Tag: members-only audio
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Virgin of the High Waters
Audio members, listen here: When the river started to rise, they busied themselves getting everything as high up as they could. They threw ropes over the rafters and hoisted furniture into the air. A dining room table and its chairs became an elaborate swaying chandelier. They drove the livestock to the highest part of this…
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A Freer Way to Tango
Audio members, listen here: From the introduction to my new book “TQBA: Tango Queer Buenos Aires”: Think of these photos as part of a dance. Where you see two people, count three. Taking photographs, I was not an outsider looking in but rather an insider looking at oneself in a mirror. The joy and ecstasy…
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Such Splendid Creatures
Audio members, listen here: Thank you for your letter. I am well. It has been a trying time. But now the storm has passed and the detritus left in its wake is treasure. I reap the richness now. Scattered seeds are punching up through the hard soil. Their birth was troubled — but isn’t it…
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Write Thank-you Notes
Audio Members, listen here: Today is my mom’s birthday. If she were alive today, she would be 95. She lived a long, rich life even if most of the last decade was bittersweet due to mental deterioration. However, she never lost her laugh and her good cheer. Even when she didn’t remember who I was,…
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Hot Tango
Audio Members, listen here: At 13:53hs the first tender flame appeared. The tell-tale fizzling sound that had been overlooked repeatedly by repair crews sent into the below-sidewalk chamber to make other, more-urgent repairs at last ignited the paper wrappings of someone’s forgotten lunch left in flagrant disregard of company regulations and burst into flame. Within…
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Plastic Wrapped (premium)
Audio Members, listen here: 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…
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The Mighty River (premium)
Audio Members, listen here: It is a wonder in this world of satellites and adventurers probing every last corner of the planet that the upper stretches of the Zagayón River remain as remote and mysterious as ever. Even today, the most detailed and reliable reports come from the logs of the first — and let…
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The City and the Flowers (premium)
Audio Members, listen here: 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…
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Refuge in Other People’s Homes (premium)
Listen here: 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…