May 07, 2006, 10:05 p.m.
First, a quick shout-out to Christina, back from Africa!!! I am so proud of you and impressed by all your feats, especially climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro ... you are my heroine. :) Welcome back to the land of the free, home of the brave. I hope the culture shock isn't too extreme for you.
I have now been in Argentina for more than two months, and much has occurred. The most important thing is that I feel much more settled, and my neck is getting WAY better! I've started dancing again, and I'm officially in the middle of school - I have my first exams in 2 weeks. AND, HUGE news that makes me wiggle every time I think about it: RYAN IS COMING!!! For the whole summer!!! (well, winter here). We are getting our own place for the month of June, including while my MOM IS HERE!!! (super excited about that too). Then we will be traveling for most of July, including going to Patagonia y me muero de ganas ir a Patagonia. I can barely contain myself because the majority of the time, I miss him so much it hurts. He arrives in 22 days, 11 hours, and 32 minutes (not that I'm counting or anything). Wheeeeee!!!
But I want to back up first: big important-ness, Kenda visited! Was GREAT GREAT GREAT to have her here! Her facebook description gives a good flavor of our visit:
"freshly baked bread and fine wine at every meal, getting drunk off first sips of wine, cafe con leche, chocolat fondant, chocolat da vinci ice cream, chocolat marquise, hours of exfoliation/massaging, getting up at 2pm, being late to 11pm non-reservation dinner reservations, milongas, tea in palaces, sunny terraces, sunny patios, sunny plazas, julio bocca, colombian jewelers, tales of threesomes, steak, hilarious english translations on menus, potatoes noisette, cyclical chatting/im-ing/emailing with mummys and jake, tiny little eggs for breakfast, and spending 24/7 with my sister!!!"
Just a few little explanations: tiny little eggs were these adorable quail eggs that we bought on the spur-of-the-moment and turned out to be the cutest and most delightful breakfast material we'd had in a long time. I think we had one every day. And Julio Bocca was a modern ballet company performance we went to and was **incredible**. The choreography was brilliant and the dancing was stupendous. Truly fall-out-of-your-seat beautiful. Like, "Really!? Her leg can REALLY be that high!??" Since then I have been to another maravilloso dance performance, only this one was FREE! From it was drawn this quote: "Do they just have an endless supply of impeccable dancers!?" and, "GOD I love living in cities." Especially Buenos Aires. They really value the arts here, there are constantly cultural events happening that are either free or at very low cost. It's interesting to see a place that actually places an emphasis on the arts in terms of finances - the government prioritizes (it appears, substantially) funds to support music and dance, in a way that I have never seen in the States.
Kenda and I also went to see V for Vendetta, a film I very much recommend. It is extremely reminiscent of Orson Wells' 1984 (not 1972, as Kenda suggested ;) but also highly entertaining. In addition, we had a charming tea with Mirabai in her pretty white dress, ate lots of peanut butter (A WHOLE ENTIRE JAR!), and, of course, shopped - although not as much as I think either of us suspected we would.
In other big news, Mirabai (my best friend here) performed in a tango show! - and got PAID. That means she is officially a professional tango dancer, aaah! In fact, the mere fact that she performed was a miracle, given that her original partner walked out on her literally 24 hours before the show. The guy was a complete tool, there's simply no other word to describe him -- he left for stupid egotistical reasons. It was like a movie - she called two friends and got them to fill in for her missing partner, and due to her persistence and their willingness to learn their pieces in A DAY, the show came through - and was great! And somewhere between helping her choreograph her solo, teach a modern tango to Claudio, doing her makeup, and watching her take the stage, I realized that I really love shows, the business of performing, the whole bit. I love the excitement, the anticipation, the hush in the audience when the lights go down, the frantic grabbing costume changes, the knowledge that all eyes are on you, the attitude that no matter what happens you must just keep going because the show must go on, the thrill of performing. LOVE IT. Also loved that despite the fact that Mirabai forgot half of her choreography for the modern piece, she and Claudio improvised well enough to fool the entire audience (the only ones who knew were those of us who knew the choreography), and make it look electrifying. Performing is so great!
