Ode To Cecilia

Around the time I turned 16 I was promoted to the position of Caddymaster at a country club at the end of the street from my parent's place. I had been a caddy for 3-4 years previous. And while I wasn't the best looper out there, I was straight-laced and honest so I ended up with the job. The gig mostly entailed controlling the flow of play on the golf course, cleaning golf clubs, pulling out golf carts, loading golf clubs on golf carts, and doing random things for the members of the country club. A small part of the job as well was managing the dwindling, but substantial caddying program. Included in this was running the caddy training program, administering the exams, grading them, promoting and in some cases firing existing caddies, deciding which caddies would caddy for which members, and making sure caddies got paid appropriately.

My first year on the job was an adjustment. I was an awkward teen and utterly lacking common sense. So dealing with and responding to basic social and other challenges was something that I had to learn explicitly instead of just getting it. I also found it hard to swallow my pride all the time and I was a 5 on a scale of 10 in terms of my ability to kiss ass. In short, it was a role that I was not made for.

At the same time I got the job, my friend Mike started caddying far away at another country club. He had been my closest friend and had also been in contention for the caddymaster job. But Mike had a problem with theft and dishonesty that no one could prove outright, but that many sensed. So when Mike saw the writing on the wall (so to speak) he left to caddy elsewhere. And I was suddenly without my closest friend.

As top caddy-I was very proud-I began to feel a sort of captains or leaders isolation, in which a leader feels lonely because he has to isolate himself from his crew in order to maintain a certain distance and level of respect. On top of that, I was still a kid and all of a sudden I had to act semi-responsible and it wasn't fun.

Caddy school took place in mid to late April. A group of 40-50 kids from local schools showed up. I knew that only 5-10 of them would ever last until the end of the summer. The rest would loop once or twice and then never come back. One who showed up was named Kevin Ostrowski. I knew of him from elementary school. A loud, brash, obnoxious, irreverant, impulsive piece of work. He was everything I didn't want to be. And he thought he was going to caddy.

Caddying is all about self discipline, patience, control, politeness, attention, and keen observation-All the things that Kevin lacked. I did not want him caddying. I didn't want to be responsible for him. I didn't want him anywhere near me. I was going to make it super hard for him to pass his test.

As is the case with the universe....Kevin was the first to take the test. As also is the case with the universe. Kevin didn't miss any questions. The first day he was allowed to come to caddy, he was there bright and early, waiting for me to open up the pro-shop and bagroom. I nodded to acknowledge his presence and hoped that I could find him a loop quickly so that he would be out of my sight. Luckily, the club president showed up and in a request that was unusual for him, asked for a caddy. And so I sent Kevin out with his first loop.

Kevin was not made to caddy or to work much in general. His first bag was mammoth and the man for whom he was carrying it was old and not a great golfer. It must have been a miserable first loop.

When it was over, I heard Kevin say something I've never heard any caddy say, especially not to the club president: 'Old man, you better give me a lot of money because this bag is huge and that wasn't easy'. I couldn't believe it. Stunned. I didn't know how to respond. Would I be fired because I had hired this kid, knowing full well that he was a train wreck waiting to happen on his first loop. But what happened was....nothing. I don't know if the president didn't hear him or just didn't care or liked Kevin's attitude or what. But he simply laughed, gave Kevin 13 or so dollars (which is what he gave everyone at the time for 18 holes) and left.

I was shocked that he had gotten away with it. Appalled. But a part of me was also envious. A part of me thought it was hilarious what he'd done. He was everything that I wasn't, but maybe I did want to be a bit.

So I never did say anything to Kevin about what he said to the club president, nor did I punish him in any way. I think I wanted to see it happen again. He was entertaining. But I never acknowledged that I got a kick out of what he did. Instead, I was extra hard on and made a special effort to ignore him.

Even so, Kevin kept coming back. Again and again. Every morning there waiting. Every morning, I sighed as I walked up the path to the caddyshack, wondering why me? Why did this obnoxious kid have to be there every morning for me to put up with? He talked my ear off. Asked constant questions. Made stupid jokes. Wasn't terribly interested in caddying. Harrased the girls in the snackbar. Harrased the lifeguards. Swung every members' club he could get his hands on. And followed me everywhere.

By August, I had accepted his presence and his help. One night, while he was helping me pick up the driving range and the sun was setting, he said to me, 'Pat, wouldn't you probably say that I'm your best friend?'

I thought about it.... And he was right. I murmured, 'I guess so'. This guy who a few months back I had hated had quickly developed from my worst nightmare to my best friend by sheer force of day to day companionship and loyalty. And he did crazy stuff that I wish I could have gotten away with. I laughed. He did more crazy stuff. And we worked well together.

So I went from a lonely angsty teen to a happy and sometimes brooding teen. All because of my new best friend.

In Buenos Aires, I had a similar experience. In my final year in Columbus I had more or less drifted apart from my Ohio friends. I was working all the time in 4-5 jobs depending on the season and when I wasn't working I was chatting on the internet with my Argentine friends. I had lost the habit of meeting up and hanging out with people in general. When I moved to Buenos Aires things didn't change, even though I had cultivated a number of quality friendships there.

In Buenos Aires, the full force of having been dropped like a cigarette butt by my modelesque Patagonian ex-girlfriend hit me. She did not come back, wasn't interested in talking, and more or less wanted nothing to do with me. So I did what I do best. I buried myself in learning and doing my 4 new jobs. And I spent the rest of my time in my apartment reading, cooking, and occasionally writing. I rarely hung out with my Argentine friends and lived out a somewhat mechanized existence.

While most of my friends became accustomed to my excuses for why I couldn't hang out and stopped trying, one friend persevered, wouldn't give up. She kept calling and texting and calling and texting......Until I finally started accepting. At first because I had turned her down so many times before and I felt guilty. It wasn't her that I didn't want to see. I just didn't want to be out of the comfort and safety of my apartment and I was down and sulking and didn't want to be around anyone.

When I first started accepting Cecilia's offers to hang out, I would greet her reluctantly and would have to force myself to engage in conversation. I yearned to look at the time and calculated in my head how much longer I would have to hang out before I could justify leaving. I only accepted invitations on my terms. We would do exactly what I wanted to do, whether it was eating at my favorite parilla, practicing giving my tour, watching a movie I wanted to see, or going to a museum I wanted to go to. Cecilia was game for whatever and whenever, even though she had to travel and 2 hours round trip to see me.

Sunday was our day to hang out and it became the staple activity of my weekly schedule, my one surebet friend interaction per week. And for Ceci it was the same. She was so loyal to our Sundays that she even came back the week after she had been attacked and robbed while returning from one of our Sunday night parilla outings. When I found out what had happened I felt a mix of guilt and shame for letting her return so late without offering my futon, mixed with genuine concern for my friend and anger at the attackers, something I honestly wasn't expecting to feel. It had been difficult to allow myself to care deeply for anyone outside of family members again. I suffered from a lack of trust and a fear of being hurt. But somehow Cecilia had worked her way into my well guarded heart.

I remember the one night over the Argentine summer in January or February when I had gone from seeing Cecilia in a mechanical way to being genuinely happy to see my friend. I was walking to the Patio Bulrich Mall to see a movie with her (As always with a 2x1 pass that I had saved from the subway) and when I saw her from a distance an involuntary smile formed across my face and I threw my hands up to signal to her that I had arrived. My friend was waiting for me. By sheer force of loyalty, consistency, and putting up with a boring, cynical, ultra-grumpy, and often-times critical me, she had become my best friend. I don't know why she kept calling. I don't know what she saw in the pathetic shell that I was then. But she stuck around and now I care about her almost as one of my family.

Part of my getting better I owe to Cecilia getting me out of my apartment. The other part was likely the passage of time, active reflection, and swimming. She helped me to trust again even when I was convinced that I could trust no one in Buenos Aires. She's as honest and trustworthy as anyone I know.

I should point out as well that Cecilia wasn't as hard a sell as my old best friend (and still good friend) Kevin. Cecilia is trilingual (English, Spanish, and German). She works 6 days a week, from 9am-9pm using all 3 languages in her jobs, she spent a year studying in Germany, she's even tempered, she has good social skills, is super easy to get along with, and she's pretty. Why she wanted to be friends with me even throughout the dark self-pity days is a wonder.

When I leave in 20 days I will miss Cecilia very much. Sundays will never be the same. Who will amble through museums with me, accompany me for parilla, go out for late movies and ice cream afterwards, force me to go dancing de vez en cuando, introduce me to new Latin music, let me practice my tours on her, walk all over town with me even though she doesn't have the right shoes, take long bus rides out to street fairs, or simply put up with me in general???

