Palermo

I have in my hands a notebook and a pencil, I say the magic words and the notebook opens, the pencil begins to write. The word Palermo appears, year 1600, a rich merchant, a politician of the colony, settles on uninhabited land with a stream running through the middle, which would later be El Maldonado; in 1609 don Juan Domínguez Palermo would buy those lands. Would he have thought, as he settled there, that his surname would give its name to one of the most popular neighborhoods of Buenos Aires? Later, in 1836, the rancher Rosas builds his residence and calls it Palermo de San Benito.

I get annoyed, I tell my pencil: that's ancient history, and now? The notebook fills with flowers, perfumes, statues and I'm happy in the Japanese garden, I know it's in the heart of many romantics. I keep remembering the zoo that Sarmiento founded, all of us in a line holding hands to go meet the little animals, "don't feed the animals," says the teacher.

I got distracted and the pencil wrote September 21st, the day of spring, of the student, the 3 de Febrero park fills up, with dreams, hopes and many encounters to remember for the rest of one's life. Who doesn't have some memory tied to the name Palermo.

The notebook closes, the pencil falls and the imagination disappears.