I haven't payed attention to this blog for a year, but I do think about it still. So many adventures are collected here. It's wonderful to be be able to look over them in this format.
My third semester at TC just ended yesterday, with the most exhausting paper I've ever had the pleasure of writing. The work I've been doing this semester has been really important for me. It's all been so moving, that I wrote a poem! The poem is a little bit about my traveling spirit, so it fits in with the rest.

If I hadn’t just enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner, 

duck fat and chanterelle, 

22 pound turkey with sage and morels, 

my dark haired ancestors gazing down upon us from the wall, oil paint and candle light,

I might not so acutely feel the weight of my ancestors as I write this. They fuse to my soul as surely as their monogramed silverware joined the flesh of the bird to the woodsy mushroom. 

And if the story had begun with the Indian’s arrows, perhaps my mother and I would not have lit the cast iron stove together, striking flint with tinder to make the sparks fly. 

I’m from the miserable boat people of 1620, the ones who survived. I’m from the witches hanging in Salem, witches and slave owners. I’m from many of the saddest boats. 

How is it that the boats I take are so joyous? Pedra de Sal, pamberi chimurenga, y la mariposa en arrullo. Can I be from there? My ancestors left their home, but that they didn’t change where they were from. Thanksgiving dinner, pilgrim pie and succotash, corn pudding on a mahogany table. Even as the weight –that food!– drags me down, I am nourished by it. 

Big Sky

In the city, I get used to the empty night sky. I can see a few flat, watery stars on my night walks home through Harlem, but in general, I'm not accustomed to looking up.

On Martha's Vineyard, the night sky is bright. Those scattered grains of burning gas twinkle and beckon, inviting my gaze to drift upwards. The great, unexplored world feels cozy and close with the universe above and the dark ocean all around.

Molly and Dad summer dancing

Roar Lions Roar

Stand up and cheer for old Columbia!

For today we raise

The Blue and White above the rest.

Our boys are fighting

And they are bound to win the fray.

We've got the team!

We've got the steam!

For this is old Columbia's day!

Well, not today...Princeton scored on the first kick-off of of the first game of the season, and the rest was history. But why would I care about if that group of 100 recently-boys won or not? I had a bottle of carrot juice, a bag full of Critical Race Theory articles, and a group of international students to keep me entertained. And if that's not good old American football, I don't know what is. 

 The Columbian army

A guy from China explained the rules to me, for the 100th time in my life. Due to the low-level of playing, I think I started to get it this time. There are four downs and they have to go 10 yards. Yes! I got to explain tail-gating to him, so at least I had something to show for being a product of a culture that holds its football dear.  Now, if someone could explain to me what the band was doing the whole time, I would feel like my expertise was complete.

Band People

But alas, no one had any idea of why some of the musicians didn't have instruments and were rolling around on the grass while the flutists and tuba players gyrated along to their rendition of...I don't know what song. Roar Lion Roar?  Speaking of Lions, Roar-y is kind of creepy. His plastic eyes look blood-shot :

Roar-y looking on with undisguised pride

Growing Roots

I'm going to stay put for a few years. From Rio, to New York, to Boston and back. California, then a private re-aquaintence with the soil of some of our United States via mini-van, road map and tent. I've spent the last few months, and the last few years, indulging my wandering soul.

Now I'm going to let some roots grow. In New York City. In Harlem.

Harlem's a good reentry. I'm not a foreigner here, but I am an outsider . I try to imagine where my place is in Harlem's story, and I find myself thinking about history a lot. The terrible and beautiful history of the world, of this country. The histories of black people and white people in the United States. Our history together. I think about these things when the man at the barber shop on the corner tips his hat to me, I think about them when a tour bus passes me down Malcom X Boulevard. I think about history all of the time now. It's a funny aspect of living in my own county.

Today, I joined a tour of Harlem for Nation Black Female Photography Day. My roommate Zoriada was the tour leader. It was a beautiful sunny day, with a sharp sun and a chill in the air. The group of more than forty meandered down the quiet streets and alley-ways of Strivers Row, examining  the dapples of trees upon well preserved brick facades. Zodi explained that these buildings were originally constructed in the late 19th century for white families, but when the developer ran out of money the bank finished the project and sold the units to black families for $8,000.  The families were characterized by their social, professional, educational aspirations, thus the name "Strivers Row".