I only hope that our friendship continues in some capacity after I leave. Cecilia has become something like the little sister I never had. And as much as she hates when I say that, it means a lot to me.

P.S. Please all wish Cecilia good luck as she has her final interview in June for a job with Lufthansa that will allow her to more easily travel the world and Denver, Colorado in particular so she can come visit.

Cordoba II

We woke late after a good nights sleep and took a long breakfast out on our giant porch. Afterwards, we headed out to spend the day in La Cumbrecita. La Cumbrecita is a small town at the foot of the Sierras de Cordoba (Smaller Cordoba mountains). No cars are allowed in La Cumbrecita which makes it comfortable to walk around without having to worry about being run down (a beautiful thing in light of its opposite in Buenos Aires). Unfortunately, the area has turned into a bit of a tourist trap. While it was once a village where a number of Germans settled after WWII, it is now inhabited Argentine entrepreneurs looking to make a buck off of small time tourism. Which is not to say that the area still isn't pretty. There are beautiful trails leading up into pristine mountains, bakeries that sell Stollen and other German treats, hotels that look like Swiss Chalets, and the people seem genuinely nice. All in all, it made for a pleasant day of ambling around, talking, enjoying the changing leaves, and hiking out to a beautiful waterfall.


La Cumbrecita was my chance to catch up with Dave. Dave was my professor, mentor, and close friend, but we more or less lost contact when he moved out to Los Angeles. Dave and I have great conversations and it's our talks that I've missed the most. In La Cumbrecita, we were able to start catching up in an ideal fall setting, much like the setting in Oxford, Ohio where we spent years rock climbing, running, playing frisbee golf, cooking dinner, and watching scary movies. I felt in my element doing what I love, hiking around in a beautiful setting while carrying on deep and meaningful conversation.

We ended the day by buying gifts of German sweet bread and chocolates for Marcelo's friends and family and afterwards took tea and coffee at a cozy faux German cafe. At the cafe, Marcelo and I carried on what has been a continuing errr friendly debate about Buenos Aires.

It all started on our first day in Cordoba on a hike outside of our cabin. I believe Marcelo asked me if it had been easy to find work in Buenos Aires. I think I responded that yes it had been easy and easy as well to get more work as I proved myself to my initial clients. I believe Marcelo asked why. And this is where I started running my mouth. This is where I should have just said, 'I don't know. I guess I'm just lucky.'

Instead, in keeping with the theme of needing to express myself and my feelings and making bold assertions based on my experiences-instead of telling people what they want to hear-I vomited a few crude thoughts about Buenos Aires. I think too, that I wanted to argue with someone about BA. With the exception of a few, I don't know most of my friends well enough to have a frank discussion about my observations of Buenos Aires. The problem is that nearly every Porteno to whom I've expressed my honest opinions of Buenos Aires has appeared hurt or turned defensive, however diplomatic I try to be. Sometimes they don't disapprove outright but instead through silence, if not a pained or frustrated face. So typically, I keep my mouth shut. But I knew with Marcelo that we could argue about this and could still be friends afterwards. So maybe that's why I took the liberty of going down the path of conflict with him.

When Marcelo asked why it was easy to get work in Buenos Aires, I said something to the effect of, 'I think that just because I follow the basic good business practices of the United States, it sets me apart from the average Argentine worker. That is, I come to work on time, I answer people's emails and calls promptly, I'm prepared, I try to have good customer service, I'm dependable, and I work hard'. Cue volcano erupting. Face anger red. Steam exiting ears. Sirens of intense Argentine national pride blaring from the tops of the Sierras! Cue me, gulping, realizing that I'd just intentionally stepped in the biggest and foulest pile of dog caca known to Buenos Aires sidewalks. And I would spend the rest of the trip and more stepping deeper....and deeper.... and then trying to clean it all off.

Game on.

I won't try to use exact quotes from here on out. It would be dishonest and I want to stay friends with Marcelo (As opposed to having fun misquoting him). The best I can do is give a summary of what was said.

Basically, Marcelo disagreed with me vehemently. He believes that Argentinians are very hard workers with good customer service skills. The concession he made was that Argentinians have a problem with being on-time. But as far as the rest was concerned, he was convinced that I was full of it.

To make my point, I cited my experience with my internet and cable service providers. How at one point after going without service for 2 weeks, having 2 separate technicians come to my apartment and then tell me they couldn't fix the problem, calling the office 5 times, and then going to the office two times, I was finally able to find one person who was able to solve what was a very elementary problem. This is not to mention the attitude I was given when I tried to get help at the office and the fact that the technicians made a huge mess of my apartment and one of them wound up playing solitaire on my computer when he couldn't fix the internet issue.

Marcelo's argument against these types of arguements was three fold: A. He has had more problems in the United States with customer service than in Argentina. B. I was generalizing based on one bad experience. C. He almost always had positive experiences with customer service in Argentina and was almost always able to procure a discount our something free as a result of his inconvenience.

I didn't buy it. I brought up another example of how when my wooden safety and sound buffering curtains broke I called 4 guys. 3 told me they would either call me back or come to fix my curtains and none of them showed up or called me back. It was only on the 4th try that I found someone who responded quickly and acted like he was interested in the fairly lucrative job that I was offering. (This guy is now my friend and English student, Esteban)

Again, Marcelo claimed that I was generalizing based on my limited experience. I went on to cite example after example of what I consider being mistreated by people from whom I've bought things in Buenos Aires, whether it be at the Fish Monger where a woman knocked on my head like Bif in Back to the Future when I didn't respond immediately to her question or at my gym where almost every morning the woman whose sole job it is to buzz me through the turnstyle always makes me wait until she's done texting or talking with a friend on the phone before she begrudgingly acknowledges me and presses the button to let me in (usually takes a minute or two or three). I pointed out how different people were on my recent trip home, how I thought people in the US were kidding becasue they seemed so nice in comparison to how I'm treated in Buenos Aires.

Marcelo countered with his own instances of mistreatment in Los Angeles and again told me that I was generalizing and that he hadn't had any of the types of experiences I'd had.

At one point, I realized that I didn't know if I truly believed everything I was saying to the extent that I was forcing it or if it was more that I had just become super defensive and was basically in a verbal fight. That is, whether I truly cared or not had gone out the window and instead it was all about defending myself from and then defeating my opponent.

Or maybe I did in fact feel very strongly about what I was saying, that it was important to me to have my version of reality validated. And when Marcelo challenged me so strongly, my sense of my Argentina experience had been challenged and instead of accommodating his opinions, I wanted to defend my own. It takes energy to change, to accept and accomodate differences into your worldview. And it's a challenge to the identity, since perception is part of identity.

When someone tells you that you're view of reality is much different than the truth, it's unsettling, shakes you up, and makes you wonder if much of anything you perceive is real. On top of all this, I had a vested interest in my criticisms of Buenos Aires. For one, I'm leaving and I've chosen to leave partly based on my view that it's a stressful and often times mean city. If I can't hold onto this view, then how do I explain yet another move to myself? Another issue is that I had a very serious relationship with a woman here that didn't work out. And I've needed for some ridiculous reason to dislike the entire city as a means of dealing with the breakup. Because I fell in love with the city at the same time as I fell in love with her. The two in my mind are kind of inseparable.

The argument morphed into a much more general one. Me: Buenos Aires Bad! Marcelo: Buenos Aires Good! I was convinced that the root of Marcelo's what I consider to be defensive posture was mostly the result of his national pride. And Argentine national pride is something I don't understand. In my opinion, it's been about as useless as US national pride. It's akin to the pride that people show for their favorite Sports team and rarely translates to progress. I also think nationalism in general is ridiculous. The idea that we should be proud of the country we live in. Why? What purpose does it serve? If anything, we should consider ourselves Team World. Borders are arbitrary lines that we imposed on the world. But the laws of nature and physics and the universe know no borders. And the longer that we feel the need to focus on national pride, the longer it will take to address the world's problems.

So in a sense, someone getting upset at my criticisms of THEIR Argentina is upsetting to me. In truth, Argentina is no more theirs than the US is mine as the world is humans. That we feel a sense of posession or attachment to pieces of land that we have claimed as our own seems a bit childish and egocentric.

