San Telmo

San Telmo is the barrio where I live here in Buenos Aires, and it doesn’t get many tourists on the weekdays.  On Sundays, you’re as likely to hear English as Spanish on the street, especially at the antiques fair, the ferria.  On weekdays, I’ve seen lots of school kids wearing what looks like lab coats—perhaps they have the world’s most intensive biology-training program for elementary school-age kids.  Often, you see huge groups of them at the same time, but somehow without giving the impression that they’re on a field trip.

If we are judged by the company we keep...

...now would be a good time to judge me.  I have an essay along with three of the other fantastic writers who took part in the 2010 Sozopol Fiction Seminars.  It's at Fiction Writers Review and you can read it online here.

On Cameras and Seeing

The second most popular question I’ve been getting, after “how are you doing?” and the like, is some iteration of, “Do you have any photos?”  The answer is no, as I said in my previous post.  When I have photos, it’s because someone else has taken the photos and sends them to me, or links me to them on Facebook, or something like that.  I don’t have a camera.  The evolution of camera-carrying through my life is something like this:

1)     I didn’t have a camera because my parents did.

2)     I didn’t have a camera because I didn’t think of it.

3)     I had a camera and took many worthless photos with it.

4)    I had a camera and took only a few photos with it, still mostly worthless.

5)     I carried a camera, took no photos, felt guilty about it, and also worried it would get broken or stolen.

6)    I stopped carrying a camera.

I was going to write more about this topic, until I saw this , which said most of what I had to say, and in addition was funny (and a little cruel) about it.  The shorter version goes something like this: while I believe a camera helps some people to see, for me, in the vast majority of cases, it has the opposite effect.

Why I don't post pictures...

Because I don't have a camera.

Why I don't have a camera will be the subject of a future post.