Sos Mi Vida

"Perfect."

We needed to return anyway.

It is my last day in Buenos Aires, and Alec and I are standing in the sharp August chill outside our apartment of seven months, vacated the previous day. Landlords seem to bear the lion's share of the world's eccentricities, and Patricia was no exception, a rare specimen – the opportunistic Argentine – who nevertheless lacked the guile to justify her disposition. Her choice of ploy for bilking us out of our security deposit, for reasons known only to her, was to examine our apartment in minute and exhaustive detail (to the point that the maid she had brought in actually started making fun of her, to my great entertainment – "If only this were a hotel, and no one cared how many towels were left"), and then proceed to demand over half of the comparatively hefty sum in case of nebulous, undefined issues. Alec was kind enough to take charge of what became an aggressive parody of a haggling session; I mainly marveled at her strategy, or lack thereof, and the implication that a woman who counts our butter knives could miss six-hundred dollars worth of damage. Needless to say, we got the vast majority of the money back.

Of course, she did not have our money on her – leading me to wonder if perhaps she did not leave the money behind so as to cheat us, but rather desperately attempted to cheat us because she didn't bring the money – so we would have to return to the place we were at last leaving behind once more. The inconvenience was not altogether frustrating: we had wandered the streets of Buenos Aires long enough, and its many neighborhoods and repetitive expanses of era-jumbled architecture, its long blocks swollen by hidden and unreachable courtyards, were well enough known to us; our spirits having settled, we had no high ambition for our final moments, and were content as a porteno to let the time while away. But we had one more reason to return, a single task forgotten. I cannot speak of its significance for Alec, but while for me much remained undone, I can say with strange certainty: only the failure to accomplish this now would inspire regret.

I'm smiling with satisfaction at what his camera has captured, quietly savoring that old friend of a sensation, last loose ends tying in my heart. The flash has banished the shadow of a tree limb cast by the darkened sky and rendered the words in an unrelenting glare, ink on concrete appearing more prison scrawl than what it is--

"CANAS SOS MI VIDA"

--graffiti in an upper-class neighborhood, and absurd.

Las Canitas, you are my life. Las Canitas, a small barrio juxtaposed between the tree-lined streets of residential Belgrano and the unblinking lights of Palermo and its endless subdivisions, comparatively light on foreigners, home to the same professional families as the former neighbor and stream of bourgeoise guests as the latter. Once a little rougher, Claudio had claimed, ten or so years ago, and therefore still up and coming. But this grafitti was new; it was only about a month ago that I first regarded it with delighted disbelief and Claudio with his signature vaguely baffled aversion. Las Canitas, where the mode reveals itself amongst participants of all ages, if not classes, and an epicurean everyday mingles bizarrely, frustratingly, incomprehensibly with an aesthetic indifference, as the ironies of "Los Angeles meets Paris" manifest unseen. Las Canitas – where the city might make you believe it floats amongst the clouds – and where the people might make you believe they are made of cloudstuff.

Whose life is that?

However it might have felt at that moment that, fundamentally, Buenos Aires was an extension of my Seattle narrative – that it was "just more practice" with better and more ridiculous anecdotes, and that while I learned, nothing I learned could cohere into an epic – that unlike the resonance of my experience in Japan with my own history, my experiences here would remain unsatisfyingly fragmented until I moved forward, and closer to a greater destiny – I felt myself too becoming aware of an ambivalence within me that could not be reduced to a choice, as Seattle was, between humility and ambition.

I have trained to delight in the absurd, to see the vagrant eddies and flows of care and concern as a natural consequence of and pragmatic response to shifting circumstances, and moreover as a diverse blossoming forth from parallel beginnings rather than so much dross to be scraped from worthier eternals. No philosophical stance or psychological tactic has done more to cultivate my social growth, to find a public and positive reconciliation between a heart reaching out and a fire too hot to the touch. Yet my nature will not countenance a treasonous world. True, I would fill a void with passion, pour a leaking vessel to the brim again and again until I have nothing left to give and resent nothing – I would love this life – but I will not have my love be made a mockery of, as when an idol, at last jostled from its pedestal, is only revealed to be hollow when it shatters upon the stone.

