The Ins and the Outs

Whooooooo. Breath. I awake today with a rather nasty hangover, something I haven’t had for some time, so forget the flowery speech—we’ll see in what manner things come out of my head.

Ouch. Drink of water. Sigh. Ok.

These last few days have been a whirlwind. Hmmm, a whirlwind. No, I take that back. More like a roller coaster with a lot of disquieting ups and downs. At best, I have been profoundly moved by the beauty here. I have breathed in the incredible panorama of greenery and sea, my lungs full of salt air and romance. Turn around, and not one second later I have been saturated with ugliness—palpable, sharp, and distressing. I gravitate towards thoughts of never leaving, of working my way into this society, buying a little apartment and building a life. Then, before another second passes, I am shaken by the disorder, the traffic, the sharp division of the people. It is an interesting thing to taste, these intensities. But could I do it all the time?

Things all and all have been fun...but…wait.

Ouch. Drink. I don’t think I have the patience to do this in length. It’s like this:

High Moment—running around with my friend Ayda, meeting lots of people, eating amazing, amazing, unexplainably amazing food. Fejoida at her mothers house. Wow.

Low Moment—getting in a car. I have driven a lot. Ayda feels especially generous with her car after she has been drinking. This was fun, like barreling down a race track with no rules. Stop Lights, Pedestrians, cordiality? Mere suggestions. While I feel better behind the wheel than as a passenger, I still feel each and every time that I am going to die. And fuck man, people are sooooo, ahhhh, wtf. It’s quite possible.

High Moment—heading to the beach outside of the city. Eating crab, and little fish balls, and fried fish French fry like thingies; jumping into the warm embrace of the South Atlantic, staring in awe at the almost unimaginable scenery and the beautiful people that embrace it. I don’t know what god was thinking when he/she/it crafted these people, but they’re faces, breasts, pictorials, bodies, lips, smiles, etc, etc, are really quite unfair. I don’t generally feel unpretty, but at the present moment I feel kind of shafted.

Low Moment—getting locked out of my apartment. God made these people beautiful, but not very practical. Why does nothing work? Why is every fucking door fitted too loosely or too tightly? Why when things break do they tend to stay that way? Why, when a nice gringo gets locked out of his apartment (door jam) will the neighbors not help? Actually, I know why? Divisions. Safety. No one would open a door for some strange guy, cause in this society, it’s safe to believe that he is not very safe. Understood. But fuck, what’s a neighbor for if not that.

High Moment—having one of those beautiful interactions with Ayda’s young niece and nephew. One of those special moments, sitting around the living room playing guitar, talking about American and Brazilian music, laughing at the way things come out of each others mouths. When you are in a tribe (close kinship or social circle, going to write more about this later), you are really in. Friendship, kisses, hugs, it’s amazing.

Low Moment—why does everything cost so much? Gahhhhhh. I hate you George Bush.

High Moment—Brazilian hospitality. Like nothing you had, are, or will experience again. My cup is always full of beer, my plate a constant mass of piling food, it is incredible. In terms of welcoming a guest (again, if he is one of the tribe), they are masters. Simply put.

Low Moment—ok, sigh, last night. I have been never been so in the culture and yet so very separated from it. Now I hang with Brazilians, which is great, if they have the patience to interact with my shat ass language skills. But fuck, I have just put myself light years away from the savvy socialite play on words poet that I claim to be. I am Fez, on “That 70’s Show”, but not funny or likable. So I went out with a bunch of ridiculously beautiful and chic 20 somethings, clearly the “we are way cooler than you crowd”, and just failed miserably at being a relatable human being. I know how to play this crowd back home, have made a study of them because shoot…I like pretty ladies. But wow, the group ended up having a house party and I became that quiet guy in the corner that stairs at people and probably creeps them right the fuck out. No language skills = No interaction skills = No communication skills = Next to no flirting skills = A seeming lack of confidence = Beta, Beta, Beta = Why would I want to sit next to you let alone have your babies?

I hate not playing alpha. Hate, hate, hate, hate. Sigh.

Drink. My head hurts less. I’m going to get something to eat.

Getting Settled

As the days move on, the sensory assault of my arrival has begun to diminish, at least in force and frequency. Naturally, as the first week still lingers, life continues to drift in an unpredictable course. I awake each morning to the sound of traffic, of movement outside my window, and beautiful sing song from the neighborhood birds. Sleep here is difficult, as I was given a minimally present quarter inch thick mattress and an old dusty pillow to cuddle up to. My allergies have protested and are persuading me to purchase something a bit more accommodating. Despite these discomforts I do sleep, and quite deeply, my brain flooded with new things to learn and in need of a good reorganizing.

