March 21. The brewery in our head.

"Mi nombre es Cecilia si necessito cualcosa me llamas..." said the friendly waitress in the café where I write today. Writing in Buenos Aires is optimal. Firstly, it's one of the worlds most literate cities, with an impressive amount of good bookstores. Secondly, the wifi cafés are plenty and affordable. Thirdly, the climate stimulates creativity. Okay, the last point is my subjective experience. I am working an a novel in Dutch in which the main character is called Martin. The café I write in today is called Martinez. When Martin travels to South America he is called Martinez too. The coffee tastes good here, a jarrito with a small glass of water stands next to me. I write for several hours, concentrating on a small ten-inch screen, destracted only by paired female jointed appendages covered partly by petite skirts. I like legs. But I like writing more. So I continue as the people pass the café in a mood I deem hasty. Why? I feel like something is protecting me. I keep surviving in this world where everybody seems to struggle. I just survive sitting here and writing my crap. It's a scandal. It's crazy. Something has to be done about it. Okay, this blog is not my only output, there are also serious things, but still, me sitting here grinning at sixty square inches of a computer screen cannot be justified by even the most brilliant of output can it?
Well, here in South America we don't think so much of a justification. We just do what we do. It doesn't matter, does it? What if everyone would think if they were allowed to try what they want most? Still, I cannot justify it. I am enjoying life and doing for no less than the full one hunderd percent what I want, so I don't have any percentage left for a justification. It's a funny mechanism isn't it?

I walk around with a woman from Buenos Aires today. She is very big, five centimeters taller than I am, and she takes nice pictures of people who sleep on the benches in the belching metropole. We walk through a big park in Palermo and suddenly she has a thorn in her toe. It's bleeding and it won't stop. We turn around. She says she will visit a massage saloon and that will take two hours. Well that's very interesting. I start getting curious about that treatment. Of course she wants to put me off and seeks a more subtle way of doing so than saying bluntly "you bother me". Anyway, we walk back through the park and she takes a taxi somewhere tells me I can walk home. Illusions come, illusions go. And it is not at all a bad treatment to undergo this cycle at least a few time. Without the tall woman next to me I walk on and think about this recycling of emotions. In a way, it must be like a soup in our head, with all those ideas, imaginations, hopes, propositions, wishes drifting in a thick fluid. Shaking it up might not be the best recipe to cook up something marvelous, but it is definitely the first line of a very good recipe. What do you think, Jack? I miss you, by the way. And I like you again. I don't need to ask you for forgiveness because I killed you. I know you are way beyond that. But Jack, do you agree? Is it good to have thinks shaken up over and over again in order to, well, preventing the need to shake them up over and over again? Do you understand what I'm saying? Sorry Jack, I didn't want to bother you. And by the way, I think the emotional brewery in our head is an asset you are not entitled too.

March 20. I read it in the guidebook.

Rested. Travel guidebooks use a rhetorically smooth English that I like to call mashed language. The smoothness of the idiom gives me an artificial taste in the mouth, a taste like a wine that is everymen's friend but leaves the connaisseur with a bitter aftertaste. It's the length of the sentences, the range of the idiom that smells like conceit, the concoction of words like concoction, the showy linguistical brilliance that makes it unreal. I prefer "Russian English" because you can sense a person is speaking to another person. I'll write a short persiflage of guidebook English now, in which I'll just make up the words. Read it and feel it. The rag-gourded boisterings on the trombose-cled aquaplanic treetops reels like a foliage bland as you recuperate the vernicular tresshold. Coming from the redupiated path along the wind-jerbous rodondritis, you haul along the zigzul of weaselbreathed prolasteracs. Following your way over the funneled duplex road, you will arrive at a tagliatelli moon-shaped echterous brailjabber. The Opulence of prigarious randards is tantamount. Be aware of the utriscopical blany-bliny queepers that might peep jeevingly into even the most heedful reeder. Continue to the tumbledomed rogue rascal-castle Plitacus built for his concubinette Vossius in 1578 and gaze at the kart-wodged rillicry that adds to the broader rant of grandiloquence reveshed unto ravenous railleries. Bart the briss brooks of the readily awry restallions and don't miss the trecharian ondulavrigance of the zip-zopped cobblestone blanders. Step in the woggling warrebuster of the cloudy canapé, feel like the crescent king himself and taste the delicoravious ripplots of his royal ruminance. Give a try at the höver-horns that conceile the vaulted frescos on the hovercraft and wert iolic precious plassings on tetrapacks insigned to heist toily twannings. Understand the Urdu language of the regalious utalotrope ultra-jaded reips dwelling in the klopwarthed mansions that are scattered around this marvelotritious moor-montobine. On your way back, don't skip the lavender lurage as it eropiates your ralapious rovus.

