Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark | Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Sunday, September 4, 2011

The Unfinished City

"The Jardin Botanico was crawling with cats, hundreds and hundreds of them. They crept over everything, collected, preened.

The city would abruptly change the subject. I had felt this from the start. You were walking along a smooth Palermo street lined with bars and shops and would suddenly stumble into a wasteland, grass and dirt. Or you looked through a doorway into a huge empty hole. It was an unfinished city, but not only that. It seemed interminable, an interminable job. This was also what I liked."

Excerpted from The Foreigners, by Maxine Swann


Maxine Swann, a friend of Donigan's and the author of Serious Girls, Flower Children and The Foreigners, lives in Buenos Aires. She's been awarded a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Prize, and the Ploughshares Cohen Award.  The Foreigners, which takes place here in BA, does a nice job of capturing how this city is - always shifting, dark and beautiful both. Plus, Swann (or at least her protagonist, who I'm willing to bet holds a biographical resemblance) seems to be a bold traveller, sometimes a little reckless, and that reminds me of someone I know.

 The author

Missing you all, as usual. Happy Labor Day weekend! Besitos.

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