Slow Down and Smell the Mate

Before anything else: the last word in the headline has nothing to do with one's spouse; it is pronounced "mah-tey" and refers both to the gourd beverage container pictured on the right, as well as to the herbal preparation within, the Southern Cone substitute for coffee and tea.

The mate ritual is akin to the coffee break or tea time: a pause in the daily labor, a slowing down of the pace and "living life in full measure," as the conductor cited in the "Willoughby" post below might have put it. A time for socializing, symbolized by the passing of the mate, all present sipping from the single "straw" (the "bombilla) as a sign of solidarity if not of the hygiene practices of the northern hemisphere.

The pace here in the Southern Cone is practically funereal compared with the frenetic scramble of the English-speaking lands. There are times when one accustomed to a quick-march grows frustrated with what seems to be foot-dragging, dawdling, time-wasting... But one learns that frustration will do one no good, because nothing will change, save that perhaps the frustrated northerner will develop an ulcer and not be able to digest the herbal infusion being shared by those seated in the shade of, say, a carob tree. Better to take life as it comes, one concludes.

I will not get done today all that I wish, but neither will I lose sleep over this fact; I have learned something from the simple folks who inhabit this district, rural folk with rarely more than a middle school education, who rarely leave the valley, who aspire to very little beyond basic needs. Could I live just as they do? Not by choice, no, but were the world, the flesh and the devil force me to slow down owing to a collapse of the fast-paced society that exists outside the valley, well, I suspect I would and be none the worse for it.

Can you say the same?

Argentine Ants Gone Global: Let's Fill the Vacuum!

The Argentina meme that seems to be gathering momentum confirmed itself in a spectacular manner in this BBC article: "Ant Megacolony Takes Over World."

Older readers and fans of Fifties monster movies will immediately recall the awful twittering of... Them!. Little did I know back then that those monster ants, instead of just making some dreadful, high-pitched noise that foreran a formic acid injection that would fill a beer bottle, were perhaps whistling a Carlos Gardel tango tune.

Signs point to yes, as my Magic 8 Ball used to confirm.

"Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same interrelated colony, and will refuse to fight one another. The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination,"states the article.

Uh oh!

"In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 600km (375 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the 'Californian large', extends over 900km along the coast of California."

Most would have speculated that the Spanish coastal colony was most likely made up of British ants, but it appears this is not the case. And who would have guessed that the California group would be Argentine rather than Mexican? The Universe never ceases to surprise!

While Argentine ants colonize the world, perhaps the Universe is sending us the message that it's time for the world to colonize Argentina? After all, this nation is one of the great melting pot nations of the West, yet there remains room for many, many more. Argentina has a population density on the order of 35 persons per square mile, but that figure fails to tell the true story, because the population density in Buenos Aires is on the order of 4,032 per square mile, whereas in the Patagonian province of Chubut, it is closer to two, tops. Outside the 15 major cities, there are fewer than ten million occupying 1,068,322 square miles. This yields a population density slightly greater than that of Canada, much of which is located in an utterly inhospitable climate zone, whereas Argentina is almost entirely in the temperate zone. Patagonia has a population density along the lines of the former Spanish Sahara and lower than that of Mongolia.

Plenty of room here, folks!

Willoughby South

That's Mr. Gart Williams looking longingly at the sign identifying a station stop that wasn't to be found on the 1960 New Haven Railroad line, but instead existed in that special place known as the Twilight Zone.

Nearly half a century has passed since I first thought how pleasant it would be to make "A Stop at Willoughby," as that particular episode was called. Willoughby was a "peaceful, restful place, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his life full measure," according to the conductor on a train that had passed through the time tunnel back to 1881.

This episode from the program's first season was acknowledged by its creator, the late Rod Serling, as his favorite, and indeed it remains one of the best remembered and most popular of the 156 episodes. Why?

Well, the conductor said it all, didn't he? When all is said and done, modern life with all its empty thrills and narcissistic vacuity goes by in a blur, and the cup is nearly always half empty. The closing narration expressed the nostalgia for a Willoughby that exists within us all: "Willoughby? Maybe it's wishful thinking nestled in a hidden part of a man's mind, or maybe it's the last stop in the vast design of things, or perhaps, for a man like Mr. Gart Williams, who climbed on a world that went by too fast, it's a place around the bend where he could jump off. Willoughby? Whatever it is, it comes with sunlight and serenity, and is a part of the Twilight Zone."

Traslasierra, on the other hand, is sunny and serene and most definitely not part of the Twilight Zone, though it has that other-worldly feel to it that one can still find in rural areas largely passed by as the Urban Ambition Express barrels past. This is Catacombs country, an enclave of slowing down to a walk and living a life of full measure.

