After logging more than twelve thousand miles of flying this week, I am exhausted. I lie awake in bed, but I cannot sleep. Too much to process and too much to digest.
Canada was cold, Argentina was warm, and it is snowing in the US. In Ricoleta, I had walked through the lanes of the national cemetery speaking on hushed tones into the phone. Each mausoleum was built like a house right next to another and everyoneone was interned overground and there they rest under the giant shadows of the city. City of the dead. There, without rents and changes of address they rest, generals, musicians, scientists, dictators and Eva Peron. I didn't feel the need for the sort of sad introspection one feels when one is normally walking through such places. I felt vacant.
Outside, I sat alone under a giant banyan tree. Its branches covered the whole park. There was an orthodox Jewish couple sharing a park bench. Next to me sat an old woman who had the looks of a retired lounge singer. It was hot and sunny. Even though summer was technically coming to an end, it felt like the middle of summer.
Later I walked on Avenia El Salvador looking for paintings. There was a jeans store that looked like a church and a shirt design shop which only has clothes in "Small" size. The waitress in the Asian fusion restaurant was pretty and could have passed off as a Bengali. Her ear was pierced at a wrong spot, almost too close the face. The soup was so hot it made me finish two bottles of water.
Later in another country, the emmigration officer questioned me about why I was hopping around so much. There was snow in the ground and I was cold. Airport was full of bearded Pakistani types in Southwest Frontier costume.
Altogether it is a happy week.
