taxi rides

I think I could justify blowing all my birthday money away on taxi rides through Buenos Aires. When you know you are getting cheated out of your money, you are at least seeing routes and buildings and landscapes of buildings and people that are all new. Even though transportation can take so much of one's day, it is easy to forgot how very big Buenos Aires is. I saw a different part of the city today, which, once I was at my destination, where I have been before, was no longer different, but the route, which on first thought made no sense to me, brought me there as if it were a different place. I saw a neighborhood, and the lines connecting it to mine, as reconstructed.

I didn't see the underbelly of any neighborhood, but I saw coming from a different geographical angle, coming through from a different street via a route that I didn't even know was possible. And the ride was spectacular! The cabdriver could see that I was questioning his every turn. He repeatedly try to put me at ease, explaining his reasoning (which was very clear, but still seemed unbelievable to me. It was later in the afternoon, probably around 5:30 pm, which is one of my favorite times of day because of how the sunlight becomes really yellow, not just light, but a light with color, and it changes the colors of the buildings and creates shadows and reflections. I always loved walking through Central Park at that time, after 4ish in the afternoon in spring or fall. Perhaps it is one of the most flattering hours for any city, although in Buenos Aires there is something for each hour.

I always loved taking a taxi across central park, from the West Side back home to the Upper-East, at night with the window cracked open. I would feel like I was in some scene from The Great Gatsby, absorbing the grandeur of New York. In Buenos Aires you don't fell the arcing turn in it's elegant half loop, the suavity of the return, you are always subject to the chaos of traffic, or just the possibility of chaos. A violent chaos, but not necessarily violent, as in something will hurt you, but the potential for everything to go off plan. There is so much life in this city, and so much passion, maybe because it's a life that is really incorporated as constant survival instinct, a sensation that everything could go wrong. Preparation is so useless.

I am yet to take a taxi in which the seat belt works, and every time I test to see if it does I feel like I have "tourist" painted across my forehead. A true porteña would probably never even think of the seat belt. I go through this whole neurosis of: I am being such a foreigner to care about the seat belt, if something happens and I die and I could have survived had I just strapped myself in, my father's I told you so will haunt me in the afterlife, and so the seat belt becomes this weird cultural encounter between two mentalities: that which tries to be ready and reduce damage, and that which says, fuck it, this shitty car is going to go really fast and pay no attention to the traffic etiquette and I may as well resign myself to that fact and enjoy the adrenaline. The seat belt betrays me in its inability to even attempt to save through its inadequacy and it betrays me desire to keep a low profile, pretend I am like everybody else here, not be so foreign.