The Cats of Buenos Aires

The cats of Buenos Aires slink lithe along the walls of courtyards or stretch in the sun of windy garden paths or stroll in the cobblestoned cemetery avenues where their keen perceptions mingle with the moldy steam of Recoleta's aristocratic dead.

The cats of Buenos Aires are ragged but distinguished. They know hard times--a bent tail, a missing eye or limb--but their fur isn't so matted. Their eyes have a softness. Some will skeptically allow you to pet them.

The city shrugs and offers what it can. It bears them no malice. It lets them slink or sleep where they will, lets them yowl and shriek all night in their territorial spats and takes it in as just one more twangy chord tossed atop the smoggy urban song.

I've been three weeks in Buenos Aires and it still feels endless. I walk and walk and walk all over and Barrios blend into Barrios like watercolors that creep up faintly, intermingle, then deepen into distinctive shades at their cores.

I see New York everywhere. Either because they share a real similarity or because tossing myself into such a vast and disparate novelty has sent my mind scrambling for the only megacity blueprint it owns.

It's like New York without bridges, flattened and sprawled but more even and relentless in its density and bustle. It is surprisingly geographically intuitive. It has a strong consistency to its grid. Though half the intersections lack street signs, I can wander quite randomly without feeling lost. It lacks the linearity and compartmentalization of Manhattan. It is more like Brooklyn in that sense (thinking of Flatbush Ave in its Crown Heights/Clinton Hill/Bed Stuy-ish realms), but with an urban intensity closer to Manhattan. It lacks NYC's Deco gleam of purpose and efficiency. Its skyscrapers are gargantuan but sequestered to a relatively small strip and look a bit awkward standing off to the side over there, ogling the center with a thinly disguised jealousy.

A drunk girl from Texas asked me on my third or fourth night in my first almost-oh-fuck situation (while I'll get to in future posts): "What the hell are you doing here at the bottom of the world?" It wasn't some weird geographic slur--I knew what she meant. Argentina: a 'developing' but relatively prosperous nation, a geopolitically neutral nation whose gaze is set primarily inward, whose fears and troubles and ambitions are primarily, if a bit self-consciously, local. European roots have inspired a love of high culture and debonair style, but aren't truly looked to for guidance, just mixed in with a dash of yearning and a dash of nostalgia and a deeper unspoken conviction that it's better off this way--we're happy enough here at the bottom of the earth, 'overlooked', but too busy and bustling and dancing and in love to care.

Setting the city even further apart is the official autonomy of Capital Federal, the province of Buenos Aires. It governs itself with only selective oversight from the Argentine government. The term city-state comes to mind. I think it sounds about right. Maybe too limited. Buenos Aires, for cats and people, is more than its own state, it is its own world.