Four Things.

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Our location at Los Ejercitos lies under the shadow of an abandoned hospital, the project aborted midway through construction. I am certain that the architect knew that it was doomed from the start, and so decided to entertain all of his structural fantasies with a free reign, as a child sits down determined to draw the biggest skyscraper in the world. It is sickeningly big; black cavernous holes, once intended to be ward windows, pepper the entire twenty stories like paralysed, unblinking eyes. It is without question the most terrifying building I have ever seen. Nowhere else does the abortion of hope stand so tall and disfigured, a mocking reminder to be endured every day.
Underneath the children mark out a rudimentary football pitch, complete with posts composed of dogshit. With curious regularity, I have found throughout my life that acceptance is often dependant on my footballing performances, to the point that I would no longer be surprised if in an interview I was tossed a ball and asked to perform a Cruyff turn. Here I am struggling - these kids really don´t give a shit about the L.I.F.E T-Shirt I´m wearing; football requires no aid. They tell me in no uncertain terms that if I hinder them I have to go. One overweight kid is holding his own until the others decide that there´s too many players and that he´s got to be sacrificed. Still panting, he accepts the decision without a word, even looking as though he agrees. He is good, but he is fat - brutally simple rules that kill discussion. From the sidelines he watches intently, with so much enthusiasm that I ask whether he wants to take my place. He doesn´t even contemplate it, just dismisses the offer, so eager is he for the game to run smoothly even once he has been abandoned. Like watching a beetle on its back, its a small drama that stays with me above all other memories of the villa.
From one abandoned building to the next, in Buenos Aires I visit El Ateneo, a theatre that is now a bookshop, its range of offerings experienced like a visit to Willy Wonka´s chocolate art factory. This is what every dinner party vampire wishes the inside of their brain looked like, from the beautiful domed mural overhead, to the myriad of books covering the stalls area, to the 20s jazz pattering away and to the coffee shop on the stage countering with the Rolling Stones. Although the music is soft amongst the sound of pages being turned, there is a deafening performance taking place here; an unseen chorus line is screaming "look how much we deliver at once!". Impressive though it is, the effect is like white noise, and I leave unable to digest anything that I have just seen, heard or read. Perhaps Augustus Galoop, in the immediate aftermath of falling in that chocolate river, felt something similar.
The worst ten minutes I have spent in Buenos Aires come whilst waiting for empanadas inside the city´s smallest parilla. It is immediately clear that I´ve made a mistake - an American girl with the loudest, harshest voice I have ever heard sits at the counter spooning papas into her mouth and extolling the merits of US airport security. An English guy sits next to The Mouth, apparently trying to collect the flecks of spit that fall. He will later pool them and drink them as an elexir of life. The old man behind the counter exchanges a glance with me and steadily turns up the radio, but the song that swims to the surface is ´Simply the Best´. The Mouth clocks this development, and pauses in her onslaught to smile a satanic smile, victorious in the knowledge that the song has vindicated her argument. Meanwhile, the old man at the counter asks his colleague for a bag too sharply, and the latter responds my picking up a pair of tongs and waving them under the old man´s face. They start to argue, my empanadas lie forgotten on the counter. I´m wondering whether I can get to them before The Mouth finishes chewing and commences fire with me in striking distance. The English boy has just asked for her opinion on health care. I make a dash, leaving money on the counter and feeling a heat that could be the grill or possibly the white hot heat that precedes a nuclear explosion. I get the hell out of there and into heaven - the street outside - skipping for joy as the parilla explodes behind me in a fit of noise, stilll shuddering with the knowledge that She was only operating on half strength.
My experiences are often unintelligible to me until a good deal of time has passed. Occasionally, however, I am ambushed. Sitting on Adri´s balcony watching her paint, listening to 'Codex´, Thom Yorke´s latest gift, those heavy piano chords feel like they´re being rolled towards me by the achingly slow movements of the breeze. The taste of the peach in my mouth is just the tip of all the other sensations unfolding around and inside of me, and it seems oddly like existing within the sweetest of memories. I live for those oddities.

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