Brukman- First Contact

I got up this morning early, at 8:30.  After a breakfast of little slices of bread and butter with a cafe con leche I carefully gathered all of my technological equipment to make the short trip to Brukman.  After a crowded subte ride and a fifteen minute walk I arrived in front.

I didn't even hesitate for a second as my nerves screamed, "Wait!  Sit outside a minute!  Gather yourself!"  

"No, " my brain said.  "You will be gathered and you will enter this very second."

I rang the bell and saw two workers inside, obviously wondering who could be ringing the bell.  One of them answered and I introduced myself, saying I had an invitation to interview them.  She let me in and I introduced myself again, elaborating on the fact that I had written a thesis and was a political science student.  The smartest thing that I did was bring a copy of the e-mail that they sent me, declaring me welcome. 

She said that this week it would not be possible, but to call her next Tuesday at 10:30.

That's still good, right?  They probably have to ask in assembly who would like to talk to me.  Surely someone will take pity on me and give me an interview.

I really did have my shit together in there, a thousand times more than when I arrived at the hostel.  I was all red and perspiring a bit since it's 97 degrees here and I'd been walking.

My only fear is that I traveled all the way here with their invitation and that they will deny me.

I did give her the copy of the e-mail, so they wouldn't go back on their word, right?

Now that I think about it, I should have gotten recommendations from Mirkin and Luis.  Damn, well, too late now.

Hopefully I'll get to see Fernando today, it would be nice to see a friendly face.  And to ride his motorcycle.  Plus he could get that suitcase which can only be stuffed with dead bodies or rocks.

Well, now all I can do is wait a week, and try to get to as many recuperated businesses as possible as well as the anarchist bookstore here, which probably has tons of information that is not available in the United States.

Now I'm sitting in the cafe next to the hostel, eating a grilled cheese and ham sandwich and drinking a glass of white wine.  I think I deserve it.

Argentina

I got here this morning at around eight, Buenos Aires time, four, Kansas City time.  Luis asked me to bring a suitcase for him that weighed around eight thousand pounds.

Okay, it was forty-eight pounds, but it was still a heavy fucker.

I had easy chat with the car driver as we arrived at the hostel.  He asked me if I voted for Obama.

I reached the hostel and had a hell of a time getting my shit together, passport, money, where did I put that paper...

Finally got it all together and moved into my humid broom closet which will serve as my home for the next ten days.  There's no air conditioner, which I now curse myself for not looking for in a hostel, but other than that it's rather lovely.  It's an old mansion that now houses several rooms and there's a large terrace where you can see quite far on the landscape.

I've never stayed in this part of town before, so I decided that some adventure was needed.  I took off walking, going straight, taking a left on one street, a right on the other.  All was fine, I bought toothpaste, shampoo, contact solution and soap at Farmacity.  I continued walking, swinging my bag and feeling the sweat run down my ass.  Then I started to get worried.  Somehow, the street that I had been walking on turned into another one, which is infuriatingly common in Argentina.  In two minutes I had become lost.  Really lost.  I walked everywhere and asked two different policemen, but I was still lost.  I found a subte station and took it to where I could walk to another subte to take to Calle Medrano, where I am staying.  As I got off the subte at Puerreydon I was so exhausted from walking for five hours with nothing to eat I actually prayed for God to get me back to the hostel.

"Please," I thought, "Please guide me to where I need to go."

 I realized that Puerreydon had turned into Jujuy magically.  "Goddamnit," I thought.  "I think this is the wrong way."  I continued walking anyway and then there it was.  A large, hand-painted sign that said "Cooperativa 18 de diciembre, ltda. Brukman" and I stopped dead in my tracks across the street.  There it was, the factory that I have been obsessed with for a year and a half.  The factory I wrote about in my thesis, the factory whose workers' faces I have memorized.  It was like Aztlan.  

I fought back tears, feeling my throat close over.

There it was.

It wasn't just a dream, a hope, a wish.  It was real.  I ran across the street dodging cars and smashed my face against the window.  There were the suits!  There were the photos of the workers!  There was my wildest imagination, splayed out before me!  I was on the street where three hundred policemen fought against five thousand protestors.  These were the streets that had been tear-gassed, smoke-bombed and lead-bulleted against fifty middle aged women who were being treated like capital criminals because they wanted to sew.

I had asked God to guide me to where I needed to go, and suddenly I found myself in front of Brukman.

I am going there tomorrow to arrange interviews with the workers.  I can only hope that I can only hold my shit together because a sobbing interviewer is lame.

Tomorrow is the day that I conquer my biggest fears and talk to my heroes.  Tomorrow is the day that I advance my life in ways that I never thought possible.

I just hope that tomorrow I don't wake up in my own bed with this having all been a dream.

I wish I had...

a pair of warm socks.

a fireplace.

hot cocoa.

marshmallows.

and something new to investigate.

