Buenos Aires Quotes

Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-five years, two months and twelve days.

Brazil was beastly but Buenos Aires the best. Not Tiffany's, but almost.

Nada es tan desconsolador, para un libro, como morir virgen. A mí, casi me sucedió.

Cuando algo bueno nos pasa, hay que saber vivirlo. Hay que lanzarse de cabeza a esa piscina de felicidad, zambullirse sin miedo, perder el traje de baño, empaparse el pelo, irritarse los ojos, tragar agua, apurar hasta quedarse casi sin aire... Dame todos los daños colaterales de la felicidad, pero dame felicidad.

EDMUND *Then with alcoholic talkativeness You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and signing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself -- actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way. Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping looking, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came. the peace, the end of the quest, the last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like a veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see -- and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason! *He grins wryly. It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a a little in love with death! TYRONE *Stares at him -- impressed. Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right. *Then protesting uneasily. But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death. EDMUND *Sardonically The *makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people.

Edimburgo o York o Santiago de Compostela pueden mentir eternidad; no así Buenos Aires, que hemos visto brotar de un modo esporádico, entre los huecos y los callejones de tierra.

[Buenos Aires] No nos une el amor sino el espanto. Será por eso que la quiero tanto

A mí se me hace cuento que empezó Buenos Aires: La juzgo tan eterna como el agua y como el aire.

On February 14, I received a telegram from Buenos Aires urging me to return home immediately; my father was "not at all well." God forgive me, but the prestige of being the recipient of an urgent telegram, the desire to communicate to all of Fray Bentos the contradiction between the negative form of the news and the absoluteness of the adverbial phrase, the temptation to dramatize my grief by feigning a virile stoicism-all this perhaps distracted me from any possibility of real pain.

The Stadium Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium. There is nothing less mute than stands bereft of spectators. At Wembley, shouts from the 1966 World Cup, which England won, still resound, and if you listen very closely you can hear groans from 1953 when England fell to the Hungarians. Montevideo’s Centenario Stadium sighs with nostalgia for the glory days of Uruguayan soccer. Maracanã is still crying over Brazil’s 1950 World Cup defeat. At Bombonera in Buenos Aires, drums boom from half a century ago. From the depths of Azteca Stadium, you can hear the ceremonial chants of the ancient Mexican ball game. The concrete terraces of Camp Nou in Barcelona speak Catalan, and the stands of San Mamés in Bilbao talk in Basque. In Milan, the ghosts of Giuseppe Meazza scores goals that shake the stadium bearing his name. The final match of the 1974 World Cup, won by Germany, is played day after day and night after night at Munich’s Olympic Stadium. King Fahd Stadium in Saudi Arabia has marble and gold boxes and carpeted stands, but it has no memory or much of anything to say.

If you go to Singapore or Amsterdam or Seoul or Buenos Aires or Islamabad or Johannesburg or Tampa or Istanbul or Kyoto, you'll find that the people differ wildly in the way they dress, in their marriage customs, in the holidays they observe, in their religious rituals, and so on, but they all expect the food to be under lock and key. It's all owned, and if you want some, you'll have to buy it.

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate. I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship. I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone, and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him. I do not know which of us has written this page.

En París todo le era Buenos Aires y viceversa; en lo más ahincado del amor padecía y acataba la pérdida y el olvido.

Already Buenos Aires was dyeing the horizon with pink fires, soon to flaunt its diadem of jewels, like some fairy hoard.

Más que ilustre, me siento ilustrador Dicho al recibir el título de Ciudadano Ilustre de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, el 10 de marzo de 2009.

Buenos Aires te digiere, pero antes tiene que masticarte.

If I had to do it over again, I would have danced like Buenos Aires. I'd be a helicopter leaf, a snowflake falling. I would have stayed there spinning wild and lonely across the dark, lonely sky.

His wife, Emilie, still lived, without any financial help from him, in her little house in San Vicente, south of Buenos Aires. She lives there at the time of the writing of this book. As she was in Brinnlitz, she is a figure of quiet dignity. In a documentary made by German television in 1973, she spoke—without any of the abandoned wife’s bitterness or sense of grievance—about Oskar and Brinnlitz, about her own behavior in Brinnlitz. Perceptively, she remarked that Oskar had done nothing astounding before the war and had been unexceptional since. He was fortunate, therefore, that in that short fierce era between 1939 and 1945 he had met people who summoned forth his deeper talents.

Temperee, riante, (comme le sont celles d'automne dans la tres gracieuse ville de Buenos Aires) resplendissait la matinee de ce 28 avril: dix heures venait de sonner aux horloges et, a cet instant, eveillee, gesticulant sous le soleil matinal, la Grande Capitale du Sud etait un epi d'hommes qui se disputaient a grands cris la possession du jour et de la terre.

«Si tienes vocación para la pintura, tarde o temprano vas a pintar y es mejor que sea temprano. ¿Por qué tiene que ser en París o Buenos Aires? Sólo necesitas disciplina. Es como el piano, ¿sabes? Rara vez da para vivir, pero hay que intentarlo», argumentó Roser.

Somehow Geryon made it to adolescence. Then he met Herakles and the kingdoms of his life all shifted down a few notches. ... Geryon was going into the Bus Depot one Friday night about three a.m. to get change to call home. Herakles stepped oof the bus from New Mexico and Geryon came fast around the corner of the platform and there it was one of those moments that is the opposite of blindness. The world poured back and forth between their eyes once or twice.

Cuando amas a alguien, se convierte en una parte de ti. Está en todo lo que haces. Está en el aire que respiras, en el agua que bebes; su voz permanece en tus oídos y sus ideas en tu cabeza. conoces sus sueños porque sus pesadillas se clavan en tu corazón, y sus sueños bueno son también los tuyos. Y no crees que es perfecto, sino que conoces sis defectos, la autentica verdad de sus defectos y la sombra de todos sus secretos, y eso no te hace alejarte; de hecho, lo amas más por eso, porque no quieres que sea perfecto. Tu quieres a ese alguien. Quieres..." Julian Blackthorn

When asked about the survey, Buenos Aires's mayor, Mauricio Macri, dismissed it as inaccurate and proceeded to explain why women couldn't possibly have a problem with being shouted at by strangers. "All women like to be told compliments," he said. "Those who say they're offended are lying. Even though you'll say something rude, like 'What a cute ass you have'...it's all good. There is nothing more beautiful than the beauty of women, right? It's almost the reason that men breathe." To be clear, this is the mayor. Upon reading this quote, I investigated, and can confirm that at the time of this interview he was not wearing one of those helmets that holds beers and has straws that go into your mouth.

bueno, primero tienes que imaginar cómo era estar en la arena. Era como ser un insecto atrapado bajo un cuenco lleno de aire hirviendo.

But get this: you're free. Freedom is the greatest gift to the artist. Don't waste it. Go to Buenos Aires. Eat some steak. Get a fresh perspective on things.

I had to live my life, and to do that I needed to go to Buenos Aires. I had to live my life, and to do that I needed to go to Buenos Aires.

Alone and unobserved Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, was at prayer in the way that Grandma Rosa would have been.

each time I cross one of the streets in South Buenos Aires, I think of you, Helen;

aceptó un largo ensayo mío para la revista Les Lettres françaises que él dirigía en Buenos Aires con el apoyo de aquella admirable protectora de las letras que se llamó Victoria Ocampo.

Buenos Aires, sophisticated and fascinating, is the Paris of Latin America; with a vibrant cultural scene, the best theater and live music, it is the birthplace of many world-famous writers.

Cambia mucho las cosas, en tal sentido, recorrer la Mancha con el Quijote en las manos, visitar Palermo habiendo leído El Gatopardo, pasear por Buenos Aires con Borges o Bioy Casares en el recuerdo, o caminar por Hisarlik sabiendo que allí hubo una ciudad llamada Troya, y que los zapatos del viajero llevan el mismo polvo por el que Aquiles arrastró el cadáver de Héctor atado a su carro.

