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.