No, I'll trust, and in trusting I'll love risk, and in loving risk I will flirt with betrayal – but I will not be betrayed lightly, or rather I cannot allow myself to allow that. The worth of my tears depends on for what I shed them – where, and with whom, and how often. Their cheapness cheapens my soul. And if to have a loved one dwindle into nothingness is survivable, to have one's love mean nothing is worse than death.

Nevertheless, to recklessly embrace the broken as whole, the meaningless as meaningful, is human, all too human, and I cannot love humanity and despise that. But to make sense of the senseless, to ensure an enduring meaning that does not disgrace one's own faith – to keep absurdity to tolerable limits – is no easy task, and one fraught with peril, peril that in turn refines and tempers a soul into a shining work of art, art in the deepest sense. So it is beautiful to love the undeserving, and beautiful to struggle toward a deserving world. The latter is for my own sake. I will not spit on my life, and those who sacrificed for it, by believing in shadows. But the former--

"Sos mi vida" – to whom shall I say it? To whom should it be said? And the one who says it irresponsibly – when is he in peril, when should I speak?

And what if he is not? What if that idol never suffers the wind, the iconoclast, the accidental elbow? What if he who worships it truly has no need for this art that forges beautiful, fortitudinous souls? And what if, if only I lived by his side, shared that pedestal, my idols too would never be threatened? If this were possible, even for a single life, then--

Is his soul beautiful?

Is mine?

* * *

from William James's Pragmatism (1908)

"The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments. Undignified as such a treatment may seem to some of my colleagues, I shall have to take account of this clash and explain a good many divergencies of philosophers by it. Of whatever temperament a professional philosopher is, he tries, when philosophizing, to sink the fact of his temperament. Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making for a more sentimental or more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament. Wanting a universe that suits it, he believes in any representation of the universe that does suit it. He feels men of opposite temper to be out of key with the world's character, and in his heart considers them incompetent and 'not in it,' in the philosophic business, even though they may far excel him in dialectical ability.

Yet in the forum he can make no claim, on the bare ground of his temperament, to superior discernment or authority. There arises thus a certain insincerity in our philosophic discussions: the potentest of all our premises is never mentioned. I am sure it would contribute to clearness if in these lectures we should break this rule and mention it, and I accordingly feel free to do so.

Of course I am talking here of very positively marked men, men of radical idiosyncracy, who have set their stamp and likeness on philosophy and figure in its history. Plato, Locke, Hegel, Spencer, are such temperamental thinkers. Most of us have, of course, no very defnite intellectual temperament, we are a mixture of opposite ingredients, each one present very moderately. We hardly know our own preferences in abstract matters; some of us are easily talked out of them, and end by following the fashion or taking up the beliefs of the most impressive philosopher in our neighborhood, whoever he may be. But the one thing that has counted so far in philosophy is that a man should see things, see them straight in his own peculiar way, and be dissatisfied with any opposite way of seeing them.

There is no reason to suppose that this strong temperamental vision is from now onward to count no longer in the history of man's beliefs."

* * *

dear grandma

"I've always felt myself unduly blessed by opportunities for travel, not only because I have already had so many of them but because by nature I don't think I adequately appreciate them. Philosophy is an eminently importable discipline, at least amongst other human beings, so I tend to take up the same bad old habits no matter where I go. One of these, perhaps strangely, is a certain incuriosity; perennially focused on what I imagine to be some grand introspective endeavor, I find myself unable to pay much more than cursory attention to differences for their own sake, more than content to coast through foreign surroundings as long as some mutual intelligibility underlies them. What I mean to say is: only if a city or a people seem fundamentally different from me in a manner that demands a new perspective on, or even contradicts, my own view of humanity or personal narrative, do I begin to investigate in earnest. For better or worse, Buenos Aires achieved that.