Tengo esta idea de que la razón por la que tenemos sueños es que estamos pensando en cosas que no sabemos que las estamos pensando, y esas cosas, bueno, se nos escapan a nuestros sueños. Tal vez somos como las llantas con mucho aire en ellas. El aire tiene que escapar. Eso es lo que son los sueños.

People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just vanished. The rumors of what had happened to them were fantastic and bizarre though, as it turned out, they were only an understatement of the real thing. Before going to see General Videla […], I went to […] check in with Los Madres: the black-draped mothers who paraded, every week, with pictures of their missing loved ones in the Plaza Mayo. (‘Todo mi familia!’ as one elderly lady kept telling me imploringly, as she flourished their photographs. ‘Todo mi familia!’) From these and from other relatives and friends I got a line of questioning to put to the general. I would be told by him, they forewarned me, that people ‘disappeared’ all the time, either because of traffic accidents and family quarrels or, in the dire civil-war circumstances of Argentina, because of the wish to drop out of a gang and the need to avoid one’s former associates. But this was a cover story. Most of those who disappeared were openly taken away in the unmarked Ford Falcon cars of the Buenos Aires military police. I should inquire of the general what precisely had happened to Claudia Inez Grumberg, a paraplegic who was unable to move on her own but who had last been seen in the hands of his ever-vigilant armed forces [….] I possess a picture of the encounter that still makes me want to spew: there stands the killer and torturer and rape-profiteer, as if to illustrate some seminar on the banality of evil. Bony-thin and mediocre in appearance, with a scrubby moustache, he looks for all the world like a cretin impersonating a toothbrush. I am gripping his hand in a much too unctuous manner and smiling as if genuinely delighted at the introduction. Aching to expunge this humiliation, I waited while he went almost pedantically through the predicted script, waving away the rumored but doubtless regrettable dematerializations that were said to be afflicting his fellow Argentines. And then I asked him about Senorita Grumberg. He replied that if what I had said was true, then I should remember that ‘terrorism is not just killing with a bomb, but activating ideas. Maybe that’s why she’s detained.’ I expressed astonishment at this reply and, evidently thinking that I hadn’t understood him the first time, Videla enlarged on the theme. ‘We consider it a great crime to work against the Western and Christian style of life: it is not just the bomber but the ideologist who is the danger.’ Behind him, I could see one or two of his brighter staff officers looking at me with stark hostility as they realized that the general—El Presidente—had made a mistake by speaking so candidly. […] In response to a follow-up question, Videla crassly denied—‘rotondamente’: ‘roundly’ denied—holding Jacobo Timerman ‘as either a journalist or a Jew.’ While we were having this surreal exchange, here is what Timerman was being told by his taunting tormentors: Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space. […] We later discovered what happened to the majority of those who had been held and tortured in the secret prisons of the regime. According to a Navy captain named Adolfo Scilingo, who published a book of confessions, these broken victims were often destroyed as ‘evidence’ by being flown out way over the wastes of the South Atlantic and flung from airplanes into the freezing water below. Imagine the fun element when there’s the surprise bonus of a Jewish female prisoner in a wheelchair to be disposed of… we slide open the door and get ready to roll her and then it’s one, two, three… go!

In 2001 he surprised the staff of Muñiz Hospital in Buenos Aires by asking for a jar of water and then proceeding to wash the feet of twelve patients hospitalised with AIDS-related complications. He then kissed their feet.

Up there in my little room I was reading revolutionary works and had the feeling that the whole world might explode at any moment; then when I went out, I found life going on as usual, peacefully and calmly: office workers were going off to their jobs, tradesmen were selling their wares in their shops, and one could even see people lazing on benches in the squares, just sitting there watching the hours go by: all of them equally dull and monotonous. Once again, and this would not be the last time, I felt more or less as though I were a stranger in the world, as though I had awakened in it all of a sudden and had no notion of its laws and meaning. I wandered aimlessly about the streets of Buenos Aires, I watched its people, I sat down on a bench in the Plaza Constitucion and meditated. Then I would return to my little room, feeling lonelier than ever. And it was only when I buried myself in books that I seemed to be in touch with reality again, as though that existence out in the streets were, by contrast, a sort of vast dream unfolding in the minds of hypnotized people. It took me many years to realize that in those streets, those public sqaures, and even in those business establishments and offices of Buenos Aires there were thousands who thought or felt more or less as I did at that moment: lonely anguished people, people pondering the sense and nonsense of life, people who had the feeling that they were seeing a world that had gone to sleep round about them, a world made up of men and women who had been hypnotized or turned into robots.

They docked at Buenos Aires. Cunégonde, Captain Candide, and the old woman went to call on the Governor, Don Fernando d'Ibaraa y Figueora y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza. This grandee had a pride to match his many names. He spoke to people with the most noble disdain, sticking his nose so far in the air, speaking in such a mercilessly loud voice, adopting so high and mighty a tone, and affecting so haughty a gait, that all who greeted him were also tempted to hit him.

At a lunchtime reception for the diplomatic corps in Washington, given the day before the inauguration of Barack Obama as president, I was approached by a good-looking man who extended his hand. 'We once met many years ago,' he said. 'And you knew and befriended my father.' My mind emptied, as so often happens on such occasions. I had to inform him that he had the advantage of me. 'My name is Hector Timerman. I am the ambassador of Argentina.' In my above album of things that seem to make life pointful and worthwhile, and that even occasionally suggest, in Dr. King’s phrase as often cited by President Obama, that there could be a long arc in the moral universe that slowly, eventually bends toward justice, this would constitute an exceptional entry. It was also something more than a nudge to my memory. There was a time when the name of Jacobo Timerman, the kidnapped and tortured editor of the newspaper La Opinion in Buenos Aires, was a talismanic one. The mere mention of it was enough to elicit moans of obscene pleasure from every fascist south of the Rio Grande: finally in Argentina there was a strict ‘New Order’ that would stamp hard upon the international Communist-Jewish collusion. A little later, the mention of Timerman’s case was enough to derail the nomination of Ronald Reagan’s first nominee as undersecretary for human rights; a man who didn’t seem to have grasped the point that neo-Nazism was a problem for American values. And Timerman’s memoir, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, was the book above all that clothed in living, hurting flesh the necessarily abstract idea of the desaparecido: the disappeared one or, to invest it with the more sinister and grisly past participle with which it came into the world, the one who has been ‘disappeared.’ In the nuances of that past participle, many, many people vanished into a void that is still unimaginable. It became one of the keywords, along with escuadrone de la muerte or ‘death squads,’ of another arc, this time of radical evil, that spanned a whole subcontinent. Do you know why General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina was eventually sentenced? Well, do you? Because he sold the children of the tortured rape victims who were held in his private prison. I could italicize every second word in that last sentence without making it any more heart-stopping. And this subhuman character was boasted of, as a personal friend and genial host, even after he had been removed from the office he had defiled, by none other than Henry Kissinger. So there was an almost hygienic effect in meeting, in a new Washington, as an envoy of an elected government, the son of the brave man who had both survived and exposed the Videla tyranny.

Norma Shearer: Mas si por miedo has de buscar en el Amor sólo paz y placer, entonces mejor será que pases de largo por su umbral, rumbo al mundo sin inviernos ni primaveras ni veranos, donde reirás, pero no a carcajadas, y llorarás, pero no todas tus lágrimas.

For all its outwardly easy Latin charm, Buenos Aires was making me feel sick and upset, so I did take that trip to the great plains where the gaucho epics had been written, and I did manage to eat a couple of the famous asados: the Argentine barbecue fiesta (once summarized by Martin Amis's John Self as 'a sort of triple mixed grill swaddled in steaks') with its slavish propitiation of the sizzling gods of cholesterol. Yet even this was spoiled for me: my hosts did their own slaughtering and the smell of drying blood from the abattoir became too much for some reason (I actually went 'off' steak for a good few years after this trip). Then from the intrepid Robert Cox of the Buenos Aires Herald I learned another jaunty fascist colloquialism: before the South Atlantic dumping method was adopted, the secret cremation of maimed and tortured bodies at the Navy School had been called an asado. In my youth I was quite often accused, and perhaps not unfairly, of being too politicized and of trying to import politics into all discussions. I would reply that it wasn’t my fault if politics kept on invading the private sphere and, in the case of Argentina at any rate, I think I was right. The miasma of the dictatorship pervaded absolutely everything, not excluding the aperitifs and the main course.

