Was it Cold? Yes!

I'm now about to write my second entry after arriving in the states 23 days ago...wow! So, you don't have to read this one, because I haven't really been anywhere, except for California, Pennsylvania and New York twice.

I am two days away from going to Colombia. I've spent this month revisiting my spectacular country, the USA.!

I visited California, briefly. Being in Oakland again was wonderful: Sonja brought me to the beloved Redwood Regional forest, we went to the restaurant Loló in San Francisco, we went to fun Stevie Wonder parties and the Farmer´s Market on Grand.

Sarah and I celebrated our birthdays (really Sarah's, it was a little premature to celebrate mine) in New York City. We were inspired by the clothes at Saks or some store like that to plan our next joint party...it's going to be amazing and glamerous!

I should not ignore my city of Cambridge just because it's so quiet and familiar. Walking down our streets (quieter than ever with the cold), it is easy to forget what this place offers to me. But there is nowhere else in the world where I feel so secure.

That being said, a month is a nice amount of time to be in the U.S.A., especially if it's split between these three great cities! The Bay Area and New York are so stimulating...a few days after Christmas, my family arrived in New York in the middle of a blizzard. Like anywhere else, snow muffled the usual sounds of the city. Taxis were pretty much immobilized, which reduces a good part of New York's action generally. BUT, the streets were still full of pedestrians AND the quiet snow-fall was accompanied by thunder and lightning rolling against the skyscrapers. Unusual and dramatic! Also unusual and dramatic were The Magic Flute and the 5 ft icicles threatening fur-covered Russian heads on 5th avenue.

This one goes out to Molly, the snobbiest Snobbist

I think the pictures will speak for themselves.

Boston Again

It only takes twelve hours for me to be back in Cambridge, lying on the floor at my parent's house, writing on my laptop. What a difference! My skin and nails are shrinking in protest to the cold here, and this is a big deal because now I'm a super high-maintenence Brazilian lady. My hair is framing my face like some kind of indication that God is around (haha, you know what I mean, like the light bursts in all of those Rennaisance paintings...I'm not claiming that God is in my face! I'm not that high maintenence...yet).

Luckily, I think these indications of the lack of moisture in the air due to inhuman temperature are the worst effects of my dramatic change of scenery. I guess I'm used to bouncing around everywhere. Today I forfitted my passport to the Colombian embassy, so no more international travel until I go to Colombia! Terrifying.

Of course, eu tenho saudade para a cidade maravillosa. Rio, if I haven't already made it clear, you are the city of my dreams. I had a marvellous last week. I can't remember everything...highlights included hanging out in Parada de Lucas (a few good classes...three students who love me!) and seeing how a police invasion in the neighborhood favela has NOT made the traficantes in P de L any less ostentacious. They were waving the guns around like it was the first time they had ever held them. I wonder, maybe it was? Because these were big machine guns, and everyone was checking them out and striking poses. Maybe some of the traficantes from Penha and Complexo Alemão came over to P de L...I can write about this stuff now because I'm not there anymore and you guys won't get scared! The rainy night after the big showdown (which was on Thanksgiving), my friend and I were supposed to go out for dinner. We got all dressed up and walked outside, to find the streets EMPTY. Empty streets in Copacabana on a Friday is really unusual, and felt quite erie. We ended up not going out because everything was closed. The next day...was sunny! Everyone was out and about, at the beach. So it seems that mass fear can be induced by the media and sustained for about 24 hours, maybe more on a rainy day. How does this compare to our own culture of fear?

Ok, but that's not really the nice stuff. On saturday, 15 of the kids from CIACAC came to Copacabana to spend the night at a hostel. I spent a few hours with them on the beach, and learned that the beach is waaaaay more fun with children. You get to run around and roll in the sand and splash in the water. I never do that anymore! And now I am the person that people can climb on to jump off of into the water. It was really fun, even in my new Brazilian bikini! Some of the kids, who all live in Parada de Lucas, had never been to the beach. I got one of the best "thank you"s I've ever recieved from a little girl named Karina. I had paid for her to come along ('cause her mom couldn't pay the R$20), and spent the day holding her arm so she wouldn't drown in the considerable current, and at the end of the day she just said "thank you" but it felt really nice, unexpected and simple and complete.

Fluminese won the national championships for the first time in 26 years. That was fun :) Then there was a flood in my 'hood, AND I spent all of my money on beer so that I could make friends with some girls (for once!), so I thought that I would be stranded. No, normal human friendliness and consideration came to the rescue and I was given a ride (Tupac was the playlist...California knows how to party!) back to my damp but perfectly navigatable street.

Ah, I really love Rio. But the words are not coming to me write now to write a beautiful poetic "farewell for now". So, I'm not going to.

Thanksgiving!

Yesterday was the fourth Thursday in November, which in every corner of my world means Thanksgiving should be celebrated if at all possible. Explaining Thanksgiving to the many people I imposed the holiday upon this year has reminded me that I don't entirely believe in the fable of Indians and Pilgrims clasping hands around an outdoor table in crisp fall weather, BUT I do believe in how nice it is to cook and eat and drink and wash dishes with as many family and friends as we can fit.

