Wednesday and Thursday

Earlier this week I walked past a home for people with mental illnesses. It was 80 degrees out and the sun was shining. Here the colors are brilliant. Maybe it is the contrast of the sky to the yellowed dirt and gravel roads, the dingy pastel colored former factories or the early model maroon and green VW bugs. The white of the gate enclosing the patio of the home was as white as this digital page. The men and women sitting in the shade there looked muted, not pale, but flat in contrast to their bleached white clothes; and they said little, with the exception of one man who screamed and pushed his brow back with his palm as he eyed the woman in front of him. She didn’t move. She sat in her chair with her mouth open. I don’t think it can be said that she was looking at anything, though she wasn’t blind. On the opposite side of the street a man slowed his car to talk to the prostitute who, despite the heat, did not seem to be sweating. Maybe because I don’t understand most of words around me, the atmospheric sounds that I notice are reduced to the hum of the language, tires on dirt and mud, horse hooves, men working, the footsteps of a little boy who seems to be pursuing a truck. He didn’t say anything. He just sucked the middle two fingers of his right hand as he walked, kicking rocks as he did. I wouldn’t call the place I’m passing an asylum; it is more of a home. It’s roughly 300 yards away from anything. No houses, bus stops, businesses. There’s just this road that I’m walking on. In my head I hear English; nothing interesting, it’s just the incessant narration that follows me through my days. And as walk by I see tableaus: a man yelling at a sitting woman, a woman wiping flour from her hands with a dish towel. She says something that arrests the man’s attention. And in my final steps I watch another man begin to smile as in the background, and more loudly than the traffic or our matron tending to her charges, James Taylor’s voice rises and I hear him singing another song about love. It’s Wednesday again, and my group of elderly women will meet, I think, but I’m not sure where. They’re not in the normal place. They’re not in the room I traveled an hour on foot and an hour by bus to get to, but there is a sign. It’s a sign I can’t read. Something about today and next week and another place. And so I’m walking back to the bus stop to watch men break bricks with hammers and mix mud and litter with cement mix and water to fix the sidewalk they’ll tear up again next week.

It’s Thursday and I’m riding in the car with Jacque (with whom things are no longer tense. Who knows why. Let’s just be grateful. She’s a gracious host and I’m a respectful guest.) because I’ve got no money since my cards aren’t working, and I’ve already spent the $50 I’ve received for the month. Last week or another day I noticed a book that Jacque bought. It’s a book of poems by an Argentinean author, and it’s been published with a cardboard cover. I’ve wanted to give this mini-writing workshop which will result in little publications for all of the ladies to take home, and here’s this idea which is cheap and easy and which would take just the right amount of time for our sessions. So I mention this to Jacque, and she says something like, “Oh, well if it’s about health and it’s creative writing, then maybe we can make a partnership between UFRGS and ABIC and your project.” She says this because she’s a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, and she is a doctor of education in the health department. So now we’re riding around in what seems like circles trying to get to the parking lot of the school, so that we can have coffee, she can tell me to come up with a plan, loan me R$20 and send me on my way. So she parks, we have coffee, she tells me the requirements, gives me R$20 and goes off to a meeting. I set off to another cafe—the hipsters’ (I’m admitting nothing) Shan-gri-la and create a proposal. So far three members of the possible partnership are in, and I’m waiting on a response from the other one. Wish me luck.

Oh, and let me know if you have thoughts about the proposal.) I still have time to tweak it.

Nightlife

Two things: I finally felt useful at my project. I worked with a woman who is 76 years old, and I helped her answer questions like: what was your childhood dream? Which dreams do you have for the future? If you could change anything in the world what would you cha

nge? Those seem like insignificant questions, but this is a woman doesn’t see a future for herself. She’s old, and so she invests all of her hope into her children. She is old and people don’t ask her questions about herself. I talked to my mom a couple of months ago, and she told me that she talked to her mom about how your children grow up and move away and how that hurts. Young people are caught up in the hurried business of living or getting by and of getting more. We tend not to challenge one another to “live up to our potential.” Not as individuals anyway. It’s as if we exhaust the hopes of the people in our lives by the time we’re “all grown up.” Of course this is not always true. If it were we would have no political debates, and I would not be writing anything. At all. Ever.