The feel of a language is an independent factor, beyond the idiom. Rested.

March 2.

Do you have to be miserable yourself to accept the Other's misery? What a question! Jack's dead one day and inappropriate questions already pop up like a Jack-in-the-box, so to speak. It's the kind of thing you think about on void days, on days when you only take a walk through a city like Buenos Aires and perambulate the many blocks in Palermo and Downtown. When you walk the zona peatonal with the many department stores, expensive cafés and street vendors. When you walk with aching heels over the pavement that smells like hot tar and catching the sunrays on your red cheeks reminding you of the fact that you forgot your sunglasses. When you sit in a park and listen to a group of drummers, when you do nothing else except exploring a new city, that's the kind of thought that might pop up in your mind.
But come on! Let's not say "you", let's say "I". I cannot stand the you-talk. In some countries it's very common to describe one's own adventures using the you-form. That way, people can stress the universality of their dubious decisions: you would have done the same thing. O yes, and when you walk about this big city no wonder you get lost. No, not you, YOU! Only you are stupid enough to get lost because you are ashamed to ask other people it's all yours. Sometimes, moralist anecdotes are told in the you-form, to distract from the teller and focus on the weakness of the receiver. Fairytales become weapons. Weapons of defense and weapons of attack. You vote for the nazi-party when everybody does so, you travel a lot in the airplane because you have to, you kill civilians because that's an order, you, you, you. Fuck you.

So I thought about this being miserable while exploring the streets of Buenos Aires. I think I (not you) need some experience with being miserable myself to become aware of the other's (your!) misery. I must know what it feels like to be lonely, to be put off, to fail, to lose a friend, to get really ill in order to understand what it means for you. It's part of my job if I want to become a writer and a big reason to travel.


Buenos Aires is the city of Daniel Barenboim, the great maestro of the Staatskapelle Berlin, whom I adore for his political engagement, showing the world there's a realm beyond the politics of territorial claims by playing beautiful Wagner melodies in Jerusalem. It's not about
Wagner's antisemitism (and the foolish populists only yelling he was Hitler's favorite composer must shut up) but about people sharing something through music. And you can transport so much through music. For example, you don't have to be miserable yourself to feel the other's
misery expressed in music.

March 1. Buenos Aires.

There are so many things that don't interest me not a tiny bit. It's not interesting to talk about them, so I leave that be. The first day of March passed by quietly and without any special effects. I hung out in an apartment in Buenos Aires and had a good time. There is not really not much to mention. Buenos Aires is a very western city, just as the guidebooks tell you it is. There is a ring of poverty though, surrounding the chique neighbourhood of downtown Buenos Aires where you find stylish cafés and skyskrapers reflecting the intense light in their glass facades. Where you'll see people on the sidewalk trying to make a living by polishing other people's shoes or selling silly toys. But this is no guidebook I am writing. If you found it on a guidebook-
shelf I am very sorry for that. I have things that are slightly more important to mention. Today I killed Jack. That was pretty easy. I just breathed the air he was supposed to breath and he went
all blue and purple. His suffocating face did not even bear the marks of wonder. He seems to have accepted his final transformation. What was he? Nothing! His contribution to the world is void. He refused to accept that he has created a history all by himself, let alone live that history. I don't understand Jack. But it's not about understanding, it's about fun. I'm glad he is gone
now. He was just an experiment that went wrong. Splitting up was not such a good idea after all. Maybe we joined again but don't ask me I don't know. You must be disappointed, and I am sorry for that. Now I just want to write, write before I think, write faster than I think. Every new thought must fall into a rosebed of words that has to be laid out before the thought emerges. Even if I don't think I want to write. What difference does it make anyway? It's just words that
won't bite anyone. But they will have a little measurable side-effect, and that can be a very neat and worthy thing.

