In Sickness and in Stadiums

[Imperative Statement: If you are skipping to this blog because you have some attachment to the archaic, sick idea of "chronology," cease this nonsense and go up and read the first one. This blog is meaningless if you don't read the first one.]

So... sickness. Yes, this subject was prompted by something happening in reality and not just a random occurrence in my confused head. I am sick. No, this isn't an epitaph - it's just a cold. A specific kind of cold that I have developed and mastered over the years - I know the ins and outs of this particular affliction like the back of my hand. This particular cold, which I've come to fondly call Old Coldy, develops over a period of three or four days that are marked by a certain lack of sleep. That's when I realize that I am legitimately sick and start laying down the welcome mat. It'll feel mild for the first day or so of being a real cold, but it has yet to reach it's zenith. The climax will last for maybe a day or so, and slowly subside for the next few days. All in all, Old Coldy will usually stay for about a week at a time, assuming of course, that one takes all the sensible steps in treating a cold - lots of rest, water, showering and nose-blowing, which I always take special pleasure in doing. You see, I like to make Old Coldy feel right at home when he comes to visit (I don't see him for months at a time, you see), make him feel appreciated and wanted. For, unlike all these people who feel "trapped" or "alone" or some such nonsense when they're bed-ridden, I relish my time spent sick. I only just realized it yesterday, but I really enjoy sickness. The occassional unstoppable bouts of coughing are of course unpleasant, but the overall experience I find to be so calm and wonderful. Recently I realized that I seek, more than anything else, old age. All these excitements and sensations and abilities and stresses associated with youth and capability just aren't for me; oh sure, I enjoy futebol and rollercoasters and will cut a rug from time to time, but all the while I secretly wish I had an excuse to slip away and take a walk through some woods and eat an apple. And although there aren't any woods here, I also recently discovered that a darkened, empty house is quite a magical thing, and I was content to shuffle about in the dark, carefully pouring myself a glass of water and groping about for door handles. The only problem is that I am still young, and I will soon tire of this lifestyle and heal, and will have to reenter the world running. But these past few days, and perhaps the next couple as well, have been wonderful practice for that great day when I officially turn old.

And now for my sublime and truly marvelous transition to my next subject, stadiums. Three nights ago, as Old Coldy was knocking more persistently, I, perhaps unwisely, went to a stadium to see a futebol match. And though my transition may not have lived up to expectations, I must say my first Brazilian futebol match did. I went with Estevao (you may remember him from a blog about religion), who was also becoming a man in terms of futebol. Our arrival at the stadium was most intimidating. We did not know which entrance to take, or indeed, where to buy tickets, and with security performing searches at intervals around the complex, we were searched several times. And I tell you, I hadn't expected to be asked to spread my legs, and even after I understood what I was asked, it still took me until a few moments after it happened to understand why I needed to. In any case though, we made it in, and found relatively isolated seats so that we wouldn't be too pressured to take part in whatever hooliganizing that might take place. But from the moment we walked in, the atmosphere was oppressively festive; we were about 25 yards to the left of a group of drummers who drummed for the entire 90 minutes, pausing only every 10 minutes or so to decide what beat they should switch to. And then, to our right, there was the overpowering presence of the rippling mass of fans that filled the bleachers overlooking the field from the side (in Brazil, they don't really have bleachers - they have levels of concrete; it gives the stadium a feeling akin to an amphitheater - one feels connected to the sport in a very esoteric and meaningful way). The most striking thing about the behavior of the mass, though, was its exact mirroring of what happened on the field, even the subtle aspects that you'd never expect an American crowd to react to. The mass recognizes when its team is putting together a particularly promising set of passes, and it can feel when the other team seems to be coming on stronger than they'd like. I think it's because Brazilians can somehow feel the energy of the game in a unique way, and that also probably has something to do with the 5 world cups that Brazil keeps in some glass cabinet somewhere. At any rate, another particularly striking thing about the experience was the sheer volume - I think it's one of the mysterious blessings of life that an oval happens be both the most convenient shape to arrange bleachers and an amazing acoustic device. When Guarani (the local club) scored a goal, it was like some prankster had snuck an enormous amplifier over to my proximity and placed a few quality microphones amongst the huge crowd over to the right - it is uniquely moving and powerful. And in between these explosions there is the steady beat of drums, and when the crowd senses that everything is going well, it will sing songs; after the second goal, it sang and sang for what must have been about 15 minutes, the same song over and over (and the song was only about 5 lines long too). If watching a futebol match on TV is like listening to a CD, goin

Buses: The Noble Institution, or Portuguese: The Pragmatic Language

Dear Blog,

Hello readers (yes, I'm not actually writing to the blog, but am communicating through the blog to you all - I thought it was time I came out with it), it's time once again for me to pollute cyberspace with a disastrously extemporaneous and hopelessly disorganized and unedited blog entry. And once again, I have perhaps jumped the gun in revealing to you the subject of this blog in the title.

So to explain the first topic, I'll give you some background. I've been in school for three weeks now, and for the past two and a half weeks I have been riding the bus home. But unlike wimpy high schools in the U.S., there is no special school bus to bear you home - there is an actual municipal bus stop next to the school, and you must ride a city bus home. I consider my time busing to be some of the most valuable time I spend here in Brasil (hey! I do too have a life...) - in any context, it is a fascinating portrait of people and social tendencies. But unfortunately, it usually paints a rather cynical picture of society. For example, whenever a double seat opens up, a person will always take the aisle seat - this seems fairly innocent, but I once heard a BBC story on the radio about how people will do this to discourage others from taking the other seat. Also, I believe a motive may be so that if someone does sit next to them, they won't have to climb over them when they want to get up. So it is an almost primeval atmosphere on the bus, especially at stops, when one is always watching where the new people will go - will they sit next to me? will they stand next to me? But it's all very according to plan - the open seats get taken, and every standing spot gets filled up almost scientifically maximizing space between people.

