Los Arrayanes
Diego, Sebastian, Colo and I head out to hike the length of the peninsula on which the grove of myrtle trees stands at the far end. It’s a 12.5 km hike to the tip of the peninsula, so we leave enough time for a 5-hour round trip.
The path leads through mainly virgin forest and it is well marked. The forest is occasionally striking in that way that chaotic virgin forests can be — weirdly shaped trees, massive fallen trunks, huge ancient grandfather trees with scars and wounds from the local llau llao fungus and lightening. The full panoramic vision of chaotic creation and death. At one point one of the guys makes a comment that the tangle of angles and curves and shapes seems architectural — “gothico, art deco, neo-classico”.
Finally, 3 hours later, we reach the little grove of myrtle trees. Not so architectural.
They’re nice, but a little underwhelming. Rumored to be the visual inspiration for the forest in “Bambi” — in truth they were not.
There’s a dock nearby and a little launch pulls in filled with tourists. We hitch a ride back to the car park, which saves us what would be a boring return hike — no one is complaining. One of the launch pilots tells us that he flew to Buenos Aires when I first played here — 1992 (maybe?) — it was the Rei Momo tour with the large Latin band. The sonar on the boat displays the surprising depth of the lake. About 50 yards from shore the water is already 200 meters deep. No one has measured the depth at the deepest points.
Dog Eat Dog
Early morning by the cabin we watch a group of maybe 6 dogs that have gathered by the lakeside. A black doggie, an outsider possibly attempting to join the group or wanting to be taken seriously, barks at all the others, fairly aggressively, while a large Labrador repeatedly mounts a sad looking female with a hound-like face, eventually succeeding in the task, after which the two are locked together for a few minutes. Ouch. None of the others seem to pay much attention to this. Barking blackie is shooed off by the others repeatedly, returning again and again. A twin of the Lab fucker barks, demanding to chase sticks thrown in the water, ignoring all the fucking and barking and growling around him. The lovers have unlocked and the others pass by and smell the sad gal’s pussy, but make no attempt to mount her. The lovers lick their privates…possibly to ease the pain of being stuck together.
Finally fed up with the outsiders’ aggressive non-stop growling and barking, a muscular member of the group takes the case in hand, and, grabbing the outsider by the red collar while they are both knee-deep in the water, he attempts to semi-drown obnoxious blackie. Or at least that’s what it looks like he’s trying to do. Others join in — one chomping down on the poor dog’s leg. A violent scrum — the outsider could be drowned as the others thrash about and hold him down — but no — after a minute or two of violence they all let go of him and there is no blood despite all the showing of teeth and even biting. They seem satisfied that he should now know his place. It seems they intentionally didn’t hurt him. It was all for show, to show him they weren’t going to put up with his aggressiveness and threats. Outsider stands up, still knee-deep in water, dripping, slightly stunned, not moving. He doesn’t run away. He slowly saunters up the bank to the protection of some bushes. A minute or so later here he comes again for more; the never-ending challenge.
One dog pisses on another’s face. No reaction. The hierarchies here must be well worked out.
On my way to work I sometimes pass by a little dog park at 23rd St. and 11th Ave. It’s a triangle of man-made hillocks and humps. The dogs brought there by their owners usually pick a hump to occupy and there they are — one dog on top of each mound, kings of their own hills. Everybody’s happy. Everyone’s a king.
I imagine if there were only one mound there would be fights — a constant and nasty struggle to see who would be top dog — but as there are quite a few options available here every dog can be king, at least for a little while.
Watching the dogs it sure seems we haven’t “advanced” much from the territorial and hierarchical struggles that those dogs so obviously act out. The smart thing about dogs is that their posturing is often just that — blackie wasn’t really hurt, no blood was shed. Actual violence is a real last resort. We push to see where the boundaries lie as well, but sometimes when acted out on a national or global scale, with tanks and explosives, it’s a little too easy to fire off a few rounds or zap the target knowing there will probably be no (immediate) repercussions.
Paraguay
Diego informs me of the band’s recent gig in Paraguay. He says it appears to be — at least in Asuncion and Ciudad del Este — a whole state based on contraband — the CD stores are fully stocked with pirate versions. 95% of the CDs are bootleg.
There are streets of huge mansions and surprising luxury cars. You’d think the contraband industry would somehow be incompatible with traditional music, but he says there is quite a lot there. Well, maybe compared to Argentina.
…
In the morning I bike out to Tierra Santa (Holy Land) in hopes of some photo opportunities. It’s a theme park out past the BA domestic airport that advertises “a day in Jerusalem in Buenos Aires”. It’s closed, but I can see “Calvary” and the three crosses from the outside:
To reach “Jerusalem” I ride along the promenade that borders the riverbank. The river is so wide one can’t see the opposite shore. Fishermen lean on the railing. Along here (and also along the border of the Parque Ecologico) are kiosks that grill meats for truck drivers and others who want a quick lunch.
Bags of charcoal supply the heat to grill blood sausages, steaks, hamburgers and various other cuts that sizzle during the early afternoons. The word Choripan is a conjunction of chorizo (a cut of beef) and pan (bread)…there’s another offering called Vaciopan, which literally means empty sandwich — but it also is a cut off the cow.
The slang here is many-layered and inventive. There’s even a genre of slang created by pronouncing words backwards. Sometimes this is compounded and complicated even further when a euphemism for something — a word for marijuana or one’s wife, for example — is pronounced backwards, adding yet another layer of obscurity to the in-crowd language.
I stop at MALBA, the modern art museum, to have lunch with Amelia and her daughter. There’s a Roy Lichtenstein show at the moment, which hardly seems fitting for a museum of arte Latino Americano.
Heavy traffic to the airport. United Airlines bumps me from the flight for being 5 mins late. We buy a ticket on American. They lose my bike, but promise there is another flight arriving soon (the bike arrives at my place later — whew.)
Rules of Empire
• Empires love classification
• “Ancient Hatreds” often turn out to be byproducts of colonial structures
• Maintaining an Empire is a huge financial drain on that empire
• Globalization spreads imperial employment practices and patterns
• Empires promise peace but beget war
• Imperial borders are inherently unstable, as they do not exist by consent.
