A plume too many

When Mountbatten was Commander of the British Navy in the Mediterranean, spit and polish often allowed the British to outshine other fleets, Lady Pamela observes:

"Our pageantry is so marvelously done because it doesn't become comic opera," she noted.
"With some nations, it's too over the top - one plume to many."
From "Born a Lady" in W Magazine

(Context: Mountbatten was Lady Pamela's father, the Last Viceroy of India, friend to Gandhi and Nehru, rumored to have shared his wife's affection with the latter.
Lady Pamela is widow of late interior designer David Hicks, mother to designer Ashley Hicks and social beauty and sometimes coffee-table-book auteur, India Hicks.)

Bend of the twig

(back of car picnic with with dad and linds in trunk, turkey 1974)

“How odd that one bends one's own twig
and it stays bent.

Who could have foreseen the permanent effect of childhood journeys ... "

- Martha Gellhorn, Travels with Myself and Another

(read it all though, quotes no substitute)

Of wind, the waves and train travel

Aboard 12:45 Empire Line (last stop Albany, mine Hudson)

All the way up the Hudson's run brown, slashed with whitecaps. (Surmise: river's taken this less-traveled mid-week day to attend to its own business of churning, too few passers-by the get blue and pretty for.)

Now, as the train stops just out of Rhinecliff (near empty and compartment sad quiet now that the ladies doing crosswords aloud have disembarked), it starts to snow.

More aware these days of my luck, to have this split city/country life. I travel weekly and so anticipate train trips as a matter of course. I still feel a pull back towards whichever habitat I've just left. But it passes and my attentions are amplified like a tourist's in the new one.

Like hurdling to and fro between plots across a fence - before one side's hinted at losing luster - BAM – I'm on the other.

Encased in the gray-brown world of this Wednesday's Hudson landscape, en route home to country portion of my week, I miss the city a little in this in-between stage. It's fresher and I wonder at the parochialness of what I see. To other passengers, thinly, discreetly scattered through the train, I think:
“City for the whole week: too much for you?"

C - waiting for own stop.

Jet-lagged spirit

"Here I am, safely returned over those peaks
from a journey far more beautiful and strange
than anything I had hoped for or imagined -
how is it that this safe return brings such regret?"

- Peter Matthieson

C - Legs bowed round phantom sheepskin saddle, notebook smelling of eucalyptus, sipping crude Starbucks stand-in for cafe con leche.

Horse stage, delayed

Cintra and the eucalyptus

3 days on the estancia = 6+ horse hours, making me some sort of middling novice.

Considering the hours were logged crossing eucalyptus-edged, roadless pampas, once pursued by the wild-maned stud-steed, once witnessing cattle called to mass by a human's bellow, perhaps they count for more?

And after the hours astride: the unsaddling.

(Indulge me, I took up no one's time in my teenage years. Having sat out the Black-Beauty/Misty stage, the animal's blissfully new.)

Returning a horse to its natural state after a ride taps something primal. It encapsulates man's history with the animal in a morning's span: saddle, domesticate, control and then unsaddle, un-bridle and, with the gate unlatched - return to freedom as if the imbalance can be re-righted daily.

C - suffering that "horse thing" too late for sleep-away camp

Uruguay: discuss

"Meat is what remains,
when nothing else is left."
- Unknown (assuming Uruguayan/Argentine persuasion)

More meat posts to come. Como no when reporting from a land of herd-dotted hills, where life centers on the asado (grill) and steak knives out-number butter.

C

Meat remains

"Meat is what remains,
when nothing else is left."
- Unknown (assuming Uruguayan/Argentine persuasion)

More meat posts to come. Como no when reporting from a land of herd-dotted hills, where life centers on the asado (grill) and steak knives out-number butter.

C

Gaucho time

Sylvera.
First mate gaucho of El Alamo, lover of 3 ladies, ex-husband of 2, gaucho swagger exuding.

"The Gauchos, or countrymen, are very superior to those who reside in the towns. The Gaucho is invariably most obliging, polite, and hospitable: I did not meet with even one instance of rudeness or inhospitality. He is modest, both respecting himself and country, but at the same time a spirited, bold fellow."

- Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle


In a land of 3.5 million people amidst 8 million plus cattle and a half million some horses, the gaucho is - by necessity - king.

Uruguay's two official times reflect the phenomenon. Estancia owners (landed gentry), city folk and deinzens of the decandent-but-Uruguay-unrelated Punta del Este observe one time. The gauchos, along with the country's sheep, cows, horses and flocks, are one hour behind (not recognizing daylight savings).

Cattle-time = goucho time.



And that's not all.

Time spent on an estancia requires a gaucho glossary.

Boleadores (or Las Tres Marias): leather wrapped metal or stone balls tethered to a leather thong used to bring down cattle, ostrich or - in the day - wayward indians.
Bombacha - the natty wide top, tight legged gaucho traousers.
Domidor: Gaucho subduer of horses. A multi-step/year process that produces horses with hair-trigger reflexes suited to the game of polo and novice riders.
Facon: Gaucho knife, tucked in the back of the Bombacha pants.
Yerra: The complete process, done in one swoop, of branding/dehorning/castrating young cattle. ("In autumn and when the moon is waning, branding is carried out in every cattle breeding establishment in the country.")



C - missing gauching it up (R's term)

Casa Puebla: An ego in plaster

Witness to the folly

Sr. Carlos Paez Vilaro claims title of Uruguay's leading artist - still churning out at 81. His early work is whimsical, colors bright and stock of images: fish, suns and moons, universally pleasant and benign.

But what was once artistic whimsy, and a wanderlust that took him to Tahiti, Spain (for requisite portrait with Picasso), and African airports where his murals hover over departure lounges, has faded. In the blurry celuloid journey thrust on visitors to his "fantasy" home cum landmark cum museum cum hotel - Casa Pueblo - the symbols all but lose their magic.

What's left disipates as you wander Casa Pueblo itself - a Gaudi-esque (his claim) confection of bumpy plaster teetering above a dramatic shoreline south of Punta.

And the charm tips to repulsion as you realize this "museum", incased in his architectural folly, is no more than a glorfied giftshop. His symbols morphed into pure commerce objects of astrology signs (for sale), posters, cheaply produced dinner plates and mugs.

Casa Pueblo, Punta del Este

C - pro-artist, pro-folly, sad for art reduced to ashtray decals during an artist's own lifetime