Excuse the digression. I felt useful for two reasons, one: Dona S— can’t read or write, so I did those things for her (if my Portuguese were better, we had more time, and the purpose of the project were to teach her I would have) and allowed her to tell a story about herself. She had the opportunity to tell a series of small stories about herself and her family to someone who was interested without being interrupted. So I made her feel important and I read, wrote, listened to and spoke Portuguese.

Not only am I understanding conversations, I’m beginning to hear the music of another language. The sounds are beginning to make sense. When I listen to the hum of conversation I can pick out phrases in addition to words. And when I talk to a native Portuguese speaker in English I can hear the difference between the way his or her laugh sounds when they laugh in English and the melody that it has when he or she laughs in Portuguese. I noticed this yesterday. My friend Tais called me and asked me to meet her at the Park. This is a very Porto Alegrenese thing to do. On Sundays most people don’t work and a lot of people go out to Redencao park and walk t

heir dogs and their babies, drink Chimarrao (Erba Matte out of a Caiu, which is a type of cup cut from a gourd) and browse the crafts fair. Sometimes there’s music in the park. Sometimes Capoeira groups come out and play. Mostly people have a good time, sun bathe and play futbol or ride bikes.

Anyway, yesterday I spent the entire day with a person who makes sense to me. The best part about walking around the city and drinking beer and chasing the sunset and playing pool is that I did all of those things with someone who is from here. She was born and raised in this city and knows short cuts and cheap hangouts and she works hard and still makes time to try to balance on the edge of a sidewalk like a tight rope walker. I keep wanting to write that I felt that I understood more about what it means to be Brazilian yesterday—that there is a rhythm here that is intimately connected to that of the language and to see a single personality that this rhythm—this urban southern gaucho culture—has created makes me feel as if I’m finally here.

I was a degenerate all weekend. I drank beer at the ever fantastic Café Cantante with 4 or 5

dudes who party from 11-6 every weekend and who have day jobs like medical doctor, lawyer, computer technician. Then on Sunday I walked around with my head in the clouds and a beer in my hand. What I did this weekend that I haven’t done since I got here was enjoy the night. Everyday someone tells me that it is too dangerous to be outside after 9pm, but that’s only true if you don’t know where to walk or who to spend your time with. I realize that poverty here is much more severe than it is in the states, but the folks who live outside and in the favellas are not malicious. Sure sometimes having nothing prompts criminality, and honestly I don’t think it’s ethically wrong to steal bread if you’re starving. What I’m trying to get at is that in walking around at night I felt some bit of the hope/eternity/freedom that exists when you’re playing kick-the-can or midnight madness under the streets lights in your subdivision. I feel like I’m trying to explain the joke.

This was supposed to be a short entry, but I don’t really have much time to edit it down, so oops. My bad.

Bicycles and Morrostock

We had a three-day-weekend this week because of Children’s Day. When I asked Jacque about it, she said it’s just a commercial holiday installed to make parents feel guilty if they don’t by presents for the little bits. Well, she stopped at “commercial holiday.” But since I had all of that time off (read: regular amount of free time) I decided to go get cultured. I went to a few places. I walked to Gasometro, roughly 3 miles from my front door. It’s a cultural center, and this past weekend it housed a Latin American Craft Fair. There were vendors from all over the continent selling their wares. I bought a bracelet for my host sister, in honor of the holiday, and a decorative rug for my host mother.


On the top floor of the Gasometro I saw this bicycle exhibit and was reminded that I have been taking pictures of bicycles since I moved into this house. Bikes are amazing. They will never go out of style, and they just might be the objects which make the most efficient use of human energy. People use them to carry all sorts of things here (and at home, but urban commuter biking is a different animal), children, furniture, beer. In the rural areas and up in the mountains in smaller more independent neighborhoods—think Hilton Head but not wealthy and landlocked—where there are no buses there’s a lane in the middle of the road dedicated exclusively to pedestrians and cyclists. This morning I watched people ride along toward their early morning tasks, some with their arms folded, a few with one hand on the handlebars and one raised with an open umbrella. People have water delivered here because they don’t drink the tap water. So the delivery dudes put three jugs of water on the front of their bikes and drop it off. The fellows who collect recycling often attach bikes to the fronts of their carts. Anyway, I thought you might like to see the bikes. Living here is bizarre. At any point during my day I am just as likely to see a cowboy riding a horse on the sidewalk as I am to see a $3000 dollar Bianche, a 1978 VW Bug or a 2002 Volvo.


