Bright Blue

I’ve been busy with travel. Fleeing the country, sailing back to the country, cycling up bodega-lined roads, repelling down the Andes; basically a book of short tales and tall stories waiting to be written. But I still feel the need to color in these introductory pages. Because in my over-embellished world of over-thought concepts, if my autobiographical blog were a coloring book it would be the first coloring book in the world to include a detailed introduction. So let me be with my crayons…

New digs. I dug. I lived in a place called Palermo with two Argentine siblings (Magda & Francisco), a British gal named Rachel and Tim, a German guy with an ear for reggae and a mind of doubts. Same names don’t mean much, but I could tell that this Tim, this European student with an ever-changing perspective on his post-textbook future, was a friend worth keeping. As for my particular quarters, well, I wrote this next passage on one of my first nights in that short-lived home:

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I live in Buenos Aires on a badly paved road on the outskirts of city center. I live in the middle of that road in a tall, thin house, three stories high. From the bottom you might look up, all the way to the chandelier plunging through the roof. If you did, you’d be looking toward a lofted hallway. And in that hallway, at the end to the left, there’s a door to my room.

I have a simple room. Stark white walls and shaky wooden furniture, there’s a lot left to the imagination I guess you might say. But a room so sleek does call attention to those, more overlooked pieces of existence. Like the sea-green mattress lying unevenly across the floor, or the bright blue coat rack hiding in the corner, or the aristocratic glass of red perched atop my desk.

Above me there’s a window. The rain still rests. Winter is yet to leave as tall, scrawny branches, shake uneasily back and forth. In the streetlamps’ glow, the trees become fierce and their shadows wave along the wet glass. When the lights are out the shadows grow, brushing against my face and scratching against these walls.

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I enjoyed that place; London’s blonde across the hall, the echoing name through wall, the sweet vegetarian with bohemian taste that lived beneath my feet and her brother, the kind athletic type, strung across the hall from her if only by a blood-line. They gave me peace of mind. The sort of mind you hope to settle into after a long day’s work or a longer night’s revelry. And more often than not, they never ceased to humor me. On my very last weekend I arrived one night to see Rachel hung upside down, her feet tangled in bright blue cloth, wiggling just a bit as she welcomed me home.

Fabric trapeze. An impromptu purchase by Magda, it was one of those ‘first by the tools, then learn how to use em’ scenarios. Thankfully, Youtube had allowed for instantaneous lessons and within just a few minutes there was inverted liftoff. Growing up as a chubster, so to say, I was never quite the sporty type yet I seemed to get a hold of this pretty quickly. I credit my titanic calf muscles and my discreet fascination of circus folk for these unforeseen abilities.

I like to think that evening signifies what my sublet was to me: a comfortable home with great people, and the sincerely unique invitation to just hang out.