February 27.

Today, Jack is asked deep questions. Why do people come to Jack with their questions? He doesn't know. He has an air of wisdom twinkling in his eyes, but in reality he cannot answer your questions. He will not and after a little while agree with you because that makes him feel good. Jack is the easiest person around if you are fishing for compliments.
"Jack, do you think there exists a God?"
Jack sighs.
-"God and I would have been good friend" he says.
"But DO you?"
-"We would have gone fishing together."
"Please answer my question. Do you believe there actually IS a god?"
_"And I would have caught more sardines because he doesn't know how to catch them."
"But IS there a god?"
-"Then I would have shared them with him and we would have had a great meal with salat, olives, feta cheese and pumpkin seeds."
"I implore you, just answer my tiny question."
-"He would have suffocated in a fish-bone, and I would have hit him on his back with my hand to save him."
"But IS he existing?"
-"And he would have said thank you Jack I give you my crown so you can be God yourself."
"Please, please...Does he exist?"
-"I would have put on that crown and the world would finally have had a God who is able to fish."
"But DOES he exist?"
-"I think so. I can't really remember but since I know so many stories about him, I guess he most be around somewhere. It's all a matter of logic."
"O Jack, thank you so much, if I can do anything to return the favor, please let me know?"
-"Amen."

We walked around in Buenos Aires and at night I baked pancakes. It was quite hot. My memory is a weak faculty but you won't care. Let's find at least something to care, so we can take pride in being alive.

In Argentina, a lot of people study computer science or related subjects because that seems to be their only way to get out of poverty, to get a well-paid job and move higher up in society. I met many students and they all did the computer thing, which is especially interesting to me because I have a master in the field without - I am saying this well aware of the fact that you won't believe me - having actual knowledge nor the slightest interest in it. But I understand the situation in Argentina. You study to become somebody, to have some money to live a decent living. A luxury struggle with the stubborn inner self that rejects every definition versus a social struggle in a corrupt society.

February 26. Beautiful skies.

I write a bad English to demonstrate the vanity of perfectionism. The text I will produce must be valueless; I envision loose threads in the tissue of your meaning. I don't know, I don't know. I am sitting in a plane again that flies through thin air. It will bring me to Buenos Aires, the enormous Argentinian Capital at the earh-colored Rio Plata. It is the last step I organized in advance. After this, I will let the wind take me on for a while, like a flower seed reluctant to fall onto fertile soil. On board of the plane I am offered a meal and I meet some people. After introducing myself and some advanced smalltalk, I am offered a ride and even a place to stay. This tiny thing called luck is never running out.
Luck! A positive experience coming suddenly and out of the blue, an experience that makes you feel alive. You can stand on a green hilltop your arms stretched towards the sky and wait for it to befall you, but it probably won't. You sigh and you climb down the hill and when you come down you meet a wonderful person.
So my luck hasn't run out yet. I was brought into town with a comfortable SUV and invited by a friendly young student couple that lives in the Palermo neighbourhood, right in the center of Buenos Aires. We walked the streets and got some money at a presumably corrupt bank. With everything settled, we went home to relax and, in my case, to dream about a doorframe with large rusty hinges that catch the eye because there is no door.