So, I was lucky to be invited back to the old Santa Theresa mansion, where many more Americans and Europeans have accumulated since I left a month ago. Every Thursday Naldo, the house keeper guy and most beloved person in Santa Theresa, cooks what probably amounts to an entire cow, and I've continued to go to these little parties even though I don't live there anymore. The house is much nicer when you don't have to take showers there! Sitting out on the terrace with the entire North Zone blinking below and drinking caiparinhas mixed with Maracuyá, Manga, Limão, Mamão, and Abaxi is as good as it sounds. And yesterday was Thanksgiving, so I brought a beet salad. Unfortunately, yesterday was also eventful in Rio for other reasons...BOPE (the special police) invaded one of those twinkiling spots in the North Zone and the city was (still is...?) thrown into a state of alert and alarm. The trafficantes are starting to rebel against the UPP pushing them out of their favelas, and have been setting fires to omnibuses and cars around the city...more than 40 yesterday! Globo, the Big Brother media of Brazil, had non stop coverage of the operation, supplied by their two helicopters which hovered above wherever the traficantes were congregated. We could, and did, watch their every nose-pick and gun-wave for hours all day from every juice bar and gas station. There's nothing like constant helicopter footage of young men hanging out in the mountains with guns to inspire fear in the entire population of a city!

At 9:30 the city stopped the buses, so, for hopefully the last time, I slept in Santa Theresa again. After an all night Wu Tang Clan dance party! A weird Thansgiving.

And, since Parada de Lucas is 3 train stops after Penha, where all of this stuff is taking place, I think I won't go to my second Candomblé ceremony with Neuza. I forgot to write about the first one, which I went to a few weeks ago...well, I have a degree in Latin America and Caribbean Studies, which if for nothing else is at least good for having displayed one or two movies about Candomblé to me. Have you ever seen a documentary about Candomblé? It is a Afro-Brazilian religion that developed in the north. I don't know much about the religion, actually, but it is split between many nations, they believe in many orishas, and the energy of everything. The ceremony I went to was hosted by a house in the outskirts of Rio (my second time outside of the city limits!), in a semi-rural, even more poor than anywhere else I've been neighborhood. We got there around 10 pm, after hanging out at the yard of Neuza's congregation, celebrating her Pai de Santo's 50th. He is an annoying, flamboyant, demanding man. I think that I startled him by being there so almost right after meeting him he invited me to light a candle and make a wish in a dark little room. The room was full of an alter with feathers and candles and other things all over it, and bowels of various substances on the ground, including money, blood and a chicken. I felt a little scared to make a wish here but I did, the most innocent and unlikely to turn on me wish I could think of! When I told the guy my wish, he was a little shocked and said, "That is a good wish. Most people wish for money or a man." Well, I thought about it, but maybe those are dangerous things to wish for in a bloody room, even though it was the nicest bloody room I've ever seen.

Ah, my observations are kind of pointless, because I don't really know what was going on...but eventually we made it to the party, and after a few hours of breezing around there, waiting, it started. Drums and men and women and children dressed in elabrorate skirts and head-dresses or just loose white or African-printed cloth walking/dancing around in a circle. The first to fall into a trance was the Pai de Santo of the house we were visiting. He jerked out of the procession and sort of jumped onto his knees, put his hands behind his back and made a crowing sound. Everyone, the partipants and the observers, started clapping and yelling to welcome the orixá. Then some of the women brought him into a room and he came out later in woman's clothes and a very distinct expression on his face, one eye squinted and his mouth in a kind of grimace-smile. Around the outskirts of the terrace where the people were walking were tables full of alchohol and fruit. He was given a red goblet and a cigarette and started carousing around, sometimes dancing and spinning, sometimes talking to people and greeting us. Others in the circle soon started falling into a trance, every time with jerks and falling onto their knees and crowing. Some people seemed to be resisting, some people seemed to take on the orixá with enthusiasm...it hurt to see one young man jump high in the air and land on his knees with his hands clasped behind him! The terrace was full of orixás, beer was flowing, drums were non-stop, everyone was singing and dancing. The words to the songs, from what I understood, were lovely and unexpected. I would like to research them a little.

People came in and out of the trance state, people on the outside (including Neuza, who was sitting next to me with a scrap of white cloth tied around her waist over her clothes as a symbol of Africa (?)) also started falling into a trance. Candomblé is the only religion that embraced homosexuals in Brazil, and there was one transvestite who was singing with the drums, with a blond wig and a long purple sheath and a very friendly face, who, when in the trance, took on a very scary orixá, a male one who wore a tall top-hat and made a loud moaning noise all of the time. Most of the orixá poeople, when they greeted a person, made the "Caw! Caw! Caw!" noise and kissed you twice and said "boa noite", but this guy moaned and drooled and shook peoples hands so hard that he shook their whole body like an electric shock. I was scared when he slowly came over to Neuza and me, and tried to avoid his transformed, painful gaze. First he greeted Neuza, and instead of shaking her hand he took of his hat and put it on her head. I knew that she was trying to resist falling into a trance, and that proximity to people in a trance had a strong influence over her...she froze and didn't know what to do...meanwhile, I was being greeted by the scary guy, and instead of shaking my hand, he turned me around, ran his hand from my head to my feet, turned me around again and reversed the motion, and sealed the encounter with a nod. What did it mean? Neuza had called her Pai over, who replaced the hat onto the orixá's head and led him away, and we stood there shaken up for a few minutes.

Oh, it went on and on, with more food, more beer, more orixás. I took a nap on a hard bench at dawn, and when I woke up the ceremony had ended and people were just sitting around, reunioning. They were trying to cook a feast of meat, but everyone was too drunk to get the fire going, hence I ate a bite of raw BBQ which really disgusted me and made my already bad mood worse. The dogs in the yard started hanging around me because I was dropping so much food on the ground. I ended up talking to a woman of 45 who had a black eye and 3 grandchildren. I remembered seeing her in the ceremony, a very proud and friendly looking women who danced beautifully. Now she was so drunk and tired that she kept falling asleep when the conversation lulled. Everyone was incredibly nice, except for me because at this point I was tired and done with Candomblé, but I didn't know how to get home and for Neuza it looked like the party was just beginning. Thank goodness one of the neighbors have me a ride to the main road and I finally reached home around 1pm, only to find the Copacabana Parada dos Gays in full swing! Woohoo! Rio never stops :)

My life is like a string of Red Fish

Christo again...he doesn't really leave the Southern zone alone!

