Veintitres

'The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.'

(Little Gidding -- I can't quite get enough!)

I arrived alone in Buenos Aires in March, curious about the year of experience that lay ahead inviting me to approach and aprovechar.

Now, in December, I march away precisely as I came -- alone and curious about experiences to come.

My foreign friends turned porteña familia have trickled in and out of this experience. As las fiestas approach, those friends have been dropping away with increasing intensity. I have found that relationships created abroad accentuate time's fleeting temperament. Time has deep, sloping valleys and steep, quick ascents. Here in Buenos Aires I have cemented some of the most profound and dynamic relationships of my life; together, through friendship, we have been thrust to exalted heights.

I am one of the last lingering foreigners I know, savoring fleeting moments with my first and last friend -- perhaps my most absorbing relationship yet -- inhaling the fragrance, enshrining the feel. Buenos Aires was my first friend, and appropriately, she is my last. I will tiptoe out of this experience just as I entered it, barely making a ripple, filled with an eager curiosity for the future to come.

I have been inhaling Buenos Aires' perfume for 10 months and I am finally at the very top of my breath. No more can I take in -- I have reached capacity, saturated with the sweetly scented, life-sustaining oxygen of experience. On Friday morning (sí Dios quiere...) I will emerge into South Florida's crisp December air and I will exhale, breathing novelty into my familiar and almost-forgotten home.

In the meantime, I am still in Buenos Aires -- more or less alone -- pirouetting in the pause between inhale and exhale, peeking curiously and expectant at the novel set of future circumstances promising possibility. I have several times in my life found myself twirling in these pauses between breaths. I embrace and agradecer these peaceful bouts of time -- they allow me ample moments to reflect, refresh and renew.

As I reflect on my time in Buenos Aires I recognize that the pieces of experience I will carry on into Life are the lessons of Love. Curiously enough, it took a circumstantial move of thousands of kilometers, away from the thick quilt of love from family and friends enveloping me in USAmerica, to learn the true lesson of Love: how to give and receive it. I have loved to the point of despair and discomfort: a city, a country, a continent, a world; strangers, acquaintances, new friends, old friends -- all of whom are, at the end, family.

I will spare details -- for they are too many and would be impossible to share judiciously -- and emphasize: the lessons of Love acquired here have been sometimes uncomfortable and always illuminating. For, truly loving a person, a city, a country and a world -- despite discomfort and despair incited -- renders me consumed with hope. It is a hope contained within me, here and now, as I dance at the top of my breath. And, it is hope I will forever suspire -- acquired by loving in Buenos Aires.