The owner of the apartment, Badega, is a quiet and relaxed guy, and has been very hospitable in his welcome. He has allowed total access to the apartment and food, insisting that I cook and shower and do as I want. This is quite a wonderful thing, as I was barred from kitchen access and house life with my last host family. As I understand it, we will be sharing the cost of food, the maid, and internet access (which is getting installed next week!). I am paying him $350 reis a month (about $200) and sharing the cost of added utilities. This is quite a reasonable price, I think, though not without the pressure to find a job and earn extra income.
The neighborhood, Brotas, is typical working class Salvador, with lots of foot traffic, little grocery stores, hospitals, and the rest. As anywhere in this city, it can be dangerous at night if one isn’t careful. Here I feel more pressure to fit in—to try and combat my foreign skin and unfamiliar look. Just before I left the US, I bought a stylish little watch to grace my wrist. It was a dumb idea….it now stays at home.

As I found out yesterday, transportation to an from a neighborhood like this can be a difficult and frustrating thing. Badega left on a sailing trip yesterday, and I was left to my own devices. Before long, I became bored sitting at home and decided to venture off into the city. I hopped on a bus to Porto da Barra, the more touristy beach front next to the city’s own historic light house. Putting deep sours into my soft American feet, I ran around the neighborhood visiting old friends, and breathing in my last trip to Brazil. Walking down the beachfront, I was to my everlasting gringo shame the whitest person on two feet. This can be a dangerous and annoying thing here, a target for insistent vendors, thieves, and street kids asking if you want marijuana or blow.

After drinking a cold beer and dipping in the sea, I decided to make my way home before the sun cascaded past the sky. It took me two and a half hours, grrrr, and is apparently damn near impossible to catch a bus back home. I sat at three bus stops, waiting, straining to read the bus signs for a familiar road. Each person I asked about getting home told me something different. With the sun going down and my pallid glow becoming ever more pronounced, I finally gave up and took a taxi back home. Twas’ an expensive conclusion and one that I dare not repeat too often.

Culture Shocked²

Holy Sweet Jesus I’ve done it again. The gauntlet has dropped and my head strains with the weight and noise of it. Monastic Oklahoma life, in all of its solitude and insulation has quite literally passed away—a swelling and triumphant discorporation leaving me twirling on my callused little toes. For the second time in two years I stepped off the plane with butterflies, rightly anticipating a swathe of verdant greenery and a heady cascade of summer air. Flying into Salvador by day has its charms, with the South Atlantic dancing on the right outside wing, and the white sandy beaches beckoning to the left. As soon as your foot steps off that plane everything changes. Not only does your language and familiarity pass away, but so too the steady cascade of inputs feeding the machine—those patchy variables of everyday life that function with hardly an upward glance. Once in and onto new land, it truly feels like a sudden rebirthing, and all one is left with is to look and feel and touch anew.

Upon my arrival, things got started right and proper with a meeting of my Denver friend Ayda, who in her jubilant and expressive manner so typical of Brazilians picked me up from the city airport. Her brother Ciao took the reigns of the car, but only after a difficult round of Tetris where we tried with great difficulty to fit all three passengers and my luggage into the most mini of miniscule iddy biddy cars.

As we drove through the city, running errands to this place and that – picking up things for the apartment, visiting friends and relatives – my how my foreign eyes slowly began to adjust (or at least attempted to). To those denizens accustomed to first world living, what could be more shocking than a transplant into this.

This city is fulllllll of people. And I mean full. I had to cringe every second or two thinking our car was going to nail some poor passerby making their way down the street. Lines of people, parading every task and masquerade of greater humanity, vibrated as we passed on by. Every bus stop, every city corner, were like mini solar systems, full of groups and assemblies and clusters of stars.

Now, if one were so inclined to play creator, grab up a number of these clusters, hold them in your hand, and then loose them onto this world. The chaos that would ensue, from forces of gravity and boundary, like some great cosmic marbles game, is exactly how I would describe the movement of the city (and especially the traffic). On the road, people cut lanes, slam on their breaks, run through crowds, and completely ignore speed limits, street signs, and polite gestures. How strange that on a social level, I find Brazilians to be the most friendly and helpful of people, but on the street all laws of opposition somehow come into affect. At one point, Ciao got in a fight with Ayda over some petty matter, and decided running red lights in heavy traffic was sound and justifiable. Not to mention, drinking in the car is no big deal, and we all had a couple of beers (albeit light) full and twirling in our bellies.

