This episode is brought to you from my favourite place on earth, no not the front row of a David Bowie concert, the jetty of our friends house in Tigre, just outside BA in Argentina.
I am still trying to work out how we are lucky enough to have friends that decided to ditch their flat in the middle of BA to move to the very inconvenient and very amazing Tigre.
Tigre is a Delta outside BA, I thought Delta was an airline, but it is a recently formed collection of islands – recently I mean 200 years – as the water flows from the mountains it brings sand and rocks down which stick here and KABOOM you have new area to live in.
The electricity goes off all the time, there is a constant risk of flood (all the houses are built on stilts) the birds never stop singing and you have to go everywhere by boat other than those problems it is a great place.
As boat is the only way to move around you can’t ‘pop out for a sandwich’ and you have way more time on your hands because you don’t spend time putting flyers for pizza and taxi’s in your recycling bin.
I think about this place all the time, I often find myself day dreaming how to build or refurbish one already here. It is a huge job, there is no popping to Ikea or ordering online and waiting at home in your delivery slot. Everything is a huge operation and I am CRAP at DIY, using a drill, fixing things, yet the idea of learning about all this stuff and how to garden really appeals to me.
Actually it does not ‘appeal to me’ but I am willing to find out how to do it, in the same way children are expensive, time consuming and inconvenient but you go through it for the magic unexpected moments they constantly provide and readily open your ‘unconditional love’ tap for them I am always thinking this about Tigre.
I have never ever wanted to live in suburbia, I am finding Cities exciting to visit but soul sucking to live in, the feeling of space and air is more important to me than ‘close to transport and all local amenities’. If you look back at posts on this blog over the years you will pick up a growing dislike of mine for food in plastic wrapping and everything tied to an offer which is really a lie, as I am sitting here writing this I am even more ready to take massive action to move away from that.
Every time I come to Argentina or Poland, in face anywhere other than the UK I am amazed at the real taste of food, in particular tomatoes.
I am sure I have ranted about this before somewhere, tomatoes in all the super markets in the UK come in uniformed sizes, plastic wrapping, with some bull shit offer, are void of flavour and have been flown halfway round the world.
Here in the green grocer one block from my mother-in-law’s house the smell of tomatoes hits you as you walk in the door, the place is not a shop with posters and offers, it is a room full of boxes and has dirt on the floor (shock horror) you can SMELL the food and everything comes in different shapes and sizes.
I was talking about Tigre and now have shot off on a rant about vegetables.
Where was I?
I am looking for the words to describe what I feel about Krakow and Tigre. Argentina is GREAT but Tigre, like Krakow, plugged into my soul in seconds I felt I had met myself, the Bernie who would wander round his own head dreaming of something that I have yet to put my finger on but have worked out how to search for it.
Just before writing this today I woke up with a mosquito the size of a small family car jumping on my forehead, I then went and made some Mate and mediated.
My head was really busy, even though is was 05:30am and the only sound around were birds and water I could not think, being here is a really big thing, the last time we were here #babybernie was five months old and I did not know what was going on, a year later I was in bits and have been on the mend ever since.
I spent an hour meditating, three sections of twenty minutes to bring myself down to earth. As I walk around here I can spot, smell and taste bits of me from the last few visits. The person I am now connects with the old me that sat here wishing, dreaming, hoping, shitting myself that I would work out what to do. If I don’t keep an eye on it I react like an old Bernie.
In the last couple of hours I have gone from dizzy, jumpy, confused to calm, curious and connected. There are so many things I worry about “without thinking” that don’t happen, are a waste of time, will never happen. Having ‘panic’ or ‘worrying what others will think’ as a default setting for life is a pain in the arse and I am amazed at how much of a driver this has been in my head and I am equally amazed at how the meditation time has made me aware of this.
Please do not be mislead by what I write as ‘Wow Bernie has it altogether’ – I don’t. However, I am working towards it one thought at a time.
