A girl from my language class threw a party.

It was only there, outside the full immersion of the classroom, that I realized everybody in the class also speaks English. English which is better than my Castellano and in some cases, perfect. I felt humbled, stupid, and perfectly stereotypical. It only got worse when I realized that they also speak Portuguese, French, and some Italian. The Russian, so I hear, speaks Russian as well.

I fumbled my way through a discussion about alternative energy sources with one of the Brazilians. He is a petroleum engineer. When I didn't know a word I would say it in English. It seemed funny that we were both struggling to communicate with each other in Spanish when we had a common tongue. Still, practice is practice. He said nothing would make him happier than clean energy, even if it meant that he was out of a job. However, he didn't think he would see the shift in his lifetime. Later, we went out on the balcony and smoked a joint that my deceptively cool professor brought. The city's skyline is very pretty at night.

The next night I went to a party at an art gallery. I was very out-cultured. It seemed like everybody I talked to had attended university in France. There were a lot of blazers and horn rimmed glasses. We danced cumbia and I couldn't tell if the girl I was with was laughing or smiling at me. Cumbia, from what I can tell, involves a lot of arm. I will investigate this further and get back to you. The music was loud and she talked fast, so I responded to everything with a nod. She got bored of the nodding American mute who couldn't dance pretty quickly. I can't imagine why.

I think some of the people here think I'm stupid. I'm not. I am busy listening and digesting, even if I am not speaking. The other day I bought Cuentos de la Selva-- basically a hundred page children's book. I bunker down with my dictionary and look up the words I don't know. It takes me about twenty minutes a page.

Still, I'm a little better each day.

Yesterday, I was looking at magazines on the street.

I was leafing through a copy of National Geographic when the man who owned the stand walked over to me, grabbed the magazine out of my hands, and slammed it down on the table where it had been. At first I was surprised, then I told him to go fuck himself. He told me to go back to North America (I guess I need to work on my accent). I mimed a blowjob. He grabbed his dick. I think I’m making friends here.

I’m not saying my infatuation with the country is gone; but it has become counterbalanced by the weight of realism. On the subway, the bus, and some streets, I have to wear my backpack on the front so nobody tries to cut it open and steal what’s inside (a sweater, a pencil, and a copy of Borges’ Labrynths, but I suppose they don’t know that). When I go running on the dirt roads, trucks pass me and kick up dust that stings my eyes. The stray dogs, which are everywhere, don’t bother you much if you pick up a rock and raise your voice. I got lost downtown on my way to language school two days ago before I had bought any minutes for my [circa 1940] cell phone. I felt very small and overwhelmed. I purchased internet access in a locutorio and Google mapped my way there—I was only thirty minutes late for my first day.

The class itself is great. I’m the youngest one there but everybody else is still in their twenties or early thirties. There’s one other American, three Brazilians, and a Russian. One of the Brazilians is cute but I think she might be taller than me. This is a problem. Guillermo, the professor, told that he still felt guilty for helping destroy a McDonalds after the economy crashed in 2001. He said it like McDonalds is something sacred to Americans. The same crash gave the country five presidents in a single week, and resulted in the plaque hanging in the hall of my school dedicated to a student who was murdered during the subsequent riots. Still, the Brazilian is cute.

Elections for governor of Buenos Aires were this last Saturday. I watched slack-jawed as Mauricio Macri danced on TV after he won, but nobody else in the restaurant seemed as amazed as I was. I guess they weren’t imagining Obama doing a salsa. Later, I visited the Basilica de Lujan and listened to the priest pontificate on Argentina’s chances in the Copa America to a two hundred person mass.

Really, this is a strange country... but the Brazilian is cute.


And here, to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

I feel like I’m in a Hemingway novel…

There are lots of shy and pretty girls, forks and knives with wooden handles, good wine, bread, cheese, and meat. It is all followed by coffee. My Castellano is okay, but it is improving quickly and everybody is patient and sweet with me. I understand most things, but speaking is harder. It is strange for me to find listening easier than talking but it is also refreshing. I listen to everybody who will speak to me. I think Carro, the maid, and Juancho, the man who takes care of the horses, both like me. Their stories are interesting and I smile when they try to say my name, as they smile when I try to say most things.