Based on my image of South America, I anticipated a striving and rising nation, dynamic and a little bit dangerous, more along the lines of Brazil (which we decided not to move to primarily because we didn't want to learn Portuguese). In fact, Argentina -- and particularly Buenos Aires -- is not only proudly the most European of South America's nations, but one that sees itself as somewhat past its glory days (very much European in that sense as well). It may sound odd to say so, but the ease of our life here was a little off-putting. Portenos are some of the most pleasant people I've ever encountered (even outside the vast upper-middle-class neighborhoods where we were privileged to find ourselves), particularly generous with foreigners and rarely patronizing, and the majority seem happy -- perhaps in the wake of recent economic upheaval that still simmers below the surface -- to live a stable and regular life, hardly the stereotype of the "passionate Latino." In fact, the apparent utter lack of urgency, existential or otherwise, was deeply discomfiting to me given my own priorities -- and clashed with certain pre-known facts: that Buenos Aires has the highest amount of therapists, per capita, in the world; that there are a multitude of excuses for anxiety in this part of the planet, even in this cushioned corner of it. Thus ensued a lengthy adventure in cultural exploration fraught and replete with frustration, delight, self-doubt, and satisfaction. And dancing. A lot of dancing. Gene Kelly meets Campbell's Hero Cycle.

I won't suffer you the details, but the point is, I guess you could say I managed to trick myself into doing interesting things. Even if all these ruminations come to nothing, I'll have a surfeit of anecdotes. Though if I may say so, without a trace of regret, I have concluded: while Buenos Aires is a wonderful city for anyone to visit, for a young man with some ambition it is not the ideal place to live. It's been very fun, and I'm made some use of myself, but I can't go for much longer before the arrow vigilantly pointing in my heart is mirrored by some clear and grounded path in my world."

* * *

For once I'm in a hurry.

I have to get somewhere and fast, and this time it's not the tailor before he closes or shwarma before the siesta starts. I have to cross the city, and while Buenos Aires is not a terribly difficult city to navigate it is unconscionably vast. The subway is packed this time of day – the sun blazes unoccluded overhead – and I'm unsure what bus, if any, would take me to my destination. The only option is to drive. So, mustering up the full extent of my courage, I open up the driver's seat door of a nearby idling vehicle and prepare to brave the hectic streets.

It's been a little while and the pace of traffic is intimidating, but I steel my nerves with the assurance that driving here can't be half as difficult as in India – conveniently not dwelling on the fact that, thank heaven, that feat was something I only had to observe. I stay alert and I'm doing alright. But every time I break, the pedal moves slightly further away from my foot – echoes of a forgotten fear – such that I'm forced to stretch farther and farther each time. Soon I'm sliding down the seat and tilting my chin up at every red light in a struggle to remain aware of my surroundings. It's only a matter of time before the inevitable happens: torn between the need to see and the need to stop, I'm unable to reach my foot far enough quick enough into the cavernous abyss at my feet, and I crash, with a stunning but painless jolt, into the taxi in front of me.

A wave of resignation washes over me, and I cleanse myself of tension and stress with a single heavy sigh. I lower my forehead to the hot leather of the steering wheel, breathing deep of its cloying aroma, and when I lift my eyes I can see a withered hand reaching from the driver's window of the taxi I've rammed and beckoning toward the side of the road. I depress the break pedal – it's no longer hard to reach – and shift, and as I pull over to the curb I realize blearily that I cannot remember where I was going in the first place.

An old man steps from the car, dressed in the eminently respectable style of all elderly Argentine men – the one aspect of the city's fashion that must without qualification be admired – but instead of moving to confront me he continues to amble up over the curb, and I see now that we are next to a park of rolling green. Imagining vaguely that it's his prerogative to decide where and how we talk business, seeing as I'm the one at fault, I extract myself from the car and follow him to a bench in the temperate shade. He sits at one end; I sit at the other. He stares straight ahead; I follow suit. I'm exhausted, and more than happy to let him take the lead. I elect not to speak until spoken to.