Off my soap box....Anyhow, Marcelo claimed that it wasn't just about his pride for Argentina, that he defends any country or place or people that others try to unfairly generalize. And I have to agree that he's right about that.... But I countered anyway with the fact that a lot of my job as a psychologist is to make generalizations based on observations. I agree that it's a fine line to walk when you are making generalizations, but that if we are afraid to make them, we are denying the information that our senses and our brains give us and trading it for fear of offending someone. On top of that, we are ignoring valuable knowledge that can help us understand one another better. Again, this is against my recent self development of trying not to tell people what they want to hear and instead expressing what I think, observe, and feel.

The end of our initial argument came when we compromised on wording. Marcelo pointed out that he wouldn't have come back at me swinging if I hadn't stated my opinions so crudely, if I had instead said that 'Based on my limited experience in Argentina' or 'It has been my own personal experience in Buenos Aires that'. Instead, I said, 'I think that this is the way it is'. I wanted to respond initially that it is assumed that I am sharing my peronal perspective and not Encyclopedic fact when I say 'I think'. But, for the sake of putting the arguement to rest and in the spirit of compromise, I admitted that I stated my opinions carelessly and even in a mean way. And so fizzled out the fireworks of the first show.

Only to be reignited in the cafe in La Cumbrecita at the end of the day. Here's how it went down.
Nidia and Marcelo were excited about getting some type of torta or cake at the cafe. Upon asking for a specific type of cake, the waiter replied that they didn't have that type of cake. Marcelo then asked for another type of cake. The waiter again said that they didn't have that type of cake either. Nidia asked what they did have. The waiter responded somewhat testily that the woman who made all the cakes was sick and that they didn't have any except for chocolate. The waiter's responses seemed rude in general, like he was upset with us for even asking about the cakes or being in the cafe for that matter or having to deal with us. The way that he said 'No' really grated on me. I was a waiter and never treated people like that, even on my worst days in my worst moods. But this was exactly what I was talking about in terms of the customer service in Buenos Aires.

With my foot still in dodo, I decided to go ahead and sit in it. The words drool drivelled from the corners of my mouth about how this type of treatment was typical of my customer service issues with Buenos Aires. Then I followed it up by saying that I didn't know whether it was simply a cultural difference or a difference in my understanding of the language, but that from my perspective the waiter seemed rude. My point being that mabye Argentines are used to talking to each other in that way and it's not considered rude at all. It could easily have been chalked up to my different cultural upbringing.

Marcelo wasn't having it. It had nothing to do with cultural differences. It was instead again that I was generalizing one negative experience on the rest of Argentina. He first defended the behavior of the waiter, saying that the waiter's handling of the situation was justified and understandable, that under the circumstances it was ok for a restaurant specializing in cakes to be out of all of their cakes but one. He went on to point out an issue he has in the United States with treatment at restaurants. Marcelo still tends to eat at the Argentine hour, 10-11 pm or later, when he goes out to dinner. As a result, he typically has to call restaurants in LA to be sure they'll be open until 10pm. Often, he says he will call a restaurant to be sure they're open until that time and they wind up not being open when he gets there, even though they say they'll be open.

I agreed with him that while this is definitely wrong, it is understandable if there are no other people in the restaurant and the restaurant is losing money by being open for just two people. On top of that, almost no one in the US eats so late so it doesn't make sense to stay open so late. I went on to point out how our separate defenses were likely based on our cultural biases and upbringings. Not being open late makes all the sense in the world to someone raised in a culture where they eat dinner between 6-7. Not having certain foods advertised on a menu makes sense to someone raised in a country where it is common for restaurants to be out of or not have on that day items that are listed on the menu. Regardless, Marcelo was not satisfied.

He brought up again my poorly worded opinions about Argentine workers. And I brought up again his defensiveness and unwillingness to compromise and before I knew it we were practically shouting at one another and people in the restaurant were looking at us. At one point, the waiter, who may have been shocked and shaken out of his bad mood by our ferocity, came over to apologize about them not having any cakes (which Marcelo used as further evidence that I was more or less wrong in my generalization). But at that point, it wasn't about the waiter anymore, it was a primitive verbal brawl going from Spanish to English and back.

I can't say that there was any clear resolution to this particular argument. It was Mothers' Day and I needed to call my mom before the call center closed up. And our tea and coffee were done and we had overstayed our welcome in the little cakeless faux German cake cafe.

The end of the argument came down to me claiming that maybe I didn't even believe what I was saying but that I became super defensive when I felt that Marcelo was yelling at me. I told him in shaky Spanish that I don't like when people yell at me. He responded suddenly and caringly that he didn't feel that he was yelling, that to him this was a normal conversation, the type he has often. He then conceeded to have possibly gone from 0-100 in a second and that what seems like yelling to people in the US is a normal conversation level to Latinos.

There were less heated arguments the following day on the long drive back to downtown Cordoba. Marcelo expressed sincerely how bad he felt that I hadn't enjoyed my experience in Buenos Aires and that he wished I had instead stayed in Cordoba. I think he took my dislike and my negative experiences personally. I tried to tell him that he didn't have to take it personally, that it wasn't his fault, that he was in no way responsible for anything bad that had happened to me in Buenos Aires. I also explained to him that I didn't just hate Buenos Aires, that I both love and hate it. I also told him as I've expressed many times in my blog how important a learning experience living in Buenos Aires has been. I would have been more comfortable and happy in Cordoba but I wouldn't have learned nearly as much.

In the end, as I process our arguments, discussions, and disagreements, I see them in the context of the evolving me, the one who now expresses himself instead of telling people what they want to hear. And the result sometimes is the aforementioned. If you stick to your guns, you conflict and you'd better be ready for it. And you'd also better be ready for some damage or distancing from the person with whom you have conflicted. I think it can bring you closer, ideally, but it can also push you apart. And I don't think I know yet how to get closer with someone via conflict. But I'd really like to figure it out.

I guess one question that emerges from this trial of new behavior is, do I feel differently after having held my ground and supporting my view of reality? The answer is that I'm not entirely sure. I think one thing I may feel is a little reluctant to share the brute force of my crude opinions. I honestly don't like the way it makes you feel in the end, like you've showed someone a part of yourself better left escondido. On the other hand, I also feel a clearer sense of definition between my worldview and Marcelo's. The argument drew clear boundaries around us and made me understand and see myself and Marcelo better. In the past, when I simply went along with the opinions of others, I felt more formless, shapeless, without value, weak. And this firmer shape I think is something I need right now, something essential to knowing and being myself, which I think is one key to being at peace or harmony with the world.

Cordoba

I returned to Cordoba recently to spend a long weekend with my friends Marcelo, Dave, and Nidia. Marcelo is originally from Cordoba but currently living and working as a screenwriter in LA. Dave is my long time friend and former professor of creative writing from Miami University, also now a screenwriter in LA. And Nidia is Marcelo's friend from Cordoba and the owner of a pair of great vegetarian restaurants.



It was a great trip and made me realize that I would have been much more comfortable had I chosen to live my year in Cordoba instead of BA. Cordoba is the 2nd largest city in Argentina, but much much smaller than BA. For me, the best things about Cordoba are that the people seem more kind, the pace of life is less frenetic, you can see the sierras (small mountains) from Downtown, and you can get out of the city to a great natural setting in 30 minutes to an hour by car.



Granted, I wouldn't have learned nearly as much by living in Cordoba. Being comfortable, in my experience, rarely equals learning. But I think I probably would have been more happy and more connected as opposed to a bit intimidated and overwhelmed. Buenos Aires is a place where you kind of always have to be on your game. That is, once you hit the streets, you start moving quickly and must cut through the noisy symphony of vehicles while simultaneously dodging people, taxis, buses, and cars. A lot of times, I don't leave my apartment because I don't want to or am not ready to deal with it all. I never really had that feeling in Cordoba, although downtown can be a little crazy around la hora peco.



My recent trip to Cordoba started with an overnight bus ride from Buenos Aires. The overnight bus experience is unique. I don't like it. But I respect the heck out of the idea of multi-tasking while you sleep. No time wasted. In Buenos Aires, it's a way of life to take overnight trips on comfortable, double decker, plush leather seat touring buses. The prices are extremely reasonable and for a small fee, you can upgrade to a service that includes a 3 or 4 course meal including after dinner drinks.



Once you're on the bus, it's great. You take your shoes off, put your earplugs in, turn the lights out, pull up your blanket, adjust your pillow against the window, and put your seat back all the way (sometimes they go all the way flat). Listo, you go to sleep and wake up at your destination. But before you're on the bus, especially if you're cheap like me, it takes a little more gumption. You leave your apartment in the middle of the night, catch the 152 bus on Santa Fe to Retiro, walk quickly through the 3rd worldish mess that is Retiro Station and then make your way to the Estacion del Omnibus. At that point, you must wait for your bus to pull into 1 of 13 or so parking places. So you're on your toes, walking back and forth from the different parking places as different buses pull in. And even if you think you have the right bus, you have to ask because the same company often makes multiple trips to the same location at the same time. You must also listen closely to the loudspeaker that announces the different buses pulling into the station. Once you find the right bus, you jump in line and try to get into the paradise of the interior as soon as possible because standing in the exhaust filled loading area is nothing if not nauseating.