Queridos jóvenes, buenas tardes. Quiero primero darles las gracias por el testimonio de fe que ustedes están dando al mundo. Siempre oí decir que a los cariocas no les gusta el frío y la lluvia. Pero ustedes están mostrando que la fe de ustedes es más fuerte que el frío y la lluvia. ¡Enhorabuena! Ustedes son verdaderamente grandes héroes. Veo en ustedes la belleza del rostro joven de Cristo, y mi corazón se llena de alegría. Recuerdo la primera Jornada Mundial de la Juventud a nivel internacional. Se celebró en 1987 en Argentina, en mi ciudad de Buenos Aires. Guardo vivas en la memoria estas palabras de Juan Pablo II a los jóvenes: “¡Tengo tanta esperanza en vosotros! Espero sobre todo que renovéis vuestra fidelidad a Jesucristo y a su cruz redentora” (Discurso a los Jóvenes, 11 de abril 1987:

When religious sociologists discovered that a parish had a zone of influence which typically radiated 700 metres around its church, Bergoglio told his priests – knowing that Buenos Aires churches were on average 2,000 metres apart – to set up something in between the churches:

Sybil and Nancy leaned over to catch a glimpse of the sun sparkling on the muddy waters of the River Plate. The skyscrapers stood proudly in clumps and Sybil assumed that the patches of green were parks. In no time the plane was screeching to a halt and they had arrived in Buenos Aires.

I was extremely shy of approaching my hero but he, as I found out, was sorely in need of company. By then almost completely blind, he was claustrated and even a little confused and this may help explain the rather shocking attitude that he took to the blunt trauma that was being inflicted in the streets and squares around him. 'This was my country and it might be yet,' he intoned to me when the topic first came up, as it had to: 'But something came between it and the sun.' This couplet he claimed (I have never been able to locate it) was from Edmund Blunden, whose gnarled hand I had been so excited to shake all those years ago, but it was not the Videla junta that Borges meant by the allusion. It was the pre-existing rule of Juan Perón, which he felt had depraved and corrupted Argentine society. I didn't disagree with this at all—and Perón had victimized Borges's mother and sister as well as having Borges himself fired from his job at the National Library—but it was nonetheless sad to hear the old man saying that he heartily preferred the new uniformed regime, as being one of 'gentlemen' as opposed to 'pimps.' This was a touch like listening to Evelyn Waugh at his most liverish and bufferish. (It was also partly redeemed by a piece of learned philology or etymology concerning the Buenos Aires dockside slang for pimp: canfinflero. 'A canfinfla, you see,' said Borges with perfect composure, 'is a pussy or more exactly a cunt. So a canfinflero is a trafficker in cunt: in Anglo-Saxon we might say a 'cunter."' Had not the very tango itself been evolved in a brothel in 1880? Borges could talk indefinitely about this sort of thing, perhaps in revenge for having had an oversolicitous mother who tyrannized him all his life.)

When fire swept through the Cromañon nightclub in Buenos Aires in 2004 Bergoglio was one of the first on the scene, arriving before many of the fire engines. Some 175 people had died, with the tragedy being compounded by the fact that the club owners had locked the emergency exits to keep freeloaders out.

Fabien, the pilot bringing the Patagonia air mail from the far south to Buenos Aires, could mark night coming on by certain signs that called to mind the waters of a harbor—a calm expanse beneath, faintly rippled by the lazy clouds—and he seemed to be entering a vast anchorage, an immensity of blessedness.

Argentina's like a novel, he said, a lie, or make-believe at best. Buenos Aires is full of crooks and loudmouths, a hellish place, with nothing to recommend it except the women, and some of the writers, but only a few. Ah, but the pampas—the pampas are eternal. A limitless cemetery, that's what they're like.

Aquel chico no iba a traerme nada bueno… pero no podía respirar. Nuestros labios estaban tan cerca que quería aproximarme para que se encontrasen a medio camino. Quería saber si eran tan suaves como parecían… —¡Hola, chicos! —exclamó Dee. Daemon se echó hacia atrás rápidamente, dejando un buen trecho entre nosotros, para que pasara el aire.

Zoe returned her attention to the map of southern Argentina on the computer. “What on earth could possibly be worth using that much nuclear power on? There’s nothing around there but mountains and sea.” “There’s guanacos,” Murray said helpfully. “What the heck’s a guanaco?” Zoe asked. “It’s a relative of the camel,” Murray explained. “It kind of looks like an anorexic llama. From what I understand, the pampas down there are full of them.” “And you think SPYDER wants to nuke them all?” Zoe said. “What good is a whole bunch of vaporized guanacos?” “Suppose they only nuked one,” Murray said ominously. “What if they focused all that nuclear energy on it? If a single irradiated iguana could turn into Godzilla, just imagine what a giant guanaco would look like. It’d be terrifying!” Zoe gave him a withering look. “The only terrifying thing about this plan is that you actually think it’s possible. Godzilla never existed!” “But maybe he could,” Murray countered. “Or worse . . . Guanacazilla!” He gave a roar that was probably supposed to be half llama, half monster, but it sounded more like an angry hamster. We all considered him for a moment. “Moving on,” Erica said. “Does anyone have a suggestion that isn’t completely idiotic?” “Ha ha,” Murray said petulantly. “You mock me now, but we’ll see who’s laughing when there’s a thirty-story guanaco running rampant through Buenos Aires.

The Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires was altogether more robust. He went out of his way to preface his position by insisting that there is no connection between celibacy and paedophilia. ‘There are psychological perversions that existed prior to choosing a life of celibacy,’ he said. ‘If a priest is a paedophile, he is so before he becomes a priest.

Through a spokesman he told Newsweek Argentina of his ‘unhappiness’ with Benedict’s words. ‘Pope Benedict’s statement doesn’t reflect my own opinions,’ the Archbishop of Buenos Aires declared. ‘These statements will serve to destroy in 20 seconds the careful construction of a relationship with Islam that Pope John Paul II built over the last twenty years.

- ¿Por qué suspirar se siente tan delicioso? - Bueno, es básicamente lo mismo que respirar. Y se siente bien respirar. El aire es delicioso.

A Mariano Vedia y Mitre, el intendente porteño que decidió abrir la avenida 9 de julio lo llamaban Guillermo Tell por las manzanas que había derribado.

En la honda noche universal que apenas contradicen los faroles

But in the spring a postcard came: it was scribbled in pencil, and signed with a lipstick kiss: Brazil was beastly but Buenos Aires the best. Not Tiffany’s, but almost. Am joined at the hip with duhvine $enor. Love? Think so. Anyhoo am looking for somewhere to live ($enor has wife, 7 brats) and will let you know address when I know it myself. Mille tendresse.

The closest most people have ever come to understanding what an investment banker does may have been on October 24, 1995, when they heard the outrageous special interest story of the day. The wire services released the story first. It was quickly picked up and parroted by almost every major media outlet in the country as a classic example of Wall Street excess. A fifty-eight-year-old frustrated managing director from Trust Company of the West, on an airplane trip from Buenos Aires to New York City, downed an excessive number of cocktails, got out of his seat in the first-class cabin of a United Airlines flight, dropped his pants, and took a crap on the service cart. There you have it. That’s what bankers do: consume, process, and disseminate.

Ser pobre implica una más inmediata posesión de la realidad, un atropellar el primer gusto áspero de las cosas: conocimiento que parece faltar a los ricos, como si todo les llegara filtrado.

