Detaching myself from one lifestyle and settling into another took about six months. One of the reasons for my coming around is what I see every morning, looking out the kitchen window of my rented house, la casa amarilla.

Charlie, keeping watch for butterflies, which she adores. Her dream is to catch a bird, one of these days… she hasn’t come close yet, but that doesn’t deter her, as she slithers through the scrubby plants… when she can be bothered to wake up.

People tell me the life of an author is “glamorous,” which I’m gonna say can only be in that really puzzling category of someone else’s job always seeming more interesting than your own. Writing a book. Everyone wants to do it—right? Okay, you want the real story? I’ll tell you my story.

The first thing you need to know, is it’s a battle. “Writing is easy,” someone said, “you just stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood appear on your forehead.” Gene Fowler said that, and clearly, he knows. Once I get through the five early stages—you know, denial, anger, bargaining, grieving, acceptance—then I give up trying to push the idea completely out of my life. I start imagining this time, it might be better. I must’ve learned something from the first book, I’ve matured. And the one that makes me really laugh? I can balance this with the day job and still have a normal life.

I can explain this to my friends. People change their minds. How embarrassing can it be, really? Besides, the first few months are exhilarating, remember? The race to get it on paper—on screen, into the keyboard, whatever—it’s a rush. A kick. It’s better than doing drugs. (That’s a good line. I wonder if the buzz, the electric-tingly-warmth washing across my skin like the tide coming in under a storm warning, the confidence-arrogance-triumph-joy feeling of being on a high, on a roll, in the zone of creating is anything like drugs. How could it be? But what if you know what this is like and then you can’t get it again? Don’t you go through withdrawal, break out in hives, get desperate, fantasize about breaking into an ATM, no wait, something simpler—stealing the bingo money—to go buy some drugs and find out if it’s the same?)

Okay, I’m back. See, that’s the kind of weird tangent I go off on all the time. Chasing butterflies and crossing county lines so I end up in another color on the map, face to face with the pockmarked troll living under the bridge who roars his displeasure at passers-by. We writers call this research. “No, don’t worry about me, I’m just researching my book…” “Gotta go do some more research…” Let me tell you, there’s always more research.

So. Research dominates my life. I dig through files all weekend, read background material over lunch, track people down and ask a zillion questions, think a lot. Am I remembering something or making it up? Google is my new best friend. I worry about printing out too many unrelated articles instead of going paperless. I look up more words than I ever did before, when I used to just pretend I knew what all of them meant. Now I have to look them up in French or Farsi too, and zut! alors! some imaginary machine gets unplugged in my head, like the clicking beads of an abacus, calculating calculating calculating how I can work them into the essay.

Now the book has some tangible form, and I’m into the just-get-through-the-day phase. Is it humanly possible to do this? Oh yeah, now I remember why I said I’d never do this again. Trust me, it gets worse. I should’ve bought stock in Excedrin. Sleep becomes a rare commodity as I stay up too late and get up too early to carve out book time. Long before reaching a compromise point between structuring the book and executing the book, I’ve become a social recluse, my time claimed for generating email, experimenting with layouts, manipulating image files, creating the index, answering email, reveling in the ah-ha moments… and writing. Which means rewriting. Rewriting again, and then re-rewriting as the book project morphs into some malevolent moving walkway drawn by Pixar animators, daring me to keep pace.

Addicting? Oh yeah. But glamorous? You gotta be kidding me.

“Everyone remembers the first time they saw La Jetée.”

I’m pretty sure we all remember the first time seeing this film – a perfect use of form and style merged with story and theme – and knowing that everything had changed, right then.

William Gibson articulates his moment beautifully. His comments are significant in today’s phone and selfie world where it seems people experience life only through a tiny screen, desperate to capture it on video (will they ever watch it again?) instead of letting it live, imperfectly, in memory. Connect this idea with Max Headroom, the original TV series, not the spinoff talk show.

“I saw it, yet was effectively unable to see it again. It would be over a decade before I would happen to see it again, on television, its screening a rare event. Seeing a short foreign film, then, could be the equivalent of seeing a UFO, the experience surviving only as memory. The world of cultural artefacts was only atemporal in theory then, not yet literally and instantly atemporal. Carrying the memory of that screening’s intensity for a decade after has become a touchstone for me. What would have happened had I been able to rewind?”  – William Gibson

Appropriate memory, given the subject of the film. If you haven’t seen it, watch with an open mind; if you have, probably time to see it again. You may be able to watch it on Hulu or get it through iTunes or find the Criterion DVD on amazon.