It's been a good week. I have lots of lovely moments to share and to think back upon from this week, and none of them involved the beach! I don't know how to connect them all into a theme, so let's just call the theme my life and let the anecdotes stand on their own.

I went to a short film festival at one of the many cultural centers (every big company or extension government seems to have their own cultural center. This film event was at the Postal Service's enourmous one, where they are also randomly showing an exhibit of Keith Herring). Some of the films were too artsy for me, and they spoke too much Português. In front of me, a very smelly skinny very old man sat with his friend, wearing funny formal/cowboy clothes. I liked two films, one about the fanatical football fans of the geral section at Maracana stadium ("Maracanã na geral" on youtube), and one about a musician. The film about the musician was sad or bittersweet, and told the story of a young man who loved to tap dance in the gay olden days of WWII. Now, this man was old, living alone in the basement of what looked like a crack house in Rio. One day, during carnival, he puts on his top hat and tails and tap dances in the confetti in an empty ball-room, alone after the party has already ended, and he is happy. At the end of this film, the smelly old old man in front of me began to cry. He turned around and looked at the crowd, seeking recognition from someone, and his friend comforted him and shouted, "It is him!" We, the small audience, applauded as loudly as we could, and the old man continued to cry. It was too much: I cried too.

On Tuesday, I met with my friend Renato for our sporadic language exchange meeting. He told me about his trip to the Amazon region. He saw the famous pink dolphins, and one day he took a solitary walk and a school of fish passed him (I just thought that this was a lovely thing to notice...I've never paid attention to a school of fish passing me in a river). His friend has stayed beyond him, and now he's worried about her, because she fell in love with two guys and lives on an island with one of them, the pousada where they stayed burned to the ground, and she keeps missing the weekly boat out of there. Renato feels sad because the beautiful, idyllic place he experienced has now changed in his mind with the experiences of his friend. He told me these things as we sat on a big rock island between Impanema and Copacabana, watching the fishermen reel in tons of red and silver fish. Renato said that he had never seen a fish caught in Rio, but on this day every man who threw a many-hooked line in pulled it out again jumping and shining with fish. The red fish looked especially beautiful against the clean ocean, with the sun setting beyond it all.

That same day, I went to my favorite bar, Baro do Rato. This is where they have a Ronda da Samba every week, and it's just a nice place, blocked off from the Halloween streets of Lapa by stacked beer crates. This week, I stood right by the musicians and watched them play...a girl played pandeiro for a few songs, and the other musicians were having fun, despite the sweaty heat (yay!). Then, guess what happened? The roof caught on fire! And guess what everyone did? Nothing! The musicians kept playing (although a few of them did look a little concerned), and everyone else kept dancing, so I did too, with one eye on the smoke, just in case. It was a perfect opportunity to sing "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire, we don't need no water let the mother-f***er burn!", and I did, but secretly to myself because I don't think anyone else would've got it.

Inside the train...unusually empty, though...(one day before operation Complexo Alemão, and I was wondering why the train was vacant).

Yesterday, I actually planned an ok English lesson (involving Beyoncé), and after the class we sat around and had a kind of ladies-club. No one seemed to want to leave, so me and my three students sat in there for quite a while, chatting away. It was nice. Then, Neuza invited me out for a beer to talk about men, but really what we talked about was her religion, Candumblé, and her NGO and the energy of everything. I really admire this woman, she is extreamly tolerant and kind and honest. So...we sat there for 5 hours! Many pleasant people passed through the conversation: the bar lady, the young guys, the old guys, a billion children, a few dogs and two cats. Then came Mr. Annoying, in his red and black Flamengo stripes. He was so nervous, just humming with tension and a desire to be liked. I am not so tolerant, I can't stand these types of people! He kept saying "With all due respect, I would really like you guys to come to my house and drink beer." Ha. With all due respect, no way. Then, Neuza wanted to use him to demonstrate something or teach me something, so she asked me to look at him ("without using your eyes") and say whether he was happy or not. Well, I didn't feel comfortable saying that I didn't think he seemed happy, so I just said he was acting really nervous and he could relax. Then he started crying and said he wasn't happy and he was all alone. Ahhhh...it was weird. But he was back to his crazy hyper self within a few seconds, asking us with all of his respect to go to his house. And I continued to be rude. Oh, well, I'm not a saint.

My train

Then I slept on the floor of my "classroom", woke up early, and experienced rush hour traffic on the old creaky train! As I travel counter-flux to my Englsh classes, I've always seem the rush hour from the other side of the platform, elbows and hands pressed up against the windows of the train as more people squeeze in. Well, I got to be in the squeeze today, and after my initial anoyance, I realized that it's quite comfortable! You don't have to hold onto anything, despite the fact that the train's shocks are so bad that the bumps actually lift you up off the ground. The crowd just holds you up. The only time I had to hold on was when I was by the doors. The guy next to me held them open with his hands and, well, we traveled a couple stops like that, hanging out of the train door. Scary but super cool! I don't plan on doing this again, though.

The scary alien guy who stands in the door, and the campaign against him..."he's not one of us!"

Annnd...I saw Vin Diesel. Not that exciting, but kind of funny, right? Oh, and I climbed up to the famous Christ stautue, but when we got the top we found out you have to pay to see the view/front of Christ, and you can only pay at the bottom. So I only saw Christ's bunda. The walk itself was worth it, though.

