Why We Move? Update from Lajeado (RS)

Thought of the “Way We Live Now” section of the Times and hence came up with the title. Twas maybe an unconscious reflex as the Times seems to be one of the few links joining me in this small city on the South of Brazil to NY, to what I have often considered “home”.

So here I am. I moved here exactly 5 weeks ago. As many people, and I am thinking of HK here, I moved away from something and to something. In HK, it seemed sentiments (in all their wide array of possibilities) were the single most frequent motivator for many single expats to move thousands of kilometers to a different life. So I have moved yet again, maybe due to sentiments, maybe work related, maybe all. 

 Lajeado is a small city about 130kms from the State Capital, Porto Alegre, not far from the Uruguayan border and about 1400kms from Sao Paulo. Please see the map above.

Tis my 4^th move this year. Rio, New York, Sao Paulo and now Lajeado.  The move came around the time of my 35^th birthday, which I have never been keen on celebrating, yet, here in Lajeado, I became deeply aware of age and people, or lack of, around me.

Someone called me a lone wolf once. Recalling those words, it always makes me think of the song “Coyote” by Don Edwards.  I had heard the song the first time as the sound track of Werner Herzog’s documentary Grizzly Man on Timothy Treadwell, I had thought the song so a propos. Click here to watch the video on youtube.

Truth be told, I had never thought too much on leaving, ever since I was 14 years old and left my home in Mexico to study in the US. Those early weeks when the kid promised himself that he would not miss and that leaving was part of reaching success. I can almost assure you for many of the same reasons that Alfredo in the film Cinema Paradiso tells Salvatore di Vita not to look back and “never to come back” to the small town and to follow his dreams in the big city. These feelings over time were reinforced over the years by the feeling of accomplishment, exploration and adventure – there – away from the past. The sense of “newness” felt at every new step, Africa, Asia, Latin America, magical lands I had always wanted to explore. I had even named the blog nomadvoice, nomadic existence I believed (and still do), twas the original way of the individual.

Yet for some reason, or for many reasons, a few weeks back I “missed”. I missed so much that the visions become almost reality, the feeling of separation, of longing. Was it age that amplified the ethereal sentiment to a physical sensation?

I don’t know. Yet, I am only writing now due to this feeling a few weeks back, the silence had a reason. So now I am back on line (not in NY!). Different, “changed”? Maybe, but back. Hope to see you all soon.

Now the long horns are gone,
And the drovers are gone
The Comanches are gone
And the outlaws are gone,
Now Quantro is gone,
Stan Watie is gone,
And lion is gone,
And the red wolf is gone. 

One morning they searched his adobe,
He disappeared without even a word,
But that night as the moon crossed the mountain,
One more coyote was heard.

And he'd go, hoo yip hoo yip hoo
hoodi hoo di yip hoo di yip hoo