Like I said, things have been a little tense with Jacque, so when she suggested that I go on a trip with my long weekend, I took her up on the idea, borrowed a tent and went to Morrostock,http://morrostockopenair.blogspot.com/, an annual music festival held in October. This year it was in Sapiranga, RS, about 4 hours away from where I live. It took two busses, a ride from a stranger (she was a lovely woman), and a 2 hour walk to get to the little bar in front of the site, but it was nice to travel. So, last night I camped by myself on a mountain in the middle of nowhere and listened to bands from all over the country play. I didn’t do much talking, but I did meet a couple of people. The best part of the whole deal was this bluegrass band, though. It is strange to listen to people speak Portuguese and then sing in English. These guys were pretty good, though. What’s more is I was probably the only person in the audience who understood what the words meant. Going to this music fest by myself reminded me how foreign I am. I liked some of the music, but didn’t understand most of what was being said (though I understand more and more everyday). And pretty quickly word spread that I am an exchangee, and this won me some stares, but no light conversation.

I’m still taken aback at the heavy influence of American culture. I find myself frustrated and possessive. You know, like, don’t call me a gringo and then turn around and claim Jimi Hendrix. I came all the way down here to experience Brasilian culture and to get away from mine, but mine seems to be seeping in at all points: one of the major grocery store chains is owned by Wal Mart, most of the non-public access channels on cable are American (Fox, Warner, and Universal), the popular music on the radio (for 11-year-olds) is American. In contrast, the teenagers are listening Funk—not American Funk, but something akin in philosophy to what Rap was about in the early 80s. It has a pretty heavy electronic sound, and it is dance music with lyrics about sex and drugs. It is very rhythmic. And I’ve been watching Telenovelas partly because I need to listen to the language and partly because I like drama. (somewhere in here I got distracted and stopped revising. oops.) But then I think it is cool that we can so easily memorize the sounds/words of another language and that that can be a great tool for study. I think that music has this incredible power to unite.

On Sunday night a drunk kid was splashing around in the puddles during the performance of Tax Free, a rock band, and one of the security guards hit him in the head and knocked him down. Maschismo is a dangerous thing. The other security guard kicked the kid while he was down. David was his name. I know that because during the performance of the clown troupe he volunteered to have a piece of paper whipped out of his hand and then he asked the contortionist to dance. He was difficult to miss with his Drew Carey glasses and mass of curly black hair. Anyway, one of the organizers of the fest called bullshit and had the security guard escorted out. Then the DJ played Come Together in solidarity and lots of people took to the puddles. Still, it is unsettling to hear a bunch of Brasilians singing Why Go by Pearl Jam and Around the World by The Red Hot Chili Peppers in English and to know that if I were to begin to speak no one would understand—to know that they don’t know what they’re saying. I feel like I’m fumbling around in the dark when I speak Portuguese, and I feel not a little guilty when I speak English. I guess maybe I was just jealous of all of the people with a common language and shared memory of songs (that the live bands sang) and geography.

I spent the night trying to get comfortable or tired in my tent. I dodged little puddles, and wished I’d had a tarp. I thought about how music and booze and pot and camping brings people together, and I how I wanted that. And then I thought that I’m proud to be a person who can speak/read in a new language (well enough to get to the right busses, accept the offer of a ride, make polite conversation, find my way to a concert a 2 hour walk away from the bus station, pay my entrance fee, buy a beer and share a Chimarrao with a nice man who really likes Bluegrass). This morning I was glad that I woke up on a mountain at 6 in the morning and that I knew exactly how to get where I was going, and that I didn’t need to rush. I appreciated the beautiful morning and the fog and the cows grazing the and free roaming dogs and the people doing everyday normal people things: opening up shop, cleaning, enjoying the quiet morning.

