Vuelvo Al Sur
Monday, October 14, 2013
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| Portrait d'Ira (1933) Tamara de Lempicka |
I would hasten to assert that the ultimate
human nostalgia may happen if one dies in bed. While staring at the ceiling
waiting for death’s scythe to fall, one’s life (that part that can still be
remembered) is one big chunk of nostalgia.
This nostalgia would be the purest and the
finest as one would not have a way of revisiting it in person by going to
places or seeing people, still alive, in one’s memory. There would be no
letdowns, no disappointments or misconceptions of good times that may have been
rosier in time now but not so in past reality.
As I lay with my heart pumping much too
quickly for comfort in my bed at a Courtesy Inn near the Toronto Airport
on October 13 any nostalgia, anything from my past was of no consequence. The
only thing important was to survive the hour and day to at long last see my
wife and two cats in my home in Vancouver.
My three-week trip to Buenos
Aires was one of tying up loose ends and coming to the perhaps drastic resolve that I
will not be going back.
I remember that when I first left Argentina when
I was a boy that I asked my mother to take me to a toy store that specialized
in intricate lead soldiers. I wanted to buy a couple of San Martín’s lovely
equestrian soldiers, los Granaderos de San Martín. I did and whatever happened
to them is no longer in my memory.
This time around, and before I left Buenos
Aires I made sure to visit San Martín’s elaborate tomb inside the Metropolitan
Cathedral. Two Granaderos, in beautiful Napoleonic uniforms, are in constant
watch over his remains. I took pictures of them knowing they would not speak or
even make me aware that they were noticing me.
I need not ever return to know that those
two or their almost identical replacements will stand guard over a nostalgia of
mine, of experiences that cannot be re-lived in the exact same way as my
remembrances of them in my cluttered mind.
I can listen to Piazzolla playing Milonga
del Angel and no matter how many times I do it cannot bring back Susana from
the grave even though I remember her gently placing her hand on mine as
Piazzola began the beautiful song at the Teatro Florida sometime in 1967.
Returning to Buenos Aires brought the reality that my city
had changed and I could almost not recognize it in spite of the landmarks
looking mostly unchanged. The city seemed bigger.
Living for three weeks with Nora Patrich
and her partner the sweet Roberto Baschetti had me taking a rail line I had
never taken before. This was the Ferrocarril General San Martín. I boarded the
train at Bella Vista and took it 12 stations and 50 minutes later to the downtown
station at Retiro. The end station was not the cavernous and beautiful
Victorian station of the Mitre Line or the smaller but still beautiful one of
the Manuel Belgrano Line. It was a metal roofed shack. On my first trip in the
San Martín train I came to understand that the Buenos Aires of my youth followed the edge of
the city that lies by the River Plate, like a long shoestring and that the
shoestring was the Mitre Line. It was a thin realm of reality. My nostalgic Buenos Aires was now modified by
knowledge of a city I had never experienced. My view had been a privileged one in
which I rarely ever saw poverty or masses of cabecitas negras (little dark
heads), as the Argentine well-to-dos call those with aboriginal blood. My Buenos Aires had been one that included afternoon tea and scones..
Finally at age 71 the new reality, a huge
sprawling Buenos Aires
supplanted a romance all but gone.
But now I know that nostalgia is
what you feel of a place when you are not in it or of it (and it can be awfully rosy)
and that the reality of the place seen now destroys and supplants that nostalgia of old. I do not
feel any sadness as long as I remember that every moment of my present existence, my
now, will someday be the nostalgic when of those I love. They may not
notice now that when they visit Rosemary and me at home, that these moments will someday
pass to be their nostalgia.
My present will rapidly become their future rosy
past. And I will not mind when the scythe falls.
Vuelvo al
Sur
Lyrics by
Fernando “Pino” Solanas
Music by Astor Piazzolla
Defintive version sung by Roberto Goyeneche
Llevo el
Sur,
como un
destino del corazon,
soy del
Sur,
como los
aires del bandoneon.
Sueño el
Sur,
inmensa
luna, cielo al reves,
busco el
Sur,
el tiempo
abierto, y su despues.
Quiero al
Sur,
su buena
gente, su dignidad,
siento el
Sur,
como tu
cuerpo en la intimidad.
Te quiero
Sur,
Sur, te
quiero.
Vuelvo al
Sur,
como se
vuelve siempre al amor,
vuelvo a
vos,
con mi
deseo, con mi temor.
Quiero al
Sur,
su buena
gente, su dignidad,
siento el
Sur,
como tu cuerpo
en la intimidad.
Vuelvo al
Sur,
llevo el
Sur,
te quiero
Sur,
te quiero
Sur...
I am returning to the
South
I am returning to the
South,
the way love always
returns,
I am returning to you,
with my own wish, with
my own fear.
I carry the South,
like a destiny of the
heart,
I am the South,
like the airs of the
bandoneon (instrument).
I dream the South,
immense moon, heaven
on earth,
I am searching for the
South,
the open time, and
everything after.
I love the South,
its good people, its
dignity,
I feel the South,
like your body during
intimate moments.
I love you South,
South, I love you.
I am returning to the
South,
the way love always
returns,
I am returning to you,
with my own wish, with
my own fear.
I love the South,
its good people, its
dignity,
I feel the South,
like your body during
intimate moments.
I am returning to the
South,
I carry the South,
I love you South,
I love you South...
