The Marvelous Maria Beatriz and I spent Christmas with our family in Buenos Aires, freed for a moment from the gravity of American madnesses, with sunny skies and 90-degree lazy afternoons.  Some thoughts, some observations, a little picada.

La Nena at the Teatro Colon

The Teatro Colon, built at the turn of the 20th century, displays its ornamented bulk between Avenida Cerrito and Avenida Libertad, fueled primarily by funding from the government of Buenos Aires.  (Imagine that -- a government-supported arts organization that produces high art for its citizens -- what a radical concept!)  A good friend of ours slipped us a pair of tickets to El Cascanueces (The Nutcracker), and on the eve of New Year's Eve we sat in the seventh row center watching the definitely weird story of Drosselmeyer's infatuation for Clara surrounded by gilt, brocade, sculpted plaster, five tiers of seating above the orchestra (the last of which, ironically, is named Paraiso, or Paradise -- the cheap seats), and a packed house.  Of which next to us sat La Nena.

Perhaps two years old, curly-haired and chubby-cheeked, La Nena had brought her grandmother along as a chaperon because in these parlous times in Buenos Aires, it makes sense to pack a little protection.  Also, the abuela's lap formed a nice soft platform for getting high enough to see the action.

And watch it she did.  Maria Beatriz and I divided our attention between the action on stage and the action on her face.  Focused, open, uncritical, she absorbed everything.  She "ooh'd" when something opulent on stage unfolded, she "aah'd" when the dancers sliced the air, she clapped when the moment called for clapping.  No suspension of disbelief for her, no arranging of critical faculties -- her whole being believed, without restraints or boundaries.  The stage did not mimic magic -- magic simply reigned, as common as air, and only a stupid person or an adult would believe any differently.

After the performance, she escorted her abuela home, foregoing a review of the performance in exchange for toddling through the air of a soft summer evening limned by a half-moon rising.

Ah, we thought, if only we could -- but then we stopped ourselves, reverting to critical mode, ruing that one could not return to such a state of innocence, that a more refined appreciation allowed for -- then we unstopped ourselves and let the gift we had just witnessed gift itself fully to our spirits: a clean sweet direct love of what the performers had tendered which reflected back to the performers the clean sweet direct love that had moved them at some placental moment to devote themselves to an art and to art itself (no matter how frayed that first love had become because of necessity, age, or regret).  Therefore, not to go back to innocence but forward to it, to move past sorrow, frustration, decline (the sediments of adulthood) to what fuels the heart with the heat it needs to beat and hunger and nourish and cleanse against all odds, which has to be love no matter how Hallmark'd or treacly or naïve or dangerous that sounds.  How to begin to remember how to get there when we have spent so much time forgetting how to get there -- a good a beginning as any, I suppose: the face of (and the memory of) La Nena.

Felices Fiestas

A faux-controversy swirled its muck around just before we left for Argentina: whether "Christians" should boycott stores that say "happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," as if "Christians" (that is, the noun form of the adjective that describes about 90% of all religious denominations in the United States) lay under siege and Christianity gasped for its last breath on the dissecting table of secular humanism.  No matter what curmudgeon'd liars like Bill O'Reilly say, an overwhelming religious majority cannot also be an endangered and embattled minority -- but, then again, truth has never had much luck against the illogic of O'Reilly, Dobson, Robertson, and their slimy ilk.

In Argentina, an overwhelmingly Christian country, guess what gets exchanged as the dominant holiday-wishing phrase: "Felices Fiestas," or, roughly, "Happy Holidays."   No one there mutters in conspiratorial tones about secular poisons, no outrage pours from the pages of La Nacion or Clarín -- people know what's what and they go about their gift-buying and exchanging with the sweetness and warmth that Argentines trade whenever they meet one another.

From outside its borders, the United States comes across as a very disconnected country -- part Oz, but also part Ozymandias, part Xanadu, but also part xenophobe, a large unruly child running around who, for the most part, could be tolerated except for the fully loaded automatic assault rifle in its grip.  At a time of war, with our fellow citizen-soldiers being chewed up by policies made by liars, cheats, and theocrats, we choose to worry about whether "happy holidays" and the tolerance embedded in the phrase signals the end of Christianity.  This kind of disconnect results in such savage stupidities as the Christian emperors in Washington inaugurating themselves for $40 million while the soldiers continue to die in unarmored vehicles for a blighted unChristian imperialism.  We live in a heart-sick country -- and silence only compounds the disease, whether that silence comes from the liars keeping mum about their complicities or the stupid distractions of a Bill O'Reilly.

Petards

On Christmas Eve ("Noche Buena"), and again on New Year's Eve, when the clock ticks from 11:59 to midnight, fireworks erupt everywhere.  For days beforehand, people buy their "fuegos artificiales" from stores in cities right down to temporary kiosks set up by the side of the road, and when the minute hand slips to fully vertical, the sky cracks and spits.

I saw two things I had never seen before:
On Christmas Eve, at Maria Beatriz's brother's house for an asado with all the family, we all stood on the street watching the display when I saw an orange glow cross the sky -- and then another, and another, and still another, ginger fire tracking low across the sky like carroty UFOs -- "fire globes," paper balloons heated by a fire that lifted and carried them on the wind.   Yes, I know, the safety considerations -- where did they land, which roofs or fields did they set on fire (Argentines can sometimes be lax about safety, such as commuter trains or busses running with open doors and bicyclists using the break-down lane of major highways for training purposes) -- but with those to one side for moment, the long horizontal traverse of the dusky balloons made a soft, almost Zen counterpoint to the vertical brevity of sparks and whistles and artillery booms: to burn a little bit slower and shine a little less brightly, but also to travel a little bit farther and at an approachable altitude before disappearing into the darkness. How very mature.

And then, in Sao Paolo, on New Year's Eve, where we had a two-hour stopover on the way back to New York.  The plane lifted off at midnight, and as we climbed over the city, we could see the multiple explosions of fireworks from every direction, these spurts of light that looked like ambitious fireflies or the punctuation of camera flashes in a sports stadium.  Light after light burning itself out in color and sound and brilliant illumination.  How very brash and bold.

Are there lessons here?  Yes.