I am skilled at listening, adjusting, adapting: 29 de diciembre de 2014
I feel like people just want to tell me everything. I am skilled at listening, adjusting, adapting, dancing around in their world until we’re chasing each other and I can’t stop the stream of questions funneling out of my mouth like cold tap water. As if numb I stutter, unable to move my brains around so they’ll help me find words to combine that make sense in the language I’m speaking.
But still I achieve asking the right questions; I collect information, creating histories that morph directly into the experienced personaje I always seem to be interviewing. The timeline is tactile, a wave written into seismic memory, an imprint stamping itself into my neuronal relations. I feel I’ve met so many enlightened people, such a schema entirely subjective.
Of course it’s all levels, and different types, too. But they all have one thing in common, and that is a certain clarity or insight into the way energy in the universe functions, and often they don’t even have to know that it’s energy. For me it’s in everything, braided intricately into the webs of psychology, baked into the cake layers of sociology, and slowly dripping into the backwards upside down collective unconsciousness — your soul, your heart, your mind, in relation to your culture’s heavy implications.
Nah, estoy volada….
Earlier I walked around Paseo de Las Pulgas to see what I’d find. That area is Barrio Güemes, and my hostel is in the same neighborhood. Also, the weekend market is there, and where we found the prostitute to buy cocaine. Well, it’s not like we were searching for her, we just sort of happened upon her.
Anyways, after that I sat on the side of the rock wall bordering la cañada, and played a bit on my iPod, wasting time until I meet up with Raúl, which I’m going to do in like 30 mins, and which is a completely different story that I will probably tell soon.
In a sort of crash landing flight this little white car screeches softly to the curb, and the man driving, maybe 30 years old, shouts to me, “Amiga, tenés fuego?” I say, “Sí, creo que sí,” and shift around in my bonano (fanny pack, I’m super stylish) for my lighter. Delighted, he jumps out without stopping the car or putting on the break, and the passenger next to him leans towards me, grinning through the open window. He’s missing a tooth, he puts his hand on the wheel as the car inches slowly forward.
By now the driver is next to me, leaning casually on the rock wall. “Ah, qué buena onda,” he says as I hand him my fire. He pulls out a joint and lights it. It takes me approximately .375 seconds to realize that it’s a joint, and not paraguayo. He passes it to me and runs to the car to tell his friend to come, and we all continue to smoke there in the shade next to the river.
A thick, earthy brown trunk leans over us, bends over the rock wall and stoops closer to the water, smooth green vida flourishes from rough branches and shines in the humid sun-drenched air. I’m sweating, holding a joint a random stranger has gifted me, having a conversation in Spanish with two silly characters and thinking, my life is so fucked up in a good way right now.
“Cosecha,” the passenger with the missing tooth says as he brings the joint to his lips, and cheers to that! You don’t know how hard it is to find flores here, it’s really not an exaggeration, and paraguayo is clearly not healthy.
This is why I love Córdoba! Strangers give me weed! As my boss Valentina’s friend told me last night while we swapped stories on the patio under a dark sky and Christmas-colored light bulbs, “Córdoba es magnético.” And like my homeless pigeon-catcher friend told me the other day, it is also una jungla: the people arrive and they lose themselves and never leave.
I feel I enjoy getting lost in this jungle, this unpredictable energetic labyrinth of art and mind waves. I feel I am one of the forgotten souls of the city, straying from the path and stumbling upon some secret no one has found but me. Perhaps never again I will escape this hold.
Valentina is really cool, but another girl like Ariadna that I admire, and I feel almost uncomfortable in her presence. Me pone nerviosa un poco. But what’s cool is that I can so clearly realize that I don’t have to be uncomfortable, there’s nothing to fear, so I fill up my lungs with that same heat and humidity, and let it out real slow.
Then I pretend I don’t have any bones in my body, to counteract any tightness in the muscles, any awkwardness in the stance. You have to be physically relaxed and if you let it, your mind will follow. My mind is that of a cat, so before taking any psychological advice be sure to take that into account.