The Zygote Stage - In the Beginning!

This whole trip began at some point and the goal of this is to describe the beginning.

I got off at the airport after being lost in a vertical parking lot maze. My parents hugged and kissed me good-bye telling me carefully to be safe and happy; they were reluctant to go. They walked only slowly away. I was saddened to see them leave but not as sad as they were, because I had had so much previous practice at sadness and at leaving. Practice earned on planes going to Korea, China, Panama and of course to Argentina (the last time). This trip to Argentina, to Chile and to the whole southern cone of South America was no different in it’s separation but it was different in it’s adventure. The pain of unfamiliarity was similar but the prize was not, and I was accustomed to this by now. I knew I’d be back to see them, hug them and love them again, but I also know I was tired of the silent tedium in Upstate New York, and also tired of the noisy and rhythmic stasis of the Big City, a place forever locked in a Darwinian struggle to survive itself. One is always locked in a contest to be the best at anything in New York City, to get there, go there and come back faster than anyone else. That can get old. 

So I had decided to return to Argentina. Not for a month or two, but this time for a long period - at least six months. I wasn’t going alone either. My boyfriend, lover and friend was coming with me. Now I feel some guilt that I brought him - how could I responsibly risk someone else to the wilds of the world? - but the fact is I probably couldn’t have kept him away. He wanted to leave, he was just as tired of New York’s bitch tantrums as I was. Just as tired of the frozen shit subways and the piss-stinking recriminations on every ride by the bums as I was. He was also just as vulnerable (perhaps more) to the impending economic doom that seemed to be implied everywhere at that time. New York was the centre of the world economic downturn. In a small way perhaps Manhattans’s race to perfect competition was a race to the bottom. That was not ultimately sustainable. It was/is/and shall continue to be a house of cards crashing down.

We therefore dreamed, and debated on the possibility of leaving the madhouse for a while. We thought about going to Argentina for a while, working a bit, being wise with our savings, and learning to enjoy a leisurely meal again. I bought the tickets and we both quietly wondered at the time if we’d be able to put up with each other for six months or a year. He and I had a good relationship, when I bought the tickets for us to go we had been an item for a year - but still, as Richard himself often said - one never really knows the changes that might occur if we came to live with each other all the time with no brake. 

Well we were going to find out. 

After my parents said good bye and I almost cried (we had had many fights over time, me and my parents, but we were earnest at least in our good wishes towards each other) I went through security at the gate. I took off my ‘gators’ (slipper like sneakers with two pictures of alligators on them) and went through security. In part of my mind I though about what my x-rayed image might look like as I passed through the metal detector, a huge fat blob with a little spindle of bone crowned at the top with glasses and a gay and ghostly piqué of hair. I don’t know why I felt so chubby when I was passing through the security gate; none of the security officers were exactly physically fit either. 

Immediately after putting my hoodie and ‘gators back on I got a call, it was Richard. He had seen me several times in the airport (I had glimpsed him only once) and ordered me to stay where I was. I say on a dirty plastic stand of chairs while he cleared security. I had asked him to back off while my parents were there, since my Dad didn’t know. Needless to say Richard was pissed, more so than I thought he would be even. 

“What. WUT” he said as I approached him. “I dunno this nigga.”

“I’m DL.” I mumbled. “In honour of Black history month.”

He laughed and his eyes lit up a little bit and for a moment I could have crushed that face up and saved it forever. Something ineffable was there in that face that had held me for a year and still holds me now - he has some kind of joy there at times that it is hard not to love. 

He got over his mood pretty quickly and we had pretzels. We lounged near the take off gate in the little plastic row-chairs and talked about how we really did it. He bitched about how he didn’t have a Dominican passport despite having lived there most of his life and therefore having to in the future pay far out the ass for visas and entry permissions that I wouldn’t have to pay for as a Chilean citizen. Then we congratulated each other on “having really done it”. We were both a little afraid and a lot excited. I held his hand a watched the digital clock on the wall over the Air Canada stand; soon it would be time to go. 

The next chapter: Andre and the kingdom of the crystal skull (argentina)

To Whom it may concern

What shall follow this post is the first in a series of entries about my new life in Argentina. 

I've moved. I'm with my peppy sidekick Richard (boyfriend) and there is a lot to talk about. Right now it's been about two weeks since I've got here and I've been deadly ill for about one of those weeks.

As I recover from explosive diarreah and respiratory flu at the same time I will write entries and post them up 'till we get to the current time period. 

I also have a few stories and such I'd like to make available on here so I will do that.

I always look up at my name blinking as if confronted by a blinding light - can I believe that those weak sounds - mushy, fake - somehow epitomise being? How can I have that transgendered name - Andre Borges - neither this nor that. . .  and even that is a lie that milk-washed nothing of a name. 

I am nothing and I believe it firmly. 

I know full well the woe of the Anglo, 700 ad before those well wrought Roman walls. Who built this? Where did they go? When did Wierd destroy everything and wherefore did Wierd come from? Who am I?

and I am the product of 800ad. Post empire, pre Christian, a nothing bathed in the sea of desolation a sea of fungal decay. I am the tattered naked savages clinging to the relics of Rome and a barbaric Latin. 

Have you ever hunted wild game in what once was a city? Then you have been inside my mind. Then you have seen the relics of ages submerged in the loam crusts of forgetfulness. . . One history surpassed by another and thus has been my life. 

I am a survivor of apocalypses, personal and otherwise. I look into my nuclear name wondering what those strange inventions mean - for even they are not the beginning - and wonder why. 

And there is no answer, and bravery is no shield against the gusting ice of the void. 

