um pouco cansada

I tire myself out so easily. It took forever to figure out how to buy tickets to Salvador...in the end I ended up giving up on the Brazilian websites and booking a flight through good old Expedia. I tried to buy a phone, but I didn't have my CPF number with me (a Brazilian identity number that anyone with a certifiable identity can get by sitting in a room with a bunch of other people and waiting for them to call the number in your hand so they can give you another number) and by the time I started walking down the smoky Copacabana streets for the second time in a row today, I walked for a few miles and it became clear that everything was already closed.
It bothers me immensely that my phone is gone. And that the altercation was so nasty. I walk forever here and feel my legs getting stronger and this in itself is satisfying. I got a little dizzy and light heated because I hadn't eaten much. I stopped in one cafe to buy a chicken pastry. Then I stopped in another for coconut juice + milk, mmm.
Oh yeah, why no phone? One night last week, I was out with some lovely Bostonians I met through the language school. We went to a giant indoor market called Sao Cristoval. It's like an all you can buy, drink, smoke, consume fest inside a building the size of a football stadium. Every trinket imaginable, a plethora of restaurants, clubs, music venues, bars, meat shops, juice shops, it's kinda like a mall but much dirtier, cheaper, funnier, stranger, wilder, poorer, etc. Some big time singer was supposed to be performing that night and this hiked up the entrance fee. As the night wore on it became clear that fans were getting pumped for the performance and I didn't see this but apparently some girl was escorted out, sweating profusely. I had been trying to get deeper into the crowd to catch a peek of Donatello or whatever big time performance man's name was, but at this point the group I was with freaked out and did a 180 towards the exit. I only understood this later, but they caught a cab for us to go home in and bargained on a fixed price for everyone with the driver. As we only live a few blocks away from each other this sounded fine. As soon as we started explaining to the driver that he would be making two stops, one for me and one for them, he got extremely angry saying that that was too much and they hadn't given him enough money. I had a bit more Portuguese than the others and tried to negotiate with the driver but he was a nasty money digger who pretended not to understand. It was a frustrating cab ride. When we pulled up to my building I tried to negotiate again and got into a nasty argument with him. In the heat of it I forgot my cellphone in that lovely man's backseat. I had just received a text from a guy I had met days before who has been inviting me out, asking "where are you beautiful?" But the cell is gone now and has been for days as are many of the new contacts in it. Shit like this must happen when traveling especially alone, frantic, and adjusting. I'm buying a new phone and it will be even cheaper than the lost one and I have a pang of regret in my chest. If only I had been a smoother negotiator when the taxi driver picked up the phone and offered more money or shown less anger and indignation. He asked me, "how much will you give me for your phone?" and when I reluctantly said 10 reais, he decided to take revenge on me and never pick up again.
Anyway, this has been a bit of a tired Saturday, and the night will pick up in beautiful Lapa for some dancing. Rio is so beautiful, how to swallow enough of it, how to do enough. It's wonderful and overwhelming.

Brazil, layered and maravilhosa

I've been in Brazil for a bit over 2 weeks now. Summer has already been incredible and deeply fulfilling.
First I went to see incredible Sicilian sites with my loving family. They are always there for me, to help me breathe and vacate when reality feels overwhelming. Now I'm in Brazil, studying Portuguese on this fellowship and enjoying every minute of the lovely new experiences, the dramatic, funny, kind (and sometimes treacherous,) people, the scenery, the soul moving music. Tudo bom.
The classes are getting a little tiring as they are early in the morning and last for several hours each day. Maybe today needs to be a day off. I was supposed to go to the countryside with a boy but we had a falling out over class differences (he thinks I'm an American princess who looks down on him.) It reminds me of a book I read recently, Goodbye Columbus. Some of the words he hurled at me were way too much, and he ran away after throwing them like useless old rocks. He wanted to take me on a field trip to see poverty, show the over-privileged "Beverly Hills" (he called me,) girl poverty, see how the American ginnypig reacts. His own experiment, his own environment. As much as I want to see the country, I don't appreciate being called Beverly Hills by an angry lover. Hilarious for someone who has been living most of the year on the South Side of Chicago in cheap rooms because a graduate student stipend is hardly enough to cover rent any where in the US. I'm not saying I'm a terribly poor person. I'm not. I've got a great family who supports me when I need it, and even treats me to lovely experiences most people never have. But I'm no Beverly Hills either. Anyway, enough. I wrote him an email explaining...maybe I'll post it here later out of interest.
So either he'll get over the economic battle he picked with the wrong tourist, and I'll go to the country today, or I'll do the more typical bourgeois thing and enjoy the glorious rays at the beach with a couple new Brazilian friends. It's going to be an interesting day regardless, and I'm going to make the best of it. I want to be the best of me but I want respect too. I want to be a good person but I also want to enjoy and enjoy the beauty and truth that is here without being pigeonholed in hurtful ways.

