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Lady Gaga and the Buenos Aires Cabbie

Posted on April 15, 2013 by sasha — 1 Comment ↓

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taxi We’re speeding through the streets of Buenos Aires. I’m on my way to dance tango on a Sunday night, heels in my purse. The cab driver is rocking out, drumming his hands on his steering wheel to a pop song. His enthusiasm is remarkable.

It’s Lady Gaga singing “Bad Romance,” that song where she goes, RAAA RAAA RAAA AHH AHH AHH. I take another look at the front of the cab and notice a photo of Lady Gaga hanging from the mirror.

“Do you like Lady Gaga?” I ask.

“Love her! Love her.” While we are stopped at a red light, he shows me a tattoo on his forearm of Lady Gaga’s face.

“What do you like about her?” I ask.

“Everything.”

“One thing. Tell me one thing.”

“Her talent. Her creativity.” he points to his head. “Her body. Her ass.” He laughs.

He then pointed to his keychain. A photo of Lady Gaga. Then he showed me his phone. Also a photo of Lady Gaga.

“Did you ever see her live in concert?”

“Yes, of course. I recorded this.” He is playing a concert recording.

In the recording, Lady Gaga starts to talk about standing up for the lesbian, the bi, the gay, the trans. She’s a big gay rights advocate.

“Do you like her?” he asks.

“For me she is a symbol of individuality,” I say. “I like that about her.”

“That too,” he says. “She’s different. She’s for the different ones.”

My cab driver’s dream is to see her in Madison Square Garden. In Lady Gaga’s hometown of Manhattan.

“I have ten t-shirts of Lady Gaga but I’m not wearing any tonight,” he says.

A grown man, probably in his late 40s, totally wild about Lady Gaga, unafraid to make his passion obvious to everyone who steps into his cab.

The world is a wonderful place. When we arrive at my destination, I have a big smile on my face. I love meeting quirky, passionate characters.

P.S. I was also happy because I think of Lady Gaga as an icon of quirky, and I’m getting ready to teach the first session of my course GetQuirky. Registration for GetQuirky closes Friday, April 19. If you want in on this initial run of GetQuirky sign up today! It’s a 30-day creative and reflective journey of quirky through your own life, writing, reflecting, going on adventures. We’re going to have fun, be creative and look at the world from different angles. You’ll get inspiration to shine as your quirky self (just like Lady Gaga does) in a community of like-minded folks.Sign up today and join us! This is Lady Q Sasha Cagen signing off.

Like this? Share it! Sign up for my mailing list to get weekly inspiration for your quirky life. To get even more inspired, read one of my books Quirkyalone or To-Do List and join us for the next session of my class GetQuirky which starts in July 2013.

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Posted in Argentina, Quirky Characters, Quirkyness

How to Be Direct

Posted on March 28, 2013 by sasha — No Comments ↓

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buenos aires street art (bears getting direct)

What I have learned most from Portenos (Buenos Aires residents) is directness. They are the most direct people I have ever encountered. Not direct in the New York sense (gruff). They are emotionally direct about how they are feeling, unafraid to say everything: the good and the dark. I learn a lot from them. Sometimes their directness bothers me, but often it inspires me because we can all benefit from just saying it more often.

I posted this observation on Facebook and an Estonian friend who lives in Buenos Aires wrote, “I so agree with you, Sasha! Sometimes it [the Porteno directness] is overwhelming and I cannot stand it, but deep inside I admire them for not choosing the ‘right time’ to tell the serious stuff as this time almost never exists. By telling things out sooner than later, we also suffer less in total.”

I’m thinking a lot about directness as I prepare for teaching my upcoming Get Quirky course. What’s the connection between embracing your uniqueness and just saying it? Actually, they they are quite connected. Read more ›

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Tagged with: communication, directness
Posted in Advice, Argentina, Quirkyness

Poignant Tango Moment

Posted on March 26, 2013 by sasha — No Comments ↓

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rsz_dsci3499 Poignant tango moment last night in a cab. I had gone to Villa Malcolm Cachirulo and it was awful from the start. Nowhere to sit, no host to seat me, so many women sitting at tables with hard expressions of waiting. I had only gone once before and had a beautiful night there but this time I felt totally invisible. My thought was, I do not go out on a Saturday night to suffer, so after five tandas of sitting and waiting I decided to leave.

On the street I decided to give Milonga 10 a try which was better.

I took a cab home and when I got in the cab the driver told me he saw me at Cachirulo.

“Disfrutaste?” I asked. “Did you enjoy it?”

“Baile.” he said. “I danced.”

I didn’t dance, I told him. I proceeded to tell him about all the reasons I did not like Cachirulo last night, including the feeling of desperation of waiting to be chosen, how frustrating that can feel. I felt invisible, I said.

“I saw you,” he said.

“Did you see me?” he asked.

“No,” I had to admit. And I wondered if I had even been looking at anyone at all, maybe I just gave up from the start.

