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89 Montevideo When I mention that I live in Montevideo part of the year there is always much confusion. Do I mean Montenegro, near Croatia? Do I mean Monterrey in Mexico on the gulf? No, I mean the capitol of Uruguay. Which just causes more confusion , as everyone knows that Uruguay and Paraguay exist but are not at all sure where they are. If they know a little something, they usually think that it is Paraguay that is the little pie-shaped country caught between Argentina and Brazil. I can’t say I was any better before I went there. I always tell people that it was a poem by Jorge Luis Borges that led me to Montevideo. I did read the famous Argentinean poet, and I did read a poem that said something like “There is magic in the streets of Montevideo,” but I think it was more than that. I had worked in Buenos Aires doing television commercials and knew that Montevideo was across the river. Something in my past has always made it seem very romantic, and I think Borges just confirmed it for me. So at Christmas as I was approaching seventy, I grabbed a friend, and we went to Montevideo. I had read an article in Wallpaper magazine on Montevideo, and we stayed at the hotel they recommended. A small place in the old city where each room was decorated on a different theme, all of them awkward. Mine was nautical and Herb’s military, as I remember. It was a chilly December although technically already summer there. As we left the hotel in the evening, the pedestrian street Sarandi was empty and cold under its streetlights. We pulled our jackets about us as we went out to find a restaurant. 90 Montevideo Suddenly there was a group of dancers in the empty street. They were leaping and rolling to the snap-snap-snap of their choreographer’s fingers. The wind blew from the river. It was cold and empty and lonely yet there they were, doing their Martha Graham contractions and bent knee leaps. I said to my friend, “Is this an art attack?” It was completely magical and made me love Montevideo from the start. That was the first big mystery of Montevideo, which was solved the following day when I saw the festival that filled that long walkway on the day before Christmas. There were singers and bands and jugglers and artists and there among them, the modern dance troupe, now in costume and with music. It didn’t spoil the mystery for me, and there were more, many more. Soon I was to see a large and empty house, buy it, and start my new life there. The men of Montevideo are, for the most part, lean and hang onto their bodies. Blue-collar workingmen really work physically, and their bodies show it. In the summer, the boys and young men frequently ride around on their bikes with their shirts off, and the long-torsoed Uruguayan body looks good on a bicycle. Broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist riding away from you down an empty street with dense trees arching overhead. Pretty beautiful. This isn’t really a mystery—except why aren’t more cities like this? ...

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