The trip to Cordoba is about 9-10 hours by bus. I was going not to Cordoba but to a small town called La Cumbrecita a little further West that took about 12 hours total to get to and required a connection in a town called Villa General Belgrano. The trip was relatively comfortable and despite waking up periodically through the night, I was able to get a few hours of decent sleep.



In Villa General Belgrano, I made my connection just in time, as we arrived an hour later than schedule. My bus drivers took the liberty to take long smoke/mate' breaks at every stop along the twisting route. At one point, I asked the drivers of the bus to call ahead to have them hold my bus so that I could be sure to make my connection to La Cumbrecita. Luckily, soon after asking, the bus pulled into the station and I had just enough time to jump off, buy my ticket, and jump on another bus just as it was pulling out.



The bus to La Cumbrecita dropped me off not in La Cumbrecita but instead at the entrance to a Hotel called Hosteria La Demonda. When the driver pointed to my stop, I hesitated before getting off. I was in the middle of nowhere on a dusty road, not at the lobby of a comfortable hotel. The stop was at the sign for the estancia but the estancia was much further up its own stoney road. The area was barren and I hoped that Marcelo, Dave, and Nidia would be there soon to pick me up. If not, it was going to be a long day in the middle of nowhere after having spent 12 hours on buses through the night to get there.

Soon after getting off the bus, I got a call from Marcelo telling me that they were lost. I tried not to answer testily, or to show the tiredness in my voice. I told them that I'd be waiting at the sign to the estancia and that I would keep an eye out on the main road for them.



So I hopped onto the broken stone structure that once held the sign to the estancia. There, I wedged my back against some rocks and pulled out a book to read while I waited. 30-40 minutes passed when finally I heard a shout and then saw a small white VW Gol driving slowly up the path from the Estancia, the opposite direction from which I expected them. I was greeted with hugs all around and I quickly jumped in the car so that we could get on with our plans for the day. In any case, I hadn't seen these guys for years and it was pretty cool to be reuniting in the middle of Argentina.



We drove to a small almacen or general store to stock up on food. Our stop at the store must have been like winning a small lottery for the owner of the almacen. Every one of us on the trip is a foodie and we spent far more than necessary to assure that we didn't go without for the next few days.



On the trip back to our cabin, I saw why it took so long picking me up. The road back to our cabin was awful: steep, narrow, muddy in some parts, and dangerously stoney. There were 3 different points at which 3 of us had to get out of the car so that the car could go down a hill and not have its underbelly torn up by jagged rocks protruding from the road. The 1-2 mile trip took at least 30 minutes and required considerable energy to help our driver, Nidia, navigate the path.



Marcelo had picked out the cabin and I had no idea what to expect. When I arrived, I was astounded by the size of the place. It was more than a cabin, it was a big luxury house in the woods. There were three bedrooms, 3 large full bathrooms, stone and hardwood floors throughout, spa showers, a giant jacuzzi with a huge picture window, a large kitchen, a living room with vaulted ceilings and a huge fireplace, and a large deck with a beautiful grill and a huge wooden table and benches with a beautiful view to the surrounding mountains. The only really weird thing was that all of the furniture was made out of stretched cowhide and gnarly old tree branches. The furniture must have cost a fortune, but it was uncomfortable and unsettling, even for a guy who likes to eat cow as much as I do. Nevertheless, the place was great, in terms of its brute force in quality building materials, appliances, and luxuries. I honestly couldn't have imagined staying at a nicer place.



It turns out that Marcelo was trying to get us a cabin from an adjoining group of cabins but they wound up being too expensive and included meals in the price. We wanted to cook on our own and didn't want to pay that much. So, the owner of the adjoining cabins gave Marcelo the number to a family who had land nearby and an extra cabin on that land for rent. Jackpot. The price was right and the cabin was amazing and plenty spacious for the 4 of us.



It turns out that the couple who rented us the cabin is originally from Atlanta. The father had been raised in Argentina but become a heart surgeon in the states and the mother had been the CFO of a large hospital in Atlanta. They were both retired and had moved back to Cordoba and while they lived in the city during the week, they spent a few weekends a month on this patch of beautifully wooded land just outside of La Cumbrecita. On their land, they built an amazing house for themselves, a house for the father's sister to stay in (the house we had rented), a kids play house (Like a Hobbit hole), a chapel, a soccer field, and a caretakers house. All of the construction was top quality and it was obvious that someone had taken great care in the planning and upkeep of the place.



We were only the 2nd group to have rented the cabin meant for the father's sister who in the end rarely made it out to the house. So, the couple decided to rent it out when they could. They also used the home for music camps in the summer.



Our first night became extremely interesting when after a hike to a nearby stream we encountered the family walking our way with horses in tow. There were 3 fraternal twin boys, a 50 something heavy-set but jolly looking man, and a 50 something fit blond haired woman (an Atlanta native as it turns out). After the introductions, they showed us around the property and explained the aformentioned details. The kids seemed well behaved, mature, and fun. The parents seemed kind and eccentric. I kept trying to peg this family, to better understand them, but they were too complex for a simple explanation.



They lead us back to their own lavish cabin for a tour and snacks. Their weekend place is like something out of Mountain Living magazine or Architecture Digest of La Pampa: Top of the line appliances, flat panel TVs, amazing wooden countertops and tables, a packed wine cellar, and a covered deck with a huge grill as well as a special Chilean convection-type oven alongside it. Basically it was a rustic looking place with all of the most modern conveniences. The place was amazing and I suggested to them that they send pictures of their entire complex to a magazine in the states. They had clearly put a ton of thought and more money than I will likely see in my lifetime into their weekend getaway.



After the tour of the house and a more getting to know you, we were invited to a dinner of fresh lamb cooked in the special Chilean oven that the father wanted to show off. At first, Marcelo being polite and reasonable said 'no no'. I quickly countered with 'yes yes!'. A mistake.



What can I say? I am a lamb fanatic and these people seemed genuinely interesting and nice. And I love lamb and the idea of cooking it in this special oven truly excited me. We talked a bit more, reluctantly but excitedly accepted their dinner offer, and then headed back to our cabin to clean up and shower before dinner. On the way back up to our cabin in the dark, Dave and I talked about how complex and interesting the family was. We were cautiously optimistic that we had found truly cool people and were excited about getting to know them better at dinner. I even remarked to Dave that I thought it was about to be one of the best days of my life...staying at an awesome cabin in an amazing location and cooking up fresh lamb while meeting really cool new people. To me it doesn't get any better. I like pointing out when life is really good and then taking time to chew on it, savor it, and file the memory away for later.



While I cleaned up, Marcelo and Nidia went off to buy desert from the restaurant at the adjacent cabins. Marcelo, always the proper guest, didn't want to come to dinner empty handed and wound up spending a fortune on creme brule type custards as well as chocolate lava cakes with fresh fruit sauce.

We walked down to their cabin in the now pitch black and could smell the roasting lamb smoke pouring out of the cracks in the house. My mouth watered in anticipation and maybe clouded my better judgement or perception as we encountered the first odd happening of the night.

#1: As we walked in the door, the father and the boys were ready for us and greeted us by playing a piece of classical music. The father and two boys on violin and one boy playing piano. The boys were not bad, but the father was swaying intensely, barking out orders to the boys, and playing poorly. Dave looked at me in a way that through the years I have come to understand means a cross between alarm and humor. I didn't much notice. I was more interested in the coming lamb and thought that the recital was more of an eccentricity than something part of a larger odd whole.



As we sat down to dinner, I scouted out the perfect piece of lamb for myself and grabbed a bit of calabaza and salad to accompany. I liked my lips and waited until everyone sat down so that I could tear into my piece. I wound up getting the kidney and various other meaty pieces. The kidney of lamb is delicious and fatty, surely a cholesterol bomb, but one that makes you happy as it kills you. I ate it first and as my eyes rolled into the back of my head noticed that I was very cold. For some reason, the room we were in was so cold that I think I could see my breath. I hugged myself for warmth in between stuffing lamb and salad in my mouth.



