By
Sydney Solis
This summer, while the prince and princess are visiting with the family of their late King father in a the land of a single star, Prince Pepe is with the Queen's father, King Albert the Good, frolicking in a large yard in the country and chasing a new cat.
Meanwhile, the Queen has been on a long journey, far, far away from the desert kingdom. She has gone to a place on the other side of the world. And although she misses her dear prince and princess and Prince Pepe, this separation has allowed her to resurrect her life. Too long she has felt the pressures of the desert kingdom closing in around her, sucking her body and heart’s energies, choking off her creative flow. She has visited the Great Tree again, became the High Priestess again, dipped into the well again and removed a toad that was blocking the well and a rat that was gnawing at the roots of the tree. Life is real and joyful, flowing and peaceful and rid of the shadows past. That’s because the Queen of Bohemia has found her true home. Like an ugly duckling that sensed something terribly wrong about her prior kingdom and battling a thousand demons, she realizes there was never anything wrong with her. It’s just a matter of geography. She realizes now that The Queen of Bohemia Lives in Buenos Aires.
I can almost see Eva Peron’s grave from the balcony of my ninth floor apartment. She is dead. Long dead. But I am just beginning to live.
I have been in Buenos Aires for over two weeks, and I feel so at home. I have been staying in a little apartment with a balcony that overlooks Recoleta Cemetary where Evita is buried among the dead generals, presidents and elite of centuries past. Every day and night their elaborate-tombed metropolis of marble and concrete scattered across four blocks reminded me that they are dead, and I am alive.
I spent the first week in a whirlwind of getting used to the city and its plethora of sites – statues of winged angels and horses, stunning art deco and turn-of-the-century architecture richly engraved, curved and ornate, all exalting the human spirit. They settle in like seeds planted in the human soul to sprout great ideas and imagination. And a new future. Like something is being reborn. Like the lingering era of military and men murdering monstrously in their fringy uniforms is finaly being snipped away, like dead hair on the stylist’s floor.
There is a different fashion sense in Buenos Aires. Of course I love it, whereas before I had to shop in thrift stores in the U.S. to find anything worthy of my Bohemianesque-esh-ness. Of course it's winter, everybody is bundled up in scarves and hats and gloves. I feel it’s rather balmy, like a decent Colorado day in Spring. The people are into coffee, tango, the World Cup, psychotherapy, art, music, books and opera. It’s the city with the most psychotherapists per capita in the world. People aren’t ashamed to get mental health like Americans are. Bookstores are everywhere, and not a Barnes and Noble to be seen! Very few chains or imports are here at all, as everything from food to underwear is made within its borders. Everything is original and artisan, from handmade chocolates and pastries in the ubiquitous cafeterías and coffee shops on every corner, to hand-made shoes, hand-knit multicolored sweaters, artisan pasta. Buildings mostly were designed by French and Italian architects, and the best apartments are the old ones, crying out the many stories and songs that the stories in its rooms - with high ceilings and long windows shielded with shutters - have heard.
Surely the landscape saves my soul. Artists and colorful buildings flourish, and my soul was warmed by the Bohemian clatter in San Telmo on Sundays in the outdoor antique fair, with tango dancers, artists, musicians, performance artists, food and the incredible act of being alive.
Bohemian Me. That is my ancestory. Card-carrying of the boat. It’s not about the stuff, but what kind of music the stuff can create. That’s our motto. Give me life or give me death, and not some plastic thing. In my life I have been the ugly ducking, with a European father who survived a concentration camp on Java during the war, and nobody could share that story. It was so far away from anybody’s shore. It was shut down and silenced under the taunts of wealthy girls in shirts with alligators over their hearts. And over my heart I wore a flower embroidered over a grease stain on a dress bought for a quarter at a garage sale.
In Buenos Aires the stain is beautiful. It’s so beautiful it clicks with every step on the pavement, every flicker of conversation in the shop window. Here I am like the ugly ducking, Cinderella, finally finding out how beautiful she really is, and that she was never ugly, she was just stuck in some really ugly places with some equally ugly people don’t even uglier things to each other. I realize that I was just misplaced and separated from my tribe. There was an error in cognition, an affliction of the mind, causing delusion of the true Self.
After so many rebukes of who I am, I have found my tribe. That’s why the Queen of Bohemia Lives in Buenos Aires. Horns are honking. Argentina must have one another game in the World Cup.
I remember my late husband, Frank. He scolded me if I cut my meat and used the fork in my left hand to eat it. He bought me a book, Emily Post’s Etiquette. After dutifully reading it, I realized that I was eating the European way, the way my Dutch father modeled at the table when I was a child. The American way is to cut your meat, then pass the fork to the right hand, as opposed to saving the step and keeping it in the left hand. I remember he scolded me if a flake of instant oatmeal spilled onto the counter from out of the little paper serving bag it was enclosed in while being poured into a bowl. He criticized me if I chomped on a chip too loudly, and when a funny voice or expressive face came out he’d say, “Why can’t you just say something normal? It’s like living with Carol Burnett.”
