Dear Blog,
As the title of today's blog makes clear, there are three topics which I will address in this address, the first being "home." By this I only mean that it is starting to feel like home here in Brazil. Yeah, not as deceptively deep and delightfully cryptic as one would hope. I'm starting to form a routine here - get up anywhere from noon to two, eat lunch, watch TV/watch Youtube/nap until about 4:30, have a snack, watch some more TV, eat supper, watch a movie with my family, stay up until about 2:30 watching more youtube and checking facebook/blogging. Every now and then one of the slots will get filled with some other obligation, like shopping, or walking, or, yeah. The only thing I really need before I can truly settle in is peers, which brings me to my next topic.
School. What is school? Come on, again? Anyway, yesterday I visited my school-to-be, Colegio Julio Chevalier. I couldn't look forward to it more. It's as cozily ghetto an urban Catholic school as you can find - it looks like a regular school on the inside, until you look up and you see the grey, bare, scary-lookings ceiling that arches above you. I've been secretly longing for a school with some grit, some darkness, you know? It's just like Hogwarts! I can't wait to find the Room of Requirement. Anyway, they also have uniforms; no, they're not robes, but they are exercise clothes - nylon pants, white shirt, even a 1950's-football-esque jacket. This place rocks.
Speaking of attire, the last subject of discussion today is jeans. To many of you who know me well, you will be reading these next lines with great expectation, excitement, and probably anti-climax (oh well). To those of you who are out of the loop, I will debrief you. I haven't worn jeans in about ten years. I decided to give them up one day, and have worn cargo pants ever since. The reasons why I gave up jeans are irrelevant; the important part is in the fact that for the past year or so, many people in my social circle have badgered me to wear jeans becase, well, I don't know - they're violently fascist conformists with aspirations of global robotification of humanity (today, jeans; tomorrow, positronic brains). The point is, those people may be reading this, and if they are, they are by now pulling out their hair (or just skipping lines - cheaters) to find out if they have won the long and bloody war. The answer is ambiguous - to the unrefined reader, it may appear to be yes, they have, but a more nuanced perspective will reveal that I still reside outside their clutches. And now the cathartic moment: I am wearing jeans even as I write this; after visiting the school yesterday, we went to the mall and I bought two pairs of jeans.
How then, can my human heart still be beating, instead of a block of cold steel placed in my chest by the fascists? Well, as defense attorneys say, "Motive, motive, motive." Why did I do it? That is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous conformism, or to take arms against a sea of fascists and by obliging end them. I ended up taking the latter course of action: to sleep, perchance to dream in the undiscovered country that Hamlet so dreaded - to oblige the badgerers and the narrow-minded, thereby defanging them. But in the end it was not out of obligation to them that I took the plunge; it was an independent choice. You see, I refrained from wearing jeans, not in resistance to the fascists, but in resistance to the fact that everyone else wore them - it was just a little personal psychological tool that I used to distinguish myself from other people, what with my vehement nonconformist streak and all. But that was just a small tool, for small stakes; one fittingly immature for high school. But now I am putting away childish things, and in making my appearance more normal, I make myself focus more upon the bigger fish - my truly iconoclastic aspects that deserve the attention. So there's the big reason, and here's the smaller reason - I realized how much better I look in jeans.
But having said this, I tell you all now that when I return I plan to wear only tie-dye shirts, for spiritual and aesthetic reasons: I think making one's own clothes gives them a feeling of purity and naturalosity, and since I don't know how to make clothes, I will do the next best thing - take plain clothes and make them beautiful. So I am exercising charity as well. So until next time, happy clicking!
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
This is a really cool picture. and we didn't even plan it!
This is the church orchestra. crazy.
If I had been drunk, I would have looked like that.
If I had been drunk, I would have looked like that.
Leo and I deride something.
Well aren't I boring?
Well aren't I boring?
This is us at the brass concert.
This is the brass. But not the concert - these are just some guys we pulled off the street to come play in the auditorium.
I'm the tallest.
That's right - Guitar Hero with no guitars.
This is Bill. Fierce one, that.
This is the brass. But not the concert - these are just some guys we pulled off the street to come play in the auditorium.