The lamb was definitely good, but not the best I'd ever had. The best I've had was in Ushuaia, Tierra Del Fuego all you can eat lamb. Incredible stuff that I'm not sure will ever be matched unless I travel to New Zealand. In any case, I was satisfied enough and ready to concentrate on engaging conversation that luckily Marcelo, the proper guest, had maintained while the rest of us were concentrating on our food.



Weird happening #2:

Marcelo noticed that all the kids had left the table and gone upstairs. He asked what they were up to and the father said, 'They're watching Bill O'Reilly''.



Dave glanced over to me and I did not meet his glance because I knew that I'd bust out laughing if I had. First of all, why were 8 year old kids watching Bill O'Reilly? Second, who has Bill O'Reilly beamed in via Satellite in the middle of the Argentine countryside? Finally, why would anyone watch Bill O'Reilly to begin with??

We were 4 very progressive/liberal whatever you want to label us guests and we were at a dinner table with a family so conservative that the children had left the dinner table to go watch Bill O'Reilly who had been beamed in to their weekend cabin in BFE Argentina. Why weren't the kids watching Disney or heck, even Nickalodean or some type of Yugioh cartoon. Bill O'Reilly? At age 8?



More importantly, what had we gotten ourselves into? We had the rest of the Argentine evening (which can be very long) to talk to these people with whom we likely had very little/nothing in common. Suddenly, we had a structure for understanding them, an organization into which we could fit the pieces to make sense of it all.



After telling us that the kids were watching Bill O'Reilly, the father went on to talk about how he is a conservative Republican who voted for Bush in both elections and who votes his pocketbook, but who is upset that he lost a ton in the stock market during the financial crisis that took place during Bush's presidency.



As the father drank more and more wine, he talked more and more about his political beliefs which made less and less sense as he tried both to be diplomatic, but convicted at the same time which more than anything confused us and made us think that he was just trying to act moderate because he knew we were all lefties.



At one point, I was shivering so badly that I had to get up to stand at the other side of the room in front of the fireplace. The mother, while also conservative but sparingly sober and reasonable, followed me and we had a polite conversation about her kids' education in Cordoba. The rest of the group followed us and sat around the fireplace where the conversation continued.

We felt trapped. The father had become more or less drunk and was talking non-stop, a litany of nonsensical opinions, each one trailing off into a mumbling mess. We had become his captive audience, obligated to listen to him wax drunken about whatever subject came to mind. We had accepted dinner and hospitality and now had to listen to this guy for the rest of the night until we could find a segue to escape.



We wound up leaving as the fire burned down to embers and the conversation finally hit a slight lull. Marcelo, ever the savor, used it as an opportunity to move us towards the door and we cordially said our thank yous, goodnights, we'll stay in touchs, and out into the night to wash ourselves clean of it all.



Back at our cabin, we tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together to understand the family, to draw up a character sketch, to have group therapy before being haunted in our dreams by what had turned out to be an odd and uncomfortable experience.



Here's what we gathered. The father was a heart surgeon who was collecting disability and insurance for arthritis in his hands. He had taken out all kinds of expensive policies in case of this and was now collecting on it as arthritis had developed in his hands. The mother had retired from her job as a hospital administrator. The kids were the result of invitro fertilization and the father had built a chapel on their weekend property to 'some God' in thanks for the children. The family had a ridiculously expensive RV in the US as well as rental properties in Chile, a house in Miami, an apartment in Atlanta, and property in San Diego. They spent most of the year in their house in the most exclusive neighborhood in Cordoba, but travelled back and forth frequently to Atlanta to see the wife's side of the family. The parents, both now retired, were spending their days on eccentric projects like building up their weekend compound, organizing music camps, collecting and drinking wine, taking music lessons, cooking, surfing the internet, and watching Fox News. The father was drinking too much and lonely and in need of people to listen to him. He has poor social skills and invites people over for opulent dinners so that he can get comfortable, drink, and then say whatever he wants to his captive audience. The wife is smart, rational, and diplomatic. She probably doesn't have to stay with the husband as he slides downhill, but does so for the 3 kids and because of all of the projects the two of them are involved in. In any case, her husband seemed to make her feel uncomfortable and it was our sense that she could have done much better. The kids seemed kind, adult-like, mature, disciplined, and fun. It was a shame that they had been indoctrinated into loving O'Reilly to please their father.



In short, we gathered that the family was eccentric, wealthy, and conservative. Almost Libertarian, needing complete freedom, the ability to do anything and go anywhere whenever they wanted. The father had prodigious amounts of energy, money, time, and intelligence, but few social skills. He had projects going constantly and was restless, in need of new challenges and in the absence of his work, had created challenges where there were none. And now, because of his lack of structure had maybe started drinking and eating too much and because he was not interacting intelligently with many people had lost any sort of rhetorical edge he once possessed.



And we had unwittingly fallen into this situation, the guests of a lonely Libertarian/eccentric family that didn't quite know what they were doing in Argentina and despite their homes all over the world weren't ready to settle anywhere, even though they had spent millions of dollars and years in planning and developing their properties.

More on our next day in Cordoba in the following post.

Charity as Cure All

I met someone during my first trip to Buenos Aires whose world view was, at the time, exactly opposite mine. Without exaggerating, she felt almost no responsibility to anyone or anything. She believed her mission in life was to pursue her own happiness.

Her beliefs both enraged and intrigued me and she effectively shook my worldview to the core. Her analytical mind tore down my somewhat shallow and cliched beliefs and made me feel stupid for caring.

Allow me to elaborate on who I was when I met her...At the time, I was heavily involved in volunteering for progressive political causes. I co-directed a campaign for Ohio Representative, made door-to-door pleas, annoyed more independents via phone than I can remember, gave financial contributions, wrote letters to the editor of Ohio newspapers, blogged, and even refused to buy anything from companies that financially supported the Bush administration.

I felt that fighting the Bush Administration and its supporters was my obligation as a citizen and I took it way seriously. Since the start of graduate school, I remember having a seething anger towards Bush and his chronies. I saw clearly that we had been lied into invading Iraq. He used our need for vengence after 911 to carry out a neoconservative agenda (pre 911) of invading Iraq and turning the Middle East into a Capitalist/Democratic dream in the desert. For anyone who was paying attention, there was never a substantial connection between Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Neither was there any reliable evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

The Bush administration seemed to be against everything I held dear. Bush slashed EPA funding, weakened every environmental regulation he could get his hands on, gave the rich gigantic tax cut after tax cut, and thoughtlessly and carelessly signed No Child Left Behind into law.

To me, Bush was the classic rich grinning villain and before I knew it, I was attributing any and all anger, unhappiness, depression, or negative thought to him. It was all his fault.

Granted, if anyone deserved it, it was Bush. In 8 years, he and his buddies trashed our country as if it were his college frat house on a Saturday night. His actions affected me personally, my family, my job, not to mention my country.

However, as I look back on it, Bush was only part of it. Sure, he upset me directly and made my day to day life unhappier than it would have been otherwise. But there was more to it. I had allowed myself to scapegoat all of my negativity to the Bush administration. Dare I say it, it wasn't all their fault.

During graduate school up until my trip to Argentina (7 or so years), I incurred a number of physical stress related maladies. Most of these maladies I attributed to stress caused from my frustration with living in Bush's world. It started with heart palpitations then turned into serious heartburn then gastritis then other more serious digestive disorders. As I look back on this history of stress related issues, it's obvious that the physical manifestion of my opposition to the Bush Administration was anything but normal. I had good reason to be upset, but to the extent that it affected my health and resulted in doctors visits and prescription medication?

I have come to realize that I was either extremely passionate and idealistic about my beliefs or there was something else going on with me. I was outletting my negative emotions on Bush, letting hidden and unrelated issues feed on and combine with anger towards him.

I don't want to completely absolve Bush. His actions were a big part of it. I'm sure of it because I felt much more at peace once the Democrats took back the Senate and House in 2006. And now that Obama is President, it's like Soma for me, dreamy bliss, a warm bath with a New Yorker magazine for me to read as I soak.

But part of it too was something else. Physical manifestations and the angry responses I had toward Bush were simply not normal. The ways I responded and the amount of vitriol I had were I think the products of something else that I wasn't dealing with. I know it because while I now feel pacified by Obama and the direction of our country, many of the same feelings I had during the reign of Bush still exist. Only now I've had to look for different scapegoats. That is, kicking Bush and his bums out didn't fully cure me as I had thought it would. Many of my responses and intensity and negativity still remain and I think that I outlet them now on anyone by whom I feel rejected.

So I guess the lesson is that scapegoating my feelings on a worthy evil, while not the worst practice, does not cure or address the root of my problems.