I went riding yesterday and scattered a flock of bright green parrots off the road. It is winter here and I am surprised they can handle the cold. Then again, the cold here is not our cold, it is the cold of a late fall. I am very comfortable in a sweatshirt, and at times, a jacket.

A man told me he had to wait an hour in line for gasoline today and when it was his turn they were out. I had no intelligent reply, then or now. Oranges are grown behind the house next to the clotheslines and the old plywood they burn to start the fires for the asados. It is also burnt, at times, to keep the house warm.

That is all I have to say for now. Things are not that different really. Simpler maybe, but no, they are not that different. I cannot say for certain but I think this is true for most places and times. What is good is good for everybody. I do not know if this holds for what is bad.

I’m currently in Santiago.

I should be in Buenos Aires but my flight was cancelled due to volcanic ash in the air. I’m fine with that—the ash sticks to engine turbines and then the turbines don’t work— that I’m not okay with. Anywho, it took about six hours to get out of the airport after the flight was cancelled. It’s a long story and about as boring as it was to sit there so I won’t go into any details, but it was actually a pretty interesting (okay, fine, illuminating) watching how everybody reacted to the delay.

There was, of course, the overweight gaucho who half heartedly tried to start a mass exodus past the armed guards at customs but everybody was too tired for him to pose any real threat. Eventually, after much waiting and groaning, AirCanada paid our fees and bussed us to a Sheraton for the night. Our new flight leaves at 5:30 tomorrow morning. Hopefully ash doesn’t like to wake up early.

Still, I think there’s an important lesson to be learned from the day. Sure it sucked, but the people who were the most miserable where the ones who were also fighting the hardest for some ridiculous solution. When you travel, almost everything is out of your control. You need to be flexible and patient and let things come and go as they will, because whether you like it or not, that’s what’s going to happen. So if there’s ash tomorrow and I have to do the whole thing again, so be it. There’s only any use in worrying about what you can change and fuck the rest.

I think this willingness to let go is more than a travel tip, it's a life philosophy.
When you’re at home a lot of things are in your control but the happiest people are the ones who still let things come and go as they will. Some asshole cut you off on the freeway? Have a bad cold and a ton of work? Brooding doesn’t help anybody and generally it just makes things worse. Just let go. Enough said.

So, how’d the story end? I made friends with an Oncologist who happens to live ten minutes from me, saw the city with his wife and twin daughters who quizzed me on my Spanish over dinner, and even scored an invite to spend a weekend in the supposedly beautiful northern province of Ju Juy. Take that, Volcano.

I told you-- life generally works out, you just need to get out its way.

My flight leaves tomorrow.

Nostalgia for home has been replaced with a general anxiety for the immediate future and so the next six months begin. I think any sort of extended trip like this causes a fair bit of worry for people because it involves leaving the safe little cocoons that wealth is able to purchase in America. We are safe, and safe feels good.

But I've also come up with a bit of a strange theory about what this anxiety means: all fear is ultimately a fear of death. Now, in order to illustrate exactly what I'm trying to say here I need to take you all through some admittedly strange thought processes. And in order to do that, I need to start where this thought did: with my fear of planes. I actually fly a reasonable bit, but somehow I still manage to need to take some deep breaths every time I takeoff. I don't care if cars are more dangerous (a 1/6,000 chance of death/10,000 miles driven) than planes (a 1/9.2 million chance of death/flight), there's just something damn unsettling about being hurled through the sky in an alluminum phallus. By the way, my stepbrother recently told me I had an obsession with statistics, but that's neither here nor there.