In 2014 a survey conducted by a nonprofit organization called Stop Street Harassment revealed that more than 60 percent of women in Buenos Aires had experienced intimidation from men who catcalled them.18 To a lot of men in Buenos Aires, women’s concern came as a surprise. When asked about the survey, Buenos Aires’s mayor, Mauricio Macri, dismissed it as inaccurate and proceeded to explain why women couldn’t possibly have a problem with being shouted at by strangers. “All women like to be told compliments,” he said. “Those who say they’re offended are lying. Even though you’ll say something rude, like ‘What a cute ass you have’ . . . it’s all good. There is nothing more beautiful than the beauty of women, right? It’s almost the reason that men breathe.

We were going to ride motorbikes from Paris to the Côte d’Azur, or all the way down the Pacific coast of the USA, from Seattle to Los Angeles; we were going to follow in Che Guevara’s tracks from Buenos Aires to Caracas. Maybe if I’d done all that, I wouldn’t have ended up here, not knowing what to do next. Or maybe, if I’d done all that, I’d have ended up exactly where I am and I would be perfectly contented.

In a plane again, Ashley thought sourly, her nose pressed to the window. Down below, glacier fought granite from horizon to horizon. This was the final leg of the two-day journey. Yesterday, they had flown the eight hundred miles from Buenos Aires to Esperanza, the Argentine army base on the tip on an Antarctic Peninsula. There, Ashley had her first taste of Antarctic air - like ice water poured into her lungs.

Yo solía amar el océano. Todo en ella. Sus arrecifes de coral, sus blancas crestas, sus rugientes olas, las rocas que besan, sus leyendas de piratas y las colas de sirena, Tesoros perdidos y tesoros guardados... Y TODO De sus peces En el mar. Sí, solía amar el océano, Todo sobre ella. La forma en que me cantaba al dormir mientras yo estaba en mi cama Luego me despierta con fuerza Que yo pronto llegué a temer. Sus fábulas, sus mentiras, sus engañosos ojos, Me iría de su sequía Si me importara lo suficiente. Yo solía amar el océano. Todo en ella. Sus arrecifes de coral, sus blancas crestas, sus rugientes olas, las rocas que besan, sus leyendas de piratas y las colas de sirena, tesoros perdidos y tesoros guardados... Y TODO De sus peces En el mar. Bueno, si alguna vez has intentado navegar tu velero a través de sus tempestuosos mares, te darás cuenta de que sus blancas crestas son tus enemigos. Si alguna vez has tratado de nadar hacia la orilla cuando con tu pierna acalambrada y acabas de consumir una gran cena de hamburguesas en In-n-Out27 que te está ahogando, y sus rugientes olas están golpeando el aire fuera de ti, llenando tus pulmones con agua como del mayal sus brazos, tratando de conseguir la atención de alguien, pero tus amigos ¿sólo saludan con la mano de nuevo a ti? Y si alguna vez has crecido con sueños en tu cabeza acerca de la vida, y cómo uno de estos días serías pirata de tu propia nave y tendrías tu propio equipo y que todas las sirenas Te amarían sólo ¿a ti? Bueno, te darás cuenta... Como yo eventualmente me di cuenta... ¿Que todas las cosas buenas de ella? ¿Todo lo bello? No es real. Es falso. Así que sigue con tu océano, Yo me quedo con el Lago.

Que un individuo quiera despertar en otro individuo recuerdos que no pertenecieron más que a un tercero es una paradoja evidente. Ejecutar con despreocupación esa paradoja, es la inocente voluntad de toda biografía.

Ciegamente reclama duración el alma arbitraria cuando la tiene asegurada en vidas ajenas, cuando tú mismo eres la continuación realizada de quienes no alcanzaron tu tiempo y otros serán (y son) tu inmortalidad en la tierra.

Pienso cuando maduraban los limones. En el viento de febrero que rompía los tallos de los helechos, antes que el abandono los secara; los limones maduros que llenaban con su olor el viejo patio. El viento bajaba de las montañas en las mañanas de febrero. Y las nubes se quedaban allá arriba en espera de que el tiempo bueno las hiciera bajar al valle; mientras tanto dejaban vacío el cielo azul, dejaban que la luz cayera en el juego del viento haciendo círculos sobre la tierra, removiendo el polvo y batiendo las ramas de los naranjos. Y los gorriones reían; picoteaban las hojas que el aire hacía caer, y reían; dejaban sus plumas entre las espinas de las ramas y perseguían a las mariposas y reían. Era esa época. En febrero, cuando las mañanas estaban llenas de viento, de gorriones y de luz azul. Me acuerdo. Mi madre murió entonces. Que yo debía haber gritado: que mis manos tenían que haberse hecho pedazos estrujando su desesperación. Así hubieras tú querido que fuera. ¿Pero acaso no era alegre aquella mañana? Por la puerta abierta entraba el aire, quebrando las guías de la yedra. En mis piernas comenzaba a crecer el vello entre las venas, y mis manos temblaban tibias al tocar mis senos. Los gorriones jugaban. En las lomas se mecían las espigas. Me dio lástima que ella ya no volviera a ver el juego del viento en los jazmines; que cerrara sus ojos a la luz de los días. ¿Pero por qué iba a llorar?

Muchos han observado que el miedo supremo es el temor a lo desconocido. Me permito disentir. Creo que el peor terror es el que nos infunde el mismo conocimiento, la pura razón, la certeza fáctica de la existencia de ese horror tan temido.

Tú y yo de la mano como dos buenos amigos; como dos buenos compañeros, unidos para caminar sobre el ancho mundo. Y que no bajen las nubes, que nunca bajen sobre nosotros. Tú, aire de las colinas, las espantarás con esa virtud de que estás llena

He couldn’t have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love, at least one copy was destined to change a life. This particular book was one of the last of the two thousand to be printed, and sat for longer than the rest in a warehouse in the outskirts of Santiago, absorbing the humidity. From there it was finally sent to a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover. It was a slim volume, and its position on the shelf wasn’t exactly prime: crowded on the left by an overweight biography of a minor actress, and on the right by the once-bestselling novel of an author that everyone had since forgotten, it hardly left its spine visible to even the most rigorous browser. When the store changed owners it fell victim to a massive clearance, and was trucked off to another warehouse, foul, dingy, crawling with daddy longlegs, where it remained in the dark and damp before finally being sent to a small secondhand bookstore not far from the home of the writer Jorge Luis Borges. The owner took her time unpacking the books she’d bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She’d never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called 'The Age of Silence.' The owner of the secondhand bookstore lowered the volume of the radio. She flipped to the back flap of the book to find out more about the author, but all it said was that Zvi Litvinoff had been born in Poland and moved to Chile in 1941, where he still lived today. There was no photograph. That day, in between helping customers, she finished the book. Before locking up the shop that evening, she placed it in the window, a little wistful about having to part with it. The next morning, the first rays of the rising sun fell across the cover of The History of Love. The first of many flies alighted on its jacket. Its mildewed pages began to dry out in the heat as the blue-gray Persian cat who lorded over the shop brushed past it to lay claim to a pool of sunlight. A few hours later, the first of many passersby gave it a cursory glance as they went by the window. The shop owner did not try to push the book on any of her customers. She knew that in the wrong hands such a book could easily be dismissed or, worse, go unread. Instead she let it sit where it was in the hope that the right reader might discover it. And that’s what happened. One afternoon a tall young man saw the book in the window. He came into the shop, picked it up, read a few pages, and brought it to the register. When he spoke to the owner, she couldn’t place his accent. She asked where he was from, curious about the person who was taking the book away. Israel, he told her, explaining that he’d recently finished his time in the army and was traveling around South America for a few months. The owner was about to put the book in a bag, but the young man said he didn’t need one, and slipped it into his backpack. The door chimes were still tinkling as she watched him disappear, his sandals slapping against the hot, bright street. That night, shirtless in his rented room, under a fan lazily pushing around the hot air, the young man opened the book and, in a flourish he had been fine-tuning for years, signed his name: David Singer. Filled with restlessness and longing, he began to read.