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Posted in Argentina, Life as adventure, My Life, Tango

In Praise of Following Random Instincts

Posted on March 23, 2013 by sasha — No Comments ↓

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street are in buenos aires

“But it’s so random,” I remember, saying with a pained expression on my face, as I sat on the couch across from my therapist.

She looked at me with a warm expression. “Random isn’t necessarily bad,” she said. “I could never tell you what to do with your life. I don’t even know what I should do in my own life. No one can really tell another person what they should do.”

Last year, I was deciding whether to follow an instinct to move to Buenos Aires. We could call it a desire or impulse. Something that really did not make much logical sense in terms of “career,” “money” or “finding a partner” (something I can say finally without ambivalence that I do want). I was actually happy in Oakland. But I felt this instinct and it would not go away.

Learning how to follow an instinct
The instinct took root in my body in 2011 on one of my last days to Buenos Aires during my first trip here. It’s a New Age cliche to say, “listen to your body,” but my body does give me messages. I just felt in my body one day suddenly in the street that I was meant to come back and spend more time in this city. That feeling was a warmth, and I couldn’t quite explain it because there were actually a lot of things I didn’t even like about this city (despite my obsession with tango). But it just seemed clear.

I remember being in San Francisco six months later, when I was struggling with the decision, talking to Santiago, a tango teacher from Argentina. He asked me why I wanted to move to Buenos Aires. “Because I want to.” I told him. I didn’t really have a more clear answer than that. I had a desire. I desire I felt in my body, as much as my mind told me no. My answer “Because I want to” seemed to surprise Santiago. A simple nonpractical desire seemed bold and audacious and at the same time inadequate, too simple. But that is all I had: a persistent instinct.

He laughed and said I would have fun with the men there. “Ah, you will see.” That’s not what it was about. I didn’t come here looking for a bunch of lovers. [My report on the men of Argentina is another story.] Read more ›

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Posted in Advice, Argentina, Life as adventure

Tale of Quirky Living: Tantric Men in Buenos Aires

Posted on February 1, 2013 by sasha — 6 Comments ↓

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There must be something about my “energy” that is radiating out in the world, “I want a Tantric lover.”

I have a completely bizarre (or amazing) tendency to attract Argentine men who on our first meeting sit across from the table from me and tell me–at length–about their knowledge of Tantra. This has now happened twice in a row in one month. I hardly know what to say. “Great!” “We just met!” I know they are trying to impress me but it feels fast. They want me to know I know they are not like all the other Argentine men. Typical Argentines, they say, want to score with as many women as possible to prove their masculinity.

A male tango teacher used the word “horny” to describe Buenos Aires. “Sexy” would be nice, but “horny”? “Horny” sounds like a city of teenage boys. Everyone is on the prowl for sex, but I get the sense (especially from talking to these chaps) that the norm for sex is traditional and fast. It’s a macho culture.

These non-macho men tell me about how most heterosexuals orient sex toward men’s needs. Until men realize that women have more sexual energy then men, and orient sex around women (learning how to make sex slower and more sensual, and to delay ejaculation), women will not be satisfied and men will have a cheaper version of sex than what’s possible. Read more ›

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Posted in Argentina, Dating, Feminism, My Life, Sex

My Tango Journey

Posted on January 16, 2013 by sasha — 2 Comments ↓

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My tango journey continues and it teaches me so much about life. I’m writing about my revelations through tango for my new book so those are still getting formed and I’m excited to share them with you–not because everyone needs to learn tango to grow, but as an example of how we can grow in many surprising ways when we dedicate ourselves to something we love. Tango happens to be particularly rich because it offers so many metaphors about being strong in yourself and intimate with another. For now I will share a recent dance with you . . . this took place in Buenos Aires but I’m dancing with a Colombian teacher.

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Posted in Argentina, My Life, Tango

Quirky Character: Leo Jara and His Creative Response to Climate Change

Posted on November 13, 2012 by sasha — No Comments ↓

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Today I’m introducing a new feature. . . it’s called Quirky Characters. I’m starting this feature because I’m a quirky-character magnet. My life is interesting because I attract people who have chosen to live in different ways or who simply emanate a quirky, innovative outlook on how they live their lives. They suggest new ways for us to look at how we live our lives and our world. So I’m going to take this part of my life and share it with you because I think these Quirky Characters deserve a bigger audience.