But compared to interesting aspects, all this sociology business is quite uninteresting and dry. You readers and your expectations of intellectual and academic material (brilliant though it may be, coming from me) - I'm quite sick of it frankly, and I refuse to suffer your boring demands. No more, no more. So now let us defy you and move to the lighter side of busing. Although people may be confined to the strictest of social mores on a bus, the trained eye can notice the individual humanity of one's fellow passengers in great relief than almost anywhere else. Of course I don't mean personality - one would need to interact with them to see that (which is of course punishable by defenstration on buses). What I refer to is a more esoteric idea - the experience of being driven about by a stranger, surrounded by strangers, in the bumpiest of fashions gives one a great sense of fellowship with those around you. You're all going to different places, but for now chance has brought you all together to spend these few minutes in silent contemplation of the meaning of things; and you're all connected by the same helplessness, the same faith in the laws of probability that you will not be the next ones everyone sees from a camera in a helicopter hovering above your burning symbol of broken innocence and betrayal. Public transportation is indeed like sharing a womb with 20 strangers.

Which I probably wouldn't appreciate as much if I shared their language. Being an outsider givers you a whole new objectivity and clarity about such things. But unfortunately I may not have that for much longer, for my brain seems insistant upon me slowly and painfully learning Portuguese. It's gotten so bad I can even converse to a limited degree. Luckily I still don't know most of the basic articles or the rules for past tense and gender. I also still can't understand my teachers or speak with proper grammar, but my hopes for a year of ignorance seem to have faded almost entirely; I doubt there will be a single person that I won't be able to understand by the end of the year. I shall have to go searching for college lectures on metaphyisics just for some words that are way over my head, I shouldn't wonder. But as long as I'm learning the language, I may as well satirize it, right? Right. So, I may as well begin where the second title of my blog left off. I call Portuguese a pragmatic language, but this is really more in reference to the people and how they speak it. A Rotarian once told me that Portuguese is a very difficult language, and that even most Brazilians don't speak it correctly. I thought that even if every Brazilian speaks broken Portuguese, it can't be that broken, and in that case, even proper Portuguese must be pretty austere. But what do I mean by all this? A legit question, although you could have worded it more nicely. I mean that a Brazilian can express in two words what an American or Englishman or Australian even would need four or five words for. For example, if in English you wanted to say "I'll be back soon," in Portuguese you would only need to say "Volta logo." Or if you wanted to say, "Do I need this?" you would only need "Preciso?" Even if it's not entirely correct (which, coming from me, is more than likely), a Brazilian would both understand you and not think twice about how correct you were (keep also in mind that although Portuguese is simple, you must say it correctly to be understood, which is why I have yet to have any luck communicating with strangers who aren't accustomed to my horrid accent and broken-beyond-even-their-standards Portuguese).

Now let me for a moment discuss the more general aspects of Portuguese. The sound of it is similar to Spanish, as I (and no doubt you all) suspected, but it is a far deeper and more interesting language, in my opinion. It's not all flash and speed and rrrrrrrolled R's (luckily, since my record for consecutive R's rolled is two); it's a much more subtle language, with much softer sounds. Much of Spanish happens at or right behind the lips - all the sounds are very straightforward and sharp. In Portuguese, everything happens, relatively, about a foot further back. All the vowels are much nasalier - and often they will bend them into a different vowel altogether (for example, "novo" sounds a lot like "naw-vee," and "grande" sounds like "gruhng-uh") - and the consonants are much more "tonguey." Now let me explain "tonguey" (I'm not apologizing, just explaining). Often, when they use the letter T they will change the sound to CH, and when they use the letter S they will change it to SH or ZH (you know what that is - try it and all will become clear), and when they use D they change it to G. For example: tipo is pronounced chipo, desculpe is pronounced dishculp, and cidade is pronounced cidaj. But there are also other consonantal oddities worth divulging, particularly that of the letter M. Whenever M appears at the end of a word, it is almost always pronounced like NG. I have absolutely no explanation as to why they did this - I think the Portuguese were perhaps simply the linguistic equivalent to impressionists. Back when Spanish and Portuguese were basically one language, the Soon-to-be-Portuguese said to the Soon-to-be-Spaniards, "Look here, we've had enough of all this 'strict interpretation of letters' business. Phonetics is more than just what's on the page - it's what's in your mind! An M sound is no more than an NG sound with a veil of lips, and a D sound is nothing more than a G sound that's been confined to a prison cell between the teeth and the tongue, by the likes of you, no doubt!" And so the strict-interpretation Spaniards separated from the artistically-inclined Portuguese and each went their separate ways; and I have become a happy inheritent of that rift - despite the well-hidden reasoning behind pronunciation, I feel a close kinship with the forefathers of the language, and would like to think that, should a similar movement develop within the English language, I would be on the forefront, advocating it. And as I end this blog entry, let me silence all you naysayers before you materialize in your devilish fashion, who would point out that I just made up that whole history of the language - strict interpretation of reality is just as heinous as strict interpretation of language, and I warn you to cease this foolishness before I send my flying poodle-shaped monkey to put you in your place.