Ya Soy Porteno

I have a bit of a city hopping issue. Seems I'm never satisfied with where I live. I feel like I'm my mom trying on shoes in a shoe store, finding something wrong with every pair. Too small, not wide enough, no arch support, heel slides out when I walk in them. So she goes from store to store trying on shoes and in the end often never buys a pair. I think I've been doing that with cities. And I'm not sure whether it's the case that I'm picky, that I have commitment issues, or that I've simply chosen places that don't complement what's important to me.

We all start where our parents raise us. For me, that was Bay Village, Ohio. I lived there from ages 0-7 and have fond memories of mainly the summer. I don't remember much about the winter. My winter memories are only snowmen, igloos, and Christmas. Summer on the other hand is bike riding, firecrackers, climbing around in road salt storage buildings, building damns in rivers, fishing in a pond, building a treehouse, drinking cool-aid, jumping off homemade ramps, wrestling, fighting, soccer, swimming, video games... My fond memories of summer should, I think, help me to recognize that I'm not a cold weather person. Anyhow, I also liked Bay Village for the lakefront, the beach, the emphasis on community sports, and the parks and recreation in general. It's a beautiful little city, despite the fact that the people, as I'm told now, are a bit stuffy or yuppy as it were.

At 7, I moved to North Canton when my dad got a job in Canton with some type of company that turned toxic waste into benign sludge (I suppose the question is...what then do they do with all the benign sludge? Harmless sludge sundaes? Sludge and slide? I digress mucho). North Canton proved to be far less fun and exciting. We moved into an aging neighborhood with few kids. I spent most of my days down in our den watching basic cable and dreaming of a time in my life when I would have real adventures like quitting my job, moving to Argentina, traveling around South America, and becoming a carnivore. My memories of North Canton are of a mostly grey, rainy, cold town. The summer was my respite and I have fond memories of working at a country club and enjoying all the spoils of that life without having earned it.

I thought my ticket out of Ohio and boredom would be my first college, the US Air Force Academy. I remember being enchanted by Colorado Springs. In springtime, the mountains shined emerald green with life. It was a fantasy land to me and I would have stayed, if it weren't for the fact that the military and I didn't get along.

I came back to Ohio when I transferred to Miami University's Western College Program (Which by the way was the opposite of the Air Force Academy in nearly every way-I loved it). Oxford is a small college town I never considered staying in-there was no reason. Too small to develop, meet new people, learn etc. It was an isolated academic environment. Great for thinking and studying, but not so good for playing what I consider to be a meaningful role in the world.

Jumping ahead 7-8 years, I was back to Miami for graduate school and then moved close to downtown Cincinnati for my school psychology internship. Cincinatti is a beautiful town with a decent climate. The summers are a bit hot and humid, but the winters are sparingly mild. I loved the hills, solid wood floored/high ceilinged apartments, German influence, organization, and the park system. I have awesome memories of jogging the 10k loop around Lunken Airport all through winter, watching the planes take off and come in and looking out over the wide, chocolate milkshake-like Ohio River. I had runs during which I felt that I was dreaming, like I could go on forever.

The only problem with Cinci was that the people and culture were very conservative. I felt stifled, strangled, alienated. I tried hard to make inroads with the progressive community, but found it to be a small and very marginalized group of not so social people. Not bad people, but just ones that I didn't connect well with and who were a lot older than me. I also felt in Cincinnati that it wasn't ok to be different, that the best thing to be was normal, plain, and boring. And it's no wonder...The majority of people in Cinci were also born and raised there. It's a place without many new people and or ideas coming in and out. Think Procter and Gamble. Big old conservative slow moving company. That's Cincinnati. And I like to think I'm more like Apple. Or if not Apple, maybe like Sandisk or something.

My first job as a full fledged school psychologist was in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, just outside of Columbus. I had committed to staying in Ohio as part of my school psychology internship. The deal was that I would spend at least a year working in Ohio after my internship as a means of paying the state back for paying for my internship. I moved to Columbus because I thought that it would be a more liberal or at least balanced city. That, and it is the heart of the political universe. Since at the time I was obsessed with politics, I decided it would be the perfect place for me.