He has spent weeks on the pristine, frosty shore of Lake Baikal in Siberia. He has drunk himself stupid in the fairy-tale blood brothels of old Dubrovnik, lounged in red-smoke dens in Laos, enjoyed the New York blackout of 1977, and more recently, feasted on Vegas showgirls in the Dean Martin suite at the Bellagio. He has watched Hindu abstainers wash away their sins in the Ganges, danced a midnight tango on a boulevard in Buenos Aires, and bitten into a faux geisha under the shade of a shogun pavilion in Kyoto.

A living metaphor for God, sexuality and the struggle in the streets of Buenos Aires comes from the images of lemons vendors. A materialist-based theology finds in them a starting point from which ideology, theology and sexuality can be rewritten from the margins of society, the church and systematic theologies. Our point of departure is the understanding that every theology implies a conscious or unconscious sexual and political praxis, based on reflections and actions developed from certain accepted codifications. These

[…]Dijo Mary Pickford que las películas deben tener un desenlace alegre para las ciudades, y uno triste para las aldeas. El desenlace de nuestros espectáculos es el que corresponde a la aldea. Lo que la ‘Novia de América’ no vio es el embrutecimiento imperialista de Sudamérica por las comedias musicales norteamericanas. En ellas se nos dan, fundidos, el arte más consumado con la estolidez moral y literaria más insultante. […] El cine debe ser interpretado en calidad de producto internacional, standard, hecho para todos los países del globo, con escenas movibles de quitar o poner, Según los diferentes mercados de consumo. Se trata, como es natural, de productos envasados para el expendio libre. El condimento patético o moral se usa según las distancias al ecuador, y las películas que destinan a nuestras gentes, traen en cierto modo las especies que gustamos. Ignoro qué cantidad de moralina se emplea para Buenos Aires. […] El cine puede servir de experiencia de arte y vida, pero también puede mutilar con traumas incurables los órganos de perfeccionamiento y vigorización del alma. (E.M.E., 1940)

¿Cuándo empezó esto que ahora va a terminar con mi asesinato? Esta feroz lucidez que ahora tengo es como un faro y puedo aprovechar un intensísimo haz hacia vastas regiones de mi memoria: veo caras, ratas en un granero, calles de Buenos Aires o Argel, prostitutas y marineros; muevo el haz y veo cosas más lejanas: una fuente en la estancia, una bochornosa siesta, pájaros y ojos que pincho con un clavo. Tal vez ahí, pero quién sabe: puede ser mucho más atrás, en épocas que ahora no recuerdo, en períodos remotísimos de mi primera infancia. No sé. ¿Qué importa, además?

Thus, being the only begotten son of method and resolve, Op Oloop was the most perfect of human machines, the most notable object of self-discipline that Buenos Aires had ever seen. When everything in life from the important universal phenomena to one's own trivial, individual failures has been recorded and anotated since puberty, it's fair to say that one's system of classification will have been honed, condensed to their most perfect quintessence. Or else deified into a great, overarching, methodological hierarchy. Method's very greatness, of course, is revealed in its sovereignty over the trivial!

Claude puede ser amable y bueno, y eso no puedes serlo tú, con toda tu política y tus aires de sabio. Con todo lo que he hecho siempre por ti, lo único que tú haces es tratarme a patadas. Quiero que alguien me trate bien antes de morir. Lo aprendiste todo, Ignatius, todo, salvo cómo debe comportarse un ser humano.

She did not like bigots or brilliant bores or academicians who wore their honors, or scholars who wore their doctorates, like dogtags. But she had an infinite capacity to love peasants and children and great but simple causes across the board and a grace in giving that was itself gratitude and she had a body like sculpture in the thinnest of wire and a face made of a million mosaics in a gauze-web of cubes lighter than air and a piñata of a heart in the center of a mobile at fiesta time with bits of her soul swirling in the breeze in honor of life and love and Good Morning to you, Bon Jour, Muy Buenos, Muy Buenos! Muy Buenos! On Nancy Cunard

que Dios, que es proveedor de todas las cosas, no nos ha de faltar, y más andando tan en su servicio como andamos, pues no falta a los mosquitos del aire, ni a los gusanillos de la tierra, ni a los renacuajos del agua; y es tan piadoso que hace salir su sol sobre los buenos y los malos, y llueve sobre los injustos y justos. —

Palo's three older brothers had died in the Paraguayan War, conscripted by the Argentinian government, taken off by force along with all the black men of their generation, because, Palo told young Santiago, they needed a way to not only win their war but also rid this country of us in the process, two birds with one stone. Buenos Aires was too black for them, one third of the population, that's enough blackness to swallow you up! to get strong on you! and so they sent our fathers off to war and opened floodgates to European steamships so that white men would pour into the city to replace us, and their plan worked, the bastarda, look at our city now.

The moment American bankers stop lending dollars to Argentina, the country is unable to refinance its mountain of dollar debt. Again, Greece is similar. Even though it has the same currency as Germany, the euro, the chronic Greek trade deficit with Germany translates into a constant flow of loaned euros from Germany to Greece so that the Greeks can keep buying more and more German goods. The slightest interruption in the flow of new loans from the surplus country to the deficit country causes the whole house of cards to collapse. This is when the IMF steps in. Its personnel fly into Buenos Aires or Athens, take black limousines to the finance minister’s office and state their terms: we shall lend you the missing dollars or euros on condition that you impoverish your people and sell the family silver to our mates, the oligarchs of this country and the world. Or words to that effect. That’s when TV screens fill with images of angry, and often hungry, demonstrators in Buenos Aires or Athens. Time and again history has shown that the periodic economic recessions that result from trade imbalances poison the deficit country’s democracy, incite contempt for its people in the surplus country, which then prompts xenophobia in the deficit country. Simply put, sustained trade deficits – and surpluses, their mirror image – never end well.

When you're a kid, the world can be bounded in a nutshell. In geographical terms, a child's universe is a space that comprises home, school and—possibly—the neighbourhood where your cousins or your grandparents live. In my case, the universe sat comfortably within a small area of Flores that ran from the junction of Boyacá and Avellaneda (my house), to the Plaza Flores (my school). My only forays beyond the area were when we went on holiday (to Córdoba or Bariloche or to the beach) or occasional, increasingly rare visits to my grandparents' farm in Dorrego, in the province of Buenos Aires. We get our fist glimpse of the big wide world from those we love unconditionally. If we see our elders suffer because they cannot get a job, or see them demoted, or working for a pittance, our compassion translates these observations and we conclude that the world outside is cruel and brutal. (This is politics.) If we hear our parents bad-mouthing certain politicians and agreeing with their opponents, our compassion translates these observations and we conclude that the former are bad guys and the latter are good guys. (This is politics.) If we observe palpable fear in our parents at the very sight of soldiers and policemen, our compassion translates our observations and we conclude that, though all children have bogeymen, ours wear uniforms. (This is politics.)

Soy sencillamente, o tal vez debo escribir que fui, un hombre solitario. Puedo pasarme la noche entera frente a un pocillo de café, y si a veces condesciendo a pedir una copita de caña de durazno o un cognac es para no despreciar a mis ocasionales compañeros de mesa. Para que no desconfíen de mí; para que me hablen. He conversado en esos bares con los personajes más extraordinarios de Buenos Aires. Actores fracasados, ex presidiarios, viejas putas en decadencia, infantiles putas en ascenso, poetas que se creían, o quizá eran, genios incomprendidos, tristes homosexuales que venían de una paliza descomunal, violeteras que juraban haber cantado con la Galli Curci o haber sido amantes de Perón.

La vida es mala con todo lo bueno. Los tiburones mortales con las hermosas estrellas de mar. Las olas gigantes con los castillos de arena. La ruidosa letra con el ritmo de la música. La enfermedad hepática con el amor de un padre e hijo. El regaliz con el limón y la lima. Es la vida. Dulce, hermosa, viento en tu cara, aire en tus pulmones, besos en tus labios vida.

sube en tu jumento, Sancho el bueno, y vente tras mí; que Dios, que es proveedor de todas las cosas, no nos ha de faltar, y más andando tan en su servicio como andamos, pues no falta a los mosquitos del aire, ni a los gusanillos de la tierra, ni a los renacuajos del agua; y es tan piadoso que hace salir su sol sobre los buenos y los malos, y llueve sobre los injustos y justos.

