Tangazos Summertime Blues G rowing up in Buenos Aires, one gets used to the onset of winter during the month of July. The days are gray, the wind is unrelenting and the consumption of cold medicine becomes a national pastime.
Winter is very cruel on the poor and destitute.
Our vision of the world and the life we live is acutely shaped by the amenities of the parental bubble in which we bloom from helpless little stinkers to fearless wanderers of a future we hardly know. For years after I left my parents' home and the neighborhood where I grew up, I kept looking forward to September as a sign that another Winter had gone by and everyone I loved and cared for, had made it through alive and well. Then July became an inconsequential month of Summer up until three years ago when the curiosity for finding out what people did for five consecutive days, eight hours a day during a Tango Week, became a self-indulgent vacation which I allowed myself to take in the wake of the most difficult period of my life. In an incredible turn of events my life changed, better yet, I found my life. I tore up the psychological mortgage that had burdened an existence molded under the prejudices of the past.