I’d purchased the phone in the US through an online international outlet because my phone, on Verizon, isn’t GSM compatible, which is what I need here. Registered it with customs at the airport, took maybe 15 minutes at the Antel store to activate it, get the SIM card put in, buy some calls via prepago rather than a contract. I can switch to that later if I want.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a card and pin number I can use at most farmacias or tiendas anywhere to load more time.

Cost me 65 pesos to activate, no charge for the SIM, and I put 100 pesos of time\calls on it (not entirely sure how that works yet). That’s about $2.55 and $3.93 in USD, respectively.
Communication access is a priority here – uploading times for photos is about twice as fast as my turbo cable internet was in San Diego.

The phone seemed like a great idea – small, unobtrusive – but the screen is too small for me to read. Mistake, there. Finally got a new one and a contract with the help of Hebert, who lives in the city. My Spanish is good for routine things, but not for more complicated interactions.

The story was riveting – emotional, funny, quirky – and if the tech effects were not what we’ve become accustomed to, chalk it up to the times. Though imagination goes a long way – they’re not all bad. The transformation of actor Matt Frewer into Max Headroom would be done today with mo-cap sensors and completely digitized. Then, it was a combination of makeup, the actor and a minimal bit of digitial f/x.

The show’s tagline, identifying it as set “20 minutes into the future,” would make it seem dated when viewed more than three decades later. Or you would think so, but it’s still relevant. That’s probably not a good thing.

I taped all the shows off the TV – yes, videotape. There’s a DVD set available – reviews are less than thrilled with the transfer quality, but as one says, it’s better than not having the episodes at all. ” If you like very long webpages with promo clips and tons of recollections about the making of the series (impossible deadlines, ridiculous budgets, network sensors) from the creative team, you’ll love the Max Headroom Oral History on The Verge.

But the taxi driver shift ends at 3 for all the regular drivers, so none were available. It took nearly an hour of calling and recalling, finally got what I’d say is a gypsy cab, three times the price. The point is that even with plentiful public transportation and a city full of buses and cabs, this ain’t Manhattan. We’re on Uruguayan time, and it’s a different vibe.

The next day, I finally figured out where I could catch the bus to go back home and changed from taxis to buses.

Here in Atlántida, I find a much different vibe in a small beach town compared to the capital city. I’d originally planned to get a bicycle or a moto, but my knees won’t be happy on a bike and the moto seemed an unnecessary expense for occasional use, particularly since I wouldn’t use it on the ruta – the highway.

So I ride the bus and take taxis. It takes a bit of planning sometimes, since the buses don’t come by as frequently as they do in the city, and I have to ask someone to call a taxi for me. But costs are reasonable. Prices have gone up during the summer, what with all the tourists – Atlántida has roughly 3,000 inhabitants from the beginning of March to early- or mid-December, and nearly 20,000 in the summer months. It will be interesting to see if the fares go back to normal after the vacation season is over.

Many of the taxistas – the drivers – know me now, and I often don’t have to say anything when I get in the cab. Pus side? a benefit of living in a small town. Down side? even fewer chances to practice my Spanish.

Before my first trip to Uruguay, I read dozens of articles. A lot of blog posts. Many of them talked about safety, the crime rate in Montevideo, escalation of same, how awful it was. I didn’t ignore the stories, but everything in life, and especially on the internet, is presented through a filter.

If someone is used to living in a small town where no one ever locks their doors, the big city can seem like a scary place. If you’re reading reports from five years ago, the situation has likely changed. So you need to balance the available information with your own experience and comfort level.

The common-sense guidelines for staying safe set out on the Guru’guay website (very recently) are the same just about everywhere: don’t make yourself look like a target for crimes of opportunity.

Robbery is the most common in Uruguay. If you’re taking pictures, you’ll be presumed to have money because you look like a tourist – that may be okay in a tourist destination, but hang on to your bag. Camera or not, if you carry a large bag, make sure it’s held close to your body rather than swinging around. Split up valuables (cash, credit cards, phone) between a bag and pockets or only carry what you need for the day. If you’ve parked your car in the city, don’t leave anything visible on the seats.

Ciudad Vieja – historically the most dicey section of Montevideo after dark, near the port – installed CCTV cameras throughout the neighborhood in 2013 and crime rates have dropped dramatically since then.

