Brazil: Last Chapter

The wind is blowing fiercely outside, whipping past palm trees, red brick houses, and darkened cement streets saturated from a night of rain. The glass windows of my tree house apartment shudder loudly, as each gust arrives from the sea and scatters in a thousand different directions. Outside, my friendly neighborhood evangelist is making his morning rounds, cupping his hand over his mouth in an effort to scream something about light, and truth, and his way of life.

I like rainy days, quiet days. Days where the multitudes are stuck at home, inside, away from their stereos, and fireworks, and other noisy activities common this time of year. Even the evangelist in his blue work pants and button down shirt seems disheartened, as if he realizes that it is habit which motivates his sermon and not the possibility that it might actually be heard.

Why is it that in the quiet of a rainy day, somewhere under the blank canvas of a gray sky, a thought seems to have greater force, as if the very act of thinking something might somehow make it real?

Lying here in bed as I listen to the wind, my laptop propped up against my knees, I am taken back inside my head, back four years prior when I first began my journey in Brazil. I remember how I felt when I stepped off the plane – the rush of warm air – like something momentous was about to take place, but I couldn’t define or imagine what it was. I remember my first few weeks living in Brotas, sleeping on a thin mattress, wondering what the hell I just made of my life and where it would take me. I remember the culture shock, the feeling of inadequacy, the necessity of throwing the fantasy aside and dealing with the simple fact that I had traded my cushy US lifestyle for a dirty one bedroom apartment, linguistic incompetence, and little hope of work or pay.

I remember many things in those first two years, many defining moments on my aesthetic journey. I could identify with the words of Christopher McCandless, the “no phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes”. The battle to kill the false being within and walk alone, “lost in the wild”.

My journey to Brazil began in 2006, after a divorce, a time of forced solitude, and really developed as a means to bring meaning back into my life—to grab life by the balls and reclaim some sense of personal identity, strength, and pride. My first trip lasted only six months and did what it was supposed to do—bring passion back into my bones and a desire to look into the future. In 2008, after experimenting with my new self, I knew I had to go back. My journey felt incomplete, like there was much evolution left to do. I wanted to get to know Brazil from the inside out, to invest in her culture, her language, to see what she looked like as a citizen and not as a tourist. I wanted to really get to know a foreign world, to throw off conventional trappings and see how a people different from my own live and love.

For the last four years, that is exactly what I did. The canvas grew richer in size, and shape, and display. First I worked at survival, finding ways to live cheaply, to speak slowly, to move about my environment as confidently as I could. Then, I worked on my citizenship, lost for months at a time in a sea of lawyers, paperwork, and bureaucracy. After, I worked on establishing my professional life, enrolling in courses, and programs, and my Masters degree. Then came the most arduous (yet gratifying) of tasks; learning how to love; to shuck off the limitations of ego and really get to know another human being—to understand that shared sorrow is half sorrow, and that shared joy is double joy.

On this journey I have learned many things. I have learned that pineapple tastes different in the tropics. I have learned to honor a sunny day, to eat fresh crab slowly, to uphold relationships above everything else. I have learned that humidity kills laptops, that a smile and an open spirit go a long way, that people around the world are mostly the same. If there is one thing that I have learned above all else on this journey, it is that life honors the brave. If you conspire to grow on a personal or spiritual level, life will conspire right along with you. Opportunities for growth will suddenly present themselves, and you will be given the opportunity, the possibility of moving ahead.

Now, with my wallet a bit thinner, my hair a bit grayer, and my wrinkles more pronounced, I come home ready to face new challenges. I come home a speaker of Portuguese, an educator, a lover and a fighter. I come home from Brazil a richer man.

For this chance to live and to love, to give and to grow…

I am forever grateful.