Self Reflection! Live! From Buenos Aires Airport

I don’t think my hands have ever been so thirsty for a keyboard. Part of this trip was the experiment of leaving all electronic devices behind. No laptop, no iPhone, no iPod. Basically me giving Steve Jobs a huge ´up yours´ finger in the face. I don’t know how any of us in 2008 manage to get to know each other or ourselves when at a moment's boredom we can shoot out text messages like machete bullets, indulge in incessant chatter on our ´night and weekend´ minutes or research hypothetical holidays in the net. There are an infinite number of convenient ways for us to distract ourselves from self .

My South American getaway was supposed to be another chaos holiday ala´ Capri in which Bartok and I could exercise all our bad judgment in a condensed and intensified two week period. When forces outside our control made it evident that she would not be able to join me, I took it as a God-given sign that I should go anyway. Alone. Independent. A voyager. That I, a girl who obsesses over men, swirls around in throngs of people on banquet couches, and generally social butterflies my way through life, should extricate myself from my own existence and take a hearty Time Out – no booty texts, bitching to friends or usefully distracting "To Do lists" allowed.

So I rented a house in Punta’s ‘trendiest’ area La Barra with six acquaintances, friends of friends I knew weren’t psycho-rapists but didn’t necessarily know well. A few weeks ago, my roommate Tatas mused to me, “You know you do different things when you’re around different friends.” This simple observation instantly startled and terrified me…and put me on the defensive. To some extent, a chameleon personality is normal. You’re not going to banter with grandma the same way you’d chat up gorgeous guy #4. But it was my hope that for once being without the presence of an intimate friend, I might in a small way reinvent myself. Or at least become a little closer to the person I aspire to be without so many Manhattan-enhanced distractions.

Little did I know my friend who organized our Punta house is a frighteningly powerful party Nazi who had us all on a stricter activity schedule than anything I’d ever experienced at summer camp. Punta was the most intense whirlwind of social butterflyness of my life, yet I like to think I was more grounded and mentally stable in this period than I’ve ever been, despite the fact that I was partying like a rock star with one week to live. I’ve come to realize I put a lot of pressure on myself to impress my friends and loved ones – with jokes, with stories, with romantic conquests. On this trip, since I was only among ‘acquaintances,' I found myself able to relax and take a more grounded, Zen-like approach even to my partying life. Instead of feeling frantic, I felt alone and capable. Instead of craving to impress, I sought solace in my own mysteriousness. With no close friends surrounding me, I didn’t have to revert into one of my pre-assigned roles – the comedian, the blonde, the writer, the weirdo. The entire experience was liberating and confidence building, especially when I later traveled to stay in Buenos Aires completely on my own.

I promise this blog will be party recap central from now on. A Punta 10-day “day-by-day” will follow next week detailing all the debaucheries. I guess my initial point here (pre-tangent), is that while having no cell phone or iPod was great (it enabled me to stay with my thoughts, hear the ocean waves and smell the Uruguayan flowers), having no laptop could be equated to my own personal version of Chinese water torture. Not because I missed my email, but because I missed writing so much. Of course I’ve kept a detailed handwritten journal with all the juicy details, but for me writing has always been rewriting, a craft that’s hard to perform on paper unless you have six industrial strength easers.

Short version: I'll be in New York soon. And in the airport lounge now, I’m damn glad to be hitting a keyboard once again.

P.S.

Huge round of applause to Bartok who has done an above and beyond job 'babysitting.' With any luck, I'll get her as a regular contributer :)