Toco tu boca - Julio Cortázar

Toco tu boca, con un dedo toco el borde de tu boca, voy dibujándola como si saliera de mi mano, como si por primera vez tu boca se entreabriera, y me basta cerrar los ojos para deshacerlo todo y recomenzar, hago nacer cada vez la boca que deseo, la boca que mi mano elige y te dibuja en la cara, una boca elegida entre todas, con soberana libertad elegida por mí para dibujarla con mi mano en tu cara, y que por un azar que no busco comprender coincide exactamente con tu boca que sonríe por debajo de la que mi mano te dibuja.

Me miras, de cerca me miras, cada vez más de cerca y entonces jugamos al cíclope, nos miramos cada vez más de cerca y nuestros ojos se agrandan, se acercan entre sí, se superponen y los cíclopes se miran, respirando confundidos, las bocas se encuentran y luchan tibiamente, mordiéndose con los labios, apoyando apenas la lengua en los dientes, jugando en sus recintos donde un aire pesado va y viene con un perfume viejo y un silencio. Entonces mis manos buscan hundirse en tu pelo, acariciar lentamente la profundidad de tu pelo mientras nos besamos como si tuviéramos la boca llena de flores o de peces, de movimientos vivos, de fragancia oscura. Y si nos mordemos el dolor es dulce, y si nos ahogamos en un breve y terrible absorber simultáneo del aliento, esa instantánea muerte es bella. Y hay una sola saliva y un solo sabor a fruta madura, y yo te siento temblar contra mí como una luna en el agua.



El beso
Pero el amor esa palabra
A un dios desconocido
Del colorado al amarillo 
Reunión con un círculo rojo 
La protección inútil
el tubo de dentífrico
Tu corazón desconcertado

El dólar blue hoy se vendía hasta 142 pesos en las cuevas del Conurbano bonaerense, donde los arbolitos y cueveros se hacían el día ante la sostenida demanda del billete en el mercado ilegal.

This I read in a publication. Let me first loosely translate it as if I were Google:

The blue dollar today was being sold for 142 pesos in caves of the urban core, where little trees and cave dwellers were having their day with the sustained  demand for paper cash in the illegal market.

A better translation would be:

The black market dollar was being sold for 142 pesos in the Buenos Aires city centre by the motionless men at city corners (thus little trees) who dealt from offices called caves. They were having a heyday because of the high demand for US Dollars.

Since I can remember, (1965) while as a conscript of the Argentine Navy I would every once in while change some of my saved US dollars with arbolitos who would stand at corners of Calle Corrientes. Most now (and a recent development of arbolitas of the female kind) are on the busy pedestrian mall of Calle Florida. When we were last in Buenos Aires in September 2019 we would change our $50 US Dollars for pesos (nowbody would arrest you and you are never cheated) for 65 pesos. Note that these blue dollars are now at 142.

Some say that when Diego Maradona was asked about the black market dollar that he answered that he did not care if they were black, green or blue.

It was in 1966 when I passed by a beautiful shoe store called López Taibo on Calle Corrientes. I spotted  a beautiful pair of brown leather boots. I entered the store in my sailor uniform (as sailors we were paid the equivalent of one US Dollar a month since the pay standard had not been changed since 1902 or thereabouts.). I asked a very serious man to show me the pair. He instantly said,  “Are you sure you are in the right store?,” and he stared at my uniform. From a pocket I removed a 100 US Dollar bill. I left with the boots and lots of change.

Sometime in the late 80s or perhaps in another trip in the 90s I went back to Argentina. Lopez Taibo was still on Calle Corrientes but in a much smaller space. My previously purchased boots no longer fit me. I wanted a new pair. I went in the story and the same man was still there. He asked for my name and came back with my foot measurements. I left the store with a new pair of boots that were still a bargain.

  

Ilse Taylor Hable

Cameron Wilson plays Billy Joel's Vienna

More Cameron Wilson

A croissant (UK: /ˈkrwʌsɒŋ/; US: /krwɑːˈsɒ̃/, /krəˈsɒnt/; French pronunciation: [kʁwa.sɑ̃] (About this soundlisten)) is a buttery, flaky, viennoiserie pastry of Austrian origin, named for its historical crescent shape. Croissants and other viennoiserie are made of a layered yeast-leavened dough. The dough is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, then rolled into a sheet, in a technique called laminating. The process results in a layered, flaky texture, similar to a puff pastry.

Wikipedia

Or in a nutshell: The croissant was invented in Vienna after the victory of the Holy League against the Turks in 1683.

In my humble opinion as an Argentine I believe that the best croissants are to be had in Buenos Aires. Here is a photo of my friend Roberto Baschetti about to enjoy this Argentine version called a “medialuna”. What is especially good is that they are slightly sweet. I believe they are coated with egg white and sugar before baking. There are two kind of medialunas, those made with butter and those with lard. The latter are crunchy and delicious if dipped into a café con leche. In the photograph below the mediaslunas de grasa or lard are the pair closest to Baschetti.

For me the first occurrence of the place Vienna happened in my Buenos Aires boyhood when my mother went to the corner grocery store to buy Salchichas Viena, or Vienna sausages in a tin.

My knowledge of the place and of its people faded but was reborn around 1959 when I would go to a coffee shop on Florencia and Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City and to sit down and order a café vienés. This was strong coffee with a large dollop of whipped cream.

Austria and its capital Vienna has been mostly off the charts for me since except perhaps learning about the Austrian/Hungarian Empire in Brother Hubert’s world history class at St. Edward’s High School in Austin.

But Austria and Vienna were suddenly in my awareness when my friend and compadre Andrew Taylor (he is the godfather of my oldest daughter Alexandra) married a tall Austrian woman, Ilse Hable in the early 70s.

Since then we have seen both of them in our visits to Mexico and we will soon visit them in Guadalajara where they live when the pandemic is over. Hable is an artist and she painted my likeness recently. I asked her if she had ever painted a selfie. She did and promises to paint another with a wider background to show her Mexican roots.

There is another connection that we have with Vienna. We have a fully restored, 100 year-old Chickering baby grand piano. I have been told that there is a Chickering in Vienna at the Franz Liszt Museum.

And then there is this wonderful citation of Vienna in a solo violin version by Cameron Wilson to a Billy Joel composition called Vienna.