Abstracts from Argentina, chapter 2

In the late morning of our last day in El Bolson we paired off: Lewis and Christy together, Joel and I together. We were decidedly going to hitch to Esquel (180km south). Without too much trouble Joel and I shuffled between the beds of pick up trucks, and in a few, short hours we were there. As we sat, watching Patagonia fly by at 100km´s an hour, we sat in disbelief at our situation. While icey peaks stood tall above us, blooming trees and flowers protested it was in-fact spring. The whole situation felt right. I thought to myself: maybe this is what I envisioned for this trip?
After making some quick friends in Esquel Joel, Lewis and I were playing on an indoor soccer team. We played from about 12am to 2am. Then it was over to someone´s place for some beer and chips. Needless to say we got back to our tent around 4am, tired, and a little queasy from all the activity and grease. Esquel was a fun place, but it again made me wonder what did I envision for this trip. I mean it has been almost 6 weeks I should have something to say of some merit or resolve. I came with the intention to slow down, learn from a new culture, learn a new language, and talk about life with some good friends in a thought provoking and different place. What I got was, respectively, a lifestyle slow enough I sometimes never left my campsite, my ass kicked in soccer, confusion and reward, and a never-ending, vulnerable discussion about anything and everything that comes to mind. I wanted to focus inward and call it progression, or to paraphrase Kierkegaard: to pause and call it movement. It is like I´ve been playing Super Mario my whole life going from level to level getting coins and stars and such. And I just hit the pause button to think about the levels I´ve accomplished, which warp tunnels I want to take, If I want to run fast through levels or stop and get every coin, or if the princess is really worth all this trouble. (I just use this metaphor so I can be ´first-player´for once in my life. Younger brothers never get to be the first player in video games). I do not think I am here to figure anything out and come home with any answers. I did not come here with specific questions to be answered. I only wanted to pause the game where I am and feel the questions I am in. I just want to feel the dimensions around, that is the questions that surround my life.

Now in Calafate my life is a lazy stroll and a hectic rampage. Each day is its own. Some days I do no more than read, write and drink tea, while other days I take in so much newness it is exhausting. It is kinda-of a funny thing: learning a language in a place that always uses it. It is like studying for a test, but then having to take the exam each time you walk out your front door. At times it is all a bit much for me, and so last week´s escape into the mountains was wonderful. I hiked for five days around the base of Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy. These massive, beautiful peaks, under girded by raging glaciers was unlike anything I´d seen. At the foot of Cerro Torre I felt en-couraged, built-up, like I feel sometimes after reading an inspiring poem, or hearing a favorite song. On the edge of the glacier´s lake, stairing into the glacier base with Cerro Torre sitting on top I took down some notes about the day there, sitting on a grey stone in a place where you could recline on the wind:

Glacier everywhere. Every few moments: thunder. Crashing in the distance. Soft and melting at my feet. Winter´s corpuscular glow lights the page. Happy and content I sit, comfortable in the midst of ancient power. God. The Glaciers are alive. They never stop moving, melting, crashing, constantly. Everything else is so still as if the glacier, so vast and unmatched in power, was watching over everything around it. Cerro Torre stands open-faced, and untouchable, displaying its allegiance to God-un-high. Its not unlike a finger. The scene is picture framed by close-by rock faces and spires, and now more rumbling. The glacier sounds like a thousand shuffling feet.

I then realized, almost being blown over by the wind, I had slowed down enough. I had, had enough time slowing the car. I now required something more. My type of reflection was changing. I had enough pause. I had recouped from a year and a half of working, and I am now constructing again. I must pause still, but the pause is different. Kiekagaard was right, but could have been more right. there is a time to pause and reflect so as to know the past and be [still] with it, and there is a time to pause and reflect so as to construct something. To know the past, or rather to know yourself, and then tell your feet where to go. Determine your future. Stop reflecting only on who you are, and start saying: "so..." "I must..." "then..." The first section of my trip is over. It existed to slow me down, teach me the basics of spanish, and get me comfortable here. Now this second section is all about application.

Phil.

Laurel: It is awesome to know you are reading.

Steph: Thank you so much for the encouragment.

Chestnut: So fun you are coming down here. I wish I would still be here. You will love it.