Yes, life here is indeed inconceivable. One just has to experience it first hand. The poverty here is so endemic, so deeply entrenched; it is hard to picture the city any other way. Hanging out with working class true to rank Brazilians is so different than life in the green tourist zone. Had my maiden voyage to Brazil unfolded as it did yesterday, driving around the slum areas and in full unabashed traffic, I think it would have scared the living shit out of me.
But this time around, things are different. I want to take the authentic path—to live, and love, and learn as a Brazilian, to truly get a handle on what life is really like here. This requires some level of acceptance, and courage, and an ability to forget position and first world ideals. This, I feel, is my path—to be a cultural warrior and combat my scrappy hold on normality.
In just one day, my first day here, I felt more challenged than in the whole of my year and a half return to comfortable living in the United States. Such things are overrated (at least for me, for the time being), and I look forward to this narrow path and the wide array of challenges that now lie ahead.

Departing the Oklahoma sub suburbs.

View outside the living room window. Yeah green!

Cafe da manha

Thought this was such a great subtitle, had to snap a photo.

My bedroom. The mattress is thin, and the air hotttttt, but I call it home.

As morenas do Brasil. Sigh. No caption necessary.

Destination Brazil

The journey begins. I stand facing south with the wind to my back,
unseen tendrils caressing, dipping and diving, moving past my body
and on to the arid plain. Freedom it whispers, movement and song,
a smile past my ear that flies up and onward—a stretch that looses
farther, and farther, and farther away.

First to the ancient metropolis of the Wichita’s,
to the bayous of Louisiana, to the turquoise waters
of the Gulf Sea. One tip and toe onward it flutters,
first to embrace the priestess and her voodoo cry.
Then comes drag of both fire and smoke, the breath
within a word, and the gift of sound for plantation cane.

Slowly, at destination she materializes.

Where upon...

and hither to...

A terra do vera cruz.

In green majesty and splendor. Great forest and coastal water. Colonial kingdoms born anew.

She turns…

She beckons…

And in concert must I yield, to smile and step forward,
to follow, right, onward, and ever through.

Pubwished

So I am finally, ever so finally, an officially published author. Way back in 2003, when I spent my days crawling around archaeological sites and old dusty libraries, I submitted an article to Michigan History—the most widely circulated history publication in my home state. This particular project was a result of my efforts as the lead researcher for the Southwest Michigan Black Heritage Society (picture little white boy me, driving around the rather segregated city of Kalamazoo, looking for leads). I got the job through my good friend Donna, who I worked with at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum. She maintains, to this day, that I am the best writer and researcher she has ever had, which is a complement to be sure.

This particular article was on the Underground Railroad in Kalamazoo County, and local abolitionist leader Henry Montague who ferried slaves furtively throughout the district. It was a fun project, and one that deserves a spotlight in Kalamazoo’s divided climate. Only thing is, the magazine reduced the size of my article almost by half. Taking out that many words pretty much butchered my own hovering authorial voice—kind of like King Solomon actually chopping the proverbial baby in half, instead of just pretending he was going to do so. It was hard to see my baby go.

Anyway, fast forward five years and they’re finally ready to publish it. I feel somewhat inspired, and would really like to publish more. Maybe some travel material perhaps, something on the history and current life of Salvador. Maybe a love story or two. It’s good to finally be pubwished, and for the rest we shall see.

Cemeteries. A historians wet dream.

Grave of Henry Montague and his wife of more than 60 years, Abigail Kingsley.

Waiting

Current ETA: 20 Days. Life moves in cycles. I am now back at Black Rocks Ranch, spending the holiday with my folks and the remaining days before I leave for Brazil. Just as last time, this place is the calm before the storm--a secluded and isolated bubble that requires a closer connection to nature and a weakening of my socialite city habits. It is in some respects a difficult place for me to be, disconnected from the noisy chaos of Boulder life, and a good number of weeks away from my South American adventure. The place has it's beauty, it's monastic like perks, but still. 20 Days. I continue to work, to wish, to wait.

Black Rocks by Dusk.

Paintball with the boys.

New Years in Norman. I hopped a couple hours away to spend the
holiday with Ben and Micha, welcome compatriots in the search for
good American fun.

Snappity hoo! New Years in the 70's is freaky flash and fun too!

After raiding the parents closet.

Beer shotguns for good measure (p.s. I don't recommend them)

Dancing and Miami Vice.

And all around pretty people and good times.