I'm the tallest.
That's right - Guitar Hero with no guitars.
This is Bill. Fierce one, that.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Miscellaneous Things
Dear Blog,
The first Miscellaneous Thing I shall discuss today is that of religion. As you all know, today is Sunday, and that means it's time to go to church. What is church? What a stupid question, you know what it is. How did I get such idiots for friends? Anyway, my host family belongs to the Church of Nazarene, and (although my church experience technically isn't over, since there's still the evening service) there are two parts to the experience--Bible school (attended mostly by adults) and the regular service. Bible school resembles American church services much more than the actual service--it's just a person with a mic talking about very Biblical things. But one of the ways in which it's very different is that, to someone who can't tell what the subject matter is (like moi), the teacher seems much more like a motivational speaker or politician than a preacher (and I mean no offense by that comment). She has a pulpit, but most of the time they leave it to pace back and forth before the audience. She wasn't angry, but she had that resolute yet endearing air that makes politicians politic so well. But often her face would become more stern and her gestures more rigid, and I could just hear her saying, as she pointed upwards and out the window, "... And those high-rollers up in Brasilia don't know a thing about us" and her she points to the audience "and our good, old-fashioned urban immigrant values." And after that the audience would get stirred up and mutter agreements.
And here is when another difference crops up between American and Brasilian bible school: audience participation is rather prevalent in the latter. After this stir-up, one member of the audience began a very long, probably prepared speech. It seems that not only the teacher, but the audience is rather analogous to the arena of politics. The whole room seemed to feel like a caucus now. [note: at this point my blog transforms into a fictional narrative. I am 90% sure these people didn't actually say these things, but other than the specific dialogue and character backgrounds that I make up, the events are entirely accurate.] This man, I imagine, was probably some dejected politician who kept getting black-balled from the lecture circuit, and was now crashing the main speaker's party. He wasn't especially out of line with her platform it seemed--she was rather bemused by his audacity, and would smile and nod at all of his comments, and after he finished she gave a laugh that seemed to say "Well, somebody's got a lot to say, ain't he?" But it was apparent that his were the kind of views that were dangerously misinformed and unrefined, and though she tried to backtrack from what he said, another man soon piped up--the iconoclast. He began his long tirade about how the other man's views were racist and chauvenist and animalistic and catastrophic in all sorts of ways. His finishing comments seemed to say, "Well, I don't mean to vilify egregiously. I just calls it the way I sees it." The room was in another stir. People of all sorts were raising their hands. The speaker tried to calm people's disquiet a bit before calling on an old lady. She had, for her entire life until now, remained absolutely quiet on political issues, but the iconoclast's diatribe had poked each and every one of her values in the kidneys, and she was about to protect her conservative ideals with a raised index finger and mildly stressed voice. After the storm of truisms and aphorisms and euphamisms cleared, everyone seemed to have grown rather drowsy, and the speaker was able to control the room again, and she promptly ended the caucus there. [Here ends the extreme violation of what actually happened. All other falsification will be strictly limited to exagerration, distortion, and omition.]
The regular service is much closer to American services than Bible school, except that it shares a great deal in common with a variety show. It has an entire orchestra (I kid you not--I'd guess at least 60 members. About double that with the choir. But I suppose you have that kind of budget with 10,000 members. Wow.), which plays a wide variety of Christian pop songs, and the show even has guests. Sure, the minister from the Mt. Zion Baptist church from Missouri isn't quite as interesting as Robert Downy Jr., but gosh darn it, he made the rest of the service seem so much better. The rest of the service, by the way, is what I suppose would be Leno's monologue--the sermon. Which (already skirting the 45 minute mark, I'd say) seemed even longer in an unknown language. Lesson learned--I must get more sleep on Saturday nights.