But even if cars are more dangerous, the real difference and the reason we (we being most reasonable people, screw the rest of you) fear planes more is because of their immediacy to death. In your car, death is an easier thing to distance yourself from because it doesn't pose a constant threat because of low speeds, stops, etc. In a plane on the other hand, you have a 36,000 foot memento mori every time you slide open your window. I suppose I can only really speak for myself here, but that memento and the fear that comes with it can be dimmed by some reading material and an inflight apple juice but it never really goes away.

Think about it-- that feeling you get on planes (or used to get before you Red Carpet Members conditioned yourself not to) is the original fear. I know for a lot of you this isn't necessarily a particularly revelatory thing, but for me it is. That is it-- all fear is a fear of death.

But the thing is that death itself is not a factor in our lives because when it comes we are not bothered by it (see: Epicurus). Thus, the only true way that death affects us is in how our fear of it affects how we live our lives. This is what we need to remind ourselves of any time we are afraid of anything. It's easy to say but hard to live by: the only true way that death affects us is in how our fear of it affects in our lives. THAT's IT. Death isn't real.

No, really, I mean it.

Don't doubt me now. I know when you read that sentence the first time you went right along with it. Actually, I'm not even saying you don't need to be afraid of death; what I am saying is that you need to act as though you don't fear death. It can never, ever, affect any decision you make. Then it becomes real and real is bad.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though I might be crossing my fingers during turbulence, I will be on that plane. I know, I'm a pussy-- but the plane is just an example; people get so crippled by fear they're unwilling to act. So the next time you decide not to do something, ask yourself if you're afraid. If the answer's yes, then you already know what you have to do.

Of course... this promotes a certain lifestyle. But you probably could have already guessed that.

Home

I'm from Greenville, Delaware. It's the most beautiful place in the world and I'm sure where you come from is too. I always get a bit nostalgic when I have to leave it but like Van Morrison says below, nostalgia doesn't always have to negative. It sucks to go, sure, but that's a good thing. It means that I care. I care about my family and friends here. I care about the roads I drive on and even more about where those roads take me. I care that we have no sales tax which, if you didn't know, is awesome.

But the crazy thing is, I don't even think I'm going to move back here after college. I want the West and the freedom it has long brought. In a way, it hurts to leave Delaware now because I know that every time I go I get a little bit closer to no longer living here. But that sadness is negative and with it we get back to what Van was saying: just because you love something doesn't mean it should tether you down. When you say goodbye to anything or anybody there's nothing to do but be happy it happened, even if you're sad it's over. All the material things we grow so attached to, people included, will one day cease to exist. So keep the nostalgia, that's the grateful part, but let the sadness go. It accomplishes nothing. Everything and everybody is constantly coming and going.

Shouldn't you be?


Some photos I took today of the First State included. I told you it was pretty.

"There is nothing wrong with change,

if it is in the right direction."

And with this self-conscious attribution to Winston Churchill, Wayward Gentry henceforth changes direction.

The quotes are out.

Yes, you read correctly. And yes, for those of you paying too much attention, I did change the blog's subtitle-- quotation is no longer a serviceable substitute for wit*, okay? There. That's that. I'm glad we got that out of the way.

Moving on... One week from today I leave for two months in Buenos Aires and from there I head to Barcelona for the rest of the year. Life is pretty damn good these days if you weren't aware.

Over the last couple of months, I have been giving you all the words of those who have walked dangerously close to the edge of truth and one day I hope to have done the same.

There you go-- my raison d'etre is now front and center. And, since you're reading this blog, I'm going to guess that yours is something similar. Sure, it's not exactly the same, and it shouldn't be, but in the end meaning is all any of us are after. You have to look for it each and every moment of your existence and even then, it's fucking tough to find.

But hey, you gotta' look anyways, and this is the beginning of my search. I hope you come along. Along the way, I'll offer you some words of my own. I can't promise you that they will be particularly illuminating but I can promise that they will be sincere and maybe, just maybe, the tiniest bit entertaining.

So, let's go. I'm tired of attributing.




*psst... Oscar Wilde.