About a year ago, I wrote that My Missus and I would be spending more time in the campo than the city ...instead of the other way around. It was always about half and half anyway. This year, it looks that we will increase the amount of time we spend in the campo.
Así, you'll begin to see a definite shift in the focus of yer humble blog.
As the last year has played out, I've been talking to friends about the difference this change has meant to me personally. I was a little surprised at the push-back I got occasionally ...as if I would suddenly become anti-city and embrace the campo with all the zeal of the convert. No fear on that one, friends!
I'm city born and raised. The fact that I've ever even been associated with country life at all has been an amazement to anyone who has ever known me! I'm just getting a little more country!
As the "change in polarity" has increased, however, so has my perspective and concentration. This is all happening as I approach 10 years living in Argentina. Instead of any "change of allegiance," it has actually allowed me to view the city with new eyes ...something that I've sorely needed whether I realized it or not.
It's not that I've become bored or blasé about the Paris of the Palmeras, it's more that it has become my hometown. I'd like to describe it as if Buenos Aires City had become as comfortable as an old pair of shoes as I approach a decade here ...but that would be hilarious to anyone who has lived here!
Just like Algren was right that loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose, I think I agree that Gardel was on the money about Buenos Aires being the lover who will never love you back.
That kind of relationship can be exhilarating and satisfying and deliciously obsessive but, after maybe a decade (?), your love doesn't die or diminish ...but a creeping satisfaction begins to set in and you begin to see less of your old flame ...and a rush of warmth takes the place of heat with each encounter. Ok, age can do that to you all by itself, too!
So ...am I exchanging passion for a sensible marriage? Am I becoming more pastoral than urban? I don't know. Maybe ...but I prefer to think we're both still crazy after all these years ...with all the pleasant surprise that entails.
Por eso, you can expect more about (and from) the countryside occasionally back-logged by all the infrastructure problems that is part of that life ...but plenty of the rush I feel each time coming back on the same highway that brought me here that first time.
Still writing, guys! What else can I do?
(BTW, thanks for the bibs!)
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