The next miscellaneous thing I will discuss today is futebol. What is futebol? Yet another stupid question. I will no longer field questions from the readers, and that's that. There are few things to say about futebol, except that there seem to be a lot more fouls in Brazil. In one game I watched, at one point there was a foul I'd say about every minute on average for about 15 minutes. But I don't think Brazilian players are more malicious than other players (well, in that game they may have been)--I think it's just that Brazilians are so passionate about futebol, particularly about getting the ball, that they don't really take into consideration how they get the ball. Brazilians will slide tackle on a regular basis, which is a very efficient way to get the ball, don't get me wrong, but Brazilians are also very good at getting rid of the ball before the tackle gets there, and thus when the tackle does get there, there's nothing to get except the player. And boy are they got. I think the refs call so many fouls, not necessarily because the tackle looks illegal, but because the fall looks painful. But I'm sure if you asked a Brazilian who got tackled if he regreted it, he would most likely say, "I regret only that I had but one ball to pass off before the tackle."
The last miscellaneous thing I shall talk about today is driving. Brazilian driving is by far the most exciting part of my day. Brazilians can be best described in traffic as fearless. Two feet between one car and the next is no more significant that two feet between pedestrians. Signalling before changing lanes? Bah! One does not signal when one walks in one direction, one simply walks! And all the surrounding cars respect without question anyone who changes direction. It is almost a status symbol. But the bravest of all drivers in Brazil are the cyclists--motorcyclists, to be specific. Lanes? Bah! They will drive where there is space to drive, and there is space for cyclists to drive anywhere--in between cars, behind cars, in front of cars, underneath semis--anywhere. And if there is one word other than fearless that is most relevant to Brazilian drivers, it is this--acceleration. To them, acceleration is more than just a word--it is a way of life. Whay go slow when one can go fast through acceleration! Ask a Brazilian if he's trying to get someplace fast and he'll say, "No! Don't bother me, I'm accelerating!" One never saw a spedometer go from zero to 60 so fast--even in kilometers, it's unnerving to see.
One more frivolous comment before I log off. It is the most entertaining thing to me when people ask me, "So how many words do you know in Portuguese?" What? I don't have them filed, do you really want me to count them? And even then it's confusing--do you want just nouns, verbs and adjectives, or do you want conjunctions and articles and all the menial boring ones too? And even with with that question answered it's a rather ridiculous task--I know English as well as anybody, but I would still be hard-pressed to list all the words I know in English. Even if you narrowed it down to a subset, like all the words pertaining to furniture, it is nigh impossible. So whenever asked what words I know in Portuguese, I'd just say "Good morning, good afternoon, good evening," and then count to six. And then for the next ten minutes I would rack my brain trying to think of all the words I actually know so I can tell them later and then they'll laugh and be impressed at my precocious learning abilities, but I can only ever think of numbers 7-20, and how weirded out would you be by some exchange student randomly counting from 7 to 20?
The first Miscellaneous Thing I shall discuss today is that of religion. As you all know, today is Sunday, and that means it's time to go to church. What is church? What a stupid question, you know what it is. How did I get such idiots for friends? Anyway, my host family belongs to the Church of Nazarene, and (although my church experience technically isn't over, since there's still the evening service) there are two parts to the experience--Bible school (attended mostly by adults) and the regular service. Bible school resembles American church services much more than the actual service--it's just a person with a mic talking about very Biblical things. But one of the ways in which it's very different is that, to someone who can't tell what the subject matter is (like moi), the teacher seems much more like a motivational speaker or politician than a preacher (and I mean no offense by that comment). She has a pulpit, but most of the time they leave it to pace back and forth before the audience. She wasn't angry, but she had that resolute yet endearing air that makes politicians politic so well. But often her face would become more stern and her gestures more rigid, and I could just hear her saying, as she pointed upwards and out the window, "... And those high-rollers up in Brasilia don't know a thing about us" and her she points to the audience "and our good, old-fashioned urban immigrant values." And after that the audience would get stirred up and mutter agreements.