I remember, a KOA campground, somewhere maybe in California, 1977. I am 10 years old. My older sister, younger sister and I go to brush our teeth. It’s busy with other campers in the small women’s public bathroom. We wait our turn in line to go to the sinks. We brush our teeth. I brush and brush and brush. I have a blue, plastic toothbrush shaped like a gun. Toothpaste foams all around my mouth, dripping down my chin. I brush and brush and brush. Women standing in line to use the sink look at me funny. I don’t understand what they are looking at. The foaming mess all around my mouth. I am just brushing my teeth, lady. I use my hands to wash away the foam with the running water. My hands become a cup to catch the water and rinse my mouth and spit. The funny looks get harsher. Because we didn’t have a towel. We used our pajama sleeves.
My sisters and I leave. My oldest sister whispers, “All those ladies with their neat little cups to wash their mouths out. We don’t need any of that.” Our mother never taught us to brush our teeth. She never taught us to comb our hair, or dress ourselves, or carry a towel or clean anything well or correctly. But she did teach us to travel, to go for it and explore.
Perhaps my sister said that to protect us. Us rag tag children in old garage sale clothing. The Six Straubs from Boulder, Colorado packed into a little fishing camper trekking to California for a family camping trip. Baptized Catholic but have a Jewish grandfather who died in a force labor mine outside of Tokyo, and a father who espouses reincarnation and a mother who writes poetry when she is not screaming at you in the middle of the night or embarrassing you in public. Driving the long roads across the West, we hear the news on the little AM radio in the truck cab about Elvis’s death while on the road somewhere in Nevada. We snap pictures from a little film camera at every monument. We are having fun. Even though we are different. Bohemians and smart Dutch Indonesians. Even though we don’t have much at all, we have fun anyway. Because we are survivors and surviving has taught us how to live.
Everything is a bit worn in Buenos Aires, very authentic, Bohemian. It’s not perfect. Not made yesterday and not requiring a car to drive. (The Gulf Oil spill is still gushing, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug.) There is the gentleness of antiquity here and a wearing down that softens the harshness of the world and lets you rest. It makes me feel at home, even though my childhood home was squalor and clutter, and my grown up home is funky, eclectic.
I cringe at the new strip malls and asphalt parking lots that overtake the Colorado prairie. I was horrified to stop by my assistant’s apartment near the Flatiron’s Mall to drop off materials before I left. My father called the mall, “The Last Mall of the Kali-Yug,” and I understand now why. This old model is from the Old Oil Regime and kills the human spirit. These neat little planned commercial hubs have proletariat housing units surrounding them, which I liken to Communist China housing blocks. From the highway they look rather decent. They were only built 10 years ago about. I drove around lost in the labyrinth of grey streets and beige buildings and wondered if I had taken a wrong turn and had ended up in Iraq instead this Suburbistan.
I found her apartment complex. One of three towering, enormous buildings that each look exactly the same as the other. Everybody’s home but nobody is there. You could walk for a while through nowhere, but you don’t bother to, so you drive in your car instead to beige mall or chain convenience store in the shape of a box to buy some kind of packaged, corporate food and bring it back to the cement compound to consume in front of a television.
The only other human beings I saw besides my assistant among these three massive compounds were some Indian women in pink saris near a doorway. There were some enormous courtyard areas of green grass. It begged for a community garden, park benches, street musicians or somebody selling candy, maybe even a child playing or I'll take screaming, ANYTHING remotely HUMAN or giving off life signals that was not herbacious. The hallway reminded me of movies I’ve seen of New York tenements. Ok, so she may be upset that I write this, but I’m doing my best to break her out of there! But this is what I was escaping, lest I die. Maybe many of you live in a city with great public transportation and works of art and amenities near you, but I have never had that. I’ve always had to drive and survive.
What I like about Argentina is that it’s inexpensive. I can live sustainably here and everybody pays cash and that's good because I'm on a cash basis now. The country went through an economic collapse in 2001 so they already know how to deal with life’s unexpected curvature shape. Here I can live in a great city and be able to rent an inexpensive apartment with everything included, like cable, phone and maid, what a deal! You can ride the bus for 25 cents. I got a nice haircut and color for $50, including tip, and my brows waxed for $2! Plus, food is fresh and all grown within the country. No hormones, antibiotics or factory farming!
The second week I settled down to do work, writing in coffee shops, meeting expats, connecting with community and possibilities. This afternoon I taught a meditation class to the social entrepreneurship called Programar. It trains 17-25-year-old slum residents to fill the IT jobs that abound in Argentina. I went to a fundraiser there recently and was so impressed. All I want to do is serve, so I got my chance. I did it all in Spanish! Even told a joke and they laughed! I hear everywhere that my Spanish is great. It feels good after all my obsessive years of hard work with language and sounds.
