IN TRANSIT. La Quiaca, Argentina. It is a sunny day in La Quiaca, a border town on the Argentinean side of Bolivia. I expect to cross the border later this afternoon, to the Bolivian town of Villazón, watch the Champions League final, and board a bus for the city of Tupiiza, 3 hours north. I am pretty nervous, and sad and a little confused. I have been in Argentina for about 6 weeks now, and the last bit, perhaps the last 2 weeks, have found me without the motor for moving on. I came back from Mendoza, from a jaunt to the border of Chile to the beautiful mountains (will plug in pictures later), and ended up back in Salta and up to Jujuy. It was a joyous reunion with my friends there, and I have been in and around Jujuy and Salta for the last 12 days or so. I was plagued with some sort of alien death cold that had me in its clutches for the better part of three weeks, until I posed the semi-idle threat of medical attention. Semi-idle because I was already successfully kicking its butt with a round of Cipro that I had in my possession, and also because the visit to the "specialist" in Salta, a larger city about 2 hours from Jujuy, was more like an amusing coffee break than an informative medical consult. I declined a radiation-fun head x-ray, finished my course of Cipro, and managed to emerge A.O.K. and ready to leave. But still, I couldn't.

Last week, one morning, I met a woman of about 65 in a coffee bar who was talking to me about how she is a Salteña (a woman from salta) married to a Jujeño (man from Jujuy) but how all of her children are Jujeños. I was struck by the strong implied sense of identity, by how much it meant to her to BELONG to those places. It resonated strongly with me as the sensation I have been trying to resolve for the last weeks, the notions of identity and belonging. Just the night before, I had been looking at the full moon from a post near a tiny desert town of Tilcara, in the shadows of some pre-Hispanic ruins, and noticed that it looks different here than in North America- still a person, perhaps, but a different person, and yet, it still feels very natural and as it has always been. Can one leave to a new place and really become of that place, as if he had always belonged there? What is it really to belong?

I spent an hour with a friend called José Luis last friday who spends his weekend evenings out on the town as Florencia, a slim and sassy drag queen, as he was in full production, painstaking plucking out each of the reluctant stumps of his moustache hairs. It's normal enough in many ways to be a man who identifies himself as a woman, or vice versa. But how normal is it really to be an American from Seattle who identifies herself as a Jujeña, or a Carioca or ???. I have been approaching my last month on the road with a sudden sense of urgency to look in the rearview mirror more than to have my foot on the gas or to be heading off into uncharted waters, full throttle. I have been smitten with an introspection that has become almost crippling. Today, at least, I have reached escape velocity from Jujuy and will be in Bolivia soon. Perhaps, by distracting my brain with a new country, the challenge of passing through Bolivia in possession of all of my stuff, and the continuing mission of becoming fluent in spanish, I will be able to free up some of my thoughts for what lies ahead.

But passing through the familiar Quebrada of Humahuaca, even in the wee hours of the morning, I couldn't help but think of those shadows and wonder if I could ever belong to the marbled multicolored mountains, to the silence of those Incan ruins and the serenity of this region, to the tiny city of Jujuy, and thus eventually to the hillside mausoleums in the tranquility of the valley. Or if I could belong to the raucous life with all of the different backdrops of Pao D'Açucar that the neighborhoods and beaches of Rio de Janeiro provide. And how it will be to return to Seattle in a few weeks for enough time to wave a quick hello and then a quick goodbye before heading off to New York. Will I become a New Yorker? Or will I live there for the tenure of my post-doc identifiying myself as a busy Jujeña or spending my free time in Brasilian bars or restaurants, as an american-born Carioca?

In any case, I have to get a few things in order before crossing the border. I have to get psyched up again to be a little more vigilant; I have grown a bit soft, out to pasture in the security of Argentina. About one month left, which feels like the blink of an eye after being gone for so long. But I will be happy in a way to be home. The slow, deep ache of meeting and making friends and having to leave them is taking its toll on me by now. It is harder and harder to answer each time now when people ask me expectantly when I will be back, or when I will be moving to their town. They are asking me the question that I am asking myself- where do you belong?