And here is when another difference crops up between American and Brasilian bible school: audience participation is rather prevalent in the latter. After this stir-up, one member of the audience began a very long, probably prepared speech. It seems that not only the teacher, but the audience is rather analogous to the arena of politics. The whole room seemed to feel like a caucus now. [note: at this point my blog transforms into a fictional narrative. I am 90% sure these people didn't actually say these things, but other than the specific dialogue and character backgrounds that I make up, the events are entirely accurate.] This man, I imagine, was probably some dejected politician who kept getting black-balled from the lecture circuit, and was now crashing the main speaker's party. He wasn't especially out of line with her platform it seemed--she was rather bemused by his audacity, and would smile and nod at all of his comments, and after he finished she gave a laugh that seemed to say "Well, somebody's got a lot to say, ain't he?" But it was apparent that his were the kind of views that were dangerously misinformed and unrefined, and though she tried to backtrack from what he said, another man soon piped up--the iconoclast. He began his long tirade about how the other man's views were racist and chauvenist and animalistic and catastrophic in all sorts of ways. His finishing comments seemed to say, "Well, I don't mean to vilify egregiously. I just calls it the way I sees it." The room was in another stir. People of all sorts were raising their hands. The speaker tried to calm people's disquiet a bit before calling on an old lady. She had, for her entire life until now, remained absolutely quiet on political issues, but the iconoclast's diatribe had poked each and every one of her values in the kidneys, and she was about to protect her conservative ideals with a raised index finger and mildly stressed voice. After the storm of truisms and aphorisms and euphamisms cleared, everyone seemed to have grown rather drowsy, and the speaker was able to control the room again, and she promptly ended the caucus there. [Here ends the extreme violation of what actually happened. All other falsification will be strictly limited to exagerration, distortion, and omition.]
The regular service is much closer to American services than Bible school, except that it shares a great deal in common with a variety show. It has an entire orchestra (I kid you not--I'd guess at least 60 members. About double that with the choir. But I suppose you have that kind of budget with 10,000 members. Wow.), which plays a wide variety of Christian pop songs, and the show even has guests. Sure, the minister from the Mt. Zion Baptist church from Missouri isn't quite as interesting as Robert Downy Jr., but gosh darn it, he made the rest of the service seem so much better. The rest of the service, by the way, is what I suppose would be Leno's monologue--the sermon. Which (already skirting the 45 minute mark, I'd say) seemed even longer in an unknown language. Lesson learned--I must get more sleep on Saturday nights.
The next miscellaneous thing I will discuss today is futebol. What is futebol? Yet another stupid question. I will no longer field questions from the readers, and that's that. There are few things to say about futebol, except that there seem to be a lot more fouls in Brazil. In one game I watched, at one point there was a foul I'd say about every minute on average for about 15 minutes. But I don't think Brazilian players are more malicious than other players (well, in that game they may have been)--I think it's just that Brazilians are so passionate about futebol, particularly about getting the ball, that they don't really take into consideration how they get the ball. Brazilians will slide tackle on a regular basis, which is a very efficient way to get the ball, don't get me wrong, but Brazilians are also very good at getting rid of the ball before the tackle gets there, and thus when the tackle does get there, there's nothing to get except the player. And boy are they got. I think the refs call so many fouls, not necessarily because the tackle looks illegal, but because the fall looks painful. But I'm sure if you asked a Brazilian who got tackled if he regreted it, he would most likely say, "I regret only that I had but one ball to pass off before the tackle."
The last miscellaneous thing I shall talk about today is driving. Brazilian driving is by far the most exciting part of my day. Brazilians can be best described in traffic as fearless. Two feet between one car and the next is no more significant that two feet between pedestrians. Signalling before changing lanes? Bah! One does not signal when one walks in one direction, one simply walks! And all the surrounding cars respect without question anyone who changes direction. It is almost a status symbol. But the bravest of all drivers in Brazil are the cyclists--motorcyclists, to be specific. Lanes? Bah! They will drive where there is space to drive, and there is space for cyclists to drive anywhere--in between cars, behind cars, in front of cars, underneath semis--anywhere. And if there is one word other than fearless that is most relevant to Brazilian drivers, it is this--acceleration. To them, acceleration is more than just a word--it is a way of life. Whay go slow when one can go fast through acceleration! Ask a Brazilian if he's trying to get someplace fast and he'll say, "No! Don't bother me, I'm accelerating!" One never saw a spedometer go from zero to 60 so fast--even in kilometers, it's unnerving to see.