But he commences instead with a lengthy monologue in a voice soft and hoarse, faintly droning but not monotone, amiably indifferent in the manner of men who have lived long enough. And I listen with interest, and feel I fully understand, despite my minimal comprehension of his actual words. I seem to recall he spoke English, actually, but I still only caught a few real phrases: "back in the fifties," for example, and, "this was, of course, when I was a student." I realize he is not only telling me about himself; he is telling me about the park. He comes to no moving conclusions; he neither introduces nor concludes his narrative, and does not present any justification or even explanation for why this story is, presumably, meaningful to him. He presents me only with a series of moments, scenes from his youth and adulthood, taking place in and around his park. I come to understand that, however much wandering he may have done, much of his life has taken place here.

An unusual number of insects begin to populate the field as his meandering exposition continues, though I only half-notice my environment in my avid interest in what the man is saying, all bemusement having long since faded. The constant buzz, if anything, serves merely as a pleasant background noise for a tale I need no reason to listen to. I later notice that some children have begun playing in the field, and their laughter mingles with the ambiance. They are flying kites, and some of the kites look like huge insects, monstrous but gentle giants that float peacably amongst their brethren.

The old man is quiet. He has finished his story, having told me everything, and his words are as dust in the summery air, passing unnoticed, losing nothing. I have not heard, yet there is no doubt in my heart that I have understood. We gaze together at the largest kite, an enormous, bloated dragonfly with swollen, clumsy eyes. It is a joke, but no one is laughing. The bench is warm, and we are silent.

"That's cool, man," I say. "That's really cool."

This is the fourth dream I remember.

* * *

dear karli

"So many projects are still half-finished, as ever, and too many paths are only just begun; the significance of too many ventures remains unclear, but still I am happy, happy and in motion once again. I read a thousand pages of philosophy and then a thousand pages more for a single paper I have yet to do more than lengthily outline; I took the GRE last week and did quite satisfactorily, but it's only the beginning of so many graduate school preparations left undone. My head spins just thinking about the variety of little tasks, vehicle registration and cellphone replacement and so forth, that I'll need to dispense with before I can even begin to clear my mind to focus on the more formidable tasks I hope to complete. But I'm ready; I'm definitely ready to begin something new, something long-term. I want to go to graduate school more than ever, to devote myself passionately to study. I have seen the other lives I might live, that I am blessed enough to have the opportunity to indulge in, and my heart won't countenance them, not for any longer. For better or worse.

Admittedly, the fact that I already knew this leaving Seattle makes whatever I've acquired or experienced while here seem somehow either "merely aesthetic" or "just more practice" at things I already knew I could do. But even in that, I begin to suspect, I have become somehow more gentle a judge. I have not only salvaged my sense that my own self-justifications must be rooted in some semblance of a grounding I share with my fellow human beings from fears that no one here would be particularly moved at all by my quasi-apocalyptic, quasi-messianic notion that there is some great and epic battle to be fought against nihilism for the sake of all people -- making my own story intolerably insignificant, at least if I tangle up a legitimate search for integrity and dignity with a anxious need for my philosophy to compel others and thereby legitimize me. I have also found myself reading more history of philosophy than usual, contextualizing philosophers I previously saw as foes for having messages inappropriate to current circumstances, reading authors whose methods I find disagreeable, coming to terms with philosophers who mirror my most heartfelt desires only to come to conclusions I find anathema.

Understanding them isn't so much the point as is a kind of forgiveness. Not of them -- I'm not quite that pompous -- but of myself. In coming to terms with philosophers who, even if they reacted passionately and trenchantly to their contemporary predicaments, reached conclusions that now seem naive under new circumstances (sometimes circumstances they themselves helped bring about) and sometimes I think misguide my own contemporaries, I can accept that I too am historically situated. It's easy for me to accept that my psychological needs are unusual because that's something I can be honest about; I think I understand how my own definitive experiences are both unique and parallel common human themes, and in that combination I feel I can be both useful and compelling. The idea that, even if some consistencies in the human condition more or less transcend time -- death, the need to make sense of the world -- and make our forebears intelligible to us, the problems I face just won't be felt as acutely in the future, even if they are now, because of ways in which I can envision circumstances changing... it's hard to explain, and sounds a little too silly when I put it like this, but...