I recently had a conversation with a friend who provided an eloquent and illuminating example, suggeting that some doctors spend years in Africa treating AIDS patients and doing great work and yet in that time never address their own suffering.

That is, some people engage in charity or worthy causes as a means of curing their own suffering. In the end, they may receive some therapeutic benefit, but never really address the root of their unhappiness or guilt or whatever's eating them. Their choice in charity is a stab in the dark, a drastic step in an attempt to cure a suffering soul. Often these charitable acts-however worthy- don't match up with the true needs of the individual.

And so I've been thinking...About all the other people who outlet feelings and energy caused by hidden issues onto unrelated factors such as their jobs, family, spouses, sports teams, politics, traffic, children, pets... They've convinced themselves that the way they feel is justified by something imperfect in their environment. Some people choose charity and volunteering or exercise while others choose... more dangerously and blame the people closest to them. Put simply, when we feel a certain way, we look to an easy target to justify why we feel the way we do.

Sometimes easy targets are right on. Lack of sleep, changes in weather, allergies. All these factors can ruin a day and make us feel lousy. But if the problem is more chronic and spans through everyday environmental changes, we look to something more stable in our lives to justify our anger, our guilt, our fear etc.

I think in general, it's true that liberals tend to me more depressed, unhappy. They use all the problems in the world to justify their general and vague unhappiness. A liberal might think...Surely I feel terrible today because the polar ice caps are melting and the polar bears are drowning. Ok, I agree, that's terrible and for a sensitive person, the idea could cause some amount of emotional trauma. Regardless, it's still an abstract concept by which few people are directly affected. What's more likely is that someone attaches unhappiness they already have and exacerbates it with news like this.

On the other hand, I think, generally speaking, Republicans are angry, angrier and meaner sometimes than I was on the left. I think they use the 'Bleeding heart' mentality of liberals as justification for their anger and fears. One need only listen to Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage and the people who call in to get a sense of the way in which they are justifying their anger with the mere existence of Hillary Clinton and gay marriage. I have no idea why or how you could justify your anger with Hillary Clinton. Ok, she's an ambitious woman and maybe part of her staying with Bill was to further her own political ambitions. I still don't think that's enough to justify any substantial amount of anger. And gay marriage. Really? I've never heard a reasonable argument against it, other than it's something different than what people are used to, and people are afraid of change. Does two people who love each other and want to get married really justify seething anger? Anyhow, my political leanings are clear enough.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is an extension of previous posts about self discovery. I think that only through learning about ourselves, facing our pasts, and getting to the core of issues are we able to begin to find peace and I suppose 'relieve our suffering'. I think people, including myself, who take wild thrusts into politics or other worthy causes are mostly picking charities at random, maybe ones that other people have told them that they should care about or that will change their lives and make them happier.

The world is probably a better place as a result of this behavior. In the end, however, people who engage in random charity as a means of dealing with their problems and feeling better could likely have better eased their suffering through Prozac.

I'm guessing that true therapeutic value and nourishment for the soul come instead from a deep knowledge of ourselves and our pasts, followed up by appropriate behavioral responses, whether that means some type of deliberate charitable act or simple lifestyle changes that benefit no one but ourselves.

So I find myself now not as angry with Bush and the Republicans. Don't get me wrong. I still get upset when they mindlessly oppose Obama in lock step, even though he has made genuine strides to compromise, reach across the aisle, and appoint Republicans into positions of power and prominence. But I'm beginning to realize that maybe some of the things that used to upset me aren't issues that I really truly care about. Instead, maybe I was justifying my anger and unhappiness with those issues.

The woman I met during my first trip to BA shook my moral etchasketch. I still don't agree with her way of thinking or behaving and I'm not sure if she knows herself enough to be convicted in this extremely egocentric forma de ser. But she did have the effect of shaking up my identity and getting me to realize that I didn't really care as much about some issues as I thought.

So for a good part of my over year long stay in Buenos Aires, I've felt a general apathy and malaise that I haven't experienced in a long time. To some degree, I have been rebuilding my moral framework, deciding what was truly important to me versus what I had decided to use as a scapegoat for my emotions. And in the meantime, there has existed a vacuum, an empty and kind of sad space where my activism and passion used to be.

These days, I'm happy to say, my passion for certain issues is returning as I begin to learn more about myself. But I think what's more important at the moment, before the step of action and advocacy, is to continue to explore why my physical and emotional responses in the past have been out of line with reality.

Wrapping it Up

Today, May 20 2009 marks exactly 1 month before I leave Argentina and start long-term life again in the States. I have officially been here for a total of about 1 year 2 months. In this time, I have gone from loving Buenos Aires, despising Buenos Aires, to loving Buenos Aires, to having mixed feelings. I'm currently in the mixed feelings stage. I think I have the city figured out to the point that I make it work, but still don't want to be here long term.



What I mean when I say that I have the city figured out is that I've figured out how to adapt to life here and what the rules and tricks are to making everyday transactions. For instance, I've learned that every time you go to buy something in the grocery store or go to a bank or to pay a bill or to the post office, you ought to have some form of entertainment ready for waiting in a line that can be as long as 30 minutes.

I've figured out that if you don't want to be harrased by the security guards in stores, you need to take your backpack straight to a locker before entering a store.

I've learned that if I'm waiting in line at any type of store or for any type of service, I must wait until the person at the checkout finishes texting his or her friend or finishes the conversation they're having with their friend before they will even acknowledge my existence. I've learned that, 'The customer is always right' is not the mantra of the service industry here. The mantra is more...'When I'm good and ready, I will pay attention to you and not a moment sooner. We are equals and if anything, I am doing you more of a service than you're doing me. And, if there are any disagreements, you can get out of my store. Chau.'



I've also figured out that if you look at a homeless person or make eye contact, they will typically ask you for money or begin following you to ask for money and if you don't give them anything and you have a heart, you'll feel guilty about it the rest of the day. And if you completely ignore a homeless person, deny their existence, you've spent too long in the big city and need to get away.



I've learned that you can't expect people in the city to respond to you in a positive or happy way. If someone is kind to you or smiles or laughs with you in a good hearted way, you're lucky and are having a good day. If not, it's typical. If you come back from some type of vacation and are full of positive energy, the city will likely suck it out of you in about 2 or so weeks time.



I've learned that the Buenos Aires psyche can infect you. The Buenos Aires psyche is one of distrust, impatience, selfishness, and pessimism. If you are here too long, you start to see the world through jaundiced eyes. You overwhelmingly focus on the negative. You consider bad intentions and ulterior motives above all else in peoples' actions. You begin to think everyone is rotten. You think that people who are overly positive or trusting are naieve. You stop caring about your fellow man, the greater good. You shake your head at people who engage in charitable acts or who have devoted their lives to it. You're unhappy, maybe even depressed.



Along these lines I think I've begun to understand Buenos Aires a bit more than before. While I was infected with the Porteno psyche, I along with many other Portenos, believed that the city was out to get me. I was a ball of worry with radar for the viveca criollo in everyone.

I think, though, that the city really isn't as bad as people say it is in terms of people looking to take advantage of each other. I think it's more pandemic distrust than reality.



Granted, there are bad people here and the viveca criollo does exist-no doubt. But what there is more of is fear and Chronica, the 24 Hour Fox News of Buenos Aires that covers every car wreck and crime that's committed. The truth is, I think, that people are overly sensitive to the fact that everyone else is out to screw them. People are hypersensitive to it and so merchants have to overcompensate to show that they are not being dishonest. Portenos in my experience are much more likely to argue with people in the store about the price of something or when they feel that someone is pulling la piel de la vaca over their eyes. Concern about the Viveca Criollo here is similar to the alertness about possible terrorists that we saw in the U.S. after 911. All of a sudden, everyone began walking the straight and narrow because we were jumpy to the point that people began calling the FBI to report Arab looking Italians who were eating kebabs instead of pasta. I think something similar has happened in Buenos Aires. People are so sensitive to being taken advantage of that they begin to fear and distrust everyone. And I was caught up in this fear, cynicism, and distrust for months.



Which is not to say that I suddenly think Buenos Aires is a utopia. I've had items stolen from my luggage in the Buenos Aires airport. My best friend here was attacked and mugged on her way back from my place one night. The family of my former host mother has endured multiple robberies and hold ups among them.



That said, Buenos Aires is like many other big cities. Crime exists. Bad people exist. But it doesn't merit the fear and distrust that people here have....