One more frivolous comment before I log off. It is the most entertaining thing to me when people ask me, "So how many words do you know in Portuguese?" What? I don't have them filed, do you really want me to count them? And even then it's confusing--do you want just nouns, verbs and adjectives, or do you want conjunctions and articles and all the menial boring ones too? And even with with that question answered it's a rather ridiculous task--I know English as well as anybody, but I would still be hard-pressed to list all the words I know in English. Even if you narrowed it down to a subset, like all the words pertaining to furniture, it is nigh impossible. So whenever asked what words I know in Portuguese, I'd just say "Good morning, good afternoon, good evening," and then count to six. And then for the next ten minutes I would rack my brain trying to think of all the words I actually know so I can tell them later and then they'll laugh and be impressed at my precocious learning abilities, but I can only ever think of numbers 7-20, and how weirded out would you be by some exchange student randomly counting from 7 to 20?
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Two lessons that are very different
Dear Blog,
Today as I was recovering from our 4 am stay-up-and-watch-Constantine session and Leonardo was teaching his girlfriend how to ask me why I cut my hair, it was eventually made known to me that we were attending a brass concert in about an hour. Since I had no plans, I decided to tag along to the event and see what was what. But as I was putting my shoes and socks on (I learned from a rather outraged 7 year-old the other day that it was most strange to wear socks about the house), I noticed that everyone else was making much more elaborate preparations--changing outfits, putting on make-up, etc. It was at this point that I realized a rather major error in packing that I'd made: I thought to bring 7 days-worth of "casual" clothes and a couple sets of "dress" clothes, but I failed to bring into consideration the necessity for "sexy" clothes. Even having read in a book about Brazilian culture, I failed to comprehend what it meant by Brazilians putting great emphasis on attractiveness. But I am not entirely without the potential to be attractive--I need only remember to never, ever, ever again wear that lumpy, unsightly sweat-shirt that I decided to wear in the rain tonight, to buy some suitable clothes, and borrow some of Leonardo's hair cream. I am actually rather excited at this prospect--I've never "styled" my hair before. I'm sure it won't live up to the hype I've created, but at least then I probably won't get addicted to hair products. :)
The second lesson involves us ditching out on the second concert we attended tonight (and it's understandable that they wanted to, because really, who goes to two concerts in one night, much less the two YAWN-fests that we attended?). Anyway, after we ditched, we had to walk home. It was about nine o'clock, and at first we were rather easy-going--Leonardo told me about how during the day, there are lots of people shopping here. But after we left the "heavily-lit" district, we entered the "dimly-lit district," and Leonardo told me, "Stay close. I think, this part is dangerous," to which his sister Aline replied, "'I think?' It is dangerous." And so our journey took on a more urgent mood: I noticed how we began to arrange a more strategic formation--Aline and Jessica (the two youngest) about ten feet in front, then me, and immediately behind me were Leonardo and his girlfriend (also named Aline). We would periodically look over our shoulders; our pace seemed to quicken depending on how treacherous we deemed our surroundings; and our eyes all seemed focused on the same bit of sidewalk in front of us the whole time. As people would walk past, it's hard not to suspect them of being that which you have feared happening upon this whole time, but what helped me avoid losing trust in every Brazilian person I see alone at night is to not fear the people I see, but to fear the unseen specter that lurks perhaps just behind them.
On a similar note, later this evening (about 11:30 at this point) Lidia, my host mother, was driving Aline (girlfriend) home with me and Leonardo tagging along (I tagged along because Leo asked me if I wanted to and I said sure because really, what else am I going to do? Stay home and blog like some loser?...). As we drove I noticed that we seemed to be running a prodigous amount of red lights. Leo later leaned over and told me, "It's best not to respect the lights, because it's dangerous, depending on the street. Avenues are the most dangerous." Every now and then we would stop because we couldn't see the oncoming traffic, and every moment stopped seemed to be in expectation of a window being bashed in a few inches away from my face. But not every sinister aspect of the city is so macabre: at one point, as we began to pass through a number of narrower streets that resembled alleys, Leo leaned over to me once again and said, "Dorian, are you ready?" "For what" I said. After a few misfires at the word, I realized that Leo was saying "Shemales." We both laughed, and then he pointed some out and we laughed harder. So you can imagine how strange it must have seemed to me when we began to pull into a rather shady looking lot, just after Leo asked me what the English word for a male prostitute was (we settled on man-bitch, since I said we don't have a word for it). But as it turns out was just a grocery store. But after the initial relief I felt faded a bit, a new oddity in the situation revealed itself to me. I looked at my watch. It was 12:15. Leo told me it was open all night, and although it made sense to me to be open all night (we have Wal-Marts and Taco Bells that are open all night), I never thought that anybody other than stoners or people whose car broke down and needed something would ever actually take advantage of those hours. But here we were, examining the fruit and the cheese and the dairy sections of the supermarket. I suppose it was on the way, so why not? What a wonderful country.
