3 thoughts
[1] the palermo of today, ie the one i just walked through, does not seem to allude to the palermo of borges except maybe in the dumbest of ways (the street is named after him, a kinkos style store is named "cyberborges", which is actually pretty funny); street toughs and knife fights there are not (and arguably borges knew nothing of them anyway, except as avatars in his boundless imagination) and yet, the entire neighborhood, in becoming what it is: the hip/chic center for expats and lonely planet-ers, has become limpid and eternal; a single instantiation in a something bigger and more infinite, collapsible, and joins similar neighborhoods in shanghai, tokyo, berlin, etc; the ontological playground of the nomadic western elite: structure is well defined, the mechanism is economics -- much like the sulpheric hot vent sea warms, the steady flow of well regarded currency (dollar, euro, lb, yen) keeps the bistros/cafe/bars/boutiques stores aggregated closely, huddled. hostels dot the landscape.
[2] the weather is perfect today! absolutely perfect. the air smells like flowers, i am still reeling a bit from the sudden change, but, basically, this all makes me very, very happy. in the park couples were making out amongst the flowers and, twinge of jealously aside, it was very beautiful. some of the women here are strikingly beautiful and the only word that pops into my over-intellectualized mind is "heterozygous advantage"
[3] the closest thing to a super market: a small bodega-esque place (and now i am speaking nyc), is run by a chinese man. he was very curious about me and asked my argentinian friend if i was korean. i hold him i was chinese and all of a sudden we started to speak in chinese. he asked me what i was doing here (working? going to school?) and i replied that i was merely on vacation -- the chinese i used here is literally, "i am here to play". it was hard for him to comprehend. he asked me 3 more times. i replied the same, 3 times. now i feel embarrassed to go there; his inability to comprehend -- that another chinese person same as he, had the sort of financial bandwidth/gaul of mind to just come to argentina to hang out --- is shining a big if innocent light right at me, the decadent d-bag wasting his life away, hands idle, never my tires of experience to truly meet the gritty asphalt of life. well thats me projecting again. im sure hes just lonely and curious, like the rest of us. oi i just want to buy my malbec in peace man.
[2] the weather is perfect today! absolutely perfect. the air smells like flowers, i am still reeling a bit from the sudden change, but, basically, this all makes me very, very happy. in the park couples were making out amongst the flowers and, twinge of jealously aside, it was very beautiful. some of the women here are strikingly beautiful and the only word that pops into my over-intellectualized mind is "heterozygous advantage"
[3] the closest thing to a super market: a small bodega-esque place (and now i am speaking nyc), is run by a chinese man. he was very curious about me and asked my argentinian friend if i was korean. i hold him i was chinese and all of a sudden we started to speak in chinese. he asked me what i was doing here (working? going to school?) and i replied that i was merely on vacation -- the chinese i used here is literally, "i am here to play". it was hard for him to comprehend. he asked me 3 more times. i replied the same, 3 times. now i feel embarrassed to go there; his inability to comprehend -- that another chinese person same as he, had the sort of financial bandwidth/gaul of mind to just come to argentina to hang out --- is shining a big if innocent light right at me, the decadent d-bag wasting his life away, hands idle, never my tires of experience to truly meet the gritty asphalt of life. well thats me projecting again. im sure hes just lonely and curious, like the rest of us. oi i just want to buy my malbec in peace man.