Date: Sat, 01 May 1999 10:06:01 PDT
From: Claude Marthaler yak83@hotmail.comSubject: "THE SPACESHIP"
Dear Redfishes !
Buenos Aires, Argentina, km 888OO
After months of riding through the windy, remote and silent Patagonia, I finally reached a big mess called Buenos Aires. I first camped in a huge "campo deportivo" near a huge crossroad. As if that were not huge enough, there was a "Carrefour" hypermarket on one side. This furiously fast river of cars in this urban lanscape made me feel more lonely than in Patagonia.Instinctively, I knocked at the door of a huge local university, where the entry for the law faculty was, after three years, stangely enough, still in construction. The lack of money for education was obvious. "There is a crazy vagabond with a motorbike at the entry" said a student. He added,"who'd like to use internet". Obviously the Argentinian law faculty at best teach you how to build up your personal fortune, not what a yak is. All of a sudden, I also became a crossroad; everyone wanted to know this wild animal and to learn no more how to legally rob his neighbour, like the politicians do so well here.
How often on this journey I have felt like an extra-terrestrial, riding a spaceship! The computer distributor took me home. A less precarious basecamp to start a one week-17 editorial marathon. I made my way through the urban jungle: suburbs, trains, undergrounds, buses, nothing seemed enough to reach my goal of publishing an article. I met numerous editors that were more attracted by my sandals, my legs, my sweaty body, my hairy face than my photographs. People's faces were like masks. Walls of make-up, tired eyes looking down on you, even if usually I was the tallest among them. In this highly contaminated city, health was like an unknown word, yaks considered like extra-terrestrians. Editorials appeared to be like deadends for rubbish like the last murder in Buenos Aires or a seminar about ethics organised by the president.
Elected people! An unreal zoo, the apparent clean and civilised world. Some doors finally opened. At a time when people drive their cars like they do themselves, in a crazy traficc jam, riding a spaceship was a luxury. It made you quickly understand that the world is physically and spritually bigger than that: huge. Like a crossroad.
The YAK_
