XVII

Eight months later and I've finally acquired something that looks and feels like expatriate street credibility. This declaration is based on encounters I've had of late with study-abroad-types and fresh-off-the-plane-ex-pats; they kindly offer me deference that I hardly deserve. What do I really know? I'm just Natalie, here in Buenos Aires, living my life.

Last week I submitted – after weeks of very hard work spent orchestrating – my masterpiece of a Fulbright application (and by 'masterpiece' I mean the very best I could do – I am not at all suggesting that I believe the application will be endorsed). Perchance the totality of the Fulbright circumstances err in my favor, I'll be off to Peru in late-2011 for another year of ex-pat living. And, irrespective of the unfolding of my Fulbright grant, Christina and I are planning on returning to Buenos Aires in mid-2011 to breathe some South American life into iNspired Generation/Generación iNspirada (more on iGen in a forthcoming blog entry). (No te preocupa, Mom, I'll be hanging around your house during the early-2011 interim!)

I share with you these plans (lest us not forget this year's great lesson, 'Man plans. God laughs.'), RF, because I am meta-aware of my propensity for what appears to be wanderlust...

However, I assure you, this is not wanderlust. This is my life.

I've been super into all-things-related-to-the-Internet ever since, at the impressionable age of 12 (year 1997), my friend Jaimie showcased to me her America Online account (dial-up Internet days, obvio). I've taken this affinity for virtual communication with me from Jaimie's Palm Beach County abode, to my life in the college bubble in Gainesville, Florida (Facebook entered the picture right around this time. and. I. have. never. been. the. same. since.), to law school in Miami. And, of course, I brought my love with me to Buenos Aires. Thus, durante my 8 month stint as an ex-pat, I've done a phenomenal job of maintaining wide-open my virtual connections (thankfully, nowadays, I've got a high-speed connection to maintain my global connections).

One question that is ordinarily directed to me – via GMail or Facebook or Skype – from the latitudes directly to the north (the US of A, obvio) is, 'Wow! Argentina! You must be having so much fun.' And, of course, I would be lying if I did not respond in the affirmative. Sure, I have fun here, but it's no more or less fun than the fun I had in Miami and Gainesville and the PBC.

Fun is fun is diversión es diversión. Sure, there is novelty in the foreign, but as I have said, novelty wears and is replaced with the familiar. And let's not forget, cada ciudad tiene su buena y su mala. And, above all, I came to Buenos Aires with my ordinary self – my buena and my mala – to live my life.

It doesn't matter where in the world any of us are; we're still within ourselves, within our self-constructed worlds. I am Natalie, I am Natalie, soy Natalie, soy Natalie. It doesn't matter where you find me, – the PBC, Gasinesville, Miami, Buenos Aires, Peru, the Internet – I am always my ordinary and unique self, living my ordinary and unique life.

Anywho, this long ramble was inspired and precipitated by the profound brilliance of Ralph Waldo Emerson's words in his concise, must-read of an essay, 'Self-Reliance.' (Shout out to Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar Tom Mendez for the recommendation/borderline duress. Yeehaw, Tom!). I am sharing those excerpts from the essay that particularly touched me, here and now (forthcoming).

I also feel compelled to share Ralph's brilliance because it's not the first time I've come across these ideas. Mom, you were right, – as always. I don't need to travel to find myself. (But I'm still going to Peru if I win the Fulbright!!!)

I do ask, however, that you please trust me. My desire to travel the world is not misdirected wanderlust. (It is a part of the masterpiece of a life I am orchestrating for myself.)

Oh yea, and please listen to this awesome song while you read the forthcoming Emerson erudition. It's almost as brilliant as Ralph. (Almost.)

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros "Home" from Edward Sharpe on Vimeo.

Now, preparate for greatness:

'....The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things....

Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant.

The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any....

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation... That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare?

Every great man is a unique.'