Today as I was recovering from our 4 am stay-up-and-watch-Constantine session and Leonardo was teaching his girlfriend how to ask me why I cut my hair, it was eventually made known to me that we were attending a brass concert in about an hour. Since I had no plans, I decided to tag along to the event and see what was what. But as I was putting my shoes and socks on (I learned from a rather outraged 7 year-old the other day that it was most strange to wear socks about the house), I noticed that everyone else was making much more elaborate preparations--changing outfits, putting on make-up, etc. It was at this point that I realized a rather major error in packing that I'd made: I thought to bring 7 days-worth of "casual" clothes and a couple sets of "dress" clothes, but I failed to bring into consideration the necessity for "sexy" clothes. Even having read in a book about Brazilian culture, I failed to comprehend what it meant by Brazilians putting great emphasis on attractiveness. But I am not entirely without the potential to be attractive--I need only remember to never, ever, ever again wear that lumpy, unsightly sweat-shirt that I decided to wear in the rain tonight, to buy some suitable clothes, and borrow some of Leonardo's hair cream. I am actually rather excited at this prospect--I've never "styled" my hair before. I'm sure it won't live up to the hype I've created, but at least then I probably won't get addicted to hair products. :)
The second lesson involves us ditching out on the second concert we attended tonight (and it's understandable that they wanted to, because really, who goes to two concerts in one night, much less the two YAWN-fests that we attended?). Anyway, after we ditched, we had to walk home. It was about nine o'clock, and at first we were rather easy-going--Leonardo told me about how during the day, there are lots of people shopping here. But after we left the "heavily-lit" district, we entered the "dimly-lit district," and Leonardo told me, "Stay close. I think, this part is dangerous," to which his sister Aline replied, "'I think?' It is dangerous." And so our journey took on a more urgent mood: I noticed how we began to arrange a more strategic formation--Aline and Jessica (the two youngest) about ten feet in front, then me, and immediately behind me were Leonardo and his girlfriend (also named Aline). We would periodically look over our shoulders; our pace seemed to quicken depending on how treacherous we deemed our surroundings; and our eyes all seemed focused on the same bit of sidewalk in front of us the whole time. As people would walk past, it's hard not to suspect them of being that which you have feared happening upon this whole time, but what helped me avoid losing trust in every Brazilian person I see alone at night is to not fear the people I see, but to fear the unseen specter that lurks perhaps just behind them.