Christ's view...Impanema, Lagoa e Leblon

And I went on a few dates :) I think that's it! Beijos!

Sol!

One of my body-image idols!

Yes, the sun is out! E eu fico vermelha. That means I'm red. I was doing so well being pasty and healthy...well, I'm happier this way, Vitamin D overdose and wrinkles! I have yet to buy a Brazilian bikini, but I'm definately going to, because I agree with the Cariocas: we should all be showing our butts to the world. What's the big deal, anyway? At first I was startled by the amount skin being displayed, but now I love that everyone is wearing a thong. Not just the gorgeous young people, but everyone. If Brazil has an L.L. Bean kind of brand, it sells thong bathing suits and tiny postage stamp tops.

Chopin at the beach, still a little melancholy

Now that I live "on the beach", life is totally different. People wear bikinis and speedos when they're grocery shopping, when they're sweeping, playing ping-pong (a very serious sport here). The surfers travel via metro. Everyone is tan and some of the grocery stores ONLY sell fruit and vegetables...this grocery store has a cute ad campaign. Billboards of fruits singing songs about themselves: "Cai, cai mamão, cai, cai mamão, cai aqui na minha mão" (Fall, fall papaya, fall fall papaya, fall into my hand). I haven't even written about the juice here. Buenos Aires had cafés on every corner. Rio has juice bars, and they sell the yummiest juice! Limão, laranja, caixu, morango, fruta de conde, millions more and ACAÌ. Oh how I will miss acaí, that purple icey juice slush.

On the beach, like every tourist beach outside of the US I've ever been to, there are people selling things. What I like about here is that 1) they´re selling things that you might actually want, like food and water and sun screen, and 2) they´re not pushy. The vendors sing out the product and walk along, if you want what they´re selling, you whistle at them. And the songs they sing are lovely...just the one or two words of their product, but in a singing way. "Aaaaaguaaaa mineral!" is the one that's stuck in my head today.

Evening walks are nice

The beach is used by everyone. Though I have gotten better at making judgements about people in Rio based on their clothes and looks and accents and attitudes (great, I've developed the ability to prejudice here!), on the beach it's less obvious. Where I live, there is a favela tucked up in the morro behind my apartment, so the people living in this poorest of neighborhoods only have a 10 block walk to the beach. Then there are all of the fancy hotels and apartments that line the beach. But everyone rents the same chairs and guarda sols for 3 reais an hour, and the bathing suits aren't big enough to determine the quality of fabric. I've learned to relax about space. Where in the U.S. I might walk for hours to find a place on the beach where I can have a few meters around me, here I just plop down where ever there's space for my chair. It's very cozey on the beach on a hot day! One mystery I have not yet figured out is this white stuff that some girls paint themselves with. They stand there or sprawl in their chair, slowly and lazily painting themselves white with a tiny paintbrush. Some kind of delapitation? I'll keep you posted.

I've seen two helicopter rescues take place right in front of me! The waves here are big and strong, and they have an irresistable pull (the portugues word for pull is puxar, confusing, huh?). So I guess people get stuck out in the water...a red helicopter swoops in while a black helicopter looks on. A life gaurd jumps out of the red one, and then a big net is thrown out. The lifegaurd and the drowning person get into the net, the helicopter pulls them out of the water and dumps them out onto the beach and zooms away. It's very exciting. So I don't really go into the water at all...too scary!

I don't know what these guys are doing, but it's pretty!

More Music

Well, I mentioned once that I might be dating someone. That "might" has become a major thorn in my heel, and I'm trying to extract it by doing whatever random thing comes my way, even if I have to go its way first. Does that make sense?

The other day, I went to...the second BNDES International Piano Competition! This is a fancy event of classical pianists under thirty from around the world. The stakes are high: R$80,000 (maybe US$55,000?) for the winner! And, although the finals were held in the opulent Teatro Municipal, the event was free. I arrived more than an hour early, and already the line was beginning to sneak around the corner. The Teatro Municipal is a magnificent building, full of gold-leaf, green stone, velvet and naked ladies depicted in glass, marble and paint. We were assigned seats in the balcony overlooking the pianist, which was a mixed blessing because these are the tiniest little seats in the world! Me, a big German man, and a diminuative (even for a Brazilian) little guy named Julio. Julio is a student of philosophy, and is very serious. At one point, he left his creaky seat to kneel in the aisle for a better view. My other balcony companions were mostly young mothers and their many children. During the first presentation (the Brazilian Fabio Martino, playing Rachmaninoff's Concerto no. 2 in Cm), I really enjoyed watching these kids leaning over the gold and velvet balconys, mezmerized by the spectacle (in my imagination, at least)...By the third movement, they were bored, flipping exasperatedly through the program and making loud noises. I remember feeling similarily at a concert in the whaling church in Edgartown with the Maskins (mom...sorry!). Anyway, Fabio did a good job. I had goosebumps, but I don't know who deserves the credit; Fabio, the orchestra, Rachmaninoff, or the air conditioning. Most likely, a lovely combination of the four.

The other two contestants were a tall, slender Japanese guy playing Liszt and a squat Russian guy playing another Rachmaninoff (talvéz no.3?). I'll admit it, I was too bored to pay much attention, and that thorn in my heel was staring to occupy my mind again...I think that they generally lived up to the stereotypes: the Japanese was extraordinarily dexterious, the Russian emotional. Everyone loved the Russian. I guess he had played Mozart sublimly at the semi-finals. So...guess who won? The Brazilian! People actually booed when the Russian was handed third prize. I felt bad for him: he is obviously one of these guys that lived for piano, pasty and bulbous, with his shiny suit pants fasten halfway up his chest. He took his little certificate and stared out at the crowd through thick glasses in a very confused way (am I making him up now? I'm not sure...). The Japanese won second, graciously, and the Brazilian, with his bouncing pianist curls, took first, to an applause which was a mixture of national pride and artistic suspicion. Julio was disappointed. He thought the integrity of the event had been comprimised.