Un comentario sobre la tontería del uso de recursos

La mayoría de los videojuegos, de las películas y los entretenimientos con facetas digitales usan algo que se llama “recursos”. O sea objetos digitales usados por accesorios o el fondo de una escena. En todo caso que quiero decir es que los “recursos” son _cada_ objeto en una escena digital. El autobús tirado por el Hunk es un “recurso” y la escena y los edificios del videojuego Half-Life 2 también es una colección de “recursos”.
Así que en las escenas digitales que pasan en lugares públicos y comunes – por ejemplo una lucha que ocurre en Times Square, Nueva York eso también tiene que ser creado especialmente para el uso en sólo un producto.
Y en eso es mi comentario sobre este asunto – la tontería de crear y recrear las mismas escenas en los mismos lugares a causa de unos conflictos legales de posesión de los “recursos” del lugar. ¿Por qué? Porque el uso de “recursos” digitales lleva el mismo grupo de derechos de objetos físicos. Eso me parece un pocito absurdo porque los “recursos” sencillamente no son como las posesiones físicas – por ejemplo para filmar una película no tenga que ser el dueño de Times Square en Nueva York. Quizás tendría que pagar algo en la forma de renta, pero para crear una película no tuviese que poseer el lugar completamente.
En mí opinión puede ser así con los “recursos” digitales. Esa línea de pensamientos me hace pronunciar las siguientes preguntas :
¿No podría ser mejor tener un “depósito” de los recursos de objetos y modelos que existen en varias películas o videojuegos?
¿Podría ser mejor, en lugar de construir y reconstruir las mismas escenas y lugares para varias empresas, trabajar juntos para crear una representación del mundo completamente digital para el uso general de todas las empresas de entretenimiento, para los gobiernos y organizaciones y etcétera?
Esa idea me hace pensar en Google Earth – pero Google Earth es sólo una colección de fotos de lugares. Mi idea es una serie de “recursos” unidos para formar el mundo entero, en fin, formar un segundo mundo utilizable finalmente por la gente.

Story comming up soon

I am editing a rather long (15 page) story that I wrote previously, and soon I will post it up here. I think I will divide it into sections, seeing as it is rather lengthy. Sorry for all the delays.

Dreams

Dreams

Red flowered whore wives don the red boats sunk jets and fly madhouse dragons chasing dreams.

They roll like thunder their silk hair strands through clouds of smoke and steam with screams of power like conquerors not slaves.

Jade ringed crimson clad women are also free now, no longer night walkers but war makers their lady fine wrists crushing an innkeeper.

His body rots somewhere dirty.

& now flying high

again the phoenix women’s angry eyes scream comets across 1930s makeup crusted on lilac faces like war paint thirsty for a rematch.

& now silver gleam & cleaver handed with iron faces heated they seek war gold in the temple halls of mad men fever pitched with fright.

Mad men drunk eyed stare mind-broken sad watching dragon women whore bitches destroy another iron statue with cleavers (some sage Christian).

& now too the sunset blazes madcap lion mained and fire dipped drowning warm pink cloud shapes into the stars like fizz.

And everywhere and all the time the blazing universe folds up with dragon women and mad men into red shapes, into star shapes, into new thoughts and into forever chaos all mixed together; flower born flower formed, blooming.

Sometimes. . .

Sometimes I get a wierd contracting feeling in my stomach when I think about something I am not supposed to think about. When I think about something that I did that was particularly embarrassing, or stupid or something I felt that I wish I didnt't feel - thats when my stomach will oddly pull back into a selfish ball.

Today I was thinking about travel again, which is something I do habitually, and I got that old odd pull to pull me back into the office world of here and now. Oddly I was thinking about some old picture in my head from a 1990s travel add. Sandals probably. Of some wild grass and bamboo house somewhere against a purple silhouetted sunset. Something utterly unreal like that.

That is not to be daft or moronic and say I actually belive in that sort of thing - trust me I don't. I have traveled enough of the world to know a fake image; however in my head that kind of image has come to serve as my "graphic user interface" for travel. In the little computer of my mind, whenever I click the Icon to think about travel and my travel, that obligatory image pops up. The image is so absurd itself that it almost provokes laughter.

I remember very well living in Taiwan, Argentina most recently and going more transiently to other places, but isn't it odd my friends that that one image, that one marketing, fake and plastic-poor reflection of what travel is remains the internal image? Isn't it strange that the fake has superceeded the true to be etched into my thoughts?

Well I think so.

In any casy I am thinking about travel, my mind full of airports and terminals and learning which is what I long to do. To be utterly lost in a crowd of swirling forigen bodies is a delight; its almost like being a random orange leaf uncaring and light. That was a feeling I got in Taiwan, that I could caper where I wished amoung the giant comanding facades of Chinese characters ringing the streets. I was only a today not a forever.

Argentina too had her own kind of incremental freedom that gripped me. That is to say Argentina has a style completely opposite of the confrontational Taiwan. Where Taiwan lurches face first intense at the traveler brandishing its neon lights, night markets and stinky tofu, Argentina hangs back with a cigarrette in her hand. Argentina moves her long sunshine and cream dress and sits down at some park and sips coquette at her wine, then she will look you in the eyes and take your soul. The traveler might not even notice at first, but Argentina is a very clever woman and before long she will seep into every corner of you subtley. You will miss that phantom lady.

And I do miss her. I miss Argentina and the other travel bitches enough which I have known that I habitually think about leaving my own little Hobbiton (which is currently NYC or the Hudson Valley depending) and embarking on a new adventure.

Mark me that I mean to.