The Beautiful Truth

The beautiful truth about a city is, you can never truly own it. You could wander it's streets for days or years and still not fully posses it. The storefronts, the fruit vendors, the train station, the architecture. All these things are becoming familiar to me, a part of my understanding, my knowledge.  It has always been a habit of mine to take ownership of places I visit. They mean something to me, I own a part of them. It's human nature to want to posses something, in order to control the effect it has on you. To capture the existence of it in a tangible, acceptable way. You can protect it's memory, preserve it's meaning. No one argues with memories you tell yourself. But this city is not mine. It will never be mine, just as it will not ever fully belong to the driver of the train, the seller at the fruit stand, or my seventy three year old host mother. The truth is, this city owns us. Part of us. Part of out lives, our knowledge, our vitality. These things will stay. Only the city knows the true route of the cab driver, or where the garbage packers go at night, where the ferrel dogs play, and where the shortcuts lead. We, all of us, have forfeited our knowledge, sparse as it may be, as a toll, allowing our true entry into the streets of Buenos Aires. As I live here, the city grows. I can feel it bending itself around me. My memories of this city are a gift, but I must remember them fully in truth if I am to best identify with this place. The truth? The truth is the storefronts have bars on them at night, the fruit sometimes has fruit flies, the train is rarely on time, and the european architectural structures are often separated by dull apartment buildings. This is where I live. Where people drink coffee at eleven at night, and hold their backpacks in front of their bodies, where nobody will smile at you but everyone kisses, where wine is often cheaper than water, and busses wait for no one. This is the Buenos Aires I am experiencing every day. The truth of the city refuses to be deterred by my imagination, and neither will I let it. I do not own this city.


Hil