It’s just possible that one of the biggest problems you’ll encounter is the condition of the sidewalks. Get distracted for a moment, and you could easily turn an ankle or twist a knee!

Mostly it’s wrangling the research and trying to bring a bit of order to chaos, find a form I can access and pull it all into whatever is going to become The Book.

In particular, the interviews are my greatest source of information and also the biggest challenge. I’ve spent hours every day listening to the audio of the conversations while reading against the transcripts. Making corrections. Noting stories I want to extract. Reacquainting myself with the experience of the interviews themselves.

I’m amazed at how much I’d forgotten, especially (perhaps obviously) the interviews from 12 and 15 years ago. I went through a phase where that passing of time, the distance, seemed to be a drawback, but now it’s key. Interviews with multiple generations of tenors, other singers, composers, give a through-line to the overall story. I’m still not sure how it will all work out, exactly, but then, that’s the process.

Aside from the reminder that one makes progress by sitting down and doing the work on a regular basis, even (or especially) when it’s not continually thrilling. You know, like a roller coaster. Lots of quiet successes show up, little ah-ha moments that I may have missed while in the real-time moment of the conversation.

These might be connections to someone else’s comment on the same topic. Maybe something I say prompts a reflection or revelation from the person on the other side of the microphone.

I’m discovering how much more I remember of the interview and how I relate to it depends on adding a sensory element. Sounds of voices, background noise from coffee machines or clattering plates or traffic. Excitement in the voices, or hesitation, regret, anger, gratitude, laughter.

As accurate as the transcripts are, with filler words – ums and you-knows – and false starts, reading them only connects me to my memory of the interview. What I’ve held onto from when it happened to listening again might have been overall joyous and positive or kind of a shrug-it-off-we-didn’t-connect-much, but hearing it now often proves me wrong.

Background noise helps me recall the setting which then reminds me of the smells, sometimes the colors, certainly the circumstances of meeting this person. Have we never met before? Is he someone I worked with? Are either or both of us tired or stressed? Emotional distance from the adrenalin-high of the interview turns out to be a crucial factor in finding my way through all the words to the stories.

So this is all progress. Not press-release worthy, just the everyday bookwork. Rather irritated that I have a trip to the US booked next week. I scheduled it a while back, needing to cram a dozen tasks and meetings into a short visit, handling wrapping-up details from many years living in one place. But I hate interrupting this bookwork momentum. Grrr.

One of the hardest adjustments, language-wise, has been hearing the Rioplatense accent. Making the connection between what I hear and what I was used to hearing, and figuring out what it means. Big disconnect. Yes, I know I’ll get there, but right now I’m not.

There’s the accent. All “y” (except at the end of a word) and all “‘ll” (elle) sound like “sh” … so you have yo = sho and playa = plasha plus llegar = shegar and so on. Ella and ello are pretty easy, but things like silla (chair) sounding like sisha confuse me.

And the “s” sound is usually dropped at the ends of syllables. “Dos y tres” becomes “do y tre” – more or less, because there’s an echo of the “s” sound that remains. Hard to describe. Easy to hear. Not so easy to mentally translate what that word you think you heard is supposed to be. Definitely not easy to translate it quickly enough to understand what’s being said!

And oh wait. Uruguay is pronounced sort of like ooh-oo-WHY, though there’s a very soft “g” in there, almost swallowed, at the end of the second syllable. You might get a similar effect if you pronounce the WHY with a breathy WH instead of a hard-edged WYE sound. At least, that’s one way of pronouncing it – I’ve heard a lot of variations, none of them remotely like the harsh “American” way that sounds like YOUR-oog-way.

But then, all consonants are much softer than in norteamericano English. I really noticed it when I returned to the US for a brief visit, after only a month in Uruguay. As I changed planes and passed through different airports, the sound of voices seemed increasingly jarring to my ears. But this is true in most hispanohablante countries and regions, which all have their particular sounds and vocabulary.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary can be different from textbook Spanish in classrooms in the US, or from anywhere else. ‘Red peppers’ and ‘for rent’ and a host of others have variations in Uruguay that make no sense anywhere else. México and Spain each have their own words that cause bewilderment from visitors, even those fluent in Spanish. Here’s a glimpse of just a few.

European immigrants from the Iberian peninsula and Italy influenced the native language when they arrived between 1870 and 1950. Wikipedia says “Differences between dialects of Spanish are numerous; about 9,000 Rioplatense words are not used or, in many cases, even understood elsewhere.” Oh great.

