El Gato Negro

The wood lining the walls of this tiny tea shop is stained with years of fragrant steam. The color of the cabinets change as you get closer to the bar, more worn and almost darker as the line of tea-pots sing in surprising synchronization. Trying to take in some self-directed courses on argentine history, i leaf through my book and let my eyes settle on the beginning with its conquest. I wonder why table manners and warfare etiquette never crossed paths. Centuries of fighting, plagues, domination, slaughter, scandle, humiliation, and all those fantastic little add ons that come with the "civilization" process could have been easily side-stepped if the royalty and generals just changed their perspective. Treaties i guess function in a similar fashion as the i-split-you-choose policy that us out-to-eaters are so accustomed to. But to flip-side this proposal, it could also make dining a dangerous experience. Hands bloody from guerrilla fork attacks, plates doubling as ceramic armor, and in the end you're left with a torn and soggy croissant that nobody really wants anyways. Maybe it is better to leave things in their current state of being.

Today's rain is impressive to say the least. It falls from all directions, pouring down against this broken borrowed umbrella, pounding up from the pavement and working its way through the threading of my jeans, and perfectly perpendicular when every carless car speeds over the shabby excuse for a drain that leaves muddy puddles to creep and slosh their way onto the sidewalk. Reading the awning aloud, i duck into "El Gato Negro" hoping for some dreadlocked musicians or maybe the jumpy superstitious type. The gentleman behind the counter is unfortunately neither, or so i type-cast by his rimless glasses and matching grey hair/sweater vest. Something floral, i think: i could use a little pseudo-sunshine. As i wait for a man too mature for that goofy red apron he's sporting to bring me my fruity tea, i feel the pounding guilt of reading in english, but the cover screams "Femenismo!" with its inverted punctuation that blogspot is not equipped to type, so i file this under semi-spanish and continue on my way. Two kids walk in, alongside a gorgeous portena woman who i disappointingly gather to be their mother, waving matching toys that light and spin and play an instrumental version of "Eye of the Tiger" at a speed that only Alvin and the Chipmunks could sing to. Each is perfectly unaware of the other and completely content pressing and lighting and conducting an offbeat round of their techno throwbacks, never long enough to actually rise "up to the challenge of our rival". The noise causes me to retreat, as it has for the past two weeks, but this place i was once so comfortable in is now new and flashing and in overdrive. My mind has begun to make mental loopty loops around its rusty metal frame like the afterhours of an amusement park open only to the carnies who work it and the locals who bribe their way in. This tiny fairground that i've swept and kept my entire life turns inside out, an exact negative of everything that i'm assured of. But this new point of view makes way for new combinations of ideas and thoughts, and i look at the carnies around me and i hear the children waving their toys and begging their hot mom for another cotton candy and to be quite honest i'm liking what i see.