Plans

Last mate on the terrace.

It's the final morning of my time in Buenos Aires.  I've had mate on the terrace, listening to the buses pass on Bolivar.  Soon enough, all I'll hear in the morning will be my brother's alarm clock or the low rumbling of the furnace.  I'll miss the city sounds, and I'll miss this city, with all of the complications & hardships & friends it offered.  I don't want to stay any longer than today.  But in these last days, I've felt preemptively nostalgic.  Yesterday, when we bought wine at the chino, the neighborhood market we visit every day (sometimes 2 or 3 times), it was the last time.  The empanadas I have in the park today will be my last BsAs empanadas, my last visit to the park. I may never see the friends I've made here again.  Everything is tinged with a heavy finality.

Going back to the States, I still don't have a plan.  I have possibilities.  Waiting tables in PA for the summer, maybe moving to Portland, maybe not, maybe applying to MA programs or writers' fellowships or teaching programs or all the above in the fall.  Maybe that's better than a plan.  Plans limit.  If they don't have a focus, a goal, a strategy toward that goal, they're pretty useless plans, however flexible they are.  I don't know who I'll be in 5 months or what that Me will do with his life, what plans he might make.  Five months ago, moving here without a plan, or with a plan that wasn't much of a plan, I was such a different self.  I couldn't have imagined the present Me at all.  I couldn't have imagined going home after only 5 months.

We have just enough pesos left for 4 pollo empanadas, one last Quilmes left in the fridge.  In a few hours, we'll take a break from packing, sit a while in Parque Lezama's amphitheater, and watch the city play itself out one last time.