Paul: Work sounds crazy. I am so glad that you were able to get a week off and head home for thanksgiving. I hope work never gets in the way of life for you again. I miss you so so much.

abstracts from argentina, chapter 1

So. I´m in Argentina, and more or less anonymous. Much like America, Argentina is full of a wide array of colors, ethnicity's, accents, and traditions. It is has been quite the change from the last time I travelled, where hoards of children would chant (wazungu, white person) as I walked along the train tracks. Here people ask me for directions...(which is hilarious to the same degree, in which my spanish is hilarious). After taking a single day in Buenos Aires, a huge city full of character and apparent history - truly the Paris of South America, I took a night bus to Bariloche - a spectacular exhibition of what God can really do - to meet Joel, Lewis, and Christy. (by the by you should go to christyandlewis.wordpress.com read some wonderful, descriptive writing about these places) If you have not met these kids you should. Joel Wenger is astounding; he is uninhibited in his honesty and intentional about his celebration, while Lewis and Christy are two walking inspirations, absolutely meticulous in loving both the world around them and each other. Now, south of Bariloche in a small, hippy´ish town called El Bolson (which so far I think means big bag...), things have been wonderful. The days are full of hiking, reading, writing, spanish, and endless conversations attempting to elucidate the worlds mysterious on how one should live. Having just returned from a three day camping trip up one of the surrounding valleys I feel full of calm and contentment. While camping Lewis, Joel and I took a day to hike up to the Alerssas Forrest. This rocked my world, filling me with all sorts of thoughts about our world. Some of these were 15 feet across. I wanted them to speak truths of the birth of humanity and tell me tales of when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Thus far I felt many freedoms here, in Argentina, I have not felt in a long time. And through seeing so much new I have felt so much new in myself. Byinlarge this trip has been quiet, filled with solemn mornings and piercing questions, staying up late discussing what I believe, and then even later to read or write about it. I have already felt so much in just two weeks. I have been laughing and playing hard no doubt, and yet have found an abundance of things to keep my thoughts and feelings on overdrive. The time now is for reflection, calm of spirit, happiness only when justified by the purest of joys. In all sincerity now l want to live, looking inward as to know what is coming forward. I wish to never again attempt to look ahead into the fog of the future, a fruitless endeavor really, we have now this moment and no more. Tall gates, insurmountable in their height and uncaring in their strength, guard the roads leading to the past and the future. We are left only with our ability to guess at the future, or claim vague truths we access through that weak and unreliable device called memory. I should look now to my heart for that will determine my feet, and thus my future. And so now I travel, because to travel is to seek, to search, to look around at everything you have never seen before and find it makes you new as well. It makes you what you cannot be at home because at home you believe your image, the image assigned to you by family, friends, and social context. You believe you are what everyone thinks you are, and what travelling does is take all that away. You are left with an undetermined self -¨as far as the world is concerned. Immediately, as you speak and walk, conveying some particular style, you become more determined by the world, but the beauty of travel is you have the freedom of choosing yourself without the fear of being told: "that´s not you" or "that doesn´t suit you." And it is in these comments that we begin to draw ourselves back into something more reserved or expected of us. It should be mentioned that it is our friends and community that keep us accountable for our progress and integrity (vagabonding indefinitely frees us from any visible community, and thus in many ways frees us from from growth). So as we integrate the two we mitigate stable community with travel, and travel with stable community. I think the two can compliment each other in the best ways. But if we build a sulaphane layer composed of what people have come to expect, protecting us from having the expectation to change, then we miss a life lived in submission to the consequences of the heart; in other words, we sometimes get so caught up in what is expected of us we forget to grow into that which we could never expect. It is the heart that speaks to the feet and hands, urging movement from desire. It is the sound within, the thing that wishes to change things for the better. It is the thing full of desire given to us as a gift. I hope as this time of travelling unfolds for me I can be accountable to the good things in me, and be transformed unexpectedly.

much love.
phil.

Eric.
Good to hear you have been chilling with the BS and that you and It havent already forgetten me.

Nathan.
Sweet to hear from you. Um yeah it was a bit odd. Election day here in El Bolson was absolutely calm. People either say the whole thing is corrupt and ridiculous, or do not really care one way or another. On an interesting note you get fined if you do not vote here, it is compulsory.

The Levridge.
I am enjoying the no cell phone currently, and I have to say their is defenitely something to be said for not having that damned thing in my pocket 24/7. However, it is still odd how sometimes I think my pocket is vibrating. Anyway, I hope you are doing well and make it out of bed for some solid BS in the future.

Kaettie.
No worries, a round of hugs for all.

Deja.
Sounds so insane-busy to deal with all that meat. It sounds like it is sweet for you, and helping those omnivores around you to live more consciously. Good luck with the officiating and technologizing.