I became more comfortable with not being able to save the world.

When I let that go, my passion did not evaporate, my strength did not fade-- and my destiny did not seem futile. From this perspective, it feels like I should have known better, that of course this was something I already understood (though I think I tend to tell myself that every time I learn something, so as not to admit I learned). But this history of mine will probably repeat. I was born to feel as though I should save worlds, however limited their scope."

* * *

I'd never been more afraid.

I cannot remember anything except that I was alone. The world about me was nebulous and undefined because it seemed irrelevant; I paid it no mind. I had a far greater problem to deal with, the greatest problem I could possibly imagine – and found myself, in spite of all my efforts, utterly unable to grapple with it, not knowing even where to begin.

I had remembered that she was alive.

My mind was racing so frantically that I struggled even to remember when I had last spoken to her. Seven years, wasn't it? Seven. I counted back to make sure. Almost seven, anyway. The question of what she had been doing all this time baffled me, to be sure, but I set that conundrum aside for the moment to address what seemed to me the infinitely more troubling issue: how I would possibly justify myself to her. How could I explain why I had ignored her all this time? I reached out for my carefully, lovingly crafted self-summaries, the entire narrative I had written for myself, and felt it all unravel in my grasp: suddenly, the more I thought about it, the less any of it made sense. I worked my way back year to year, on how each action and thought had arisen from the last, and as I followed that thread the fear rose up from my belly to my throat.

Everything depended on her death. That was what explained everything; that was the beginning of it all.

But I had remembered that she was alive.

How could I even begin to make sense of myself?

And if I couldn't, what would I say to her when, inevitably, I saw her again? Because there was no way I wouldn't. I would have to return to her.

And then I would be judged.

This is the fifth dream I remember.

* * *

from Maps, by Simon Parkin (http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/28/maps.html)

"It's not that the dialogue's bad, though, it undoubtedly fucking is. But the entire stories are always such a muddle."

She never liked JRPGs.

"It's Tolkien through a glass darkly and, God, if that weren't bad enough, Tolkien through a glass darkly written by computer science nerds for whom English is a third language. After Basic and C++."

"That's very funny," I say. "But, that's precisely what makes them culturally endearing or, at very least, interesting. It's art. Made by mathematicians."

She ignores me. "Not only that, but you're in constant fear of these random battles. It's like there's someone sitting behind you while you're playing, whacking you round the head every 30 seconds or so. You can't see it coming, so you're continuously on edge. Even despite the fact the battles rarely hold any sort of challenge. You hit the same set of buttons a hundred times over, and the machine spits out small change for the effort.

You say videogames are beautiful, expansive puzzles. I say: bullshit. You may as well be working on a factory assembly line; the challenge is exactly the same: one of perseverance, not intelligence."

"Right, but there's more to it than repetitious combat," I say.

"What, like talking to townsfolk? Jab the talking doll in the stomach with the X button and have it spit out its solitary line of dialogue about the earth's lifeforce or some other hotchpotch pseudo-philosophical twaddle? 'Hey! Would it be OK if you fetched me my lost straw doll from a town on the OTHER SIDE OF THE OCEAN?!' Or: 'Oh-God-Have-You-Heard-The-Rumours-About-This-Evil-Wizard-Who's-Stealing-All-The-Crystals-In-The-World-And-Who-Will-Save-Us?' Yeah, super enriching, Simon."

"No. I mean. Yes. You're sort of exactly right. But you're also sort of missing the point. Yes, games are power fantasies. But more than that, they show us the way things are supposed to be..."

"What?" She puts down the controller and, for the first time in the conversation, listens.

