Long ago, I tried to write some kind of conclusion to my blog. I wrote this, sitting at home on a late night and have tried to touch it up a few times since then. It'll never really be finished, so I foist it upon you, warts and all.
Oh, and I don't mention it, but I think I'll be back. I hope I'll be back, after college to study music there and be a trombonist and make enough money to live.
Anyway...
I've always appreciated "The End" with a question mark. Just who or what does it question? Am I, the writer, challenging you the reader to guess whether or not this is the conclusion of things? Is the phrase itself an admission of the uncertainty of endings and the future? Is it the sound of incredulous disappointment, "The end? Is this all there is to it?" Maybe it's simple ambition, the man in charge of the credits trying to wedge an opening for a sequel. In this case, it's a little of all but especially this: It is a confession of ignorance, colored with a little hope. I could not bear to put an unadorned "The End" on any chapter of my life, much less one describing my time in Argentina.
Home, now that I am, I am waiting for someone to catch me while I am by myself at some social event, or sitting at my kitchen table late at night while I'm feeling reflective and I am waiting for them to ask "Nathan, how was Argentina?" I've been abroad a few times and I know that no one really wants the answer you want to give to that question. I know that I might not be able to give the answer I want to give to that question. But I want that person to hear my series of glib replies and short
but hopefully enticing responses and nod and say "Man, Nathan, that all sounds really great, but tell me: What is the heart of Argentina? What beats inside its chest? What moves its blood from the tops of the Andes, across desolate plains, through forests and rivers and swells the bleachers of its soccer stadiums? What is the gory psychic center of this forgotten arm of South America?"
And I want this person to listen patiently while I find the right words that make them see the faces of the people in Salta and hear the power of the Iguazú Falls and feel the mythic sadness of Buenos Aires. I want to elate them and I want to bring them to tears. More than that, I want to them to let me run out of words and have them nod again as they set down their cup and say to me "Nathan, wow. I really get it. That's so beautiful. It's great that you went"
So what is this heart? Who is this dark and hatted figure, the Argentino?
The Argentino, near as I know, is a farmer. Yes, the Argentino is more than that, and something besides that, he(she) is a fisherman, indigenous, cosmopolitan, oligarch vagrant, too, but truly at the core, the Argentino is a farmer.
Every last one of them, even the most urbane, electronica-listening city punk. The first time my spider-sense tingled to the rural nature of the Argentino, I was in the heart of Buenos Aires, in one of the parks of Palermo, speaking to a new acquaintance, Sef (short for Serefim). We were talking about Sef's new marijuana plant and his plans for it. I was asking Sef about the difficulty of growing such a thing when Sef did something that hardly blipped on my cultural radar. Sef took his hand out of his lap and patted the earth next to him and said:
"No. Don't you know about the earth here. It's amazing. You drop a seed in it and stand back. You can't stop things from growing in it"
There was something interesting about the whole scene. I didn't know what it was at the time, so I mentally earmarked it for decompression. And here's what I can tell you about it. Sef is the farthest thing from a farmer I can imagine, he was introduced to me through my friend Silia as the only porteño member of her goth and/or weird kid friend group. For my poor untrained ears, his vocabulary and pronunciation were a punishment of colloquialisms and Buenos Aires-isms. His summary reference to chicks, chunky urban fashion and vast knowledge of hallucinogens had me convinced of his urban, and therefore Buenos Aires, credentials.
But here was this skater punk, petting the earth like a dog and bragging about it. He spoke of it reverently, preciously, like a great treasure. That, I've realized since then, is something that I have never seen an American of any stripe do. No American that I've met (I've not met any farmers) has ever expressed to me anything approaching knowledge, familiarity or I daresay intimacy with the ground under his feet. There are farmers in America, but if we once were farmers, I don't believe we are any longer.
Sef's attitude echoed through the streets of the city. Encounters with people of a variety of backgrounds yielded the same attitude. My friend Niko, carpenter and total urbanite, also speaking of his forays into narcotic production, praised his earth and literally scoffed at the notion of hydroponics. What need?
I believe that a farmer is more than a person that inculcates earth and draws a harvest from it, a farmer can draw a richness less tangible that wheat or corn. He sees the earth and truly appreciates it. He looks at the earth like a conductor looks at a score. He can read it, he can see where there will be problems and plenty. He can appreciate the beauty of its design. The way the wind blows down from the north and the color of plant growing in the field is as meaningful to him as the fermata over the penultimate note is to the conductor.
This attitude permeates Buenos Aires and doubly the rest of Argentina. The doorman to the first building I lived in was from the province of Córdoba and spoke to me a few times of the beautiful countryside there, but he didn't just talk about sunsets and lake-views. There's always a certain knowing, slightly technical way of talking about the land, that I like to think is powered by the Argentine drive to make richness out of the earth.
This is why porteños always seem like they need a few hours more sleep. They're missing something and they don't even know what it is. They're in a long-distance relationship and they think that their supposed to be single.
And that's why everyone else in Argentina is... what they are. I think that living in the countryside as an Argentino would be like majoring in art even if you think an MBA is what you ought to go to college for. Yes it's easy, yes, but as a friend once told me, para que sufrir?
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