I don't have much to say but I feel like I should be writing an entry.
You know?
I'm in a hostel in Buenos Aires right now, waiting for Madeline to get here
(she's coming on an afternoon plane rather than an overnight bus).
I am also eating graham crackers.
They are from California!
That seems like such a novelty--food from the US of A
sort of like the 4th of July traditional-US-BBQ we did yesterday:
It's kind of funny to think of such normal-seeming food¹ as
a foreign cultural experience.

One thing I find funny is
the kids from the States find the Finnish girls' salted licorice candy gross
and they find our Root Beer Barrels gross...
I guess they're both gross, but for some reason
each of us likes our own gross thing. 
How's that for cultural exchange!

And I have to say I'm excited:
classes are done, I got great grades
I spend my remaining days painting, knitting, and generally chillin' in myriad ways
I'll be here in Buenos Aires for 7 days and then
it's just 3 days of more chillin' and then
the next afternoon I get on that plane for home.
And I feel like a traveller again,
a carefree traveller rather than a sad expatriate.
As Argentina's grip on me loosens,
I love it more and more.²
Gotta give props to Lady Irony.

¹ Barbecue chicken and ribs (sauce from Tennessee, grill located behind my argentinian aparment building), Bush's Vegetarian Baked Beans from a can (also from California), veggie shish kebabs, roasted corn on the cob, potato salad (100% argentinian veggies, skewers, and mayo), southern style sweet iced tea (teabags from Tennessee, sugar and lemon wedges from Argentina), beer (Córdoba brand, pretty self explanatory), and s'mores (graham crackers, marshmallows and Hershey's chocolate bars from California)

² I've decided that rather than a "waiting room" Córdoba is better described as a (parentheses) inserted into my life.  And sometimes (the tangents within parentheses are very interesting and cool).

A young man sits alone at a table for 4
facing the entrance to the Great Wall of China Buffet. 
His dark hair has the loose curls of a mother's favorite son;
he is old enough to have grown into his body
but young enough for a fresh & open face. 
His gaze is dropped to somewhere just below
the middle of the table--there, in front of his plate,
--his eyes softly unfocused. 
I recognize in that look my 15-year-old-self trying not
to think about the boy for whom I wrote secret poems,
and the way he used to look at my best friend,
and smile. 
Somewhere within his quiet place the young man
lifts a generous fork of noodles, leaning earnestly foward
in his seat to tuck the bite into his mouth.  In this moment
I wish I were in a French movie so the audience
could see the sad boy who eagerly eats,
but even more,
I want to be able to remember how my own lover eats. 
But he is a continent away, and a 4-month-old memory,
and I can't.

(Maybe this is prose, maybe it's poetry...
and like any good artist
I'm lying about something that really happened
in order to tell the truth.)

Yesterday I jumped off a cliff.

What?

Córdoba, what will you leave engraved on my heart?

National holiday in Argentina & like the good little female I am, I went shopping!

Seat 35 L:
the right wing covering and
revealing the world

LiveJournal Haiku!
Your name:	inc4ndescent
Your haiku:	they are quite weak when in leaf form as if they sold patterns maybe you should
Username:
Created by Grahame

( here are some good ones too )

Filosofía por Rubén Darío
Saluda al sol, araña, no seas rencorosa,
da tus gracias a Dios, oh sapo, pues que eres.
El peludo cangrejo tiene espinas de rosa
y los moluscos reminiscencias de mujeres.
Sabed ser lo que sois, enigmas, siendo formas;
dejad la responsabilidad a las Normas,
que a su vez la enviarán al Todopoderoso...
(toca, grillo, a la luz de la luna; y dance el oso.)

And yes--for you, my English-speaking friends...

Philosophy by Rubén Darío (my translation, which is okay, but can only ever approximate)
Greet the sun, spider, don't be resentful,
give your thanks to God, oh toad, for being.
The hairy crab has a rose's thorns,
and mollusks are reminiscent of women.
Know how to be what you are, enigmas, being forms;
leave responsibility to the Norms,
who will send it in turn to the All Powerful...
(Play, cricket, to the moonlight; and dance, bear.)

there had been poems growing in my head
like ivy--one leaf unfurling after another
each day, a new strand
each strand, a new verse

one went--

a vast white room within my chest
peopled by empty glasses

and there stopped.  It was an image more than a poem, and never made it past that one little sprout.

another, I could walk down the street & add lines--

If I can't love you, I will love the world:
the dog who follows me 6 blocks home
an empty bottle like an obelisk on the sidewalk
the boy who eats french fries alone
(next line here, same manner, same form...)

but I'll never write these poems
they're gone from me now
along with that unshakeable melancholy,
the enveloping heaviness of being alone

Because after that horrible moment when my heart disappeared through a hole in my throat, after all the guilts he asked me to confront, after I had confronted them and owned them and admitted they were mine, he told me--I feel closer to you.  That you take my insecurities and give back understanding foritifies your place in my heart.

I woke the next morning
wrapped in a shining, carbonated mist
golden like champagne, invisible like the hands of the sun.
Blankets up around my shoulders,
my breath up around my ears,
I was safe within my love
which, after all

distance cannot touch.

He saw ahead of him a mountain of days, and he felt every one of them already
because they would all be the same. 
As if they buried you under a mountain of clay and you could feel it with your whole body. 
You must feel each ounce of it.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Much had happened in our lives during that time.  Most of it we experienced together,
and it happened somehow that we stopped perceiving the world individually
and had each added to his or her observation the spirit of the other. 
Thus the presence of the other became, apart from desire, quite a normal need. 
Without it, the day lost a part of its meaning.

I've been reading this book                                                                                 The Year of the Frog
the author was part of the Czech literary underground of the 1980's.
The grammar is awkward                                
as if Slovak can never really translate into English
but the feeling of the book flows hot and red through my arteries                                                        like new blood.

I was sick to my stomach yesterday all afternoon, evening, and early night
I think from something gone bad in my lunch
I'm too damn polite/shy/cowardly to reject anything I'm given
even if I can tell it tastes kind of off.
Gave me a reason to read all night, and for that, I am glad.

Today I feel fine.
It is a ridiculously gorgeous day, the kind that makes itself happy.
I should be outside, but I am in front of this screen
because I want to share something

(I)(probably)(can't)(get)(it)(across)

give+it+a+try

---okay---

the narrator's voice reminds me of my lover
I want to feel the weight of his hands

instead, there is the weight of the book
the pages light as a whisper
the deep silence within the text
unfolding a whole (silent) world within my head
in which people speak
(silent)
and dogs bark
(s
ilent) and I am silent, and happy
in the way that sad songs make me happy.

Being melancholy is close enough to being content.

Pandora played me a Fall Out Boy song.

...and I liked it.