almost free of dead weight...rapunzel spins again

I'm reading this marvelous article on the imagination. Let it set mine free. Tonight the goal is to revise my overwrought thesis to the point of presentability.

I have lived monastically, scholastically, and in a lonely ivory tower for two years now. I am my own witch. I let down my own hair. I climb down my own hair and hope to find a prince or a kingdom or a reward for sitting up here spinster style, spinning, spinning, spinning.

What do I weave with my golden threads? I weave attempts at thoughts that are supposed to be meaningful in terms of the wondrous human experience. They are supposed to fit into the box you give me. Society gives us boxes to fill. I'm sitting in this interesting box. It's lit with candles and full of other isolated spellbound zombies.

I've got my cappuccino and thoughts to keep me company. Courage said Goethe. The Faustian striving spins on, curse-like, making self-punishing soldiers of men.

It's rainy as hell inside and out. If life were a movie this would make for a good depressing scene. Drip, drip, write. Drip, drip, write. The faucet is open again. I want to sink into the waterfall of my imagination with a merman and an endless ocean of time and body. Expanse, expand.

May-be

May's a month of possibility where this caterpillar turns to the ultimate self-fulfilling metaphor and butterflies the pain and shit away.

Ma ma mia
The words the words
to free ya,
are you are you
gonna tell me
the little girl who watched little boys
like ants on her hands kept in boxes
of childhood manipulation fantasy
gets to come out and play?

April creeping up...brushing off the crawlies

creepy, comes from creep. it's an interesting word.
from wiktionary "creep (plural creeps)The movement of something that creeps (like worms or snails)A relatively small gradual change, variation or deviation (from a planned value) in a measure.(informal, pejorative) An annoying irritating person(informal, pejorative) A frightening and/or disconcerting person, especially one who gives the speaker chills or who induces psychosomatic facial itching.Stop following me, you creep!"


So what is implied is creepy, wormy, insect-like slithering movement, either emotional or purely physical that makes the experiencer of this movement uncomfortable. You could say that relationships are in some ways based on movements that we make towards each other communicatively. Communication and interaction is a movement. So "creepy" is a movement that is buglike, uncomfortable...maybe this is where primal fear of the unknown and distrust of strangers hooks up to allow us to figure who we can and can't trust in this short little blip of a life. 

permeability

I don't know about you, but I'm far too socially permeable. I've known for a long time that I can be extremely (or overly) affected by what people say and do towards me. My mood, my thoughts, my disposition...I guess I should live alone again (soon!) until/unless I find people who I'm happing cohabiting with. I'm very high in empathy but at times I wish I could just switch it off. Click.
Really, people can take advantage of the permeability and good will of others. These amoeba layers that separate me from other people, they could use a few body guards in there. I think I'd like a couple Israeli soldiers patrolling mine. Got them. Ready.

helloooo

I want to write an article called: America's Next Top Woman
stay tuned, it will be a linguistic anthro expose of how Tyra Banks is a self-made policer of the American model woman prototype, whitening strategies and all.

I am on a kick that involves bouts of attempting to thesis write and then taking breaks by watching the silly, wise, and rude Patti Stanger. I am a sucker for certain kinds of television. Oh the personalities. And a yenta?
Come on. If Patti calls herself a 3rd generation matchmaker I'm probably at least a 10th. It's just a guess, but come on. I was born in yentaville. I will shuffle love like an easy deck of cards and deal your hand and read it as if I'm psychic except I'm not, I'm in yentaville. I know that doesn't make any sense. Um.

Good night love-wanters. (don't we all)