Uruguay and I

I think I just figured out why I came to Uruguay. I mean, I know why I chose it in the first place; I wanted to go somewhere less popular so that I wouldn't be surrounded by English-speakers, and Pablo said Montevideo wouldn't scare me as much as Buenos Aires. That was basically my logic. But I'm not talking about why I chose to come here but about why I ended up here.

For the past eight months, I'd been doing a lot of questioning as to why it had to be Uruguay. Don't get me wrong; I love it here, I really do. But I love it here right now, for this year of my life, and to come back and visit, but I know that I couldn't stay here forever. (Which is actually a novel discovery for me, because it seems like every time I go somewhere I end up enchanted with it and swear I could stay there forever.) There is only one reason, really, that I couldn't stay here, and it's something that I cannot easily describe. It's not something you notice in a week or even in a month; it's something that may start to nag at you after six weeks or so, but even then, it will take you considerably longer to put your finger on what exactly it is that is slowly knawing away at you. In fact, I'm not certain that many of the people living here are even aware of what it is. They all feel it, but most could probably not tell you what it is. It is something like depression; and it is something like repression, and it is something like a little of both. It is a longing and a lacking and a melancholy. There is no black cloud or thick fog hanging over the country, but there is something in the air that causes even the rosiest of glasses to become tinged with grey. Let me reiterate: this does not happen overnight. And if you are lucky enough to become aware of it and keep a cloth by your bedside to wipe your glasses clean once in a while, then it will probably not affect you in a year. That is why I am able to love it here and why I would come back, just not permanently, because as time goes on, even the cleaning cloth will turn grey.

So why did I come here? What is it that I am supposed to learn? Apart from linguistics and Spanish and becoming more independent and attempting to learn to cook and making friends, etc., what am I meant to learn in Uruguay that I wouldn't have learned in any other Spanish-speaking country? Yesterday, after reading poetry by Gibran Khalil Gibran for my Arabic literature class, I spent the morning in a gypsy dancing workshop. In the afternoon, I went with an Uruguayan friend to his Taiwanese friend's house to discuss Buddhism and make Chinese bread. Then I went home and read Trubetzkoy and Chomsky in Spanish and curled up with some empanadas to watch a Japanese film that had been reccomended to me by a different Uruguayan friend. This morning, when I woke up, I mused about yesterday and how wonderful, if a little ridiculous, it had been. I had always thought that the only place where I could find such a linguistic/cultural orgasm was Middlebury. Suprisingly, I found it right here in Uruguay, and I didn't even have to suffer through raunchy language-table food. And then it dawned on me. It may be that there is a great deal of discontentedness in Uruguay, but it is this sense of lacking in their own country that causes Uruguayos to look outward to other cultures, cultures that are foreign and exotic to them. I'm not saying that this is a good solution, but I will say that overall the country of Uruguay is just as confused as me. In this stage in my life, I am searching. I am inquieta, driven to do and see and learn as much as possible, in hopes that eventually I will come across somewhere, something and someone that I will know is right for me. In this way, Uruguay and I have something in common and I think it is this commonality that has brought me here.