Independence Day - El 25 de Mayo

5.24.06
Barrackas, Buenos Aires

It’s the day before Independence Day here in Argentina. Most of the some 42,000 taxis that roam the streets day and night are proudly flying the Argentine flag. A blind man gets on the semi-crowded bus I’m taking across town and starts his way towards the back. I can barely ride the bus with good eye site, but he with his cane and all starts passing out pens to the passengers, pens to write with, pens that say Staples on them. He starts into his delivery about what quality they are and there can be no value on these pens. I take one, a red one as do most of the other passengers. Thinking to myself I can never have enough pens I listen carefully for the price, but it’s never given. I see other passengers digging for change and I figure its more of the sliding scale donation plan. I shell out a peso but tell him that I want a blue one, not red. He asks me if he’s holding a blue one – no. I’ll take a black one I as I trade the red for black. The guy across from me gave him two pesos for his pen.

Luis, Ricardo, Tommy and Sam, these are some of my Argentine friends. One is actually my roommate and is paying his rent (or will if allowed by the landlord) by writing for the web site project for me on the side. He drove his car from Philly to BA, that’s why I hired him. Sam Slaughter… that helped also.

Marina, a very good and dear friend of mine has taken ill with a piece of wood that fell into her eye while tending to her guinea pigs. Now she’s in a world of pain and can’t see… it befuddles me how these things happen to us, either by our own actions or by forces that we can not control. It’s been a rough year for her she tells me, ‘especially since I met YOU!’ she adds. I feel bad and there's not much I can do... but I think I'll see her tomorrow if she's up for it. We can't even watch a movie which is our favorite thing to do. She's up on her films more so than I these days.

The heater is working but drips water out on the balcony which then drips down right in front of the main door to the apartment building, which then gets the tenants into an uproar as if I’m not being a responsible tenant. That is to be fixed on Sunday or Monday but for now the bucket catches most of the drips as long as I remember to dump it every so often.

Today is now el 25 de Mayo, Independence Day, but since most Argentines don’t feel very independent of foreign influence and have serious doubts about their current, past and future governments they don’t really celebrate as say Americans would the 4th of July or even Argentines do on say Christmas or New Years Eve, going crazy with the pyrotechnics. What a country, todavia.

Oh, and here's a few snapshots from my trip back to California http://grphoto.net/sftrip/index.htm