The Small Things

An hombre taking in a sunny dayAs I walk down the busy Avienda Santa Fe, I find myself frustrated when I am zig-zagging between the other slow pedestrians on the street that are leisurely walking and stopping every few minutes to look at something when I am in a hurry. How can they walk so slowly on one of the busiest streets in the city? When I walk this pace in New York City, I am a fish in a swarm swimming down the streets in unison with the rest of the fast paced city. The contrast of pace is quit surreal. In New York, I walk with my head down, focused, trying to get from A to B as quickly as I can, flowing with the pace of the New York minute. I hardly notice the faces of the people passing me on the streets, the colors of displays in the windows, or the smells of the food that I am breathing. I am missing out on the details that make New York what it is. This reminds me of what John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.” I feel like Argentines take the time to look at the people that they walk by, to notice all the colors, and to breathe in the various smells of cafes. Argentine’s most acclaimed short-story author, Julio Cortázar, makes this visible through his writing. Each sentence of his drags on with description about every minute detail, details that the average New Yorker would not notice on their outing in the park. In his short story “Blow Up,” he writes about a photographer observing a couple in a park. He fills seventeen pages with pure description of one simple scene of a photographer in a park. The photographer notices the anxiousness of the boy by watching his hands twitch and rapidly move in and out of his pants’ pockets. Cortázar writes about the desire beaming out of the women through the glow of her eyes. He reminds me of every Argentine taking the time to notice the small, seemingly “unimportant” details in life. It is a trait that I am trying to learn down here. I want to notice all the details in Argentina that make it what it is. I have to start to remind myself to slow down and to take it all in. It is so easy to get wrapped up in nothing. To think I am in a hurry and have to rush down the streets in order to be somewhere, even if I have nowhere to go. Next time I walk down Santa Fe, I want to slow my pace and be one with the Argentine sea. I want to walk slow and keep my head high. I don’t want to let life slip me by while I am busy making other plans.

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