The Good Old Times

The other day I took a quick stock of the posts I’ve written since I started this blog five years ago.

Five — Years — Ago !!!

Unbelievable!!

When I read a few of the first stories I realized that I still like them.
Sure, now I would write one or the other slightly differently, run another edit over them, but the core, the idea and character of the tale I wouldn’t touch.

Unfortunately, most of those posts didn’t make it into the new archives when I changed to WolfsView 2.0 (new software and design) about two years ago. At that time it would have been too much work to mold them into the new layout.
Now, with most everything about 2.0 pretty much settled (and the first thoughts about a version 3 popping up), I will make an effort to help some old scribblings see the light of day again.

“The Four Pillars of a Successful Day” is my first attempt at post-reanimation. I wrote it in May ’08 and – oh boy – a lot of things have changed since then. Not only here in San Martin, Patagonia, Argentina, where the old saw “change is the only constant” applies like nowhere else I’ve lived, but in the other protagonist-town Boulder, Colorado, as well.
No, I’m not going to rewrite the story to match the reality of October 2012. I much rather point out the changes and thus document a short period of history in a small niche of personal experience.

• Here in San Martin the bookstore/cafe “Cinco Sentidos” doesn’t exist anymore – neither does its Colorado cousin “Bookend Cafe”, my favorite attachment to the “Boulder Bookstore”.

• “EADS”, Boulder’s famous News&Smoke shop with a 100 year tradition is up for sale and most likely to go out of business soon – if it hasn’t already by the time of this writing. (read more about it here ).

• I don’t live on a Golf course anymore. My life among the (mostly absent) rich and famous ended after 8 months. Meanwhile I have moved no less than four times, lived in a small cabaña (tourist “hut”) and guarded a six bedroom inn as sole inhabitant.

• There’s no way that I could get four pieces of delicious pastry for a little more than a buck anymore. Inflation has been hovering above 20% for almost three years now and that brought the price up to about three pieces per two Dollars (using the official exchange rate – which is a farce, but that’s another story!).

Not that I would go to “La Piemontesa” for my pastry-treat anymore. In the four years since I wrote about those four pillars I’ve gotten to know San Martin better and learned about how the inherent dynamics of a tourist town in the volatile environment of Argentinean economics destroy and create new businesses at an astonishing rate.
“La Piemontesa” is still a ‘pillar’ of San Martin in the sense that it is one of the pastelerias which have survived the dramatic changes in town but the best sweets for my tastebuds are now created somewhere else.

“Good old times” as a nostalgic statement then?

Well, it depends on the perspective.
The times were good then, and they are good now, it’s just that the ‘good’ has changed – sometimes in location, often in perception.

Here’s the link to the post again: “The Four Pillars of a Successful Day”

Tags: in english, Patagonia