I'm not sure I understand the origens of the Porteno mentality, whether it's a recent change that resulted from the crisis of 2001 or whether it's much older and dates back to the negative culture of Tango music lyrics. In any case, the mistrust I think in some ways is a self fulfilling prophecy. For instance, I don't know anyone here who trusts the government. For that reason, they couldn't care less about voting or the political process. They have resigned themselves to the idea that all politicians are crooked and that there is more or less nothing that they can do to improve the situation. As a result, politicians here more or less have free reign to get away with doing all the things that people accuse them of because it's expected and maybe even accepted behavior.

It's frustrating to listen to as well since Portenos are so knowledgeable and opinionated about politics and the country and yet, they have been unable to come together at the grass roots level to call for a change, to bring forth an alternative leader to the national forefront, to promote an environment in which an honest and decent politician might have enough support to cut through the corruption. Instead, they wait in isolated disenchantment for a hero politician to save the country and many place the blame for the country's woes soley on the government but place no responsibility on regular citizens for affecting change.

What would the US be today if it were not for grassroots activists crying foul at the Bush administration and supporting young progressive alternatives? Organizations like Moveon.org and Democracy for America that pooled together creativity, intelligence, people, resources, and money to reshape the country via grassroots. I was there and watched it happen, groups that started with 5 dorks in a room-including myself-that turned into standing room only auditoriums of revved up young people. Elections are stolen in my country and we still were able to build an organization from the ground up that eventually kicked the vast majority of bums out and replaced them with what appear to be decent and intelligent people.

I think mistrust and fear here also hobble the country economically. The distrust between people, banks, and other financial institutions disallows loans that generate business growth, increased standard of living, and increased home ownership. Money here simply doesn't move well, largely I think because of the fear and mistrust. The big money is stored up in the bricks of all the real estate in Capital, where all the smart wealth hides it to collect 5 or so % a year. The Argentine stock market is used by few inside the country and at the least sign of instability, money is removed and stocks get crushed. It is only good for short term trades.

Granted, there is good reason for people to be wary of financial institutions. Bad governance and corrupt worldwide banks stole everyone's money here in 2001. But, as much as I hate to say it, unless the two sides mend the relationship, Argentina will never grow economically in the way that its neighbors Chile and Brazil are.

Fear and mistrust also wreaks havoc on every day life at the street level in Argentina. General lack of trust and fear of each other has lead I think to an every man for himself mentality. Rich or poor, young or old, male or female, people here tend not to take care of the city. They litter outright when garbage cans are all over the place, even two steps away. They let their dogs poop all over the streets and don't think twice about leaving it for someone else to clean up. They drive like maniacs, ignore general traffic laws, run down pedestrians who are walking in cross walks even when the pedestrians have a green go signal. They cut people off in the streets whether it be walking or driving, without acknowledging or apologizing to the person they mistreated. They don't greet each other unless they know each other well.

In short, I think mistrust and fear of others has kept people from coming together as a community to support causes that promote general wellfare: clean streets, sidewalks, kindness, looking out for your neighbor, treating each other as human beings instead of cattle, recognizing that they're all in this together and that bad people are the minority and that the city would be much better if people came together to take care of it and each other.

Fear and mistrust also I think infect personal relationships here. This is the problem I find most unfortunate. I have found my friends in Argentina to be very loyal, kind, giving, and concerned. Frankly, I think friendship means more to Argentines than it does to people in the United States. In Argentina, it's not ok if you go a few weeks without talking to a good friend. In the US, it's common to go months without talking to a good friend. No big deal. We've just come to accept it. In Argentina, friendship means true committment, caring, loyalty. If you are not communicating with your friend, it is reason for concern. I think it's great.

And my friends here often contact me when they are concerned that things between us aren't going well or if we haven't spent much time together. I don't find it overbearing at all. I find it endearing and heart warming. It's one of the best facets of Argentine culture.

My point in saying this is that I have recently realized that I allowed my Porteno mentality to infect my friendships. Over the summer, I began to mistrust the intentions of some of my friends in BA. I distanced myself from them. And now after reflection and figuring things out, I realize I was wrong. My friends here are great. They really care. Sure, maybe their intentions in being friends with me weren't 100% pure, but whose intentions ever are? I shouldn't have ever questioned them and I hope they don't lose trust in me. Because if nothing else, there ought to be trust among and belief in good friends. It's a start....

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.

The Question Part Deux

So my brother Kevin might be more sad about me leaving Buenos Aires than I am. For him, it's cool to have a brother living in Argentina, just as it's cool for me to have him living in Stockholm, Sweden (not to mention the fact that he's about to publish his first book and has already attracted an impressive following).

So why am I not sad about leaving?

I suppose that although I'm not sad, I'm really not sure what to feel at this point. All I know is that the big city is not really for me. As I've said over and over again, I like Buenos Aires in January and February when everyone is gone. The rest of the year it's stressful, with occasional holiday respites.

I know that I will miss what the city has taught me. For the first time in my life, I haven't modelled myself or my actions from anyone else. In Buenos Aires, I started a new life and had to rely on myself to build my personality anew. In doing so, I realized the shortcomings in my previous role models, or at least that they weren't perfect. I also realized that I don't have to be perfect, that self development isn't always about moving in the direction of a perfect self, but instead about coming to know oneself(or maybe soul) better and fitting your life to your true self. That is, for most of my life I think I've been trying to fit two size too big Nike Air Jordans to my feet when really what I've always needed was an obscure and cheap pair of Saucony Jazz's with Doctor Scholl's insoles.

Back to the idea of my newish self... Buenos Aires has helped me to be more confident in almost all respects, with the exception of talking to women (I digress). I'm not sure if this confidence comes from knowing myself better, or that I haven't looked to a model for guidance, or if I take life and people less seriously, or if I have a bigger picture perspective, or if I feel more empowered because of what I've done here and therefore am not intimidated easily, or if I've learned to be more assertive and confident after living in the big city. Who knows.

So my point in stating the above is that I like what this experience has done for me, even if I haven't always liked the experience. It has been a challenge, exciting, nothing if not an adventure. And while I may not feel sad right now, I am worried that I will lose what this experience has provided. I'm afraid I'll lose the empowered part of my personality that allows me to tell people what I'm honestly thinking and feeling as opposed to telling them what I think they will want to hear or providing the response that will result in the least conflict. Ok, granted, sometimes you can't always do that, but I think you ought to be able to say what you really think the majority of the time and save the white lies or untruths or pleasantries (whatever you want to call them) for when they are more or less absolutely necessary. I think we lose ourselves when we don't tell people what we're honestly thinking and feeling. We become a reflection of what other people want instead of a projection of who we are.

So I'm afraid I'll lose this aspect of myself. In truth, I'm not sure I like this aspect of myself. It certainly results in more conflict and less kind feelings towards me and less opportunities for friendship. What it does, however, is bring me closer to me. It also, I suppose, brings me closer to people with whom I genuinely connect instead of those who are attracted to their own reflection or my generally passive and non-combative nature.

Ademas, I'm afraid that when I go back to the States I'll miss the instability, challenge, and adventure of this life. My apartment here is like a nice canvas tent. My bed is a glorified cot. I haven't figured out how to turn on my wall heater (Update 5/15/09 success! I'm not a total idiot). The oven is on its last legs. And my furniture is a 2 on a scale of 1-10 in terms of comfort. The effect is that it makes my life more simple. It also doesn't allow me to get too comfortable. It keeps me on edge, moving, thinking, getting out into the city, working at my computer instead of watching an endless stream of movies I've already seen.

Being here also is an adventure in terms of my perpetually changing job situation. I've had all kinds of experiences here. Jobs I would never have had in the US. For instance, I recently fell into teaching Spanish to the former ambassador to the UN from Columbia. So cool. And I didn't even try for it. It simply came by way of a recommendation from another job. At this rate, if I stay here next year I have no idea what might come my way. In the United States, I know more or less exactly what I'll be doing day in and day out, 8-9 hours a day at least. Here, I work nowhere near that many hours, but still get by without breaking into savings. Essentially, my job and life are unstable in BA, different every day of the week and changing in shape almost every month, usually a combination of giving tours, teaching English, preparing a student for kindergarten, teaching English, History, and Science to Elementary Grade students from the U.S. I'm never quite sure what I'll be doing the following month and I'm never too busy, but somehow if I do a respectable job with whatever I'm doing, I garner enough recommendations to find another job and always have my needs and many wants met.

In the US, on the other hand, I typically worry about keeping my job, making ends meet etc. Even though I earn enough to support a family of 4. I guess my ease of mind here has to do with the fact that I won't be here long term. I'm not a legal employee, I have no state retirement, I have no job secured health insurance. I'm more or less on a year long adventure hoping nothing crazy happens, that I make it through ok so that I can jump back into the comfort of my old life with new skills and without too many scars. How would I feel if I were here long term? Would I handle it differently? Would I be more stressed?