We also visited the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where I was struck by a photograph of a cellist in an exhibition of Gordon Parks. And finally, the tour finished with a "Great Day in Harlem"-style portrait of all of the beautiful women and men who joined the tour. As we all crowded the steps of a brownstone, the women next door cleaned her window and scowled.

I write this with Andre Tanker (one of my mentors in Trinidad!) music blasting through my window. Earlier it was Salsa, and later on it will be live jazz. On Wednesdays it's the disorganized grunts of an open mic night, and when there is no music, I can easedrop on my neighbors.

 Today was a great day in Harlem.

Festa de Tomate

These photos have nothing to do withe the festa de tomato

Swiss Lemonade kills colds.  I know this because I've been resorting to it for a few days since I noticed my throat was looking a little white.  I'm a week away from bidding my fair love city goodbye, so I cannot get a cold right now.  Three days, 8 enormous glasses of lemon juice, and 2 sleepless nights later, and I'm still fending that cold off.

I did loose my voice, but I'll chock that up to screaming for hours.

Why was I screaming for hours?  Nothing sinister: I went to a concert.  More accurately, I thought I was going to concert, when in fact I was going to the Tomato Fest.  The Festa de Tomate happens in Paty de Alferes, two hours out of Rio de Janeiro city. Like all good adventures, I went into this blindly, lured by the name of one of my favorite musical artists, Arlindo Cruz.  It was easy: we took a bus and two hours later got dropped off at the misty, light-bulb strewn empty field that was serving as a parking lot.  Beyond the strings of yellow halo-ed balls of light, there were bigger, brighter lights: Carnival Rides! This wasn't going to be a hippy tent marajuana music experience, as I had assumed.  This was a regular county fair!

We walked by the guys getting drunk next to their cars across a little bridge, and into a neon stick-food paradise.  Sausage on a stick; chicken on a stick; candy apples; cotton candy; chocolate fondue shish kabab strawberries... Crepes on a stick? We purchasesd our R$20 tickets from a scalper (my friend Aurora is all about scalpers), and in we went...

9:00 pm is a little early for Brazilians.  We had the place to ourselves, and so for an hour we wandered around the fair grounds.  A cover band played a good selection of Beatles tunes as we checked out the winning tomatoes, peppers, maracujás and laurel leaves.  Aurora sampled the chicken espetadinhas, and I opted for a more suggestive salchicha, and we ate in front of the looming "Ranger", for sure the center-piece of the ride aspect of this fair. "The Ranger" sparkles and glows and whirls people into the air, upside down and backwards in a wind-mill style adrenaline rush.  We hadn't seen it in action yet, and I have read enough Brazilian news papers to not feel like breaking the Ranger in, so we veared towards some bleachers where fireworks and barulho were attacting crowds.  Through the smoke of a million cheap firecracklers, I could see young men in cowboy hats and jeans with decorated leather chaps. They were praying in front of a Madonna idol framed with raining fire, and a deep godly voice was loudly explaining to us that Deus is in everything, and is the ultimate everything everything everything la la la. When that finished, The Gringo rolled out on his motorcycle, tore up the sand a bit, flew through a hoop of fire, and then fell when a poor girl from the audience joined him on the back of his ride for a romantic spin around the arena.  Hahaa! No one was hurt, not to worry.

Next came the cowboys.  This was my first rodeo! I was surprised that they really celebrate the bulls.  A big white one got to parade in front of us for a while alone before he was hidden away again.  The cowboys and the bulls came out together, flaying around for a few seconds in a jerky dance. We could only stand this for a little while...the noise was too much.

We then went on the rides: the Ranger, a pirate ship, and "The American Show". The American Show is hard to explain: from the outside it looks like a two-story house spray painted with naked ladies at a car wash.  I thought it was going to be a peep-show, but was thrilled to find out it's in fact a series of gears and mechanical things concealed by plywood that you have to walk over in the dark and pretend you're a car going through a car-wash. It was really scary!  A couple of 9 year old boys went ahead of us and even they were scared (but they tried to help us ladies through, being blossoming Brazilian men).  We were all pretty sure our legs were going to be ripped off by some malfunction, and I think we were in the dark corridors for a long time, just standing there, trying to detect if we were in any real danger. As we emerged into the Carnival light again, some air sputed up from a hole in the ground and blew my shirt up in front of the crowd waiting for The Ranger.  Insult to potential ingury.

