Love and School

Dear Blog,

I judge this has been enough time to hype up the ending to my last blog, which promised an explanation to how I could enjoy, nay, appreciate even, a romantic comedy. So here is the promised explanation: you may alert your favorite periodicals. First, the title (which I was able to find in English via google) is The Accidental Husband. If you have seen this movie and thought it was really great, feel gratified, for I concur, and thus its cinematic quality is beyond doubt. Anyway, the main reason I thought it was so good was that I really liked the way that the two protagonists (or I suppose antagonists to one another - the lead lovers, you guessed it) had qualities exemplifying extreme behaviors of their respective sex which, at first, caused an emotional separation, but ultimately brought them together. The plot had a sort of elliptical elegance (I'm going to spoil the plot now - sorry, but I'm making a point and I'm very insensitive; but really, you know they're going to end up together, and these points aren't really emphasized in the movie, so it's not too big a loss I think):

The Woman, who just wrote a book, has a radio program, and when the Man's fiancee calls in because she's having second thoughts, the Woman tells her that she should hold out for a more suitable match - the Woman displays her pragmatically feminine and even harsh attitude towards love, and thus ends the marriage between the Man and his fiancee. And wouldn't you know it, the Man happened to be tuned in just at the right moment to hear the Woman give this advice, and is piping mad at her. So his marriage ends and he is most angry, and when he comes home to his apartment above a family-owned Indian restaurant (the owner of which, I might add, is worth half the cost of admission for his minor soliloquys) he seeks out the technology-smart adolescent of the house and asks him to try to get even, and the adolescent devises a way. He hacks into some government file and finds the Woman's birth-certificate (or some such document - I'm not savvy in such matters), and offers to change it to make the Man legally married to the Woman. The Man consents to this plan - he displays his impulsive and reckless masculinity, and thus jeopardizes the Woman's forthcoming marriage to a well-off publisher. So the Woman (unaware of the Man's instrumentality in the apparent mistake in her marital status) seeks out the Man to try to sort it out. So a lot of quite interesting and humorous things happen (which are, unfortunately, too incidental to divulge in this blog entry), each bringing the two emotionally closer together while, paradoxically, displaying two personalities which are in complete opposition. And the woman experiences exponentially increasing doubts about her marriage and, indeed, about her entire philosophy concerning love. Eventually, however, the Woman finds out about the part that the man played in their "accidental" marriage, and feels entirely betrayed, and retreats to the safety of her boring, stable fiancee, and her cost-benefit analysis approach to love. But she still experiences doubts up to the marriage, doubts on a much more serious scale - in the heat of passion with the Man, she doubted, but in the calm of marriage, she questioned: is there a sound way to calculate a suitable match? How can such a system be tested? How can evidence for or against the system be documented? (Of course she did not say these things specifically, but I imagined them because they seemed to get the issue's goat, as it were.) And on the day of her wedding, her fiancee comes to her and tells her that the only sensible solution is to leave him for the Man. This, I think, is the profound moment in the film: the fiancee, representative to a degree of the Woman's own intellectuality regarding love, forfeits her to the impulsive, reckless energy of the Man. In essence, two opposing energies, entirely of their own accord, compromised themselves in order to join together. It's like the unbreakable wall stopped stopping, and the unstoppable force stopped forcing. It was beautifully representative, to me, of the fundamental paradox of love itself, and the movie got me to contemplating that paradox as well: how can these two energies be better described? How exactly do they balance? How can one consciously nurture this balance? Are these two opposing energies ends in and of themselves, or do they contribute to a greater force, which is both the pinnacle and the foundation of true love? What else contributes to the relationship? I thought of answers to those questions that I thought were adequate, and I may explore them more thoroughly later in an essay or something when I feel like it; it may appear in this blog, or perhaps in some prestigious love magazine like Cosmo.