I think I would almost certainly change my life if I were going to be here long term. But I'm not quite sure why. I'm healthier than I've been in years, emotionally and in some ways physically. I have good cheap health insurance. My standard of living is high not because I have lots of stuff, but instead because I don't work much and have the money to travel on occasion and eat pretty much whatever I want. My jobs are fun, varied, and fulfilling. My mind is active. My personal development has been rapid and illuminating. The only unfortunate and, for me, unsustainable part of my life here is the big, dirty, crowded, mean city. If I continued to live here, I would move to a less crowded city where it is easier to get away to nature on the weekends and where the people are friendlier, like Cordoba. The other issue here is my lack of a partner. I have some good, loyal, fantastic friends in Buenos Aires, but haven't found a right woman yet. Which is not to say that I couldn't find one in Buenos Aires. It's just that it's not easy in the big city and I stink at it in Spanish. It took long enough for me to talk to women in English. Learning to do it in Spanish has, errr, not been successful. Add to that the different culture of dating as well as different rules for engagement and I am, well, useless.

So I have my little year and some months adventure down here and I jump back to the US with a good stable job in hand and I return to being a comfortable and fearful wimp who hunkers down on his soft leather couch and watches movies on the weekends and fills the week with the drudgery of work, gym, and a little tv before bed. Great.

If I return to the above, I'll surely miss BA. I'll most definitely be sad that I left. I'll feel that I left my life in Buenos Aires and returned to a coma-like cocoon. Maybe I'll spend the rest of my life doing what you're supposed to do: Buying a house, preparing for retirement, staying in shape, eating right, taking preventitive measures against age-related diseases. Life could easily pass this way, without stopping to look around more, doing what I'm supposed to do.

And if I don't want to stagnate? If I don't want to jump back into comfort? How do I do that? The answer is... I'm not entirely sure. I worry or think anyway that I may have to get away every now and then, like I'm doing now, to be sure that I maintain my current frame of mind. If I find myself stepping into old habitos, maybe I'll plan a summer trip to a new Spanish speaking country. Or maybe I'll take a year and go off to some place like China or Vietnam. But can I continue to develop without plopping myself into stressful and challenging places? Can I maintain my form of being and learn even more about myself, continue to connect with me while I'm stationed in one non-overtly challenging place?

What I can say is that I'm going to try. And to some degree, I think there's no going back. I think there are some components to myself that, now that I have uncovered them from the junk that had been obscuring them, I can never deny again.

I wound up taking a job as a bilingual school psychologist in Aurora, Colorado, a suburb just to the East of Denver. I took a job that does not pay as well as others. However, the job is as a full-time bilingual psych working primarily with Hispanic students and their parents and teachers. I wanted this experience so that I could build off of my time in Buenos Aires and to further improve my Spanish in a functional way. In addition, the school district in which I chose to work is extremely diverse and has a very large Hispanic population. If all goes as planned, it will be something between living in the US and another country, an intermediary step on my way home from Buenos Aires, working in Spanish all day but living in English.

I've also chosen a part of the country with which I'm unfamiliar. I've spent limited time in Colorado and the West, but from what I've seen it's beautiful country and in proximity to all sorts of amazing state and national parks. In addition, there is a strong alternative spiritual community in Colorado as well as a focus on the environment, with bike paths on all major roads as well as clean air and water.

But none of this answers the question of what I will specifically do to continue to develop, to continue to learn more about me. I will likely need to take at least a few concrete steps to ensure that this process continues. The following are ideas:

1. Continue the blog. The blog will likely become more boring and might suffer even less readership, but so long as I'm learning and articulating and reflecting and developing, I suppose that's all that's really important.

2. Continue to pay close attention to self. I learn about myself when I have the patience and state of mind to take note of details. For instance, I learned in BA that in the Spring and Summer, I become argumentative, ornery, and impatient. I often separate from my mild mannered friends, temporarily severing relationships until the fall when I settle down and am more patient, peace loving, and focused on compromise. It took me over 29 years to articulate this. I'm hoping that with more attention to myself, other discoveries won't take nearly as long. I also hope that I meet other perceptive people so they can give me feedback or point out things about me that I haven't been able to see. For example, I recently reunited with a great old friend who I openly asked to help me with providing feedback and career counseling based on what he knows about me. It was refreshing to have the perspective of such an intelligent and perceptive friend who more or less selflessly had my best interests in mind.

3. Learn what's important to me. I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any specific God. I simply wasn't provided the tools to do so. That leaves me with uncertainty about my existence. Maybe I'm here for a reason, maybe not. So what gets me out of bed every morning? If not the hanging fruit of afterlife or the desire to please God, then what? This is something I'm going to have to figure out as I learn more about me and the way I interact with the world. I've identified recently that I really like to help people. I like to see them smile. I like when they are grateful. I like when I do something for them that maybe someone else couldn't. I especially like connecting with people through words. I like helping them talk through psychological and philosophical difficulties or conflicts or just ideas in general. I think that, for whatever reason, it was something I may have been made for. I feel as though I am connecting with harmony when I connect with people on a deep level through words. I feel the same when I help people work, talk through, and articulate psychological issues. It's a sense that maybe suggests that I have found my place in the world, as if my true self has been temporarily fit into the universal puzzle.


4. Make more deliberate decisions to reflect what's important. So once I decide what's important to me, if that ever happens, I'm going to try to make better decisions to complement my meaning. I spend an inordinate amount of time reading the news on the internet every day. I would say 80% of this time is wasted. Granted, I do learn some important stuff and I can't say it's not enjoyable and it is spontaneous. But, it doesn't give me the sense of fulfillment that doing good work or writing a chapter of a book or writing a solid blog entry does. I also want to begin to make sure that my money is spent on stuff that directly reflects what's important to me. I swam for 6 months, 4-5 times per week in an oversized bathing suit that fell off my butt after every lap. I refused to buy another while I spent money frivolously on stuff that wasn't nearly as important to my health or happiness. I felt ridiculous when I finally realized this, that swimming was a priority in my life but I had not supported it at all financially, with the exception of my gym membership. Along those same lines, during my recent interviews and travels, I've become acquainted with the YMCA system in the US. It turns out that the Y is much nicer than I had imagined. And I love the idea of a community coming together to create a center where people can meet and stay fit in a clean and safe place, even if they don't have a ton of money. It's something I've decided that I'd like to support charitably. I think it's one of the first charitable ideas I've come up with myself, as opposed to having people tell me that I should.

5. Relax, maintain perspective, don't let people trick you into taking stuff too seriously. People at my old jobs would get terribly worked up about stuff that just didn't matter all that much. And as much as I would try to avoid the stress, it would infect me too. I've got to find a way to avoid the hysteria and the generally fearful attitude from which I kind of fled when I came down here. If I find myself wrapped up in it, I'm going to have to find a way to mediate or change it. But I can't accept it. Hysteria and stress are toxic.

6. Make connections with like minded people whom you connect with while you are being yourself. I have the bad habit of making friends with people whom I don't really connect with but who become friends with me because I tell them what they want to hear or because I'm non-confrontational. There are times when it's necessary to be non-confrontational and to kiss butt, but NOT when you're looking for a friend or partner with whom you'd like to have a lasting and meaningful relationship.

7. Find and commit to a weekly spiritual reflection of some sort, perhaps aided by other articulate people who are searching out the same. Sure, I could reflect or meditate by myself each week, maybe just by continuing this blog. But it'd be nice to share the experience with other like minded people. Others could also provide motivation, consistency, and structure to ensure that the process of development had as much chance of continuing as possible. Further, it's hard sometimes to notice details about myself. Harder sometimes than noticing things about other people. For this reason, having others to help me learn about myself might be more effective than going it alone.

8. Write more. My method of self expression is without a doubt words. The more I express, the better I do it, the more I learn about myself, and how to articulate what I'm thinking and feeling. Sometimes I have difficulty sitting down for long periods to begin and sustain the writing process. I like to walk and be active and can't concentrate for stretches in front of a computer unless I'm highly motivated to do so. One method I'd like to try in an attempt to write more is to buy a recording device into which I can dictate and then transcribe later. Then, in theory, I can walk through the Colorado Rockies or the Canyons of Utah and capture my thoughts in the process. Later, I can eat a long dessert while I transcribe, correct, and shape as I go.

Any other ideas for helping me to continue my process of self discovery and spiritual development would be much appreciated in the comments section.