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.