I walk through the beach.
I walk through the shores, dipping my legs in the salty water, without compromising to shove my whole body into the waves. I have my backpack too, the cd player in my ears. The sunglasses, the cap, my t-shirt on. And I look at all of you, as if I was an alien, but i’m not.
All of you can see me.
I analize you, my eyes behind the shadows ask you if you’re sure that the collective fantasy we are living, in this beautiful day, is just something more than a bit of it. The place is pure paradise. The streets are dirt streets, natural, safe. Everything is beautiful. Big houses, too many grass water sprinklers, too much at least for my taste (I’m coming to think that when it rains in the beach is God’s natural response to all those damn sprinklers), the houses: all brick & tile, beautiful. They are too neat, nicer than the ones in the suburb I live in (in Buenos Aires). The gardens are a beauty competition, run by low- stepped entrepeneurs with few people under their charge, and still working marvels in the sandy grounds.
I walk bare footed from the house to… everywhere. Without any fear of getting cut with some glass or something, and without worrying about picking sandals or sneakers every day. My mom would have yelled at me for not wearing anything at all. “It’s just not sure”. but… why?. If I just love making irrational choices. That sometimes I play around with risks, and I just don’t care, and what I consider dull the rest of the world thinks taboo. To go into the house, for an example, just like that, in my bare feet, and have my brother in law look at me, in my bathing suit, in my bare feet, without a t-shirt on and showing off my big belly. For him to look at you ant think you’re an indian. Oh yeah… these trips help you get your inner primitive man back.
And I just love that part, it’s been a long while since I let that indian part of me off.
In this beautil metropolis of ours that is Buenos Aires it’s just impossible to walk in your bare feet. Doctors say that it is healthier to walk in your feet, but the morals and the place itself forbids us to do so.
I just needed a break.
I needed not to be me- be a bit less like me to get back the self I used to be.
The self that went to this place (Pinamar) twelve years ago, with a proud tommy and a stamped smile, with sand up to my neck.
That I had a mom AND a dad (which my sister in praignancy and my brother in law.. well, they reminded me of them.. a lot). That I was protected and at many times spoiled. Not to feel drowned by control, but being watch over at least a bit. To be taken care of like a small creature even if I wasn’t one. To sleep early, without wanting to go drinking or partying at night.
That I had a mom AND a dad (which my sister in praignancy and my brother in law.. well, they reminded me of them.. a lot). That I was protected and at many times spoiled. Not to feel drowned by control, but being watch over at least a bit. To be taken care of like a small creature even if I wasn’t one. To sleep early, without wanting to go drinking or partying at night.
To break off the seawaves with my belly. To walk towards the deeper part of the ocean with a smile on my face.
And to think I could go around the beach in my feet without worrying. I know it’s kinda repetitive. But the indian and the kid in me missed each other (I was only missing the bucket and the little shovel). I don’t let them wander around too much, you can tell. I don’t know why i’m so uptight about them anyway.
That the sensation of belonging there, in that place, seemed real.
That I could go to Wiches (an old bar in that town) where we ingested large amounts of cholesterol, a burger and a fruit drink. I see the place hasn’t changed all that much altogether, except for the incoming of sponsorships into the look of the place. I can still see dad smiling for lapses of time, and some of them in which he would get tired of being angry at me, of yelling, of the beatings and all the swearing, of childish attitudes. Only that today i’m not a rebel, and I used to be one. Now i’m just a beat-up animal.
And now I imagine you don’t understand me while you see me walk. It is because, as I’m telling you this story, you feel more estranged each second. I was never like you. And at the same time, I’m just like you. I’m miserable, I was happy. I was miserable, but I was happy. Today, I just mingle between the two, more than I used to.
And I analise you, I call you “sheep”, all of you walking in front of me in your Levi’s shirts, your Rip-Curl bathing suits, standing in front of Nissan/Renault beach or UFO beach, or DirecTV ’summer loft’ beach, smiling like you were the cream of the crop. You’re not on the top. There is no top. Everything is a fantasy, beatiful productions of your mind. Everything was fantasy. And if i’m not at the top, you look down on me and think “how does he dare, not to follow the fantasy”. And yeah, it’s tough, there are no beaches in Bella Vista, and all the illusions, the dellusions are fragile, few, hand-counted… there is not that much margin to dream of a different sight. If Levi’s wasn’t a clothing brand, it would probably be the name for a bus stop.
I study all of you, yet i’m and i’m not the same as you.
‘Being top’ in Argentina still seems mediocre in front of the rest of the world, where social separation doesn’t allow us for such stereotyping and recognition. Except, of course, in those countries in South America and in Africa where poverty is a very separate barrier from the richer people. God only knows if they have those snotty high society magazines. It’s the only thing, I think, that I still cannot stand to see.
‘Being top’ in Argentina still seems mediocre in front of the rest of the world, where social separation doesn’t allow us for such stereotyping and recognition. Except, of course, in those countries in South America and in Africa where poverty is a very separate barrier from the richer people. God only knows if they have those snotty high society magazines. It’s the only thing, I think, that I still cannot stand to see.
Twelve years- and a lot as happened for me to tell you. The only thing that could separate me a bit more from you would be me wearing an overcoat and dressing like a ‘private dick’. But i’m too comfortable, while my cd player satisfies me as the only CD inside of it is “Rated R…” of the Queens of the Stone Age. Maybe that disc is a bit to blame for my feelings, I can’t deny it. It seems like ’so-me’ to be able to justify my choices to such irrational things. I just don’t know.
“I had a good time, yeah”. I needed to take out a couple of phantoms that live inside my closet, for a walk.
