Friday, April 27th, 2012
Last week, international film festival. This week,
international book fair. This country is starting to seem like the romantic,
intellectual fantasy I dreamed it was…
Remember the book fairs of the golden days of your childhood?
Well take that, and multiply it by Latin America and add a line that goes on
for at least two blocks to get in, and you have the International Book Fair. As
normal, we all arrived at different times with Angela in the lead. To find her,
I just went to the back of the line and made my way up until I spotted her in a
stylish trench coat. Olivia managed the same and we passed the time quickly as
we waited for Heather. Once we made it to the front, we were told that we
didn’t even have to wait in line because we were students. Oh. Good to know…
Immediately inside, we were greeted by lots and lots of book
stands. The arena you first enter had books separated by province, meaning that
every book in that stand featured books written by authors from that area, or
they were books that were based in that area. Alright. Not exactly what I was
expecting, but still interesting nonetheless. Then we realized there was
another huge arena and that was where the real action was.
Whoaaaa. Alright, that is a lot of books. There were
bookstands from wall to wall, in addition to hundreds of people browsing
through them. We didn’t really know where to begin, but we did anyways. There
were books for all kinds and they came new and old. But regardless, were still
expensive. Of course, the “classics” were the most abundant with at least 5
Borges works at each stand in addition to MartÃn Fierro and all the dirty war classics. After
passing through the stands for about an hour or two, we started to see more or
less of the same books. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I was sort of hoping
that the books would be used and all sort of different. I’m not saying Borges
wasn’t a genius, but I know Argentina has other authors to be proud of—in
addition to all the other quintessential Latin American writers who knew a
thing or two about the art of literature.
We lost Angela amongst the books and waited on a giant lime green
sofa for her return. But that never came. How is it so easy to lose people
amongst books? I think every time I go to a library with someone we each wander
off and can’t find each other again. Each person is carrying out their written
destiny within the aisles and pages. Sometimes
you’re enticed by a cover. Other times, you are flayed out in the aisle,
absolutely captivated by a book you happened to pull off the shelf. And that’s
just one of the many ways in which a book can so mercilessly hook us.
In addition to the books were also lectures and guest
speakers. Seeing that we felt like we’d seen everything, we decided to attend a
storytelling event. We weren’t really sure if it was a lecture about
storytelling and how to do it or people doing storytelling. It was the latter.
And oh what a treat it was…
The first speaker told 4 stories from where she grew up and
I guess they were funny in the way that you kinda had to be from this specific
town to really understand the humor. I laughed, but at the same time, I
couldn’t help but feel like she had this hilarious romantic nostalgia for this
place that I only barely understood—with some descriptions lost because my
vocabulary for adjectives is somewhat lacking…
Then there was the second speaker. Her story was phenomenal.
Not because I liked the story or that she was even particularly good at
storytelling. No, I loved her because her story made absolutely no sense, she
yodeled on two occasions and I thought maybe I was stuck in Pan’s Labyrinth
juxtaposed with an episode of Sesame Street. In a nutshell, her story was about
the magic of every day life that she believed in. I think. And how it could
transport her through time and space. One moment, she was getting milk for her
mother at the grocery story, the next moment she was transported to a tree with
a nice goat nearby. And to demonstrate when the space-time continuum had been
broken, she would yodel. As Angela and I started to fall asleep and have
psychedelic dreams, the yodeling was definitely an alarming wake-up. To top off
her already long, incredibly convoluted and absolutely obscure (obscure even by
MY standards) story, she sang a song. More yodeling and some really strange
lyrics and her crazy folk woman voice were enough to make us sprint for the
door before the next “storyteller” could take the stage.
It was the kind of thing that while it’s happening you are
screaming in your head “THIS IS SO HORRIBLE PLEASE END NOW I WANT TO
GO!!!!!!!!!!!!” and feel like you’re the cantankerous first grader throwing a
fit about not wanting to go grocery
shopping with mom right now. But this was way worse than grocery shopping. It
was an hour of my life I’ll never get back. But an hour of my life that, upon
inspection after it had elapsed, was absolutely hilarious. Something that in
the moment sucks, but as soon as it’s over you can turn to your friend and say,
“WHAT. THE HELL. WAS. THAT?!?!?!?! AMIRIGHT!?”, then have a laugh over how
terrible it was, emphasizing the worst parts, which everybody agreed was the
yodeling.
I have no idea who that woman was, nor what she actually
does, because if she’s a storyteller, she’s either the best or worst one in the
world. I can’t tell…
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