The other BIG news is that I have started dancing again. My neck is feeling better, and after getting acupuncture, reiki, and massage, I feel like it is on the road to definite recovery. I have therefore started taking ballet again (minus kicks and turns), and jazz, and tango. Ahhh, tango. Still difficult but I feel like I'm progressing; I still lack certain steps and I would really like to find more lessons, but Claudio gave me a mini-lesson the other day and I feel like I'm moving forward - I just need to practice more. I need to stay on my axis and keep everything tight so I can do things like back sacadas without falling over. I also need to collect (bring my feet together) faster and more often, because otherwise they get caught on things like pantlegs or the big toe of my partner! Not good. Mirabai has also suggested that I do tango exchanges -- tango for swing or tango for English. The way it works it that you find someone you think is really good, and you offer to teach them English for an hour a week, and then they teach you tango for an hour. I still haven't been going enough or dancing with enough really good people to have built up a repertoire of people to ask, but it's an excellent idea because it's essentially private lessons for free.
The other big theme in tango lately has been music. In general, Mirabai and I find Argentineans to be rather traditional in their taste of tango music. Essentially there are two types of tango music: the boring kind (i.e. traditional - this comprises the majority), and the fantastic (i.e. tango electronica, a recent invention of composers like Piazzola and groups like Bajo Fondo Club and Narcotango). The fantastic type of tango music is sexy, sultry, and sleek - and it makes you want to dance. The traditional type is the kind that makes you say, "Yeah, I always thought tango was just for old people." Of course I realize it is my own personal opinion that tango electronica is better, but it's not just because of how it sounds - it's because people DANCE better to it. It's exciting, and interesting, it has a strong beat - people on the floor do more interesting, intricate, creative moves, they glide and twist and snap, they are dark and striking, as opposed to the way people dance to traditional music, which is smaller, less exciting, more measured, and more contained.
Miscellaneous:
- I just finished a book in Spanish called Finalmente Juntos, which I'm excited about. First of all I'm excited I found a used bookstore, and secondly that I managed to find a great book practically right away. The only problem with it was that it has quite the provocative cover, so I'm pretty sure people on the bus think I was reading a romance novel. Whatever. Anyway it was a little like Bridge Jones' Diary, only in Spanish. I stayed up til 3 reading it the other night, and then another three hours in Ateneo, my favorite café. It's the kind of book that you finish and then you're like, "Darn. I really MISS those characters!" Speaking of which, I find it strange the extent to which I really miss the characters from Gray's Anatomy. Kenda brought along the DVD of one season of Gray's, and she, Mirabai and I watched the entire season. It was wonderful, but now I really miss the people in it!
- I met a guy at a milonga the other day who just got a job doing research in a Wisconsin university and is therefore moving to Milwaukee for 3 years. All I could think of when he told me was "Dude, you're going to freeze your ASS off..." It's getting chillier here, but then again, the weather in Bs.As. is so unpredictable - one day it will be hot and muggy and the next day the lows will be in the 40's. Today is gray and overcast, and occasionally super windy. I have dubbed it officially autumn.
- We watched the film The Corporation in one of my classes. It got me thinking about a number of issues, including the issue of citizen control. I think a lot of times I despair about the state of the country, especially with regard to corporations and their control over *everything*. And while I still think this is true, the film pointed out that not everything has to be controlled by the federal government. In other words, there are other ways to limit the control of corporations -- banning them from specific TOWNS, for example. Town leadership, county leadership, and state leadership still mean something in the States, but it's something that I constantly forget about. In my head, it's like if it's not federal law, it's somehow not real. But there are towns that have said NO to big corporations, or limited their power and control. My very favorite part of the film was a town meeting where citizens came together and discussed their options in limiting the entry of a certain big corporation into their town. There were a lot of views represented, from "Well if you don't like them, just don't shop there," to the reply "Yeah, that's fine, I won't shop there, but what about the fact that they're going to pollute the river, the water I rely on, or the air that I breathe?" and "The problem with corporations is that we have no representation. The decisions they make affect all of us, but we have no say in them."
- Here's an interesting exercise: Tell me your ten favorite words and I will tell you who you are. In my opinion (and from my conversations with people), the interesting thing about it is not necessarily the words you choose, but how you choose them, and what your perspective is on why chose them. For example, do you choose words for how they sound, or for what they mean? Here are mine, what do you think they say about me? What are yours?
1. sensual
2. sacapuntas
3. poubelle
4. cuddle, puddle, huddle, and muddle
5. putter
6. thrilling
7. trundle
8. grace
9. pindly
10. stupor
Quotes from ...