"I mean, deep down they function how we want the real world to function, right? There's a set of rules and, if I follow them and do the right things in the right order, success is kind of guaranteed. That's true of all videogames, but in JRPGs there's the story too. They have a set trajectory that leads me out of the bastard confusion of adolescence towards an endgame of maturity and identity and, er, status I guess. And all you need to do to experience that is follow the breadcrumb trail and keep turning the cogs..."

"You're mixing your metaphors," she says, smiling. "You definitely play too many of these things. The bad writing's rubbing off on you."

It's my turn to ignore her. "Because, while the battles may be random, the war's outcome is always predestined," I continue. "You're predestined to succeed. Just so long as you keep going. And jeez, that may be escapism or a gross oversimplification of the reality we live in, but isn't that sense of... of justice the yearning of every human being? Are not JRPGs maps of perfect worlds where everything behaves how you expect it to?"

"Um..."

"Because, when your life turns to shit and people let you down, or when you study hard but still flunk your exams regardless, or when you work your ass off and your boss doesn't notice.... Or, or even if he does but is too preoccupied with his own quests to congratulate you... I mean, that's sort of a broken system. It certainly feels that way. That's just not how things should be. JRPGs counter all that disappointment and unfairness with dependable justice. They reward you for your efforts with empirical, unflinching fairness. Work hard and you level up. Take the path that's opened to you and persevere with it and you can save the world.

You can fix the things that break..."

* * *

Yes – I can.

And I will, one way or another.

Because –

I'm all grown up.

Dr. John - Qualified

There's more to tell, and I'll tell you the rest when I see you.

Yeah, I'm ready, too ready. I'm ready to be among the people that I love, to be here, with and for them. I'm ready to do what I love in the world I love, the world where it all makes sense, knowing now without a shadow of a doubt that I would cling to this life even if that world left me behind and sense went with it – that in doing so I hide my eyes from no truth. My friends are here, my family is here – my sister is here – and my future is here. All these weaknesses and melancholies of mine are like the blemishes upon my cheek, treasures of my blood. Forged in that blood, beneath these beloved tawdry lights I can feel my soul gleaming.

I'm a magnificent warrior.

And you can count on me.

You are my life.

* * *

The island is aglow in garish neon tones, the water pink and purple and the sand sickly green. My feet are buried in that, but I am too distracted to check if I am wearing shoes so that the moist cracks in the rashed soles of my feet won't be worried by the grains. I am staring instead at my classmates, for I have stumbled upon their party. They are all drinking from the same oversized glass, and the liquid sworls with its own eye-aching tones, but I strain my gaze nevertheless to make out the dark flecks in their concoction – and see that they are spiders, dead spiders, their little legs flaking away.

The boy seated in the center of them all, supporting the witch's brew with both arms, is my partner in the stories we tell, fellow organizer of playground battle formations, the one who comes up with the villains when I come up with the heroes. He is smirking at me, so insufferably, like he was the time when I told him he was going to punch him in the face if he didn't stop bugging me and he didn't believe me. Maybe he knows I'm scared of spiders. Maybe he's found out and has been planning on using it against me. Or maybe he knows something else I don't, something about me. None of this occurs to me; even his smug expression, which I before found so weak and loathsome, does not register. I am completely occupied by my perplexion and uncharacteristically absent of emotion as, regarding in silence the festivities before me, I turn over and over a single question in my mind.

Why would anyone drink spiders?

This is the first dream I remember.

* * *

dear me

"I love America.

I drove seven hours on Thursday and seven again on Friday to dance among dancers and laugh among friends; I sunburned my arm dangling it overlong out the window of the Golf; I joked over the phone with Kimi as she awaited her first date; I put my arm about her shoulders in the sun as in silence she shed tears – in shame, but also in compassion for those whom, in his faux-stoic and self-importantly artistic blindness, our father has hurt with words that parody integrity. Every day I eat something new and wholesome, every day I exult in something marred or twisted or dry and dirty that reveals itself as beautiful – that Indian man harassing that old Filipino, our own heated but measured words exchanged. I say every day, but it's only been four days.

So, it's still true."