Tango dansını kökenine kadar araştırdım, tarihçesini okudum. (...) Buenos Aires’te çıktığını biliyor muydunuz? Ve ilk çıktığında sadece genelevlerde yapıldığını? Gangster dansıymış. (...) Tangoda roller önceden belirlenmiştir. Erkek ve kadın ne yapacağını çok iyi bilir. Erkek her zaman kadını yönetir. Kadını yönlendiren, ona komut veren, kendine çeken, geri iten, döndüren, uzağa fırlatan, atan, tutan hep erkektir... kısacası, erkek maçoluğun alasını yapar. Kadın sadece bunları izler. Adamın ayaklarını, adımlarını, hareketlerini izler. Kendini ona bırakır. Tangoyu kadınlar bu yüzden seviyor zaten. (...) Kadınlar böyle bir şeyi asla itiraf etmek istemezler; özgürlüklerine ve bağımsızlıklarına düşkün gibi görünürler ama içten içe hükmedilmek hoşlarına gider.

Today humankind has broken the law of the jungle. There is at last real peace, and not just absence of war. For most polities, there is no plausible scenario leading to full-scale conflict within one year. What could lead to war between Germany and France next year? Or between China and Japan? Or between Brazil and Argentina? Some minor border clash might occur, but only a truly apocalyptic scenario could result in an old-fashioned full-scale war between Brazil and Argentina in 2014, with Argentinian armoured divisions sweeping to the gates of Rio, and Brazilian carpet-bombers pulverising the neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires. Such wars might still erupt between several pairs of states, e.g. between Israel and Syria, Ethiopia and Eritrea, or the USA and Iran, but these are only the exceptions that prove the rule.

Ganz sicher aber haben mir die Kästners eine Familieneigenschaft in die Wiege gelegt [...]: die echte und unbelehrbare Abneigung vorm Reisen. Wir Kästners sind auf die weite Welt nicht sonderlich neugierig. Wir leiden nicht am Fernweh, sondern am Heimweh. Warum sollten wir in den Schwarzwald oder auf den Gaurisankar oder zum Trafalgar Square? Die Kastanie vorm Haus, der Dresdner Wolfshügel und der Altmarkt tun es auch. Wenn wir unser Bett und die Fenster in der Wohnstube mitnehmen könnten, dann ließe sich vielleicht darüber reden! Aber in die Fremde ziehen und das Zuhause daheimlassen? Nein, so hoch kann kein Berg und so geheimnisvoll kann keine Oase sein [...], daß wir meinen, wir müßten sie kennenlernen! Es ginge noch, wenn wir daheim einschliefen und in Buenos Aires aufwachten! Das Dortsein wäre vorübergehend zu ertragen, aber das Hinkommen? Niemals!

Mi padre me dijo que leyera mucho ante todo. Sobretodo que viera en la lectura no una oblicación sino un goce. Creo que la frase lectura obligatoria es un contrasentido. La lectura no debe ser obligatoria. Podemos hablar de placer obligatorio. ¿Y por qué? El placer no es algo obligatorio; es algo que buscamos. ¿Felicidad obligatoria? La felicidad la buscamos también. Pues bien, yo he sido profesor de literatura inglesa durante veinte años en la facultad de Filosofía y Letras en la universidad de Buenos Aires y siempre les aconsejé a mis estudiantes: Si un libro les aburre, déjenlo. No lo lean por que es famoso. No lean un libro porque es moderno. No lean un libro porque es antiguo. Si un libro es tedioso para ustedes, déjenlo aunque ese libro sea "El Paraíso Perdido" o "El Quijote". Si un libro es tedioso seguro ese libro no fue escrito para ustedes. La lectura debe ser una forma de felicidad...

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him. I do not know which of us has written this page.

The other one, the one called Borges, is the one things happen to. I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically now, to look at the arch of an entrance hall and the grillwork on the gate; I know of Borges from the mail and see his name on a list of professors or in a biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typography, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; he shares these preferences, but in a vain way that turns them into the attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that he has achieved some valid pages, but those pages cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no one, not even to him, but rather to the language and to tradition. Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself can survive in him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, though I am quite aware of his perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things. Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others or in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him. I do not know which of us has written this page.

An enigmatic lack of curiosity about the future that prevented him from enjoying the present. But what someone else feels always belongs to the world of the imagination. You never know for certain, What we begin with reluctance or even with a sense of repulsion, can end up drawing us in by sheer force of habit or an unexpected taste for repetition. You would need to have lost an awful lot before you’d be willing to renounce what you have, especially if what you have is part of a long-term plan, part of a decision that contained a large dose of obstinacy. The desire to know is a curse and the greatest source of misfortune; The Buenos Aires accent, at least to Spanish ears, does always tend to sound like a caricature of itself. There’s nothing like curiosity and comedy to distract us—if only for an instant—from our sorrows and anxieties. What at first repels can end up attracting, after a swift moment of adjustment or approval, once you’ve made up your mind. The greater your grief or shock, the greater your state of desolation and numbness and abandonment, the lower your defenses and the fewer your qualms; professional seducers know this well and are always on the lookout for misfortunes. Even when things are happening and are present, they, too, require the imagination, because it’s the only thing that highlights certain events and teaches us to distinguish, while they are happening, the memorable from the unmemorable. Going back is the very worst infidelity. When something comes to an end, even the something you most want to end, you suddenly regret that ending and begin to miss it. You never stop feeling intimidated by someone who intimidated you from the outset. Not being able to choose isn’t an affront, it’s standard practice. It is in most countries, as it is in ours, despite the collective illusion.

And all that connectivity makes us more vulnerable to malware and spyware,” I say. “We understand that. But I’m not so concerned, right at the moment, about whether Siri will tell me the weather in Buenos Aires or whether some foreign nation is spying on me through my toaster.” Augie moves about the room, as if lecturing on a large stage to an audience of thousands. “No, no—but I have digressed. More to the point, nearly every sophisticated form of automation, nearly every transaction in the modern world, relies on the Internet. Let me say it like this: we depend on the power grid for electricity, do we not?” “Of course.” “And without electricity? It would be chaos. Why?” He looks at each of us, awaiting an answer. “Because there’s no substitute for electricity,” I say. “Not really.” He points at me. “Correct. Because we are so reliant on something that has no substitute.” “And the same is now true of the Internet,” says Noya, as much to herself as to anyone else.

Tamara Bunke was the only woman to fight alongside “Che” during his Bolivian campaign. She was an East German national, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 19, 1937, of Communist activist parents. As a child, her home was frequently used for meetings, hiding weapons and conducting other Communist activities. After World War II, in 1952 she returned to Germany where she attended Humboldt University in Berlin. Tamara met “Che” Guevara when she was an attractive 23-year-old woman in Leipzig, and he was with a Cuban Trade Delegation. The two instantly hit it off as she cozied up to him and, having learned how to fight and use weapons in Pinar del Rio in western Cuba, she joined his expedition to Bolivia. Becoming a spy for the ELN, she adopted the name “Tania” and posed as a right-wing authority of South-American music and folklore. In disguise, she managed to warm up to and entice Bolivian President René Barrientos. She even went on an intimate vacation to Peru with him.

A base de estas condiciones fisiológicas se ha producido una depresión: ésta la combate Buda con la higiene. Contra la depresión emplea la vida al aire libre, la vida errante; la sobriedad y la selección en los manjares; la prudencia ante los licores; igualmente, la vigilancia contra todas las emociones que producen bilis y calentamiento de la sangre; ninguna preocupación, ni para si ni para los demás. Reclama ideas que calmen y serenen, encuentra medios para desembarazarse de las ideas contrarías. Imagina la bondad, el ser bueno, como favorable a la salud.