But this is old news - the night of the movie is close to a week past, and the pressing event of this evening is, you guessed it, berries-er, I mean, school, as is clearly indicated by my title, you fools. So - what to say about school, and where to begin. Well, perhaps I should begin with the preparation for school. Yes. (whoa! if anybody else just disassociated the word "yes," please post a comment - it would make my year.) First, I think it's interesting that there is no "first day" as we think of it - no orientation, no shortened day to get settled in. It doesn't even feel like the first day; it feels like everybody's already been there all year, knows what to do right away. The teachers don't even review, or try any rapport-establishing, or try to get to know you, or anything - they just jump right into the first lesson. I found that quite interesting, as well as increasing the fun level and decreasing the work level (you know how orientations always have forms or requirements or supplies that serve as a kind of pre-homework). But on an individual level, the question remains: what does one need for school in Brazil? Well, lucky for me, nobody told me anything, so nothing! You can imagine how relieved I was when everyone else seemed to have workbooks and monstrous notebooks and such, and I had one pencil and one small notebook, half-filled with other random writings. And when every teacher asked me if I had supplies (keep in mind that I can't be sure, but I think that's what they said), I was able to just shake my head and shrug my shoulders and be off the hook immediately - one never felt so free. Now if only one could combine that freedom with senioritis... ... ... Anyway, I shall now describe the overall schedule of the day: school begins at 7 o'clock (ungodly for such a religious nation), and people begin coming to class about 15 minutes later. There are two 15 minute breaks, before and after lunch, and then there is, of course, lunch. I didn't notice when classes changed because I've got myself into a schedule of going to sleep at about 4 am and getting up at about 2 pm, so I was a bit sleep deprived. So moving on now, I will first discuss the language barrier, which of course, is coming into much sharper relief in school. I found it rather fun having only a vague idea of the subject at hand - it especially enables you to really judge how good a teacher is. You all of a sudden see clearly which teachers can control a room, which have charisma and poise, and which ones struggle to find leadership qualities in themselves, or resort to immaturity to maintain control. In my opinion, operating under these criteria, the best teacher was the math teacher, Tomas (they all go by first names here). He was energetic and forceful and could make students laugh and get them involved rather elegantly - I also liked him a lot because he reminded me of some divine combination of Mr. Jorgenson and Mr. Bjerke (BHS students should be caught breathless just at hearing such an idea put forth). But unfortunately, math was the subject in which I understood the most, because it's hard not to recognize factorials (what with the exclamation point and all), and I did factorials like two years ago. But the subject in which I understood least, and thus was the most interesting, was physics. It was so fun watching him draw all those neat lines and the equations that were equal to Va and Vb, and when he got to electrical currents (it's hard to not naturally interpret "Corrantes Eletric," what with all the postives and negatives floating around on the board, so I did know what he was talking about; luckily, though, I know nothing about that, so I remained happily oblivious and thus rapt and attentive), he began drawing all sorts of cool diagrams of batteries and pools of water, no doubt describing the proper way to assasinate someone by hot-wiring their pool.

Speaking of purposefully misinterpreting what teachers say, there is an occasion in which I did so which will later bring me to a whole new avenue of discussion, so I shall relate it now - not because it is funny or interesting or unoffensive, but because I am a pragmatic writer, and you will just have to endure this next unendurable portion if you want a smooth transition to the rest of my blog. Ah, but before I relate that, it would perhaps be timely to tell you that in this school, it is not the students who go from room to room after each class - it is the teachers who are made to trek across the halls with no company but the sound of their footsteps and each other's hesitant and paranoid attempts at eye contact in passing and the incessant sound of the bell that is their taskmaster and owns their souls. I was tearfully proud of the Brazilian school system. Truly, Brazilian students have achieved a victory that should be trumpeted and celebrated across the world, and I hope that those reading this blog will take up that baton of freedom, run the half-lap of revolution, and pass it on to the teammate of sweet, sweet liberation in this struggle that we students struggle in for our rights and dignity. Anyway, so the gist I'm getting at here is that the teachers move around instead of us, and so the fourth teacher we had today was both our sociology and geography teacher. During her geography class, the first thing we discussed was racism. She had the rather awkward habit of every now and then asking me (in Portuguese of course) if I was understanding everything (which would be no problem if she just said "Entendi?" because I know that word, but she always seemed to choose some other wording that made it unclear to me who she was even addressing), and on one such occasion, she asked the girl in front of me (who had very kindly offered to be an interpreter of sorts, yet at the same time a nuisance because she was always asking me if I needed help, which interefered with my desire to not understand what was being taught) if I understood the subject matter. The girl asked me if I knew what "Racismo" was, and I said, yes, and thought the whole venture of communication all the more pointless. And then I was inspired to misunderstand it. So, the way I heard it (and this shall henceforth be my official version of her words, because I do love fabrication), she said, "[name I can't remember], would you please tell Felipe that he is at no point to be racist during class?" Ah, that was quite fun, quite fun.

And I suppose you're all wondering who this "Felipe" is, so I suppose that shall be the next avenue that I take. I'm not sure why, but from the first day I set foot in the school (a few weeks ago was when I first visited), the school officials insisted upon calling me by my middle name, or the Portuguese version of it anyway, Phillip (Felipe). I'll admit, it is much easier to introduce oneself as Felipe, than Dorian. I suspect I shall introduce myself as such to most people I meet from now on, for convenience's sake. So that's the story of how I came to be called by my middle name in Brazil. I think I shall discuss one last point before cutting off this monstrosity of a post (I do apologize for the length, but the first day of school is an important event indeed, and I had to resolve the romantic comedy cliff-hanger, so cest' la vie I suppose). This last point I unfortunately did not get to earlier, for it did not seem to relate easily to other topics, so I shall have to end this blog entry awkwardly and with a bit of an anticlimax, for I shall be discussing merely this: the boistrousnes of my Brazilian classmates. They are certainly a fun group to be in class with; it makes me appreciate all the more Brazilian teachers, for they must learn to talk at most unnatural volumes to rise above the din, as well as ignore the daunting numbers of students either chatting loudly or sleeping (another triumph - vive l'revolution!). I was most tempted to fall asleep many times as well, but opted not to to try to make myself more tired tonight, so that I might get more sleep. And on that note, I am beginning to feel the intended effects of my austerity, and so am most unfit to continue blog-writing, and so until next time, happy clicking.