Nostalgia
Poetry of the heavens, immense landscapes that humble your being, The smells of “asado”, country, and wine. The color of the South Atlantic Great, tango, and sweat. The memory of my first sweetheart… The color of her hazel eyes, her hair flowing in the cool breeze… The song I still hear her sing, her wild and hungry lips. I can quantum leap in a moment of magic and relive all of it, like in a dream…
Argentina; mother, sister, lover, girlfriend, the blood of my being, you are in my soul. I long to see you again, at the Buenos Aires shore, looking up to your skies searching for memories, and with moisture in my eyes, recalling them. My soul never really left, and my spirit keeps coming back, you are all of me, piece by piece, cell by cell, tear by tear. Is there a simpler way to say I love you a million times?
Some country and some countryside. How much I revere you. It’s the feeling of belonging, it’s one’s trait, it’s the aura that surrounds it; it’s the feeling of what one becomes. Universal Love downsized to the country level. The greatness of a Land in a minuscule postcard. The sounds of the rivers, the bark and shade of a tree, the shouts of laughter of street children playing “futbol” The irrepressible taste of sea salt in the air, the sunset at the beach, the moon rising in the southern sky. All the stars that you can count before you sleep.
An insatiable human need for the wonders of the unknown has taken me far, crisscrossing the world’s oceans, and filling my bag with the experience. Met people here and there, in places I can’t even spell… and tasted everything in each of them. But Argentina followed me wherever I went, wouldn’t leave my skin, and whispered in my ear in the language of a mother’s love. “Of course, you will come back”, she said. “Of course I will”, I responded. And it feels like a thousand years since I swore that promise and I still find myself, the same, in place… still an expat.
And yet again, not one at all.