Leo Jara directly confronting climate change outside the eco-villa

The first official Quirky Character is Argentine Leonardo Jara, an eco-dreamer (he calls himself a “loco” [crazy]) who is building a sustainable community on the Tigre river just outside of Buenos Aires entirely out of trash. He calls it the Echo Movement. Why Echo? I asked. “It’s poetry.” He said. Each little pod of sustainable development will be an echo to others all over the world to create their own sustainable eco-villas: places that have been created to be sustainable, autonomous, and in harmony with the natural environment.

the eco-villa in all its recycled glory, Tigre, Bueno Aires, Argentina

Leo bought this land thirteen years ago when he was 23. Over the last four years, over 600 volunteers (travelers/backpackers/couchsurfers who have come through and spent a day or a week working with him) have constructed a little house made almost exclusively of recycled materials. Everything they use is someone else’s trash: the pots, wood, toilet, mattresses, lamps, wood, chairs, refrigerator, everything. Nothing was purchased (except for some materials for the roof and its system to convert rain water into drinking water). Everything was scavenged or given to them by neighbors. Who, by the way, all have very cute, fancy little weekend cottages and normal lawns–it’s quite the contrast between the wild eco-villa and the weekend homes surrounding it. (Imagine a band of environmental anarchists creating a community in the middle of the Hamptoms. Kind of like that.) Read more ›

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Tagged with: climate change, eco-villa, sustanaiability
Posted in Argentina, Quirky Characters, Travels

How to Turn Your Complaints into Joy (aka my first pot-banging protest in Argentina)

Posted on November 12, 2012 by sasha — No Comments ↓

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we were there!

When I first got interested in South America, I spent a lot of time in Brazil (my first South American love as a country) and I heard the saying, “Brazilians party and Argentines protest.” Indeed. Argentines were born to protest. It just seems to be in their genes. Few Argentines dance tango but many talk politics. Argentines are also really good at complaining and looking at the complexities of life, but that’s another story.

The anti-government 8N protest (or cacerolazo, pot-banging protest) in Buenos Aires this past Thursday was spectacular. I’ve never been to a protest quite like it. I met up with two Colombian friends (one of whom has been living here for four years, so she has her things to protest about) on Santa Fe, one of the main avenues with people streaming into the downtown Obelisk, and we joined in for the ride. The streams of people blew us away. We have no protest tradition like this in the U.S. or Colombia where it is a mainstream activity to go out in the streets with hundreds of thousands of people and cheerfully bang on pots and pans to speak your complaint about politics. The crowd was diverse: Girls in their Catholic school outfits, mothers pushing strollers, elderly folks, everyone. People seemed so happy and alive and dignified streaming down the streets. Protesting seems to alchemize complaint into joy. Read more ›

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Posted in Argentina, Travels

Ten Ways I’m Settling into My New Life in Buenos Aires

Posted on November 7, 2012 by sasha — 1 Comment ↓

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Dear readers! Dear me! It’s been almost a month since I posted. My life has gone topsy-turvy since moving to Buenos Aires. I’ve been here almost a month now and I finally feel ground below me, enough to post again.

To make sense of it I will make a list of all the things I’ve been getting used to in this new version of life, so far south on the globe:

The colors in the kitchen are my absolute favorite–aqua and green. This place was made for me.

1) A new apartment: It is the tendency of Americans to plan ahead. Everyone in San Francisco asked me, “Do you know where you are staying?” And I said, “No. I will look when I get there.” As a veteran traveler I know that planning sometimes is not the best way and the best thing to do is just show up. My theory worked. i wound up choosing the first place I saw, two days after I arrived, a gorgeous little one-bedroom owned by a tango teacher that actually feels a lot like home, exquisite aesthetic, a balcony overlooking a tree and a very beautiful street.)

2) A new schedule: When someone asks me to have a drink, he wants to get together at 11 pm. The milongas–events where we go out to dance tango–often get going at midnight and go until 4 am. I often went to bed in San Francisco between 11 pm and midnight. It’s taken me a full month to adjust and not feel terminally groggy during the day.

3) A new climate: Hot! Humid! It’s only primavera (spring) but it’s already in the 90s. What will it be like by January? The humidity however is great for my skin. Read more ›

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Posted in Argentina, Travels

Buenos Aires Here I Come!

Posted on August 28, 2012 by sasha — 2 Comments ↓

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A lovely tango couple in San Telmo my friend and I stumbled upon last time in BA–oooh, the street passion

Soon I’m headed back to South America, first to Cali, Colombia, one of my favorite places on the planet (where I first discovered tango), for a visit of ten days, and then to Buenos Aires, where I am going to do my first test of location-independent working and reconnect with tango at the source. I’ll stay in BA for the fall and maybe a little longer.

When I came back from my 2010 travels in South America, I made a list of what I want in life, and one thing on the list is the ability to spend 2-3 months a year in another country so that I feel fresh and alive, outside the bubble of the United States. Although people called that adventure “the trip of a lifetime” I knew that I didn’t want that to be the last. I wanted to have many trips of a lifetime! This is how I would like to do it.

This time, my intention is to keep working and tap into my creativity in South America. I’ll be working remotely, part of the whole “location-independent” trend. This will be an experiment for me. I’ll stay at least for the fall, renting an apartment and basically continuing my life as I live it here–only dancing tango later (tango starts at 9 or 10 in SF and 11 or 12 in BA!). I’ll be working on my memoir,and recreating this website with some cool new programs for readers to come–please sign up on the mailing list to stay in the loop! Read more ›

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Posted in Argentina, Celiac + Gluten-Free, Travels