here...sometimes in fact the women here actually seem a bit unkempt and slightly disheveled (despite the reputation of this city as the mecca for plastic surgery, etc.). They hustle through the streets like harried New Yorkers...but they all come out at night! or many of them do. They must sneak in a early evening nap. There is still a siesta-based lifestyle here, which is why I must like it so much. In fact, I operate on the TWO NAPS system. I rise EARLY (by noon, say), drink three or four cups of coffee, do some stuff, then am ready for the first nap. Then venture out to start my day at about 3 p.m., walk 100 blocks, maybe tinker with a drawing or two. Then home for dinner at 9 p.m. and another nap, then ready to go out about 11 or 12, dance until 3 or 4 (or 6 a.m. on weekends) and trudge home afterwards. Borges: What does our sadness matter, if someone once thought themselves to be happy?
Posted on: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 18:43:36 +0000
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