A Pox on Roses, Too

Curmudgeonly and cantankerous in Buenos Aires...

Joel Bowman, powerless to resist the urge, from Buenos Aires, Argentina...

The problem with living in a city like Buenos Aires is inspiration... one can hardly escape it! 

Barely two weeks have passed since we returned to town and already we find ourselves intolerably engrossed in all manner of productive endeavors. Whatever happened to aimless wanderings... to casual café-hopping... to loafing about the city’s myriad plazas, parques and bosques? 

To... flâneuring? 

Yesterday, in a fit of industrious agitation, we downed tools and set off for a do-nothing stroll through Paseo El Rosedal, a nearby garden notorious for its layabout picnickers, indolent interlopers and gooey-eyed romantics. 

There, we reckoned, we could stealthily take our place among the dippy daydreamers, the resolutely careless, the ardently indifferent and the downright lackadaisical. 

The weather at the outset was perfect for the occasion: unremarkable. We even abandoned our digital devices, so as not to be distracted from our project of determined apathy. From disinterest we would not be deterred!

No sooner had we set off when our senses were assailed. The herbaceous aroma of sizzling, fatty chorizo, wafting over from the street vendors’ carts... peels of unbridled glee from young scooters and cyclists as they weaved daring paths through the sauntering throng... the crepuscular sky, unapologetic in twilight glory, draped in pink and orange chiffon, preparing for a lusty evening... 

Head down and face long we resisted, forging along in dull and monochromatic drudgery, each step more resolute than the last.

Then a gaggle of giggling geese, criss crossing our personal path; nonchalant, aloof, pleading cutesy innocence with their each and every waddle. And overhead, herons and hawks, kites and doves, coots and cowbirds and caracaras, too. A flight, a flock, a fleet. Our mind was off and racing... A dopping, a diving, a daggle... a bunch, a brood, a brace... a bed a battling a... a... blast it!... a badelynge! 

Still we plowed ahead, hoeing our miserable row, blinding blinkers drawn. And still the assault continued, merciless and mean. 

Down by the crystalline water leans a honey-haired nymph, staring with longing eyes at her chiseled city swain. Their blanket strewn with forget-me-nots, the skyline rises upside down from the shimmering surface between. 

Whoosh!!! go the rollerblades under an ‘80’s era escapee, racing through the parklife crowd in a blur of hypercolor and tattoo ink and hifi-blasted reggaeton.  

Splash!!! go the paddles of the steamer, biped-powered, churning up the reeds and murk in turbid green and browns. 

Squark!!! goes a quartet of preteen gossip girls sitting two astern, two to prow, lanky limbs splayed over the gunwale, lithe fingers tracing the aqueous firmament.

And here we’ve come – unbeknownst... involuntary... lily-white... impeccant, too – upon a Japanese bridge in defiant latticework, aflame in bougainvillea, red, orange and, adding slander to our suffering, brilliant, unrepentant magenta. Astride from shore to shore, we ascend her graceful arc, only to discover before us, Paseo El Rosedal in full bloom, unfurling at our feet. 

At last, our defenses slain, arms attrited, crank and grump grown slack, we draw deep one last heaving sigh... only to find it spiked with springtime effulgence, laced with buttered popcorn clouds, tainted with the gentle click-clack train, chugging in faint silhouette towards the spectacular molten horizon. 

Our sortie resoundingly routed, we head for home defeated... with nary left of the whole sordid affair, save for the aforementioned description. Blast it all to hell. 

Until next week...

Joel Bowman

P.S. All photos taken at earlier dates by dear, patient, ever-sanguine wifey. Yes, Paseo El Rosedal looks like this pretty much all the time. Pssh.