On a similar note, later this evening (about 11:30 at this point) Lidia, my host mother, was driving Aline (girlfriend) home with me and Leonardo tagging along (I tagged along because Leo asked me if I wanted to and I said sure because really, what else am I going to do? Stay home and blog like some loser?...). As we drove I noticed that we seemed to be running a prodigous amount of red lights. Leo later leaned over and told me, "It's best not to respect the lights, because it's dangerous, depending on the street. Avenues are the most dangerous." Every now and then we would stop because we couldn't see the oncoming traffic, and every moment stopped seemed to be in expectation of a window being bashed in a few inches away from my face. But not every sinister aspect of the city is so macabre: at one point, as we began to pass through a number of narrower streets that resembled alleys, Leo leaned over to me once again and said, "Dorian, are you ready?" "For what" I said. After a few misfires at the word, I realized that Leo was saying "Shemales." We both laughed, and then he pointed some out and we laughed harder. So you can imagine how strange it must have seemed to me when we began to pull into a rather shady looking lot, just after Leo asked me what the English word for a male prostitute was (we settled on man-bitch, since I said we don't have a word for it). But as it turns out was just a grocery store. But after the initial relief I felt faded a bit, a new oddity in the situation revealed itself to me. I looked at my watch. It was 12:15. Leo told me it was open all night, and although it made sense to me to be open all night (we have Wal-Marts and Taco Bells that are open all night), I never thought that anybody other than stoners or people whose car broke down and needed something would ever actually take advantage of those hours. But here we were, examining the fruit and the cheese and the dairy sections of the supermarket. I suppose it was on the way, so why not? What a wonderful country.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The Journey/The Arrival
Dear Blog,
"He came by car, then by plane." A person desiring to begin an account of my journey from Brookings to Brazil could easily enough start with that phrase; and since I share key traits with such a person that compel me to follow suit, I have elected to do so. But before that account begins in earnest, it would perhaps better facilitate the telling of the tale to divulge some of the background tht precedes my trek. The relevant detail of divulgence is that this stay in Brazil represents in my subconscious life a seminal crossing to independence, and one of my highest goals to achieve as an adult is a strong spirituality. Now as I was wheeling my way across Minnesota (partly in a tow truck, it might be noted, due to our van's transmission's inability to take the pain of bearing me off to some foreign land), I felt confident in attaining that goal, but as I left my parents standing in line to board their flight to Rome, I felt the rush of independence come upon my, along with a certain duress applied by the responsibilities of my circumstances. I felt a dull heavy stress slowly laying over me, pushing away calm and playfulness and replacing them with intense potential energy--a readiness to handle difficulies that most seek and admire, but I fear and shun. I tried reading my book on Kabbalism to regain the sense of spirituality I was so terrified of losing, but I could get no lasting solace.
It came time to board the plane and I felt a new worry--ever since I experienced a panic attack on a plane last summer, I grow nercous when preparing to fly and feel I must steele my nerves thoroughly. This amounted to a rather unhappy state in teh minutes before takeoff. But as the engines grew loud and the plane's momentum was birthed, I heard some voice of a past self, a self experiencing flight for the first time, begin a chant: faster, faster, faster. And I felt a rush of thrill and hedonism and release as the plane lifted off. It was quite a catharsis and I felt whole again. Throughout the rest of the flight, the plane acted as a sort of incubation chamber for a new self that was merging two soft and vulnerable selves into one. I think the plane was a very significant setting for this, because, having flown since a very young age, I have many pastoral memories from planes, but they are also paradoxically, a cultural symbol of adulthood. But whatever the cause, I disembarked into Houston having successfully comprimised independence and spirituality. But that comprimise would soon appear inconsequential.
My second flight (from Houston to Sao Paulo) was marked mostly by 1) the laborious filling out of customs and health forms, and 2) the moral conflict of whether I should stay up and watch the episodes of House that were so very tantalizing at this time or to prepare for what was sure to be a tasking first day by getting a good 7 hours of sleep. And as I sit here nodding off at 12:30 with a grand total of 4.5 hours of sleep, I am of the contented conviction that that guilty pleasure was as necessary as it was indulgent. But returning to the cut of the jib, as I was getting on the flight, I was, for the first time, surrounded by Brazilian people, and my individual mountain-climbing was immediately dwarfed by this summit which had so suddenly and sneakily presented itself. As I got off the flight, mind entirely numbed by sleep-deprivation and food from hell, I realized that I must prepare myself to spend a considerable amount of time for the next few weeks practicing my role of the village mute.
But as the day progressed, and how slowly it seemed to do so, my family, who are wonderful beyond description by the way (beyond description, that is, to a pseudo-inebriated person such as me, but wonderful despite), proved to be a very inclusive force, and I greatly relished those delightfully awkward moments when, following a minute or so of conversation and glances in my direction and giggles (depending on the converser), Leonardo, my brother and English-speaker extroaordinaire, would say something beginning with "Um, they wondering..." At a birthday party we attended, I would even often find myself the center of attention (I was even given the first piece of cake, which was apparently most significant because everyone cheered and clapped as I received it), and my family would prove to be some the the warmest people I've met. The language barrier doesn't keep me from enjoying their company; it actually makes them more interesting when they're speaking all these word-type things that I can only sit back and absorb. I think if I can muster the energy to pay attention, I will be able to figure out this language deal before long. But I'm afraid I won't be able to do even that if I don't end this... post... of sorts, before long, so with that I must bid you all a happy clicking as you quit your browser/tab and go back to the productivity you wrongfully abandoned for this. Boa noite, tchau!