Le da la sensación de estar rodeado de libertad, de oxígeno. Tothero es como un remolino de aire, y el edificio en el que se encuentra, las calles del pueblo, no son más que escaleras y pasadizos del espacio. Es tan perfecta y coherente la libertad en que se ha convertido el desorden del mundo gracias al simple estallido de su decisión, que todos los caminos parecen buenos, todos los movimientos serán caricias para su piel, y ni un solo átomo de su felicidad se alteraría si Tothero le dijera que en lugar de ir a una cita con dos chicas iban a reunirse con dos machos cabríos, o que no iban a Brewer sino al Tíbet".

By his early-twenties, John F. Kennedy was living one of the most extraordinary young American lives of the twentieth century. He traveled in an orbit of unprecedented wealth, influence, global mobility, and power. As a student and as diplomatic assistant to his father, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1940, Kennedy journeyed to England, Ireland, France, Moscow, Berlin, Beirut, Damascus, Athens, and Turkey, pausing briefly from a vacation on the French Riviera to sleep with the actress Marlene Dietrich. He met with top White House officials and traveled to Cuba, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Peru, and Ecuador. He gambled in a casino in Monte Carlo; visited Naples, Capri, Milan, Florence, Venice, and Rome; rode a camel at the Great Pyramid at Giza; attended the coronation of Pope Pius XII; and witnessed a rally for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He recalled of these momentous years, 'It was a great opportunity to see a period of history which was one of the most significant.' In a visit to British-occupied Palestine, Kennedy recalled, 'I saw the rock where our Lord ascended into heaven in a cloud, and [in] the same area, I saw the place where Mohammed was carried up to heaven on a white horse.

You mentioned that Palermo, the part of Buenos Aires where you were brought up, had been a violent place full of bohemians and bandits. There they had two names for the knife, ‘the blade’ and ‘the slicer’. The two names described the same object, but ‘the blade’ was the thing itself, and ‘the slicer’ described its function. ‘The blade’ could fit in the hand even of a sickly child shut up in his father’s library, ‘the blade’ could be any of the superannuated daggers and swords belonging to his warrior grandfather or great-grandfather and displayed on the walls of his house, but ‘the slicer’, the knife in the hand slicing back and forth, in and out, existed only in his imagination, in a fascinating world of rapid settlings of accounts and duels over honor, an insult or a woman, in dark street where you never went, where no writer went, except in the literature he wrote. ‘I’ve always felt that in order to be a great writer, one should have the experience of life at sea, which is why Conrad and Melville and, in a way, Stevenson, who ended his days in the South Seas, were better than all of us, Vogelstein. At sea, a writer flees from the minor demons and faces only the definitive ones. A character in Conrad says that he has a horror of ports because, in port, ships rot and men go to the devil. He meant the devils of domesticity and incoherence, the small devils of terra firma. But I think that having experience of “the slicer” would give a writer the same sensation as going to sea, of spectacularly breaking the bounds of his own passivity and of his remoteness from the fundamental matters of the world.’ ‘You mean that if the writer were to stab someone three times, he could allege that he was merely doing so in order to improve his style.’ ‘Something like that. Soaking up experience and atmosphere.’ ‘It’s said that the artist Turner used to have himself lashed to the ship’s mast during storms at sea so that he could make sure he was getting the colours and details of his painted vortices right.’ ‘And it worked. But neither you nor I will ever experience “the slicer”, Vogelstein. We are condemned to “the blade”, to the knife purely as theory. Even if we used “the slicer” against someone, we would still be ourselves, watching, analyzing the scene, and, therefore, inevitably, holding “the blade” in our hand. I don’t think I could kill anyone, apart from my own characters. And I don’t think I would feel comfortable at sea either. There aren’t any libraries at sea. The sea replaces the library.

Quiero decir, ¿por qué alguien haría esto? ¿Por qué las personas se enamoran si puede que haya una posibilidad que se sientan de esta manera? ¿Qué carajos les ocurre a los seres humanos? ¡LOS SERES HUMANOS SON JODIDAMENTE TAN ENFERMOS Y RETORCIDOS! Quiero decir, lo entiendo, se siente bien, ¿sabes? Estar enamorado, ser feliz. Pero cuando esa alfombra mágica es arrancada de tus pies, toma todos los sentimientos felices y buenos con él. ¿Y tu corazón? Simplemente se rompe. Se rompe sin remordimientos. Se rompe en miles de pedazos, dejándolo insensible, mirando sin comprender las piezas porque todo su libre albedrío, todo el sentido común que una vez tuvo en su vida se ha ido. Diste todo por esa maldita cosa llamada amor, y ahora sólo estás destruido.

Before he became Pope Francis, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio faced many problems as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina. High poverty rates, massive drug addiction, and powerful gangs all concerned him, but one problem seemed to root all the other issues. He noted in a 2013 interview: “The biggest problem we face is marginalization of the people. Drugs are a symptom, violence is a symptom, but marginalization is the disease. Our people feel marginalized by a social system that’s forgotten about them and isn’t interested in them…. Marginalization is the mother of our problems, and unfortunately she has many children…. Basically, what society is telling these people is, ‘We don’t want you to exist.’ The work we’re doing here is to try to tell them instead, ‘It’s good that you exist.’”21 That response — “It’s good that you exist” — carries great power. To someone struggling with alcohol, who drinks away his loneliness, we say, “It’s good that you exist.” To someone who loathes her body and thinks she’s too fat, too skinny, too short, or not good enough, we say, “It’s good that you exist.” To the addict, the slave, the homeless man, even the murderer, we say, “It’s good that you exist.” This phrase reminds people that they have intrinsic value, regardless of what they produce, or how they look, or if they have it all together. It echoes what God said immediately after creating the first man: “[He] looked at everything he had made, and found it very good” (Gn 1:31). Next time you want to uplift someone’s dignity, remind them of that wonderful truth: “It’s good that you exist.

General Mario Vargas Salinas, now retired from Bolivia’s Eighth Army Division, was one of the young army officers present at Guevara’s burial. It was his duty to accompany an old dump truck carrying the bodies of the six dead rebels, including that of “Che” Guevara, to the airstrip in Vallegrande, Bolivia. Knowing that the facts surrounding the burials were leaking out, he decided that after 28 years the world should know what had happened to “Che” Guevara’s body. At the time, Captain Vargas, who had also led the ambush in which Tamara “Tania” Bunke, Guevara’s lover, was shot dead, said that Guevara was buried early on the morning of October 11th, 1967, at the end of the town’s landing strip. After the gruesome facts became known, the Bolivian government ordered the army to find Guevara's remains for a proper burial. General Gary Prado Salmón, retired, had been the commander of the unit that had captured Guevara. He confirmed General Vargas’ statement and added that the guerrilla fighters had been burned, before dumping their bodies into a mass grave, dug by a bulldozer, at the end of the Vallegrande airstrip. He explained that the body of “Che” Guevara had been buried in a separate gravesite under the runway. The morning after the burials, “Che” Guevara’s brother arrived in Vallegrande, hoping to see his brother’s remains. Upon asking, he was told by the police that it was too late. Talking to some of the army officers, he was told lies or perhaps just differing accounts of the burial, confusing matters even more. The few peasants that were involved and knew what had happened were mysteriously unavailable. Having reached a dead end, he left for Buenos Aires not knowing much more than when he arrived….

—Los cazadores de sombras somos lentos para amar —explicó—. Pero cuando amamos, lo hacemos para siempre. Era algo que recordaba haberle oído a Helen una vez, quizá en su boda. Kieran parpadeó y la miró fijamente, como si hubiera dicho algo muy sabio. —Sí —repuso—. Sí, eso es cierto. Debo confiar en el amor de Mark. Pero Cristina... nunca ha dicho que me ame. Y ahora los noto a ambos tan lejos... —Todo el mundo parece estar lejos ahora —dijo Dru, pensando en lo solitarios que habían sido los últimos días—. Pero es porque están preocupados. Cuando se preocupan, se meten dentro de sí mismos y a veces se olvidan de que estás ahí. —Miró sus palomitas—. Pero eso no significa que no les importes. Kieran apoyó un codo en la rodilla. —Entonces ¿qué debo hacer, Drusilla? —Umm —reflexionó Drusilla—. No te calles lo que quieres, o puede que nunca lo consigas. —Eres muy sabia —afirmó Kieran muy serio. —Bueno —repuso Dru—. Lo cierto es que lo vi en una taza. —Las tazas de este mundo son muy sabias.