Vladimir Nabokov: (author of Lolita)
"Genius is an African who dreams up snow."
"I confess, I do not believe in time."
"I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is."
"Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much."
"Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash."
"My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music."
Denis Leary:
"A new poll shows that Senator Kerry's support in the South is strongest amongst blacks. Kerry's appeal to Southern blacks is obvious. He is a white man who lives far, far away."
"A recent conversation: Dubya: Look at the clock, time is racing! Cheney: That's the second hand, George."
"Here in Hollywood you can actually get a marriage license printed on an Etch-A-Sketch."
"I lapsed into rude."
"In the elaborate wardrobe of human emotions, guilt is the itchy wool turtleneck that's three sized too small."
"The radical right is so homophobic that they're blaming global warming on the AIDS quilt."
"There's nothing wrong with being shallow as long as you're insightful about it."
"Washington, DC is to lying what Wisconsin is to cheese."
"What is guilt? Guilt is the pledge drive constantly hammering in our heads that keeps us from fully enjoying the show. Guilt is the reason they put the articles in Playboy."
Dianne Feinstein:
"Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe."
"Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want."
Hugh Jackman
"Being on Broadway is the modern equivalent of being a monk. I sleep a lot, eat a lot, and rest a lot."
"I have a wife and a son, but the gay rumors have started. I guess it's a sign that I'm moving up the ladder."
"I have a terrific marriage, but unlike a lot of relationships where they ebb and flow, no matter what happens you fall deeper and deeper in love every day. It's kind of the best thing that can happen to you. It's thrilling."
Language spot:
Dictionary.com Word of the Day - brummagem: cheap and showy; also, spurious.
From an e-mail from a friend:
"Your life sounds fun and strangely reministent of the film Amelie."
From work:
"Under the circumstance of the imported culture which has continuously impacted the local culture, it has protruded the importance of the requirements of special talents in the field of broadcasting who possess global points of view."
From a particularly entertaining dinner with Kenda: (menu in Spanish with English translations)
Small mozzarella cheese slice to bread crumbbs
Ojo de bife - Ryb eyes
Al plomo - in lead
Jesus's spaghettis with seafoods
Bombon escocoses - bombon
Carpaccio de lomo - Loin carpaccio
Matambrito de cerdo - pork meat brawn
Pechuga de ave - chicken breas
Muslo deshuesado - boned chicken tigh
Politics:
Did you know that 100 people have died of bird flu already? And that they found a dead swan in the UK who tested positive for HD235 (bird flu)? Ahh, the joys of reading The Economist. Emily would be proud of me. ;) (Slota, not my current flatmate).
And from my good friend Ali, on the documentary Why We Fight:
I recommend seeing this film if you haven't already. "Why We Fight" addresses the US military-industrial complex and the current situation in Iraq. How did current US policy become so far removed from original American ideals? How do we change the situation before it becomes catastrophic? Below is an interesting review of the film.
Why We Fight
By Karen Kwiatkowski
Director Eugene Jarecki has put together a wonderful, moving and important film that examines the modern American military machine and the modern American militaristic mindset.
His film is the 2004 Sundance Film Festival’s Documentary Award-winning Why We Fight. The title of the film recalls Frank Capra’s World War II films – popular movies that promoted, eulogized and helped mythologize America’s participation and sacrifice in that war. We fought in World War II for many reasons, but mostly it seems, because we believed.
Why We Fight carefully illustrates how our beliefs, our national character, our shared view of ourselves as Americans have changed since World War II. Jarecki utilizes President Eisenhower’s famous farewell speech of January 17th, 1961. In this speech, Ike warned of a growing military-industrial complex, and its possible negative impact on our democracy and our republic. As the late Colonel David Hackworth used to remind me, Eisenhower spoke of the dangers presented by military-industrial-congressional complex.
Eisenhower advised there was a "…danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." He reminded us, "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. He said, " …we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
I had read, but never before actually watched Eisenhower’s farewell speech until I saw Why We Fight. Those who are today manning the ship of state in Washington, D.C., like people my age, completely missed this prophetic speech. As Ike passed the presidential baton to a fresh new face, a youthful George W. Bush, like most of his generation, was focused on high school shenanigans, and the American people basked in long-awaited economic prosperity.