"He came by car, then by plane." A person desiring to begin an account of my journey from Brookings to Brazil could easily enough start with that phrase; and since I share key traits with such a person that compel me to follow suit, I have elected to do so. But before that account begins in earnest, it would perhaps better facilitate the telling of the tale to divulge some of the background tht precedes my trek. The relevant detail of divulgence is that this stay in Brazil represents in my subconscious life a seminal crossing to independence, and one of my highest goals to achieve as an adult is a strong spirituality. Now as I was wheeling my way across Minnesota (partly in a tow truck, it might be noted, due to our van's transmission's inability to take the pain of bearing me off to some foreign land), I felt confident in attaining that goal, but as I left my parents standing in line to board their flight to Rome, I felt the rush of independence come upon my, along with a certain duress applied by the responsibilities of my circumstances. I felt a dull heavy stress slowly laying over me, pushing away calm and playfulness and replacing them with intense potential energy--a readiness to handle difficulies that most seek and admire, but I fear and shun. I tried reading my book on Kabbalism to regain the sense of spirituality I was so terrified of losing, but I could get no lasting solace.
It came time to board the plane and I felt a new worry--ever since I experienced a panic attack on a plane last summer, I grow nercous when preparing to fly and feel I must steele my nerves thoroughly. This amounted to a rather unhappy state in teh minutes before takeoff. But as the engines grew loud and the plane's momentum was birthed, I heard some voice of a past self, a self experiencing flight for the first time, begin a chant: faster, faster, faster. And I felt a rush of thrill and hedonism and release as the plane lifted off. It was quite a catharsis and I felt whole again. Throughout the rest of the flight, the plane acted as a sort of incubation chamber for a new self that was merging two soft and vulnerable selves into one. I think the plane was a very significant setting for this, because, having flown since a very young age, I have many pastoral memories from planes, but they are also paradoxically, a cultural symbol of adulthood. But whatever the cause, I disembarked into Houston having successfully comprimised independence and spirituality. But that comprimise would soon appear inconsequential.
My second flight (from Houston to Sao Paulo) was marked mostly by 1) the laborious filling out of customs and health forms, and 2) the moral conflict of whether I should stay up and watch the episodes of House that were so very tantalizing at this time or to prepare for what was sure to be a tasking first day by getting a good 7 hours of sleep. And as I sit here nodding off at 12:30 with a grand total of 4.5 hours of sleep, I am of the contented conviction that that guilty pleasure was as necessary as it was indulgent. But returning to the cut of the jib, as I was getting on the flight, I was, for the first time, surrounded by Brazilian people, and my individual mountain-climbing was immediately dwarfed by this summit which had so suddenly and sneakily presented itself. As I got off the flight, mind entirely numbed by sleep-deprivation and food from hell, I realized that I must prepare myself to spend a considerable amount of time for the next few weeks practicing my role of the village mute.
But as the day progressed, and how slowly it seemed to do so, my family, who are wonderful beyond description by the way (beyond description, that is, to a pseudo-inebriated person such as me, but wonderful despite), proved to be a very inclusive force, and I greatly relished those delightfully awkward moments when, following a minute or so of conversation and glances in my direction and giggles (depending on the converser), Leonardo, my brother and English-speaker extroaordinaire, would say something beginning with "Um, they wondering..." At a birthday party we attended, I would even often find myself the center of attention (I was even given the first piece of cake, which was apparently most significant because everyone cheered and clapped as I received it), and my family would prove to be some the the warmest people I've met. The language barrier doesn't keep me from enjoying their company; it actually makes them more interesting when they're speaking all these word-type things that I can only sit back and absorb. I think if I can muster the energy to pay attention, I will be able to figure out this language deal before long. But I'm afraid I won't be able to do even that if I don't end this... post... of sorts, before long, so with that I must bid you all a happy clicking as you quit your browser/tab and go back to the productivity you wrongfully abandoned for this. Boa noite, tchau!
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