Crazy is the Same Everywhere

Last week I was all stressed out about what to do with all of this free time, and how annoying it is that things are not what I expected them to be, but things are never the way we expect them to be, with the exception of family gatherings, and I realized I was complaining about having free time. That’s just silly. I have a long list of places I can go to for free, so I’m going. Besides, if I’m out of the house my host mother and I can’t piss each other off. I’ve been to 3 very large, very populated parks, this museum: http://www.iberecamargo.org.br/ and a rally/concert (the poster is on the right). So this week was better there were more characters.

People are funny. I’ve spent my week walking around piecing the city together. I’ve walked for roughly 15 hours (perhaps I should purchase a bicycle), and I’ve talked to a bunch of strangers. For the last four days or so I’ve walked around for 3 or 4 miles a day going to parks and museums, rallies and concerts. I watch people in cafes and speak to whomever strikes up a conversation.

This week I’ve learned that crazy is the same everywhere you go. Bars and coffeeshops (here many cafès are bars) attract crazy people. Money is money, and people are usually willing to pay for a seat if they can stay in it for hours when they have nothing else to do and they are, for some reason, averse to sitting around in parks all day. Today I met a woman named Tonia Flores, and though she was drunk and she gripped my bicep a little too fiercely while trying to emphasize a point about indigenous peoples initiating their youth through drugs, she was gentle and adamant when she claimed herself as my mother (which I rebuffed since I’ve only got one of those), and entreated me to call her should I need anything. In the same way that I like old people, I like crazy people. Both groups have a lot to say, and much of it is interesting. For instance, why pass up a chance to talk about race and mental illness with someone who sees the world very differently from the way I do?

For a long time my greatest fear was that I would go crazy. Mental illness exists on both sides of my family, and I worried from the time that I was 15 until I was 23 that I would be schizophrenic or manic depressive or something equally terrible. I have tattoos which read “imagine and fearless,” in part, (though for this meaning the latter should read “fearlessly”) because when I was 23 my greatest fear was to allow myself to see and feel all of the things that I can imagine—I thought maybe I would go so far that I could never come back—and I wanted to give myself permission, everyday, to spook the bogeyman.

Anyway, I asked to take a picture of her, but she called herself ugly and told me to take pictures of beautiful people instead. I told her she was beautiful, that everyone is beautiful, and she blushed and tisked and told me to put the camera away, so even if you see her, you’ll never know. Sorry.

But I can talk a little about our conversation. There are a lot of people in the states who claim to have Native American blood. Maybe that is because they want to seem more American or less white or less black or less racist or maybe they just want to show their pride. I dunno. But in the last month I’ve heard several fair skinned people assure me that they’re descendents of Africans. I suspect this has something to do with pride, and also that it is in some part and effort to make me feel more accepted or as an expression of kinship. Interestingly enough, some of the folks might actually be my kin. Anyway, Dona Flores pointed out that racism is open in the U.S.—that you can see and hear it in every part of our culture and that, in stark contrast, racism in Brasil is veiled.

Then, trying to demonstrate to me that she knew some English, she pointed out that I am black by saying “niggers like you” in the U.S. are in a bad situation like the blacks, the mentally ill, the poor and the homosexuals here. I was struck by three things: somewhere along the line someone had taught her that the right word to use to refer to black people is “nigger,” secondly, the jails here are filled with the same people as the ones at home, and lastly, that she specifically mentioned the mentally ill. The mentally ill are not a population who receive much attention or mention anywhere I’ve been, but they do make up over half of the homeless population and much of the imprisoned population in the states. There was no resolution to our very broken conversation. I explained, as best I could, that blacks in the states are called blacks or African Americans. I’m not sure that made much sense to her. When I finished my coffee and got up to leave she grabbed me by the shoulder, put her palm on my head and prayed over me for a minute before she kissed me on the cheek and let me go.

Again, I’ve rambled on. Next week, I’ll try to keep it short and give it a little structure.