una huelga más...

"Huelga": strike.
The Subte workers decide to quit sometimes, such as today. It leaves the city of 12 million people in a bit of a lurch. The cars on days like these are allowed to park literally anywhere in the streets--some streets are 3 rows of parked-cars wide. After riding the colectivo (profoundly crowded bus) for an hour to school, passing the same pedestrians and watching them again pass me, i decided it would be faster to walk. Adventuresome. Very legitimate excuse to be late to class.

La Buenasuerte

What the heck?!?! So we were assigned this novel in class, and the awesome author actually took time to come into our class to take our botched interview questions and talk about his writing to 15 foreign students who probably misunderstood half the cultural references and missed some blatantly obvious elements. I hope we didn't put the book too much to shame. God bless ya, courageous man haha. I loved the book in the first place, and he was just a really cool, eloquent (of course), normal guy who spoke about his 28 years living in the villas outside Buenos Aires. The villas are extremely poor areas, where the people live on free land given by the government. He went to the facultad (the University that's free for all Argentines) and obviously got a huge education. We asked how he got started writing, and he mentioned that he had tried his hand at mechanical engineering....then wanting to perform guitar at a conservatory....then history and literature....and for your information, it is NOT easy for the Argentines to change their major. If they're 3 years in and have a change of heart, it's back to square numero uno. This guy, Juan Diego, began writing by imitating Borges--and on the side, writing a magazine at school that accounted silly anecdotes of his friends and daily stories about his villa. His amigos told him to quit the Borges stuff and go with his natural flow, which has turned out to be pretty brilliant. He loves to crank the volume up to max when he writes (wow that's a first). Each chapter of his book had a little different lyrical lilt to it...quite possibly owed to the songs played at their moment of creation. Looks like a great secret, folks. His idol is Mark Twain, for his ability to dig right to the heart of small details in a single character's daily life that as a whole account the entire essence of the culture. Juan Diego's philosophy is to describe the tiny in order to create an amalgamation of the general--the general never reveals the details, but the details always shed light on the grand scheme. In this way he's been pretty revolutionary in writing such anecdotes about the grit of life in the villas. He sells rings on the side in the evenings at the plaza.

I ran into him in the hallway during our break-time. I commented on something on his blog and he asked me if i had a blog he could read (what a "vergüenza"!-shame). I'm considering it ha. Then we got to talking about bands--a favorite theme of his. He ALSO likes the Police (YESSSS) and asked me what other names i knew so he could download them. His taste is along the lines of folky-harmonica-Bob-Dillon, chill Indie, and punk. Interesting mixture. I couldn't contribute much (everyone who knows me surely knows i am the world's worst candidate for naming bands) and he ended up with suggestions from the whole class on our favorite music. What a real guy, right? Such buenasuerte--we felt so lucky have a cool famous smart artsy author show up to our little class.

I'm sorry, Juan Diego, if any of this "bio" is terribly off. I chalk it up to the foreignness, where missing a "no" in a sentence can make for a wildly different meaning. I think your "buena onda" (good vibe) got translated.

Oh Luisa.

Best 60-year-old-host-Mom quote of the day: "Look at all those naked boys on T.V. How cool...."

Sorry i haven't really been writing guys. Just thought i'd throw you that little bone.