Jul 06 2008
Life from the shooting range
It is midnight on a Saturday that has been eventful only because it marks my first arrival ever in the most famous Latin American country this week in the news: Colombia. I am in Bogotá (yes, I’ll write it with an accent, that is why I have a French, an English and a Spanish keyboard all configured in the same computer, so I can toggle across them and meet spelling requirements as they emerge).
Strangely enough, only a few moments ago I realized that nobody in my entourage (family in Buenos Aires, or closest friends) knows where I am staying at. It also occurs to me that this could be a marker of freedom, although I do not need to mark it. I have always been a free spirit, even when I thought I was not.
Not even my office colleagues in DC or Houston know where I am staying — I don’t think I ever mentioned it to them. They know I’ll be at this Congress, but not much else. So I am technically untraceable today, and will remain so unless I decide to disclose my whereabouts. The only person who knows where I am is somebody I met once in Buenos Aires, and who has an interest in me (asked me to her bed). But she lives in Oregon, and she does not know anybody in my circle of friends, so my location technically still remains a mystery, even if she does know. There is no way anybody could get to her to find out about me.
In the past, when I had a steady girlfriend, she would know. She would ask me every time, and we would talk on the phone or Skype quite often. Now I no longer speak to her with that frequency, only when we get organized so I can pay my fatherly visits to our dog and keep him with me for a few days. There is a certain charm to being unable to be reached like this. Of course, there is the extra element of fear…should anything happen to me, nobody would find out. I guess I like such a wide array of possibilities to exist just because I simply forgot to say where I was. And I enjoy the paradox of having a total stranger know. Now I am a single, free and lurking soul in the shooting range. Only members are entitled to share knowledge.
