Day 29: Reality Set into Motion

Another 12-14 hour bus ride. We didn’t have blankets this time…so when I woke up, I was FREEZING. I almost wished I had plastic bags on my feet again. Okay, so I realized I forgot an interesting story to tell from the Mendoza trip.

My feet go so wet during the one day it was raining. I had to change my socks twice. Erika told me to wear plastic bags on me feet, cuz it’ll keep them dry and warm. Low and behold, they were. But, we both had 2 pairs of socks to dry, and for the day we had them sitting on the side table, but we didn’t want to wake up to turn off our alarm clocks, only to touch semi-wet, smelly socks, so we thought of every possible way to hang dry them, including putting them on the curtain pole, the hooks on my side of the wall, and on the bed posts. Eventually, we put a couple on the closet pole, and I lodged the random stick in the closet to create another pole and put the other two there.

That kept us highly entertained…for a really long time…

Anyway. It was cold when we woke up. They told us to get up because we had stopped at the same café we stopped at the first night, for breakfast. I’m so glad I got used to drinking coffee again at Soka, cuz that’s all it is in the morning. Coffee and croissants.

Not that I’m complaining.

It took about another hour before we made it back to the Retiro station. In that time, we were talking about the future. It was…unfathomable.

A lot of things ended up being closed when we arrived, which was to no surprise because it was a holiday. So, we just walked back to the C line subway. While we were waiting for the sub, we heard a dog barking from far away. Turns out this dog was running alongside the train, and you know, we thought nothing of it. We just thought it was dog being stupid, chasing after the conductor alongside the platform.

WRONG.

So, the doors opened, and we walked in to sit down. All of a sudden, the same dog prances in and hops up onto the bench and makes himself comfortable. Erika and I both concluded that we weren’t the only ones who saw this for the first time. Everyone in our train car was staring as the dog just KOed as if it were his home. It was quite…amusing.

Erika and I made plans to go to the Japanese Garden, and then I got off of my station. I walked out and I saw my street. Ahh…sweet, sweet Buenos Aires. How I missed thee…

I didn’t miss the pollution though. XP

As I was walking back to the apartment, for some reason, I recalled a conversation I had with one of the guys in my film track about making a movie here in Buenos Aires. The guy I was talking to was an actual film major. At the time, I was envious that he was able to study film, even in his undergrad. I was so sure that he would be able to get into a grad school for film, hands down.

But, I came to this realization.

There is a very distinct difference between him and me. The first question he asked me was where are we going to get the funding to make a movie? In the past two years that I’ve done movies at SUA for learning cluster, I did learn that having a budget is very, very useful, BUT what I also learned is that if you have the passion, you can make do with what you have. That’s like the creed of indie film. Because of the low-budget, indie directors have to use a bit of creativity to make the most out of what they have.

This realization made me feel better about not going to undergrad for film. There has to be more value in making a movie than, how much is the budget. I say, if the bare minimum to make one is there, then anything is possible. That’s something I’m pretty damn sure you can’t learn in film school.

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche