Death to the Blank Side: Subway Passes

De-blank-ifying the back side of my Buenos Aires subway passes.

Currently (still) Reading:
Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

Currently Listening To:
Song: Good Night Wish (iTunes)
Artist: These United States (myspace)

Sketch of the Day | Congreso

A few days ago the power went out in our apartment building so, with computer and home sitting silent and black, I went outside and sketched the Congreso building. It is a structure I see everyday and nearly everyday I think "man I gotta paint or draw that big badass green dome." Thank you "blackout" for making me sit down and finally draw the mutha'ucka.


Congreso + sunset + rainbow (taken Nov. 2009)

Currently (still) Reading:
Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

Currently Listening To:
Song: Mutha'uckas (iTunes)
Artist: Flight of the Conchords (myspace)

New Painting | Orange Crush Retrograde

In late 2009 I started a group of multi-paneled paintings called the Retrograde Series. The paintings are an exploration of the memories, questions, sights, sounds, tastes of my youth, and their juxtaposition against each other, and the world around me decades later.

With Orange Crush Retrograde I dive down that rabbit hole once more. A memory of sitting on a bar stool next to my Grandfather, feet dangling high above the floor drinking an Orange Crush soda, blends with a memory of hearing Madonna tell Dick Clark that she wanted to "rule the world". I wonder about the long and short term effects of war being a constant backdrop to the American paradigm, and that butts up against the fondness I had for my armies of little plastic men.

The composition is split into panels and cropped to exaggerate the idea that no one part of the composition is supposed to make a clear definitive conclusion about what the images mean as a whole. The hope is that something new exists for each viewer, and it is up to the individual to decide what answers exist within.

(See the first piece in the series, "Bazooka Retrograde", here)

Currently Reading:
Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

Currently Listening To:
Song: Ten Dead Dogs (iTunes)
Artist: Wild Sweet Orange (website)

Theme Songs

What song should play every time you enter a room? For example, Darth Vader had the Imperial March. Not bad. Makes me wonder...how awesome would it be if you walked into a room and everyone's cell phones started playing the theme song from The A-Team. Or if you were at the mall and every time you entered a new store Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) by the Eurythmics came on over the speakers. Ideally I'd want my theme song to change daily. Keep it fresh. In sync with the personality of the day.

I wonder all this because the other day as I walked into my gym Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen started playing on the stereo. Not exactly my first choice as theme songs go, but I couldn't help but stop and laugh. The first 4 minutes and 38 seconds of my workout were spent sitting idle on a weight room bench, just listening to the lyrics. It was maybe the first time I ever really listened to them. The most ironic part of this song starting to play upon my entrance was the fact that in the thirteen months I've been working out there I have never seen another American. No one there even really speaks English.

I would guess that ninety percent of the music that plays in my gym is American or British music, mostly from the 80's and 90's. Actually, if I'm walking down the streets in Buenos Aires that's the genre I often hear coming out of the storefronts as well. No matter how many times my ears are caressed by the likes of Cyndi Lauper and The Outfield down here though, it's always kind of weird on some level. Like I'm continuously walking through the soundtrack of my youth, but in South America...and it's 2010. The equation of it all doesn't add up in my head, but then again...maybe that's the exact formula needed for the perfect daily theme song.

Currently Reading:
Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

Currently Listening To:
Song: Radio Nowhere (iTunes)
Artist: Bruce Springsteen



For more on how I first ended up in Buenos Aires check out the first post of Harmony and Dissonance.

Bariloche or Bust

"Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean." - John Muir

We spent the week before Christmas in Bariloche, Argentina, a mountain town in the heart of the Andes. Surrounded by snow-capped mountains and lying in the heart of Argentina's Lake District, Bariloche has been dubbed by some as the Lake Tahoe of the South America. For Annie and I it stood as a reprieve from the sometimes maddening congestion of concrete, people and diesel air that is Buenos Aires. For me personally it was a chance to go out on a four day solo trek in the mountains.

25 Hour Bus Ride
25 hour bus ride.
Buenos Aires to Bariloche.
Concrete to mountains.
Height by floors
to height by altitude.
Rolling out across the plains,
and more plains.
Double decker bus.
Three meals of ham sandwiches,
and duche de leche cookies.
Into Patagonia
and the endless expanse of chaparral,
and nothing.
Nothing and dust.
Dust and cattle bones.
Cattle bones and powerlines.
Sticky sun-baked bus stations pass.
The windows feel warm.
We rock and sway.
Dip and curve,
through brick and tin towns.
Sporadic sleep.
Book pages turn.
Movies fill the monitors.
The first in English.
Then two in Spanish.
The last in Japanese?
And we're there.
Real. Mountain. Air.


It took us 25 hours by bus to get to Bariloche. My time there would highlighted by a solo excursion in the surrounding mountains. While Annie relaxed in town, my big green pack and I went off the grid on a four day trek that took me through forests, both dead and alive, and above the tree line in the rock and snow. It was the heart of the spring melt and flowing water was not only a near constant sound, but a frequent source for me to quench my thirst. I would spent two nights sleeping alongside clear blue alpine lakes, and one in the solitude of a damp and flowing green valley. Not only were the wooded valleys and snow capped mountains I traversed interesting, but so were the hikers from Austria, Germany, Scotland, Australia, Argentina and the United States that I met along the way.


Bariloche Hike - Day 1
We walk, pack laden.
Over gnarled stone
and through tombstone trees.
On the ridge we stop for water.
I hear only wind
and plastic bottles.
And then Danny's harmonica.
Dead forest blues.


All and all it was a solid trip. One of physical endurance and mental rejuvenation. Lungs filled. Thoughts expanded. I left wanting more.

Check out all the photos from the trip on flickr here.


The book that made the hike with me:
The Best Short Stories of Jack London
by Jack London

Currently Listening To:
Song: Baltimore Blues, No. 1
Artist: Dear Tick (myspace) (iTunes)

For more on how I first ended up in Buenos Aires check out the first post of Harmony and Dissonance.

Sketch of the Day: San Telmo Bass

The above sketch and haiku were inspired by a visit to the big Sunday market in San Telmo, a barrio of Buenos Aires.

San Telmo market
Street performer serenade.
Cobbled and alive.

Currently Reading:
Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

Currently Listening To:
Song: Zebra
Artist: John Butler Trio (myspace) (iTunes)

For more on how I first ended up in Buenos Aires check out the first post of Harmony and Dissonance.

Sketch of the Day: La Boca

The above sketch was inspired by a visit to the neighborhood of La Boca in Buenos Aires, specifically the area of it known as Caminito.

La Boca
Next to the murky waters
of an old port canal
we walk on cobblestone
through corrugated tin colors.
Accordians and meaty grills
waft in the damp air.
Vendors line the streets
selling tourist trinkets.
I look for something
amidst the pulsing square.
Something that isn't frill.
Finally I find it
hovering like a ghost
in the reverence
of an old man
and his polished violin.

Currently Reading:
Fight Club
by Chuck Palahniuk

Currently Listening To:
Song: Juicy
Artist: Emily Wells (myspace) (iTunes)

For more on how I first ended up in Buenos Aires check out the first post of Harmony and Dissonance.