Ah, these kinds of surprises are what makes my world go around.  At midnight, the concerts began and were wonderful.  I got to sing "Meu Lugar" along with Arlindo, one of my ultimate Brazilian dreams, and he wiped the prolific sweat off of his head with t-shirts and threw them to the crowds.  Very sensual. Marcelo D2 followed up with another really good show.  By 4 o'clock Aurora and I were eating meat again at some stand, surrounded by a drunker group of be-legginged,-be-cowboy hatted, be-booted Brazilians of all ages.  We didn't know how we were going to get back to Rio, but that wasn't a concern.  Of course we would find a way.  And we did: bus-bus-train.  We caught an omni-bus to Jacarí through the morning mist.  The sun was hidden behind clouds and grassy hills, and everything was damp and rural and clean looking.  I slept on the train through Madueira and past Mangueira.  In Rio the metrô was excesively airconditioned, and I stopped by the juice stand to buy some more limonada on my way home.  10 o'clock found me snoring in my sleeping bag. So far my cold is only a quarter-cold. I've just got to fend it off for 8 more days and Mom will take care of me!

Masa Masa

After living somewhere for a while it’s inevitable that one establishes a routine, right? I find myself these days totalmente sem tempo...What about the hours I’m supposed to be baking on the beach? I haven’t done that for weeks! Is this what it really means to be Carioca? (*Interesting etymological note: oca, in Tupi, the indigenous language that was spoken before the Portugues arrived, means big house. Kari means white man. So Carioca means house of the white man, and that’s what people from Rio are referred to as).

Where am I spending all of my time? Mostly on the train. That lumpy bumpy uncomfortable train of plastic seats. Why oh why do they curve the seats right in the middle of the back? It hurts so much when we lurch or jolt- a hard crack to your back bone. And the carcophony of vendors. I like a few: the guy who has colorful make-up cases and always hangs his display from a hook off of the hand-bar above where I sit, so it hits me in the face. And the young energetic water guys are pretty cool. Everyone loves the sorbette sellers, but one in particular has hawked his way into my heart. He sells plastic water bottles with a freezable ice-cube thing attached to the lid. He has a laminated newspaper article about his wonderous water bottle that he shows us, his captive audience, and he’s quite gentile, yet convincing, in his pitch. Today a man with a mullet bought one even though the only color that was left was pink! And my vendor has really nice muscles.

The reason I’m on the train so much is because I go to Parada de Lucas so much. Today a few of us put the masa up on the concrete walls in preparation for painting. The first time we attempted this, the masa was ruin, so it was hard, frustrating work. This time, the masa was perfect: fluffy, white, beautiful! It was so easy to spread across the walls with the metal spreader tools. So, today masa-ing was um prazer. We got a little kooky in there with the radio, too: dancing forro, singing “Eu se pego” and “Nossa alegria”, trying to get the Swiss guy to stop swearing, sliding around on the wet tiled floors.

Yesterday I was at P de L to teach English. I’ve got a group of 5 crianças, aged 10-19. They are a joy! I must have gotten better at teaching ‘cause these kids get there early and don’t want to leave when class is over. Yesterday was the day before Easter holidays. Easter here means big chocolate eggs decorated in shiny plastic, and I think that you’re supposed to buy them for any children you know. I bought grapes instead, and they liked them, because we played that game where you stuff as many grapes in your mouth as possible (learning how to count in English was the excuse). The Swiss guy’s parents also visited recently and guess what they brought? Chocolate. A bar was donated to my class, and I distributed it at the end. Most of the kids went for it and ate like normal kids eat chocolate. But Julia, a skinny 12-year-old who is wired most of the time, savored it like a connoisseur. It was so cool: she took tiny little bites and let it melt with her eyes closed. She only ate a bit and saved the rest for her mom. So elegant!

Parada de Lucas...I’ll write about it later, tá?

