One of the many benefits of having a studio space within a community of artists is that there are tons are art, social, fashion and other magazines lying around at my disposal. I came across this poem today in the April 2010 Harper's Magazine and it made me feel warmth. It was written by Jorge Luis Borges (1988 to 1986), an Argentine writer who's progressive blindness, according to some Scholars, helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination since "poets, like the blind, can see in the dark". Having lived in Buenos Aires, the city where he was born and spent most of his life, I feel very connected to his words. While reading his poem, I could see the narrow streets, the European influenced buildings decorated with authentic wrought iron balconies, artesanos in the ferias, plazas commemorating fallen Argentine Heros, brightly colored walls and incredibly rich and detailed graffitti, and, of course, the tango dancers in the street.
Who was it that said it all in a homegrown tango
Whose drawn-out, lovely sweetness made me pause
Under some unassuming little balconies
In that leafy neighborhood that isn’t even yours?
All I know is that in its sorrow I saw a simple yard
Within whose earthen walls the whole sunset fit,
A place I’d glimpsed a few months ago in some slum,
And that I loved you more than ever, hearing it.
Caught in that music, I stayed there on the sidewalk
Facing the lonesome moon, the heart of the street,
In the relentless wind that came down driving the night.
Toward the fresh stars. Toward the chance of being a man.
And toward that clear memory my eyes keep seeking
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