Earlier this week, I took the bus back to San Telmo. An indigenous man walked by me with the usual hippie, backpacker look. However, I wasn’t afraid when he started talking to me. He was from Peru, and going to sell his flutes and seed necklaces at the street fair. He said that when I walked by he could see my aura, “like a comet went by. I saw a trail of light and sparkles like a comet behind you.” We talked for a while. I could understand his Spanish very well, as I’ve spent time in Peru and Ecuador, and it was refreshing, since the Argentine accent is difficult for me to understand. And there were three policeman next to me by the time we reached the street corner. We talked for a long time, about the indigenous shamans, intuitive knowing, connecting with the cosmos. It was great to connect. The indigenous, like he, are so connected to the depths of the soul and the body.
I had to say goodbye temporarily, as I was expected at the Programar fundraiser. I hooked up with him again afterwards and he gave me a Mayan astrology reading. We went to an internet café and he looked the reading up with my birth date. I’m KA, the color is white, and it was pretty accurate in that I’m a writer, and to inspire people. It’s good to remember these things. Or be reminded. The Queen sometimes forgets and those little doubts and fears slip in. He wanted to do another reading about getting stuck energy out of the body, but I begged off, saying I was tired (I was, and I’m not used to humid cold so started sweating in the café.) and that I wanted to get to the Puppet Museum before it closed. I’m glad I did, as my inner child delighted in the small, dark theater filled with the pattle and murmur of children and parents voices, which massaged the heart of my neglected childhood down to a laugh in the belly.
A few days ago I went to the Finca Ecologica Nueva Vrindavana in General Rodriquez, about 60 kilometeres outside of Buenos Aires in the country. It was pouring rain and cold. I had intended to stay two nights to get a feel for the place and see if I could bring my kids later. But after a sleepless night on a hard mattress in very rustic conditions listening to roosters at all hours, and after freezing by a small wood burning stove and being reminded that I just survived one of the longest, coldest winters in Colorado history and that I had come to Argentina in the WINTER, and there was a warm, soft bed waiting for me in Buenos Aires, I left early.
But it was not before enjoying the place immensely - the calm of nature, the French, Portuguese and British young travelers working at the farm. I toured a very soggy farm the next morning with a regular staff member who was Argentine. I looked at the cool crops growing in the vegetable garden, of cilantro, broccoli, and cabbage. They grew onions not to eat but as a pest repellent. Roaming cows, geese, a cat and neighboring chickens and roosters blow any Disney theme park away. I took an interesting yoga class, listening keenly for new Spanish yoga vocabulary, watched the movie What the Bleep do we Know for the 5th time in my life, and ate some serious vegetarian fare, a respite from the heavy carbs, confections and carne in the city.
I also got to visit with Krishna. We went to the temple. It was great to see the deities, Krishna and Radha, and be reminded that Krishna – that divine presence - is with you always. He’s that transcendental reality, the supreme reality behind your dualistic thoughts that produce this illusional reality. Connect and identify in that realm, then all fear, all karma, drops away. It is moksha. Like Christ there with you, you are never alone with the divine presence. You just wake up to it one day, and never leave that house of love again because it fits you like the skin you bathe in the morning, glistening in the sunlight.
I was so grateful for my experience. I came back to a sunny Buenos Aires and a warm, soft bed and heated apartment! How poor people suffer! I don’t want to, and I feel they shouldn’t either! Now I have been writing in coffee shops and showing the street to my kids via SKYPE. I’ve been working and practicing yoga. I’m in my groove. It took all this time to decompress from the states, find myself without my children around, which is pretty much 24-7, and really connect to my creative self. It took a little time, but it was there all along.
Now I leave on tomorrow evening. I am a little sad because I already feel that this is my home. I will be sad to see the brown prairie at Denver International Airport when the plane touches down. The dry air will probably kill the body that my hair has here. I got the best haircut of my life here as a walk in! But I have my mythic self to defend me from the upcoming pressures and final details of moving and arranging things. But I am so looking forward to my Mythic Yoga retreat, Kripalu kids camp, Omega training and more. As I have been re-inspired by my own dream. I just had not been able to look at it in a while. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't have vampires draining your energy and time.
I am determined to return to Buenos Aires with my children in the fall, (their spring) so that they can experience what I have experienced and to continue what I have set in motion. In the meantime, I am ready to return to Colorado, for I know myself.
So the Queen has found herself. She touches her crown with the blue jewel in it and she's ready for transport. And although she is a bit nervous to come back to the desert kingdom and tie up loose ends, she has a secret talisman. She was given a golden swan on her journey by the townspeople of Buenos Aires. She carries it in her pocket wherever she goes. The golden swan gives her the courage to return to the desert kingdom and put the final demons to rest with the final battle. For all she sees in front of her now is a bridge. A bridge that she is crossing over. She does not look over the edge of the bridge to the perilous depths below. She just looks to the other side of the bridge. She feels her feet and heart moving steadily toward that side. She will surely arrive. She will surely arrive home.