Lo hice nuevamente. Uno de cada diez años puedo soportarlo… una especie de milagro ambulante, mi piel brilla como una pantalla nazi, mi pie derecho un pisapapeles, mi rostro sin forma, delgado lienzo judío. Retira la compresa, ¡ah, enemigo mío! ¿te doy miedo?… ¿La nariz, la fosa de los ojos, toda la dentadura? El aliento agrio un día se desvanecerá. Pronto, pronto la carne que alimentó la grave sepultura me será familiar y yo seré una mujer sonriente, sólo tengo treinta. Y como el gato tengo nueve vidas que morir. Ésta es la Número Tres. Qué basura para la aniquilación de cada década. Qué millón de filamentos. La multitud como maní prensado se atropella para ver desenvuelven mis manos y pies… el gran strip tease señoras y señores éstas son mis manos mis rodillas. Puede que esté piel y huesos, sin embargo, soy la misma e idéntica mujer. La primera vez que ocurrió, tenía diez. Fue un accidente. La segunda vez quise que fuera definitivo y no regresar jamás. Me mecí doblada sobre mí misma como una concha. Tuvieron que llamar y llamar y quitarme uno a uno los gusanos como perlas viscosas. Morir es un arte, como cualquier otro, yo lo hago de maravillas. Hago que se sienta como un infierno. Hago que se sienta real. Creo que podrían llamarlo un don. Es tan fácil que puedes hacerlo en una celda. Es tan fácil que puedes hacerlo y quedarte ahí, quietita. Es el teatral regreso a pleno día al mismo lugar, a la misma cara, al mismo grito brutal y divertido “¡Milagro!” que me deja fuera de combate. Hay un precio a pagar para mirar las escaras, hay un precio a pagar para auscultar mi corazón… late de veras. Y hay un precio a pagar, un precio mayor por una palabra o un contacto o un poquito de sangre o una muestra de mi cabello o de mi ropa. Bueno, bueno, Herr Doctor. Bueno, Herr Enemigo. Soy vuestra opus, soy vuestra valiosa niña de oro puro que se funde en un chillido. Giro y ardo. No crean que no estimo su enorme preocupación. Cenizas, cenizas… Ustedes atizan y remueven. Carne, hueso, no hay nada allí… Un pan de jabón, un anillo de bodas, un empaste de oro. Herr dios, Herr Lucifer tengan cuidado tengan cuidado. Sobre las cenizas me elevo con mi cabello rojo y devoro hombres como aire.

Que seguramente mucha gente no había conocido nunca el amor. Que en el fondo se conformaban con buenos sentimientos, que se enterraban en la comodidad de una vida vulgar y que se perdían sensaciones maravillosas, que son probablemente las únicas que justifican la existencia. Uno de mis sobrinos, que vive en Boston, trabaja en las finanzas: gana una montaña de dólares al mes, está casado, tiene tres hijos, una mujer adorable y un coche estupendo. En resumen, la vida ideal. Un día, vuelve a su casa y le dice a su mujer que se va, que ha encontrado el amor, con una universitaria de Harvard que podría ser su hija, a la que había conocido en una conferencia. Todo el mundo dijo que había perdido un tornillo, que buscaba en aquella chica una segunda juventud, pero yo creo que simplemente había encontrado el amor. La gente cree que se ama, y entonces se casa. Y después, un día, descubren el amor, sin ni siquiera quererlo, sin darse cuenta. Y se dan de bruces con él. En ese momento, es como el hidrógeno que entra en contacto con el aire: produce una explosión fenomenal, que lo arrastra todo. Treinta años de matrimonio frustrado que saltan de un golpe, como si una gigantesca fosa séptica en ebullición explotara, salpicando todo a su alrededor.

Se levanta y hace la cama, luego recoge del suelo unos libros de bolsillo (novelas policíacas) y los pone en la librería. Tiene ropa que lavar antes de irse, ropa que guardar, medias que emparejar y meter en los cajones. Envuelve la basura en papel de periódico y baja tres pisos para dejarla en el cubo de la basura. Saca los calcetines de Cal de detrás de la cama y los sacude, dejándolos sobre la mesa de la cocina. Hay trapos que lavar, hollín en el alféizar de las ventanas, cacerolas en remojo por fregar, hay que poner un plato bajo el radiador por si funciona durante la semana (se sale). Oh. Aj. Que se queden las ventanas como están, aunque a Cal no le gusta verlas sucias. Esa espantosa tarea de restregar el retrete, pasarle el plumero a los muebles. Ropa para planchar. Siempre se caen cosas cuando recoges otras. Se agacha una y otra vez. La harina y el azúcar se derraman sobre los estantes que hay encima de la pila y tiene que pasar un paño; hay manchas y salpicaduras, hojas de rábano podridas, incrustaciones de hielo dentro de la vieja nevera (hay que mantener la puerta abierta con una silla, para que se descongele). Pedazos de papel, caramelos, cigarrillos y ceniza por toda la habitación. Tiene que quitarle el polvo a todo. Decide limpiar las ventanas a pesar de todo, porque quedan más bonitas. Estarán asquerosas después de una semana. Por supuesto, nadie la ayuda. Nada tiene la altura adecuada. Añade los calcetines de Cal a la ropa de ambos que tiene que llevar a la lavandería de autoservicio, hace un montón separado con la ropa de él que tiene que coser, y pone la mesa para sí misma. Raspa los restos de comida del plato del gato, y le pone agua limpia y leche. «Mr. Frosty» no parece andar por allí. Debajo de la pila encuentra un paño de cocina, lo recoge y lo cuelga sobre la pila, se recuerda a sí misma que tiene que limpiar allí abajo más tarde, y se sirve cereales, té, tostadas y zumo de naranja. (El zumo de naranja es un paquete del gobierno de naranja y pomelo en polvo y sabe a demonios.) Se levanta de un salto para buscar la fregona debajo de la pila, y el cubo, que también debe estar por allí. Es hora de fregar el suelo del cuarto de baño y el cuadrado de linóleo que hay delante de la pila y la cocina. Primero termina el té, deja la mitad del zumo de naranja y pomelo (haciendo una mueca) y algo del cereal. La leche vuelve a la nevera —no, espera un momento, tírala—, se sienta un minuto a escribir una lista de comestibles para comprarlos en el camino del autobús a casa, cuando vuelva dentro de una semana. Llena el cubo, encuentra el jabón, lo deja, friega sólo con agua. Lo guarda todo. Lava los platos del desayuno. Coge una novela policíaca y la hojea, sentada en el sofá. Se levanta, limpia la mesa, recoge la sal que ha caído en la alfombra y la barre. ¿Eso es todo? No, hay que arreglar la ropa de Cal y la suya. Oh, déjalo. Tiene que hacer la maleta y preparar la comida de Cal y la suya (aunque él no se marcha con ella). Eso significa volver a sacar las cosas de la nevera y volver a limpiar la mesa, dejar pisadas en el linóleo otra vez. Bueno, no importa. Lava el plato y el cuchillo. Ya está. Decide ir por la caja de costura para arreglar la ropa de él, cambia de opinión. Coge la novela policíaca. Cal dirá: «No has cosido mi ropa.» Va a coger la caja de costura del fondo del armario, pisando maletas, cajas, la tabla de plancha, su abrigo y ropa de invierno. Pequeñas manos salen de la espalda de Jeannine y recogen lo que ella tira. Se sienta en el sofá y arregla el desgarrón de la chaqueta de verano de él, cortando el hilo con los dientes. Vas a estropearte el esmalte. Botones. Zurce tres calcetines. (Los otros están bien.) Se frota los riñones. Cose el forro de una falda que está descosido. Limpia zapatos. Hace una pausa y mira sin ver. Luego reacciona y con aire de extraordinaria energía saca la maleta mediana del armario y empieza a meter su ropa para