Corruption? I can't say for sure. But, on that interesting topic, I enjoyed a Brazilian blockbuster with the thorn guy on election night. Brazil has elected her very first female president. After the movie ( Tropa da Elite 2...don't see it 'till I get back, ok mom and dad?), the mood was glum. Pobreçinho is completely disillusioned with Brazilian politics, and who can blame him? In São Paulo, they elected an illiterate clown to congress...the movie is a social critique, and not a very happy one. In fact, a very very depressing assessment of the leadership and social realities of this city. I guess I would be sad, too, but I find it quite interesting that on the one hand people flock a movie with this message, and on the other hand feel completely disconnected to the finding of a solution. Surely they cannot hope for the movie's final: the heroic cop beating the currupt politician to a bloody pulp. That just doesn't seem likely.

If I'm lucky, it won't Rain tonight

Ok, I know I've made it sound like the constant rain here is not a problem because it's such a fantastic city, but....it is a problem. I'm really sick of it. Yesterday, coming home at about 1, I caught what in Trinidad is called a maxi (just a little taxi-van on a fixed route) to get from Lapa to Copacabana. As I waited on Rua da Gloria with the transvestite prostitutes, it started to mist. A van came, I jumped in, and it started to pour. The windows fogged up and I couldn't even see where we were. Luckily, someone knew that I wanted to get off at Siquiera Campos, so they dumped me out on that street into a puddle/river, and I "ran" (did I mention that I've decided to throw caution and anonymity to the wind and augment my already monsterous frame with heels?) under the tent of one of these sidewalk resturaunts that line the praia here in my new bairro. There, I spent time with an assortment of other rain-refugees, watching the new river get bigger and faster. The sidewalk merged with the street. The cars appeared to lose their wheels. The water comming out of the sky accelerated downward as the water in the street accelerated horizontally towards my feet. I remember last year seeing photographs of Rio under 8 feet of water, so I got scared and decided mete o pé despite the flood. This was uncomfortable. At times during the 5 block walk, the dirty sewer water reached above my knees. At one point I fell, because I was wearing heels and the curb was completely submerged and the sidewalks here are made of impracticle mosaics! Grrrr. Soooooo disgusting. Meanwhile, men were actually hitting on me, more than one! I am not especially friendly when alone and soaking wet in the streets, up to my waist in sewer water at 2 in the morning. Only Ricardo, who works at the Chopp kiosk at posto 5 on Copacabana was able to get a nice word out of me, because he tried to cover the 3 foot deluge with a piece of cardboard for me to walk over. It's the thought that counts!

I think I'm stuck in Rio

Oi gente,

Finalmente, acho que eu posso falar Portugues um pouco melhor que quando eu chegou. Não utilizo o pasado...talvez isso limita meu nivel da comunicaçaõ, mas tambem não posso ficar no pasado!

Oh, how I hope the weather will get better now that I'm moving to Copacabana! It's true: ever since moving into Santa Theresa a month ago, I have seen maybe 5 sunny days. Of course, this has encouraged me to get to know different aspects of the city. I've been to the museums, I've started attending a charming music school, I teach English in Parada de Lucas. I even started dating someone...I think :) BUT I want to go to the beach. So, if moving within 10 meters of the black and white wave mosaic sidewalk is what it takes, I'll do it. Also, Santa Theresa is grossing me out. There are red worms in my shower and pigeons are shitting everywhere. I can't walk up the hill without talking to one or another guy who thinks I want him. I give this impression to the men here somehow. Believe me, I'm not trying. But when the security guard at o Museo das Bellas Artes tried to kiss me yesterday, I had to face the facts that something in my comportamento is encouraging these dudes. Não! I'm going to start walking around with inverted eyebrows. But if I do that, and the sun comes out and I get a sunburn, than maybe my eyebrows will get stuck like that, so I won't do it (just a little taste of how I secretly make decisions :)

Most interesting and bloggable, of course, is that I'm "teaching English" in a favela. Well, it is a treat for me. I don't know how my students feel...yesterday they were pretty animated, and 10 animated kids in a 4x7 cement room next to an open sewer is quite a contrast to the black and white mosaic sidewalk of Copacabana! But I like it. They are animated (when I say this, I do not mean that the energy has anything to do with my lesson) and they are funny, but they aren't mad at me because I'm the "teacher" or because I'm bad at teaching. So even though I can't handle them, I don't feel bad. I told Nueza, the director of CIACAC where I work, that basically I don't know what I'm doing and things are just gonna be crazy and she just laughed her smokey laugh and said that's fine (I think that's what she said...). After my final lesson yesterday, one of my students invited me over to her house, where she treated me to a cake she had baked for the occasion and a telanovela. I watched her sisters playing a creative game with a ball and big pieces of cardboard in the street.

I don't know how to explain this...I really really don't want to go on about the poverty and adverse circumstances. I also don't want to gie you the "innocent children brightening the streets of the slum" thing. Because, these are cliches. They are true, but I think it's too easy to think about a place like this in that way. The fact is that this is a commuity that is very poor, practically ignored by the government but still made up of people who participate both within the favella community and outside. It is an interesting relationship, that of the government and the favella. If you have time, look up the UPP. Maybe it's the kind of poverty that is so profound that I can't even understand it's depth or see it completely. Honestly, I don't know. But my days there have been normal, uneventful, and pleasant.

