Buenos Días, Buenos Aires

When do I engage the present? When do I embrace that which is happening right right now with its hand in my face and its stink all up in my snoz? Right. When in the history of humankind will I finish processing photographs from three weeks ago and declare fit for consumption some narrative so long stewed it no longer resembles more than mush?

Now.

Katie just stuck her head out onto the balcony and asked me if I want toast. I do not want toast. I want instead to drink this coffee and sit shivering on the morning balcony (despite the llama-patterned alpaca-wool socks on my feet and the puffy down Patagonia jacket on my, um, torso).

Katie is my lovely roommate in this here 5th floor Palermo apartment. Katie is the the sister of a longtime friend, a man some may know as Charlie and others as Chuck. Before that Thursday evening, April 1st, when we arrived to receive our keys for the month, Katie and I had never met. Faith! And well placed, because we're great and this apartment is great and wow, seriously, Buenos Aires!

That is a sunset. Now is morning. Now is when Claire Fisher Scott, my dear dear friend, sleeps still and dreams perhaps of a certain husband arriving in just a few hours. I hope my hands warm up by then so I can give Whit appropriately awesome high-fives.

Claire and I have been spending a relaxed week since she arrived to visit on Sunday. We have been eating much delicious and drinking much wine; we have been laying in the afternoon by the heated pool in my apartment courtyard. She has been putting up graciously with my need to bill hours. We met new friends from the States, saw a hippie drum show, visited a cross between Disneyland and Bourbon Street, and purchased and destroyed so many galletitas from the bakery around the corner.

Claire, Whit and I will travel tomorrow to Bariloche for three days in the lakes region, northern Patagonia. I will make good use of my Patagonia gear—thank you, Sarah—as it is already epically cold down there. And by that I mean 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

We will return to greet so joyously Dave! Zucker! Have I mentioned that I love my friends? Have I mentioned that I will have three particularly pleasing ones here in Argentina with me? Morning, life, how brightly you shine on this ugly hospital ventilation system on which my gaze rests from my balcony!

The leaves are falling in Buenos Aires. Autumn is sharply, crisply here and winter is coming. I will escape north ahead of the freeze to Mendoza and then Peru and then Ecuador. Eric and I will surf for a week—SURFING—in Ecuador. And then I might, you know, be flying back... home... to Seattle. What home, what city: only Buenos Aires for now. No one is even awake on the West Coast yet.

Buenos días, Buenos Aires. Good morning, all. Now, what was I doing again?