Men Doze Alone in Mendoza (Or: Before the Farm)

Far off, far off beautiful Laura sleeps
or tries to and I am not there to help
in these stupid struggles
us glob twins share.
It would be something to feel
the stitch of Laura Bell´s hair!

Córdoba Stands Where Spain Fell

El Rio Paraná Gets Seen

Darwin would have been pleased
to walk with me out of the jungle
back into the town of San Ignacio,
seeing one little boy in a tree
and then another in church on his knees.



The day I left San Ignacio for Córdoba on a night bus, I went for a walk into the semi-jungle just to the west of the town. Here are some pictures. The river you will see is el Rio Paraná, which is the natural border between Argentina and Paraguay. This area also serves as a certain kind of natural reserve, with settlements of Guaraní, the tribe native to this area, set about. I ended up going through one of them and it seemed quite poor, but the people were friendly enough to me. For example, I was apparently walking in completely the wrong direction into the middle of the jungle, if this man hadn´t stopped to ask me if I wanted a ride, well then who knows where I would have ended up!

It was a good five hour walk, though in a strange circuit because of the river and the lack of paths. I found one path, however, and for a short time felt that fear that must have plagued those famouse adventurers, like Indiana Jones.

The Sysiphus of San Ignacio

The Ruins of San Ignacio Miní

What you didn´t learn from the Jesuits

was how to coil the thread through the slits

and ignite my own face in your mirror

to better describe the lesson I´d hear

a pauper in the present, but tomorrow freer

in your smiling doctrine sound to our peers

but rotten and hollow to the new but past ears.

There are ruins now: the classrooms

the church now closer to nothing

the aula where the native kids still sing silence

the dead field cemetary blurred

by the Big Green´s encroachment

the small kitchen no longer in use

the empty plaza space where the noose was

laid around your padre neck,

but now you´re gone and still there

is all that memory´s wreck.

Some stupid how emits from the stones;

commands and comments, the seeds you´ve sown

and what wings have flown to call a mate,

my daring darling heart years less to satiate.

Who is Horacio Quiroga?

Slightly out of the town of San Ignacio Miní towards el Río Paraná, the Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga decided to build a house.

He did this at the turn of the century, when it seemed much of this state, Misiones, was still a heavily forested, subtropical region. The houses you see at the tourist place: a replica of the first one he built, used in a film as described on this plaque;

and then his second house, made of stone, the statement of this fact implying that a) the first was wooden and b) that it´s difficult to build a stone house in the jungle.

The houses apparently meant a lot to him and stand as an example of his literary aesthetic. Like Conrad and Chekov, who he cites as his own heroes of the short story, Quiroga seems to be fascinated with the nineteenth century character exposed up against the hard reality of the natural world. And he naturally contributes to the larger reaction against the Romantic vision of the natural world that dominated the popular fiction of the early part of the century.

I´m unfamiliar with his work (I hadn´t even heard of him), but there was a graphic version of one of his stories displayed where a number of dimmed out young kids tear a happy sunny little girl to pieces; he´s known for his morbidity. The butterfly, beetle and flying insect collections are a testiment to his interest in the fragile boundary between the safe and the dangerous.

Beyond the details of his house, a small museum on the grounds had a plaque of his Ten Rules for Writing a Short Story.

Only drawing on my own experience, I think these make a lot of sense as advise to a writer. Or that they reflect certain conclusions that I´ve found.

The other fact that struck me about this man - his love life. He taught at a high school in Buenos Aires. One of his students became a lover. Despite objections from her parents and the public at large, he married her. She was only twenty years old, thirty years his junior. After she bore their first child, the relationship began to deteriorate. Quiroga was diagnosed in the 30s with prostrate cancer. After a short treatment in Posadas, the capitol of the state, he returned to the jungle retreat in his ´stone house´.

Whatever happened there in his illness forced the woman and the daughter to leave for Buenos Aires without him. The writer was left there in his jungle world, called ´Iviraomi´, or ´country of the little trees´, to die alone.

All of this brings up something I had mentioned to Ciça: wouldn´t it be better if we could always get to know the artist before seeing their work? The instance in this case was Joao´s short film, something I had heard about for five years, but had only seen last week. I got to know him first. This also applied to Ciça´s friend Cristian, who has made a number of films and I only have recently seen them. It´s likely to be pointless to ask if it this makes art better, but it certainly changes how you enjoy it. And maybe, for me especially, it´s because it cuts out a lot of the distortion I feel comes in when I am looking for the character living in the work. And that´s only when I can´t seem to just let myself enjoy it.

What is Bossa Nova?