You know a little about favellas already, right? Remember Black Orpheus? Or Cidade De Deus? I haven't seen the bad guys, or at least they didn't make themselves obvious to me. I also haven't seen the musicians or the dancers or the singers. Just a few kids and some funny dogs and Nueza. For me, the starteling part is the train ride to Lucas from Central, which is a 40 minute clanging lurching vendor-squacking view of what happens when you go north in Rio. It's not all favellas, but it is all poor looking. Where there are "real" houses is less "pretty" than the favella, because little hooligans have literally covered every inch of surface space with their tags. I wish I could take a picture of this, but I'm a little wary of using my camera (even though really and truly I don't feel threatened here. It's more that I'm reluctant to take pictures of other peoples' difficult lives). They are these black tags, illegible and tangled. Meanwhile, the favellas are covered with makeshift electricity lines, more tangled black lines in the sky. Honestly, it's not very beautiful to me. The quintesential Rio art print is that of the colorful favella climbing up the hill...Where I'm working, there is no hill, the houses are not painted and many are just crumbling and open. I guess at night when the black knotty aspects are muted out by the darkness, the favellas on the train ride are pretty, like hillside constellations. But, I mean, at night all you can see are the lights.

Speaking of lights, another little light of my weekly routine is the chorrinho school in Urca that I go to on Saturdays. It's at 8:30, that's the only thing I don't like. Four hours of pandeiro, and the I get to watch all of the students play together under the trees in the back yard of this grand university building. It's charming!

My New House Makes Me Go On The Internet

óla gente

Who am I writing to, anyway? Maybe I should say "óla, Julia", my one and only official reader :)

Anyway, I have moved to the decrepit and charming Santa Theresa. It's kind of like if a tourist moved into...hm, well, if Brattle Street were winding up a mountain, and the mountain was in the middle of the Bronx, and it was haunted and colonized by hipsters, that would be the equivilant. It's kinda cool, but also kind of impractical and creepy.

The walk down...

And, to contrast completely with that description (you just have to see it to get how it all goes together, I guess), today I jumped on the Bunge (street car) to get downtown. In Santa Theresa, we have several modes of transportation: walking (prefered), taxi, omnibus, moto-taxi, and street car. Everything with wheels is a little dicey, because the narrow road into the bairro is composed of hair-pins and cobblestones. It has been rainy since my move, and the combination of tires, slick rock, hair-pins and no space is just not fun. So I've been walking a lot. But I changed my pace and jumped on the street car today. It's free if you hang off the side :) , so everyone is doing that (yeah, me too, 'cause there were no seats left), and it's just like The Music Man! People were singing and clapping, I don't know why. And we just wind our way down, clanging the bell, tooting the horn, singing and...hanging on. There is one particularly "thump thump thump went my heartstrings" part, over the Lapa Viaduct arches, where you're way up above everything and just hanging over...

Now I'm going to go home early because I don't know how to get home late at night :(

My arch nemisis: Pigeons are gross

Settling In

My hostel from Pão de Açúcar

I'm moving in on my third week in Rio. To me, of course, this feels like just the beginning, but I think in terms of international trips, I am expected to have seen and done something interesting by this point. And I have! Don't worry, I'm not sitting on my inadequate-looking butt all day drinking caiparinhas!

In fact, I don't really like these ubiquitous acid drinks that are offered enthusiastically at every bar, tourist or otherwise. I've only even sat on the beach a few times...actually, that's not true. The beach here really does work itself into everything, sand just filling in the cracks of a day. As long as you're in the Zona Sul, you will be looking at the many bays, maybe even dipping your toes in, at some point. But once you venture into Centro, or even more off the beaten track into Zona Norte, Rio's beach culture nearly disappears. On a rickety communter train heading North, I saw some boys dressed in red swim trunks and yellow t-shirts waiting on the platform. I recognized the uniform from a hot day on Impanema, and sure enough, the boys were going home with their silver kegs of the chilled matte that had been so refreshing. So, there are indications of the beach in the North...

The girl from Impanema!

But I have to admit I have been more interested in the night life here than in the beach life. Every night offers various music opportunities...Samba, Samba, Samba, Forro, Samba, Funk, Samba...Rock is pronounced "Hockey" (haha). Obviously, I like the Samba. There, I can just groove my own little way, singing along with the inevitable "La-ya La" chorus. Funk...well, let's just say my years of whining classes in Trinidad help out here, but it's not my first choice!

Practically every night I find myself at a Samba party. My friend Eduardo has been my guide. He seems to go out every night of the week, and every time to somewhere new and interesting. His only distractions from a die-hard nightlife are the Fluminense games that happen all of the time (Rio has a bunch of football teams, some of the best in Brazil, and everyone is beyond obssessed).

The first time we went out, he brought me to a little back street bar in Largo de Marchado, where a tiny band played soft chorinho ("little cry"). Since then, he's brought me to sambas all over town. One on a rock by the port where the first slave market was held in Brazil. A bar in Lapa where we've ended up every Terça Feira (Tuesday), free concerts all over the place. I am the gringa with a huge bottle of water (I cannot get hydtated here!), and every time I offer Eduardo some, he says "Thanks, but I only drink the water that the birds refuse." Get it? Vodka, cachaça...clear alchohol. It took me a while to figure out what he was talking about, I kept insisting that the water was store bought, as "clean" as I could find....anyway, a cute little Brazilianism for you guys.

