It rains in BA - and the gauchos wear knives

From email to EJW (Seattle) & HGW (Buenos Aires)
Very hot bus ride. Very inspirational conversation.

And when I got home I found the poem. Funniest thing, it appears to have 24 lines.

The conversation brought to mind the things I collected "behind my eyes" from our trip. But there is so much more to see. How could I write just from the little I was seeing there? I thought of the empanadas, the delivery guys with the plastic boxes on the back of their bikes, the grocery with the inclined moving sidewalk and the place you buy those little sandwiches with the crusts cut off, Blackfoot, the cemetery, the huge tree in front of Cemetario Recoleta, the dance recital, seeing the tango dancers through the door, the stinky river, the rainy day, the crafts' display, the store with the man who sells those local shoes . . . the giant flower, the people, the language, the flags of different ages hanging from the balconies, Rural.

And then today the news photo had this. And I thought, "Harrison, you should go take pictures, those gauchos are really photogenic."

Photo from seattlepi.com's "Today in Pictures": July 29, 2009
AP Photo/Eduardo Di Baia
An Argentina's gaucho wear a traditional "facon" knife on his belt as he walks in the street near La Rural at the capital's annual agricultural fair in Buenos Aires, Wednesday.