Little Epiphanies

My mother believed that you could make the world a better place through little gestures. Flowers in a vase. Hosting a party. Sharing a piece of chocolate. Telling a grocery clerk that they had done a great job. Encouraging her children to “try and look cute.” Her life, like all lives, was touched by tragedy…

Walking toward the milonga in the late afternoon, I hadn’t noticed the lack of light in the buildings I passed. Long golden rays of sunset shot down the cross streets. But when I saw two women leaving — two hard-core milongueras, the sort who stayed till the very last note — I knew something was…

They wrapped me in cellophane and set me in the middle of the plaza where I waited while the sun and rain eroded me and pigeons defecated on my head. People asked me what was I waiting for. Through the plastic I shouted that I needed someone to release me. Their well-intentioned fingers fumbled and…

From the start, there were mysteries. They were astounded to see the riverbank lined with empty chairs for kilometers and kilometers on end. The chairs on the bank were made of woven willow branches and had sinuous, undulating lines. In many places the jungle had re-taken the chairs, swallowing them under matted vine and fallen…

I arrived in Buenos Aires 32 years ago this week. Then, as now, it was the run up to Spring. The cool air of Winter was cut by warm shoots of light that made walking her streets like pushing through the folds of night and day. Flower sellers hawked little bouquets of waxy-petaled jasmine from…

On a street in the neighborhood the other day, a car appeared without wheels, without engine, without windows, without seats. A mere car carcass. Someone had bothered to cart it there but its utility – beyond wishful thinking – was hard to see. You had to be really desperate or really imaginative to find beauty…