The Southern Cone is filled with places like this; climates and topography vary, crops grown are different, modcons may be more or less, but they have in common a pace that has been lost in the so-called developed world. It makes for a good "last stop," a place in which one can set down roots and live a life in large measure insulated from the tumult of a world in growing economic distress and social discontent with excessive political control, a place in which social engineering has yet to tinker much with the time-honored traditions of the folks who call these places home.

Better Willoughby than Alphaville, Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 fantasized dystopic technocratic dictatorship in which society is directed by a slow-talking computer named “Alpha-Soisant” with a whiskey-and-black-tobacco-broken, bad-barbiturate-habit voice that explains to secret agent Lemme Caution that everything is relative, governed by probability, and the word “love” is without meaning.

Are you holding a thirty-year commutation ticket to Alphaville?

Before your ticket gets punched one too many times, you might consider getting off at Willoughby South. We'll be waiting for you at the plaza.

Confluence

The synchronicities simply don't stop and this post gives me great pleasure to write.

Here we are at the confluence, something I have hoped for from the moment I began this web site.

You see to the right a photo of La Confluencia, both the place in Patagonia where two rivers meet and a self-sufficient community: http://www.laconfluencia.com/ This community is now part of the "Catacombs Confederation," which is to say Southern Cone Paradigm Changers working together to create a sustainable future for our posterity and a largely self-sufficient present for ourselves and those who wish to join us.

La Confluencia is near the Patagonian town El Bolsón, as is the nearly self-sufficient Traditional Catholic monastery the Seminario Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, whose hardworking monks are held in high esteem by hippie-esque "New Agers" and grizzled laborers alike.

The "padres" and seminarians at the monastery are friends; I visited them in March. The folks at La Confluencia recently contacted me because we have both built bale structures, and we quickly recognized that synergies exist that we should not allow to be ignored. We are now looking forward to a tripartite get-together with the monks to initiate cooperative ventures that will hopefully create a ripple effect in the larger community.

The folks at La Confluencia practice bio-intensive agriculture. I'd heard of it, but never known any one who practiced it until I encountered an acquaintance at the nearby Saturday morning farmers market and after chatting a good while, he agreed to come to The Catacombs in the second week of July to do a demonstration. When I returned home, there was the email from La Confluencia!

The universe appears to be trying to tell me something, and I'm all ears.

There may be a message here for you as well, because things are coming together rather nicely here in Catacomb country.

Highballin' the Love Train

How could the O'Jays know back then that the next stop was going to be the Southern Cone? They couldn't, of course: they were in the Old Paradigm.And the kids in this video? Well, the tee shirts on the girls say it all, don't they? "Nerds." Sigh.

Look at that room!

The color of the wall: bilious green, something their folks must have picked up at a Sherwin-Williams get-it-off-the-premises sale. The tacky posters, the flimsy curtains. The Love Train got derailed on its way through here.

The kids are spirited, I'll give them that, but the guys would have been prime candidates for "pantsing" back in my day, and the girls... well, we won't speak of them. But their behavior is not the sort that belongs in the street.

See, the world has turned nasty, and in the kind of neighborhood where the pavement ends, the street-light-vee hits the vanishing point and there are no more pachinko parlors, well, in those places, these kids could find themselves face down in a toilet bowl until the bubbles stop breaking the surface and the Love Train is a lonely whistle in the distance: Choo-Choo-Woo-Woo Bye-Bye.

Enough of that! Let's think happy thoughts! Let's get on board the Love Train! I mean, if you miss it, I feel sorry for you and, well, this whole train meme is kind of something you should, you know, like, "get into to."

We will be examining over the course of this week the ever-more-impelling urge that should be rising within readers to, well, "Git on bo' the Love Train" as it morphs into the Trans-Andean Express, the Traslasierra Streamliner, the Patagonia Powerhouse... Imagine yourself in a 50s vintage pullman dining car, linen on the table, heavy flatware flanking porcelain plates, white-jacketed waiters, clickety-clackety, clickety-clackety, wibbledy-wobbledy, landscape rollin' on by, smell that bacon frying, and you're heading south, south, ever further south, the rat race falling further behind, becoming nothing more than a hazy memory because you're on the Love Train, highballin' past dusty hamlets, whistle Doppler-shift-hooting like a barn owl caught in a wind tunnel... Love Train comin' on through!

Take a close look at the links on this page, think about the metaphorical train you're riding now. It's time to get on board the Love Train! Believe me, if you miss this Love Train, I feel sorry, sorry for you.


But not as sorry as you'll begin feeling sooner than you might think.