Cachaça casado no mercado

I bought a pandeiro from my pandeiro teacher, and yesterday another new friend gave me a lesson. We ended up singing all of the Astrud Gilberto songs I've been listening to all of these years, me in English, him in Portugues! The lyrics are quite different, and it was fun to comb through them. Did you know that the Girl from Impenema was not tall and tan and young...well, she was lovely. She was so beautiful, that her beauty was something for everyone to share and enjoy, and this guy was sad that the beauty wasn't for him, but he also recognized that that is the way it is. Just a little different from the way we sing it.

Meu Pandeiro

My roof/the view from my room

I just moved away from the beach, up into the hills of Santa Theresa. I am far away from everything, except for Santa Theresa, which is a little artsy/old money neighborhood, the kind of place where the buildings are crumbling away and the artists are painting them all different colors with spray paint. My place is no acception. It's a family house, with the family still intact, and I think Great-great-grandfather's wastebasket still hasn't been emptied, let alone replaced. It's a mess. I live in the eaves of the roof with the pigeons and their shit. But, I have a great view! After writing this, I will go visit a tiny NGO ("onghee" haha) in the North where I am the new English teacher.

The view from Santa Theresa: a castle and Christo!

Typical graffiti, typical architecture

Beijos!

Oi gente!

Back on the trip, so hopefully back on the blog...

I think this has all started rather well: I discovered that having my plane to Brazil canceled in Charolotte, NC is not that bad. I woke up the next morning to the rhythm of a fancy alarm clock at the Embassy Suites (?), stretched out in my super-comfy bed, took a little jog in the gym, checked my bag at the airport, and spent an informative day at the Levine museum of the New South. Then I ate some fried chicken with okra and candied yams at Morts. Yum! Coming back to the airport on the bus, I met a 85-year-old Colombian man who lives in Charlotte all by himself! He´s been there only four years, he´s estranged from his son´s because they are, or at some point were, living in sin with some women, his wife passed away decades ago, and he has no friends because he thinks all of the old people are racistas. And he was taking this bus to the airport to try and book a flight to Colombia, where he will collect his pension and then move again, maybe London or New York?

It was a funny little side-trip, but well worth it!

The flight to Brazil from Miami (somehow I got to Miami, too) was funny: by the time I got to this third airport, I had encountered a lot of displaced Brazilian travelers, and walking onto the airplane, to the last last row where I had been seated, was like walking through a beige, canned-air dream of friendship. That is to say I kinda knew a lot of people, and I felt super popular. I spent most of the flight drinking wine with the Brazilian guy to my left, the Floridian girl to my right, and the fat man who´s chair kept breaking in my lap ahead. And winking at the cute flight attendents. The moral of the story is: Boston may not be the friendliest city in the world, because ever since leaving the place I have had this feeling that we´re all supposed to be friends with each other.

And yes, I did arrive in RIO! I am here now, in fact. This city...It is really beautiful. Those mossy looking stones crumbling into the ocean are really there, mingling with mist and sun. The weather is coolish and bright: it is spring here. I went for a quiet walk in Botafoga, along the beaches, and enjoyed seeing the fishermen along the sea-wall, and the colorful old houses with stucco mouldings and big glass windows. Across the bay, the Jesus on the hill was spreading his arms open to the city, and in the water in front of me a little gold jesus/saint stood on a rock and pointed at a fish.

In Copacabana, the sidewalks are covered in famous wave mosaics, the cars honk, the buses spew grey smoke, and the men walk around in speedos. Ronaldo and Rafaela, some new friends, discussed the democratic nature of beach space as we sat there on the beach, watching volly-ball and ping-pong and brazilian bikins and watermellon sellers.

Last night, Rafaela from São Paulo and I went to a samba bar in a neighborhood called Lapa. The singers were from Samba schools, and they had full samba bands (Pandeiros and all!). The music is so wonderful! This is where it comes from!

I am happy to be here. I will make sure the stories get better!

Sidewalk Noir

Sidewalk Noir

There's a street called Brattle in Cambridge. It used to be called Tory Row, named after all of the English loyalist whale hunters who built their big houses there. I walk down this street at least 4 times a day, to and from Harvard Square. It's a beautiful street, a beautiful walk, paved with jutting flagstones and shadowed with encroaching or magnificant trees. The stones are big and worn, and are losing their fights with local tree roots. One must look down to avoid tripping on their little battle grounds.

I'm going to tell you why waking down Brattle Street with your head down is a good idea (besides the necessity of doing so to avoid falling):

Shadows! Brattle Street boasts some of the best shadows in Cambridge, and they are all around your feet as you gawk at Longfellow's old house and the Divinity School and that huge once-pink/now-white monstrosity that I love. The shadows are thanks to the matte flagstone and the shapely chestnut leaves and, at night, the lovely but practically useless orange street lights.

The only thing these lights do well is turn off right when you walk into their vicinity OR assist the trees in casting their wonderful images onto the matte grey cracked sidewalk. And also onto a very special old tawny BMW that used to always be parked where the image or an elegant iron fence could be temporarily cast upon it, lending some night-time glamour for the old wreck.

On nice days, a very certain kind of nice day, the sun gives the shadows multiple dimensions. While one shadow dances in the wind, another layer of shadow remans still or dances a different way. And the sun shines between the leaves in perfect little replicas of itself. My mother told me that during an eclipse, these little suns all eclipse together.

Waaay Back: Louisiana

Cleaning up: An out of place boat

Ah, Louisiana. I'm thinking of going back there. Of all of the places I've lived in the U.S.A, I think that New Orleans, that damp and fated city, is the most...well, what can I say that hasn't already been said? It's a city that resonated deeply with me. I really don't even know much about Louisiana or New Orleans, just the little I found out while staying there post-Katrina for a few months.

