Well, it's been a week...

...since I got back from a week-long trip in Yanquilandia and taking yer blog to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver as the Official State Blog of Democrats Abroad.

Recovery would have been easier if I'd been younger, richer, and hadn't just returned from a visit to the campo this evening!

But I've laid low enough, long enough, to develop some reflections on my first trip back to the old country in more than 3 years. My wife has prodded me for my thoughts... especially since she feared that I might like it so much that I'd never come back.

Ha, fat chance! After two nights, I was homesick for Buenos Aires.

So, volver ...to return; returning where? Leaving what? I was much too busy to think about how my compass was spinning on some strange pole between North and South. I could feel the magnetic fields as I passed back and forth through them but there were so many tasks to distract me: making the airline connections, finding a place in Denver I'd never been before, getting to locations for credentials and stories, feeding and watering my muse (who stayed with me constantly), bucking security, waiting in lines, and walking, walking, walking.

I was determined to immerse myself in yanqui culture as if I'd never experienced it before and as I'd never experienced it before. The fact was, however, it slipped on like a beloved pair of shoes that I'd somehow not worn for years. There was nothing foreign to me. It had only been 5 years since I'd left ...not 25. All the things that I'd left were still there and there were no real surprises.

But the convention experience aside, if that's at all possible, everything was much as I'd left it: places to go, people to see, work to be done, more... better... faster. The American Way.

It's something to be proud of: the efficiency, the fearlessness (that's not the same thing as bravery), ...the willingness.

It's the willingness that gives me the willies ...and probably always has. There's probably never been a pool of humans so imbued with "can-do" and "yankee ingenuity", and ready sacrifice as are the estadounidienses. It's usually awe-inspiring. It is also scary to consider those noble qualities once co-opted.

Forced to compare the feel of the US to the feel of Buenos Aires, I couldn't help but think of myself in a pinball machine. I was launched, launched myself, by way of metallic springs and plungers, into slick surfaces ...full of light and lights, gladly hitting bumpers, racking up points, making things spin, dropping into holes ...and getting popped right back out of them for an extra replay. Everytime I thought it was over, I was flipped back into the game with tremendous force and speed ...repeating as much as possible until it was all over.

Life in Buenos Aires is much more like a game of marbles, a game that is not played much anymore but once was the biggest game in town all over the world. The human contact and skill take the place of the steel springs and electromagnetic relays. It takes place on a rough surface, it's circumscribed. The stakes are higher for the individual. No one thinks it can go on forever. You take your best shots and you consider them carefully. There's no flipping madly, hoping to keep your ball in play until another opportunity presents itself ...or doesn't.

Consider, as well, the experience of a sidewalk table both acá y allá. To sit at a wonderful sidewalk table in the US is an occasion for relief, an escape, an opportunity to enjoy the outdoors ...very pleasant. Those same qualities make up part of the Buenos Aires café, too. However, there's more of a destination to it here.

From the most ritzy tablecloths to the rough-hewn tables where working men and women spray a little seltzer into their borgoña, there is a birthright quality that pervades the feeling of sitting with friends in the open air. More often than not, I could not smoke in Denver even after being seated outside.

More than that, really, is the attitude that although there are great fortunes to be made ...there is no shame in not making them. Making a living here doesn't equate to living in the same way it does in the US. Life is friends and family and living the "good life" isn't possible without them. Only steps away from that attitude is another: being poor is not a crime nor a shame nor even your fault.

Lest I leave you with a lackadaisical view of life in the "belly-button of the world", in the 11th largest city on earth, consider this: competition is real here and it's for all the marbles.

The fantasy that you can have competition and all the good that it brings to the surface ...without any losers ...just doesn't exist here like it does in the US. And it's not far from that table to the one that considers health care and education a human right instead of a blingy priviledge to the ones that have already succeeded the most.

So, I'm back home in the land that I love, with the people I love and, ...if not feeling more alive ...feeling a little more life in me. God Bless América.