Green Mango Gatorade

I was going to go for Blue Ice Gatorade. It would have been a safe and familiar choice like a chai latte after a bikram class. I found myself being impulsively and chemically drawn to the green mango gatorade instead. I paid my 4 pesos and cracked it open on the walk back home. It was brighter than any liquid I've ever consumed without medicinal intent. Bold. Expressive. Maybe it isn't the type of gatorade I would drink every day of my life, but today it presented a fascinating new experience that wont be available to me for the rest of my life.

I think I have settled for being bright bold and expressive on an aesthetic level for fear of incorporating those ideals into my being at an internal level. It is easier to take a tequila shot, wear blindingly bright colors and bitch to your friends about how true love, peace and happiness cannot exist in a world so close minded than it is to OPEN your mind to the possibility that they may actually exist.

For all that I try to generalize about the 'culture' of argentina for descriptive purposes, my real inspiration has come from the individuals. Anyone can get lost in the system, the collective, the politics. I have been inspired by trivial details and large feats alike: a woman who has had a child due to a wartime rape, a friend who is still as in love as the day his boyfriend moved to the opposite hemisphere, a disillusioned band who offers us pot instead of coffee and hopes to change the establishment with lyrics of love and simplicity, a tango teacher with an affinity for profane cartoons who moved to argentina without speaking spanish, a little pudgy cousin who claims, "manana no existe mami", a woman who believes in free love, lace stockings and acyrillic paint and militant peronism who is not willing to mute herself to appease anyone else, a pair of sisters that don't call themselves such, but are better feminists than anyone I have met, a roomate pursuing her dream of international development in guatemala despite being constantly berated by a conservative family, a friend who is not shrinking back from the redefinition of love exploding his safety bubble, a woman who's brother was taken from her and finds the courage to lead unintentionally ignorant american children past his monument, a refreshingly respectful boy who openly treats women better than the machismo framework of his society, a grandfather with wrinkles of joy despite fleeing his fatherland for years and putting his family's life over his pride.

I am constantly challenged and inspired by the bright, bold and expressive individuals around me. Don't be afraid to drink it in today.