Winter Slumber

The restaurant has been characteristically dead the past week.  Last night I had two tables, the previous night three and the night before that four.  During the week we absolutely must have two servers or else the owner will freak out so there's half the money and twice the time to be standing around.  There's a couple of activities that I partake in to pass the boredom and there are as following:

1.  Sneak up to the office and play on the internet.

2. Find globs of sticky tack and make them into animals.

3. Sneak into the kitchen and eat bleu cheese.

4.  Devise paper games (Exquisite Corpse, Paper Telephone, etc.)

5.  Read the newspaper over and over.

6. Continue my search for gold in the hollow wall.  I've carved a pretty big hole that someone adorned with googly eyes so I added a mustache.  This search for gold is serious business.  In the 30's the building the Blue Bird is in was a speakeasy.  The guy sold barrels of moonshine and only accepted gold bars as payment.  At the time, gold bars were illegal and could not be exchanged for money.  After the guy died his son decided to remodel his house and found forty-thousand dollars worth of gold bars.  I think he hid some in the building too.  Jorge and I also theorize that there are dead bodies somewhere too.  I hope we find the gold first.

Anyway, I am off today, entertaining myself with episodes of The Office and chicken breasts.  Hope you're all having a dandy day too.

BEST PET AD EVER

I was skimming through the want ads today looking for bulldogs and I found this:

KINKAJOU- 5 yr old male, bottle raised, $900 or trade for guns.

Old Friends ctd.

General Clark P. Willis on civilization:

"You know all this marriage bullshit?  It's all the fuckin' civilization tellin' young men that they need to marry for the pussy.  And they think 'Aww, I'm so in love with this girl' and they tell you that, and you know what?  It's all bullshit, they've been trained to think like that.  I tell you what, if a man ever tells you any kind of that crap like, 'Baby, I can't live without you, you're my sunshine,' you tell that man to go fuck sixteen porn stars and then see if he still wants to marry you.  Now you gotta loan him some money cos fuckin' porn stars is big business, see, it can get real expensive but at least after that, you know he's in love with you and not your pussy.  Trust me, it's worth the money."

Best.  Advice.  Ever.

Old Friends and Resolutions

Old Friends

"I'd sure like a yodelin' honey canyon right about now."- Clark P. Willis

There's this guy that I have known for about five years, ever since I started my first restaurant job at the Cup and Saucer.  His name is Clark and he is a railroad foreman.  He's an eccentric and has the foulest mouth God ever gave anyone, including me.  He comes in regularly, always ordering the fish special and if he's feeling like it, an apple crostada.  He drinks coffee in the winter and ice tea in the summer.

His favourite subject is, of course, pussy, more specifically the one that belongs to the owner of the restaurant.  He's imagined her pussy in so many different ways, different hairstyles, tastes and whether or not it has teeth.  He's come up with countless schemes that will get him into her pants.

This is all in jest, of course, but he plays a dangerous game when he knows her husband is there, lurking nearby when he'll lean towards me over the bar and say, "You think that since I brought in that blow torch for you fagnasties and pedophiles to make creme brulee that she'll give me some pussy?"

The world is divided into three categories for Clark, pedophiles, fagnasties and Mrs. Goodpussy's.  The first is reserved for anyone Clark doesn't like, bosses and rich people.  Fagnasties are the rest of us, especially if we're gay and Mrs. Goodpussy's refer to the owner of the restaurant and an interior decorating friend of his.  

The man is a legend, basically.  I've never met anyone so fascinating, so off the grid.  He shows up to the restaurant with filthy hands and proceeds to pour olive oil over his customary mountain of bread and eat it.  Yet he spends an average of thirty dollars on dinner and another ten on tip almost every night.  When he buys new shirts I can always tell, because I have to cut the tags off from the underarm after he's worn the shirt all day.  He tells me if any pedophiles bother me I just have to tell him and he'll take care of the problem.

Clark used to be in the Army, and is a Vietnam vet who was in the shit with people's heads exploding and unforeseen gunfire and  intestines spilled all over the ground.

When he came back, his PTSD was so intense that he couldn't function.  The Army dealt with it by giving him sixteen electroshock therapy treatments and then a certificate, officially proclaiming the Clark was now ready to re-enter the world as if nothing had happened.

So now he sits at my bar every night, barking to either see me, Monica Lewinsky, or Lori, Lorelei Shugabritches.

And there he sits, the lost child of the United States Army, as mysterious as a scientific anomaly.  

Resolutions

So I have made the resolution to stop being afraid of doing things, especially things that will advance my future career/life.  The things that I am afraid of doing are insane, listening to phone messages, paying bills, working on projects... Things that I really really enjoy doing are put to the wayside because I am afraid that they are not going to be good enough.  I know, right?  **Paging Childhood Trauma, please come in Childhood Trauma."  I've decided this year that my official resolution for this year is: Fuck it.  I am going to make 2009 my bitch.

And now that you all know, I have to do it since it's been posted in the infinite universe of the internet and if I don't do it, everyone will know.

It's going well so far, I actually complete a to do list yesterday and I've lined myself up to hopefully give a lecture at the Infoshop.  I'll let you all know when that is and hopefully the movie theater will be up an running before too long.

"Can you please make an announcement that all pedophiles must leave the restaurant by nine p.m.?  Thank you."- Clark P. Willis