The Write Thing

Buenos Aires, Saturday afternoon, 6.00 pm:
La Giralda. Came downtown for a good walking exercise and a tour of bookshops along Corrientes Avenue. Nothing to die for, so far. Got hold of a copy of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal on DVD as a debt I had with the Swedish master. Stopped here, for a quick “cortado” at a cafe that seems to be one of the few traditional things still standing in this city where progress equals monumental tower buildings and sterilized glass-clad coffee shops. La Giralda is still one of the few places in town where you’ll pay five pesos for a sizable cup of white coffee…yes, perhaps I should have gone for the submarino con churros, a classic here.

There are quite a few people at the bar. A threesome at the table next to mine are engaged in passionate platitudes, and make a raucous scene once every five minutes, startling my pen off the lined pages of my Moleskine…I can even smell the salami of the sandwich the bulky boy next to my chair is having. But that’s part of the deal in this place, so I find it somewhat charming.
The book tour so far is proving hard. I walked similar streets to those I prowled over ten years ago. Zivals is now a tango store as well, and the classical jewels I used to marvel about in the old nineties are now dusty leftovers of those days, when you could choose between at least two different versions of Wagner’s Der Ring. Unknown singers now beckon from their dim-lit racks, offering exciting — and challenging — renderings of Schumann’s lieder.
I crave for rarity. Where is that book that will bring me a glimpse of the odd, magical city where you could find the weirdest things, like a postcard of Patty Duke’s 1960 TV show? Where is the city in which Bolshevik-oriented youngsters would flock to see Streisand’s On a Clear Day instead of a Fassbinder’s retrospective that played in the next room? Where is the all-encompassing Buenos Aires, apocalyptic but shining with the charm of rare movies? Where is the unexpected pleasure, the purpose of the quest? It seems I belong now to the small group of outcasts left to ponder and waltz around our own thirst for more.

One more hour is left to my wanderlust to see a hopeful outcome. I have the hunger inside. The hunt will go on.

I belong to the group of people who believe that the reader gains from the knowledge of the context that shapes the writing process. We live
what we write and write what we live, so severing the verbs to extract the final work that results from this unique combination is like seeing only a piece of the pie.

I have been thinking about a universal human feeling these days — jealousy. Here’s how the English and the French would put it:

Harold Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West’s husband, to Vita in a letter after she had eloped with Violet Trefusis and seemed unreachable:

…but I know how extremely busy you are and how much of your time is taken up by playing tennis and talking to your dirty little friend. At times I get racked with longing for you, and the slightest thing gives me a crise de jalousie, not jealous of your loving other people (you know I am calm about that), but jealous simply of your being with other people dont je ne connais pas la puissance sur ton coeur.

[January 8, 1919]

But perhaps my favorite definition of jealousy is given by Proust in La Prisonnière:

D’ailleurs la jalousie est de ces maladies intermittentes, dont la cause est capricieuse, impérative, toujours identique chez le même malade, parfois entièrement différente chez un autre. Il y a des asthmatiques qui ne calment leur crise qu’en ouvrant les fenêtres, en respirant le grand vent, un air pur sur les hauteurs, d’autres en se réfugiant au centre de la ville, dans une chambre enfumée. Il n’est guère de jaloux dont la jalousie n’admette certaines dérogations. Tel consent à être trompé pourvu qu’on ne le lui dise, tel autre pourvu qu’on le lui cache, en quoi l’un n’est guère moins absurde que l’autre, puisque si le second est plus véritablement trompé en ce qu’on lui dissimule la vérité, le premier réclame en cette vérité, l’aliment, l’extension, le renouvellement de ses souffrances.
Bien plus, ces deux manies inverses de la jalousie vont souvent au-delà des paroles, qu’elles implorent ou refusent les confidences.

Interestingly, Proust defines jealousy as a “maladie”, whereas Nicholson seems surprised to feel something of the kind — or maybe it’s simply a form of English understatement. What Proust points out very well — à la Proust, without being too explicit — is that no matter what the jealous heart decides to do, suffering will not cease.

I’ve been away for the past few weeks, visiting exotic places like Costa Rica (well, being a Latin American myself, the adjective sounds stilted at best) and Houston (now, that’s exotic for a Latin girl!). I’ll post more on that later. Today I wanted to revisit the blog and inaugurate a new category I had neglected for quite some time: Theatre (yes, British spelling it is). I have just come back from a play called Ora X: L’Inferno del Dante, which I understand is written, directed and played by Matteo Belli, an Italian actor from Bologna (I may not have gotten that one right, it’s the information I was given). The Internet has been generous enough to include an Italian review of this work, and the link on the name mentioned above will guide you to it, if you are interested. This play was offered at the Teatro Cervantes in Buenos Aires, and the last show was yesterday night, March 16th 2008 (you probably missed it here…). I had not been to the theatre in a long time, but today it simply had to be. It was the effect of an interesting and enthusiastic review of this man’s work at one of the top local newspapers, La Nacion that prompted me to take my car and simply drive to the theatre for the ticket. The show was at 21.30, and I loved it. I’m not very familiar with Dante’s Divine Comedy, so this acted like an introduction and a return to what I once heard or even dared discuss with some literary experts, not that I am one. After all, this hypertextuality business really works, because once you’ve read someone, you’ve really read many other people, backwards and forwards. The power of networking was in the literary world way before the business world discovered its application! In short, I loved the play, this is a tremendous actor who deploys his mastery of comedy, drama, plasticity, voice and timing in a 120-minute show. I salute yet another example of the few accidents that can take place in Buenos Aires — seeing quality shows that are not made to reach the average audience. Yes, some people left the room before the show ended, others complained about the length, and very few people bought the DVD when they were leaving. But perhaps that sadly illustrates the fact that Argentina has decided to lower the bar of expectations and challenges, and that people just want to be spoon-fed whatever could put them to sleep comfortably and easily. And I don’t think Belli is to blame for that; only the people and what they let happen are.