And Columbus was great for assuaging my desire to volunteer in a politically meaningful way. I wound up co-directing a campaign for a great candidate and guy, Dean Hernandez. But while the political scene was awesome, the personal one wasn't. Columbus is a football and drinking town. I'm a biking/swimming smoothy drinking guy. I found the people in Columbus to be extremely friendly and welcoming. The dating scene was great in terms of quantity of singles. And friends were easy to make. But I simply didn't have much in common with the people in Columbus or the culture. In fact, I can't remember having a really intense conversation with anyone my entire stay there.

So the summer after my second year of work in Columbus, I flew to Buenos Aires to learn Spanish. In class in BA, I met people from all over the world and had the best conversations of my life, outside of undergrad at Miami. It seemed too that almost everyone in Buenos Aires was capable of intense conversation. They listened, were thoughtful, opinionated, educated, and challenging. I fell in love with the people of Buenos Aires (one in particular but I digress mucho mas que aun antes) as well as the place (or maybe the people in my mind were the place). I connected too with the Italian culture. On top of that, I made friends throughout my little Palermo neighborhood.. with the guy at the natural food store, my barber, the folks who ran the corner lunch counter, and my host family. I thought that I had found home. So, after returning to the states to fulfil my contractual committement to Reynoldsburg, I made plans to move to Buenos Aires the following year, to see if it was truly my place, to see if I'd in fact found home, to continue to date BA to see if I we were ready for committment.

Well, as those loyal readers of my blog will attest (You can see where this is going. Countdown to Pat badmouthing Buenos Aires) Buenos Aires has a few skeletons in the closet, as it were. The town is not as pretty when you have to make a living here, when you're not on vacation, and when you're not in love (High 5 you know what I'm talking about to my German friend Maike). So I'm breaking up with Buenos Aires. I still want to be friends. I'll be back here in December leading a group of students from Miami and I suppose I'll be coming back for some time to come. Buenos Aires has left an indelible mark on my soul and identity.

That's why I titled this entry Ya Soy Porteno. Because whether I wanted to or not, I've adapted to the city and become something of the average citizen here. There's a part of me that is much more direct, assertive, selfish, honest, forceful, quick thinking, resourceful, impatient, and heartless. Certainly I'm missing some Porteno adjectives, but I think that's a good start. And the part of the Porteno mentality that I like is the honesty, directness, and selfishness. These are forms of being that I felt guilty about in the past that I now realize are-to a point- human and healthy.

In Columbus, I was much more like water, going with the flow, not trying to rock the boat, trying to please everyone and avoid conflict. I think that if I were to go back there and show my Porteno side, people wouldn't recognize nor like me. Which is not to say that I've become this mean, selfish Dick Cheney like monster. But rather, I say what I think more now, am a bit less patient, and assert my needs more than in the past. In a sense, it's a relief to me that I don't have to counter the new parts of me with the old image that people knew in Columbus.

My concern now is that, for the same reasons I'm leaving Buenos Aires, I'm not going to fit in in Denver. My experience in Denver is that while it's a biggish city, the people there are really nice. Granted, I think it's a great thing to be nice and I wish that it were more acceptable in Buenos Aires-the meaness is one of the reasons I'm leaving. But I'm worried now that the meaness and directness have found a home in me. That I like how direct and maybe rude people are here. Maybe the brutal honesty and directness are something that has unconsciously connected with me, despite the fact that I've ostensibly rejected it or at least feel as though I ought to. I'm worried that how nice people are in Denver will seem false and insincere, and that the people won't really be telling me how they feel. And I'll maybe fall into the trap of not feeling as though I can tell them how I feel. Once again, I'll feel repressed and will spend my days on instant messenger chatting with my Argentine friends or maybe Skyping once I mule them all down laptops with cameras. Maybe I'll lose myself once again. Regress.

I'm worried too that in general Denver will be another bad choice. It has many of the objective components of a city in which I think I could connect. Progressive people, universities, clean water, clean air, mountains, lakes, proximity to many national parks, large Hispanic population, day drive to Mexican border. The only things I think it might be missing are people interested in having great conversations and a warm climate (although it's supposed to be mild in the winter).

I'm concerned that I'll feel the desire to jump again to another city, that I won't be able to commit, that I'll be perpetually city jumping, looking for the perfect shoe...When maybe it's not the shoe-it's me.