Ike knew a thing or two about war, American government, and our nascent military-industrial complex. Eisenhower worried, but we weren’t paying attention – at least in 1961. When asked why he made the film, Jarecki said, "Americans [today] have a visceral sense that something is rotten, but no-one can seem to connect the dots…. I wanted to make this film because we need what Eisenhower called an ‘alert and knowledgeable citizenry’ to compel change, to improve the public’s ability to monitor those in power."
Why We Fight is filmed in a new kind of America. It is still filled with everyday people pulling together for glory, Capra-style. But this documentary carefully and intelligently reveals the present-day fruition of Ike’s darker vision.
Many everyday Americans are featured in Why We Fight. A father who lost his son in the Twin Tower attacks on 9-11. Workers making armaments on massive factory floors, and workers writing global engagement policy prescriptions from inside carefully appointed urban thinktanks. Politicians and contractors and military recruiters and soldiers. These simultaneously common and uncommon people are key to the film’s humanity and its directness – because these people are us.
However, Jarecki’s steady hand reveals that while we are indeed Frank Capra’s Americans, we are today, in Jarecki’s words, "…caught in a vortex of spiraling militarisation and moral and economic bankruptcy, and [we] feel remote from and powerless to change those forces."
Why We Fight grapples with this sense of moral and economic bankruptcy that many feel as we stay the course and fight wars in Iraq, and elsewhere. The film illuminates the "insolvent phantom of tomorrow" that Ike foretold, and it attempts to get underneath the superficial explanations, and ideological perspectives. In Jarecki’s words, "We tend to hunt for heroes and villains, rather than study roots of the problem. I wanted to make a film that goes beyond the focus on the individual."
Jarecki gets it. He understands and clearly articulates how the care and feeding of the American military leviathan has been, and remains, a shared role of both Democratic and Republican Parties. There hasn’t been an antiwar party at the national level for decades, and it is easy to see why. What Cold War competition, massive federalization and sophisticated and relentless government agitprop pitting "us" against "them" has produced is summed up in a Raytheon worker’s reflection on her job. She pauses for a moment, and says, "I’d really rather be making toys for Santa." But she isn’t.
Will Washington, D.C. like the film? It is hard to predict whether the Bush Administration or the loyal opposition in Congress will first launch a stone at Why We Fight. Jarecki has provided an apolitical history and an apolitical reality, portraying an America evolved in the dangerous direction that Eisenhower exactly foretold.
Can the military-industrial-congressional complex be reined in? Should it be? To the extent that Jarecki passes judgment on the latter question, he defers to Eisenhower in the affirmative. It should be "compelled" and controlled by an alert and knowledgeable citizenry, such that "security and liberty" may prosper together. But can it be?
The film is perhaps less optimistic of whether it can be reined in, as an interesting clip with Senator John McCain discussing the growth of the military industrial complex is cut short by an urgent phone call from the former CEO of Halliburton, and Vice President of the United States.
But what I really find inspiring about Why We Fight is that we see the words, thoughts and deeds of the average American in this movie – the factory workers, the fathers and mothers and sons and daughters, the backbone of this nation. To a person, it is these Americans who exude patriotism and deep abiding love for this country. It is these Americans who, with all their faults, are founts of common decency and morality. Jarecki is excruciatingly fair in his portrayal of war-promoting policy wonks and war policy beneficiaries like Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. But the fact remains that these policy designers simply don’t make a hell of a lot of sense.
Jarecki has both artfully and scientifically pulled away the curtain that currently shields the pillars of the present-day American military-industrial-congressional complex. In a time where Abramoff, Halliburton overcharges, and Duke Cunningham-style "congressional leadership" has already publicly embarrassed Washington and the Pentagon, this film will be downplayed by the leadership in Washington, D.C. on both sides of the aisle. These public servants and the defense corporations in league with them will say, "Enough already!"
But Why We Fight will eagerly be consumed and digested by millions and millions of real and loyal Americans who are now weary of strange endless wars in far away places and an economy wasting under the demands of voracious spending on "defense." These American, as I did upon watching the film, will begin to really think about what we have become. These Americans will become newly awake, newly alert, newly watchful. These Americans will begin to embrace and assert, as did our forefathers, the blessed idea that we are governed and directed by our own consent, and none other. Eisenhower would certainly approve.