Things that struck me: I always come back to that scent of the Sweet Olive Tree. I've smelled it since and studied it. It's an amazing smell, like the most fragrant rose mixed with blood orange and grass. But it was love at first sniff for me because I never knew where it was coming from. I'd be walking down Government street in Baton Rouge (a grey, dreary street if I've ever seen one), and suddenly this delicious smell would override the gutter animal corpses and the exhaust fumes of the passing "lemons" (I think LA has the most derelict cars of any state...judging by shoulders of US 10 littered with flat-tired heaps). I would look around, but I could never find the source. In Oakland, CA, I finally did. There was a bush/tree around my Jewel Box neighborhood, with little tiny green flowers, but you had to go across the street to smell them. The scent has a sort of ventriloquist quality.

The Mardi Gras Spirit

I love Carnival. New Orleans has the best Carnival in the USA, I think. It's not like other fun parades and street parties, where you get excited for it to happen maybe a week before, and then it happens and is fun and is over. Mardi Gras runs deep, even when it takes place only a few months after an incredibly debilitating disaster. So, this is also alluring to me. The elusive scent of a tree and Mardi Gras. I think that sounds like a solid reason to move, don't you?

Back in Time: Medellîn

Hernan

It was a small, plaster house, painted white with turquoise and orange trim. On its outside walls, ropes, saddles and tools hung among toy babies, old boots, rusted drill bits, masks, weighty keys, horse shoes, tree branches, spoons, and glass soda bottles. The effect was astonishing, to be greeted upon arrival by his carefully selected and arranged junk.

Hernan Collects Stuff

Our arrival here was unexpected. My sister Molly and I were staying at the countryside house of Rafa, a man who worked at our hostel in Medellín. We had traveled the 45 minutes to Santa Elena on a crowded bus, a beautiful journey through flowering mountains that had ended prematurely when our bus was hit by a motorcycle. We walked the rest of the way to Rafa’s house, through dewey blackberry fields and muddy riverside paths.

Fields of Blackberries

Now, the next day, we were walking again, to Hernàn’s house. Ahead of us, Rafa and his girlfriend negotiated the rocky dirt road on a moto, leaving Molly, Sergio and me to our feet. The incline was negligible, but at 2800 meters above sea level, I felt like I was breathing with mesh lungs. Before our 20-minute ramble through the graceful, grassy hills was through, I had given up on my broken conversations with Sergio and he was chain-smoking. Our pace slowed as we approached a borrachero tree, and Sergio explained that from the fruit of this tree, Colombian thieves and kidnappers make a drug that turns their victims into zombies, losing their will power and memory. By the tree was a foot-bridge, and across the bridge was our destination, the house of Hernán.

In front of this unusual house, set among flowers and moss and drug trees and junk, stood Rafa and a small, fit, brown old man. Like other campesinos I had met, Hernán wore muddy rubber boots up to his knees. His grey mustache was bushy and his missing teeth added unquestionably to his charm. In the middle of his face, smiling eyes reached towards the upturned corners of his mouth, making a friendly shape. I immediately felt comfortable surrendering control over the day to this alluring old man.

Inside his house, we learned more about Hernán. His walls were covered with stuff. The living room was a showcase of newspaper articles, portraits and photographs of important people, and posters from political rallies. His bedroom was elegantly decorated with sloping lines of diagonally aligned booklets. Inside the house, every surface was adorned with something, but the kitchen he had left alone because he enjoyed the natural effect of blackened walls that resulted from 80 years of cooking on an open wood stove.

Book Lover

A Kitchen

Hernán’s family had lived in this house for three generations. A farming family, they had at some point decided to focus on flowers. Santa Elena, on the outskirts of Medellín, is part of what is considered “flower country” in Colombia. Hernán, now in his 70s, was raised among the blooms. He was one of the original sillateros, artists who arrange enormous and intricate flower displays to be carried through the streets of Medellín during the annual Feria de las Flores. The wooden chair now used to hold a sillatero’s display used to be used by campesinos to carry the sick and elderly around the mountains. Showing us his own patinaed silleto, he told us that only a few weeks ago he had proudly displayed the flowers grown in his and his siblings’ gardens.

Hernan's Craft

Soon, Rafa and Olga were ready to go, but Molly and I decided to stay with Sergio to manufacture an antenna for Hernán’s one-channel television set. Mission accomplished, the four of us set off through the fields to find a place to celebrate. But the fields held another mission, and after buying two bottles of harsh anise Aguardiente at a nearly inaccessible bodega, we were wandering through the meadows and cows, peering desperately at the ground for little hills of yellow grass. Molly and I finally learned that Santa Elena was not only fertile for flowers, and that in these fields, hallucinogenic mushrooms were springing up everywhere. The only trouble was that they were very difficult to find under the matted grass, and so Sergio had enlisted the expert eyes of Hernán to find these sellable gifts from the earth. Molly and I contented ourselves with tiny plastic cups of Aguardiente, and soon the day became ridiculous. Roaming the pathless hills, we passed cows with holes through their torsos, and young lovers singing with guitars. Everything was charming, and we knew that Hernán felt the same when, at the end of the day, he brought us to his brother’s garden of many acres and arranged for us a bouquet worthy of the winning Queen of the Flowers.

Sorry, no pictures of the cow.

I wish that we had parted ways then, with the sun setting and our arms full of blossoms and mushrooms. We didn’t though, and the night deteriorated with more Aguardiente and less light. Luckily, the only one of us who really lost face was Segio, and as Hernán rode off on the back of Rafa’s moto at the end of the night, I was left with memories of a perfect caballero.