Juan suggested three ways to learn online:

• listen to Urugayo noticias (as in evening news presentations) from Uruguayan or Argentinean stations
• listen to and watch movies on YouTube with subtitles in English – there are some movies from Uruguay but many from Argentina, with its thriving film industry
• Google “Uruguay song karaoke” to find popular songs with lyrics on the screen – plenty of them on YouTube – and gain, sticking with those from Argentina or Uruguay

Practical experience

I was doing pretty well, más o meno, in speaking it when I read aloud in class. And with 3 hours of class each weekday for a couple months, I read — and listened — a lot. Now, though, as I’m getting into working on the book every day, I’m immersed in the nuances of the English language. With the writing process already mentally challenging, I’m not finding the energy to work on my Spanish. Reluctantly, active pursuit of fluency will have to wait. I absorb some of it in the few interactions I have in Atlántida, and I certainly eavesdrop when I’m riding the bus. Eventually I’ll be impossible to understand outside the Río de la Plata area of Uruguay and Argentina!

What will $513 UY pesos* get you at the Atlántida feria? More than I could fit in the photo: *approximately $17.60 USD

• 2 manojos grandes de espinaca
• 1/2 kilo de fresas
• 4 manzanas
• 2 morrónes
• 2 dientes de ajo
• 2 lechugas
• 1 docena de huevos
• 2 pepinos, 4 naranjas
• 2 paquetes de menta fresca
• 6 papas
• and at the hipermercado, on the way back to the casa, 1 paquete de galletas de arroz

The Thursday feria is Atlántida is, possibly, larger than the one I explored in the Parque Rodó section of Montevideo, as it covers some 4 or 5 blocks. About one half of the first block has fruit and vegetable stands; there’s a cheese truck; a meat truck; and several small booths with dried fruit, spices and some random groceries. All the rest of it offers t-shirts, shoes, hats, purse, sunglasses, trinkets and some household goods.

There’s another smaller feria on Saturdays on the other side of town.

In Montevideo, with its much-larger population, there’s a feria just about every day of the week, in some neighborhood or other. The Montevideo feria hosts dozens of fruit/vegetable stands, almost mini-stores. By way of comparison, each of the largest stands have about the same amount of produce that a smaller grocery store in southern California would have – that is, not the largest of the chain stores, but more than a regular-size Trader Joes would have. 

There were 6 or 8 trucks, at least, including the large seafood one. Only a handful of non-food tables and booths.

In Atlántida, I was expecting a lot of the food to be organic, but most was not. In Montevideo, I was surprised that the quality of the food on display seemed to be higher, since I thought the proximity to the farms in and around Atlántida would make it easier to deliver food faster. Later, though, I came to understand that the best of the crops go to the big city. Bigger market. I get it.

I ended up mostly not going to the feria, but to the hippermercado instead. Closer to the side of town where I live and easy enough to take the bus there and sometimes back, if I didn’t have too much to carry. Buying for just one person, I could get what I needed there. 

Verduras orgánicas at the chacra

Every other Saturday at Pilar’s chacra [meaning ranch or farm] there’s a midday gathering for people to buy the fruits and vegetables. My friends, Gundy and Syd, live three blocks from me, so they would kindly pick me up for the short drive out into the campo. I know Atlántida is a small town, but even so, it’s a surprise to find it takes less than five minutes to really be out in the countryside.

Pilar’s greenhouse is at the end of a dirt road, past a pond on one side and a large field of dried bush-like plants. “Blueberries,” I’m told. “Just wait.”

The greenhouse has sturdy plastic sheeting for walls and roof over a wood frame. Rows of raised beds, all with an irrigation system, are always in various stages of planting. And everything here is organic.

Maybe a dozen people show up for conversation and to buy. Sometimes, depending on weather or schedules, there would be only 4 or 5 people. But always you could find various types of lettuce or greens, tomatoes, spinach, herbs and other vegetables from the greenhouse.

Ask for what you want and the owners go and cut it out of the ground or pick it off the plants there – talk about fresh!

Everything’s weighed for you, jotted down and you’re done. Reasonable prices, too.

Homemade jams are available at a small table and another couple had fresh wheat grass for sale at a makeshift table on upturned  crates.

Everyone knows everyone and this is clearly a social occasion. They’re all interested in organic food-related products, so they share recipes and the latest news. After a few visits, this 3-hour stretch became just a bit too long to go grocery shopping. I was generally itching to get back to writing.