On the way back today, after paying our train ticket and entering the platform, me and the Swiss guy realized had a long wait ahead of us, so we tried to let the train lady to let us out to buy some ice cream. She couldn’t let us out and then let us back in for free, but she did give us a key to a secret door down by the tracks. We had to jump down into the tracks and climb up to the other side, where there was this door...but we couldn’t get it to open. Too rusty. Oh well. I don’t really need any ice cream. Getting back up onto the platform was an adventure enough.

On the ride back, I always try to look through the scratchy windows for the people on the tracks. The crack guys are still down there smoking (not in Parada de Lucas, another train stop). Their neighborhood is Manguinhos, and it looks like it’s being knocked down slowly. The houses facing the tracks are often missing walls. I used to be so fascinated by this area, but now I’m not. I think this has something to do with riding through Centro Barranquilla every day for a year. Even though I’m in Brazil and I’m in Rio de Janeiro and it’s fantastic and amazing, everything is not as exciting as the first time I was here. I think I’ve reached a new level of traveler.

Broadening my Horizons

This boat almost caught me skinny dipping! I had the whoooole beach to myself before they turned up.

It's hard for me to leave Rio. Last time I was here, I didn't. For three months, I stayed within the city limits, with one exception: the city of Niteroí, which is like the Minneapolis to Rio's Saint Paul (or vice versa?). The minute you say "Niteroí" to a Carioca, this will come out their mouth: "The most beautiful thing about Niteroí is the view of Rio." Yeah, yeah. I've heard that one before. Can't people be so boring? I feel like every city says that about its neighbor.

Some say this is the best thing in Niteroí

A few weeks ago, Alessandro and I took a trip to Niteroí. Suddenly we were subiendo a hill covered in eukalyptus trees, and -ta da!- what a view.

Anyway, Niteroí doesn't really count. If someone's been to Boston and Cambridge, I'm not impressed. You have to go to New York or something too. And, finally, I've broken the confines of this enourmous, jealous city! Phew.

Paraty is a UNESCO world heritage site, full of cobble-stones and beautiful low white buildings full of restarants and rich old lady clothes :) I didn't spend much time there. Just enough, in fact, to find a boat. A boat to a little fishing bay, where we were greeted by a muscular man and woman making their way towards us, paddling a canoe with their hands. It was slow going. This couple (Velho and Luli) found us another boat, which took us to a hole in the forest, from which we hiked to another beach. The beach, called Sumaraca, was secluded, can you believe it?

The view from my tent

The owner of the beach is a quiet fisherman named Manequín. With a scant converation that mostly consisted of nods, my crew and I (a Japanese dread-head and a crazy Brazilian guy) determined that we could set up camp, and did so in the growing darkness. I changed into my new Brazilian bikini and sat in the shallow ocean under the milky way. The water was so transparent that even in the starlight I could see my body under the sea. Above, stars. There is no better way to clean yourself of a city!

I asked Manequín what his favorite star was and he said, "Botafogo". This football team from Rio is represented by a star. I guess you might get tired of stars when you have to look at them every night...

The next morning, after a dip, I sat with Manequín. I had of course made a million assumtions about him already: his solitary life, his deep understanding of the world. I learned that his grandfather and father had been born on a beach not far from here. That he had 7 children who still live on that beach. He gave me a coconut to drink and we just sat there quietly, which I thought was the perfect way to interact with a fisherman in a red sunga on a secluded beach in Brazil. Soon, a little motor boat carrying Velho (who is by no means velho), Luli, and a lot of beer arrived. My quiet Manequín ran for the boat, yelling something I didn't understand, grabbed a beer, and this is how I learned: sometimes lonesome fishermen are raging alchoholics. The silent Manequín was never to be seen again. He chatted and laughed and had a good ol' time. When there was no one to talk to, he yelled "O legato! O legato!"- "The lizard, the lizard!" and his little dog pintado would run barking into the bush.

I'm not sure this is an accurate representation of my abbs but...check them out! Oh yeah, and that's Manequín, and the Botafogo star gleaming in the backround.

We ate sushi from the fish we caught, and mussles steamed in the salt water where we picked them.

Sushi

Another crazy group of people (who we had traveled with from Paraty) decended from the hill on which they were staying in the afternoons and caused ridiculous, deserted island drama that I was the happy bystander to. It was a very lovely couple of days. If you ever want to know how to get there, ask me!

Finally! I can check taking this picture off of my things to do.