Pagan Hugs for Gypsy Jews

The best writing teacher I've had thus far has told me a lot of that intuitive advice that I thought I knew but that was driven home by her words: write every day. Even if it's shit. Write, write, write. When I was a little kid I used to think about being a great artist and my drawing teachers would always tell me to draw every day, draw, draw, draw. We are these creative monkey machines that need to practice our crafts all the time every moment so that the engineered beauty of our minds may find a voice in the coupling of talent and a hell of a lot of practice. Practice, practice, practice.

I had so many jumpy dreams last night. I'm torn between doing my research in two different countries, not too mention my sudden consideration of the fact that moving for my work will and does involve personal upheaval and I should consider that. I've been so reckless with my own emotions. Pick up and move like a gypsy and act as if this is a natural path, the path, my path, as if wherever I am will just fall into place from simple gravitational pull.
I saw a really informative personal documentary last night and for anyone who's interested in the shifting flows of time, culture, and blood it's a very interesting sketch. The film is called Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness. According to my grandfather, we're related to this lovely poet, Sholem Aleichem...a pretty light in a past I can only see through the recollections of others.

Speaking of films, I'd also like to plug my friend John Ullyot's film in the making: Mulligan. It's looking creative and wonderful as his work has always been and I'm looking forward to seeing a character I've read in so many stories come to life on the screen.

Today's my father's birthday. Which is a good bit more important to me than Jesus' birthday could ever be, but it's a happy day in the US...I like how eager people are to congratulate each other with it, I guess I just like human warmth and it can be touching from strangers. Maybe that's why I like countries like Brazil where it feels like American Christmas every day.

Maybe that's my answer? Brazil. Brazil? Brazil?! Either way there's a warm tropical spot near the equator of my heart and it's spreading. Happy warmth day to all!

This imperfect thing we love so much.

About a week, A WEEK, until I fly off to Brazil. It's sinking in and is a little terrifying. I'm terribly excited and as usual I'm finishing up a paper, getting last minute things together, and have not started packing. I lived in denial for 2 days this weekend during which I mainly slept and watched weepy lovesick episodes of Grey's Anatomy. I am a master hibernator, especially when there's work to be done. Ok, I also managed to go on a date on which I had fun stepping outside of myself and pretending to be some random hot woman in a pretty dress on a date, (dates are good for that because the role-playing is such a game), cleaned out my fridge, and had my first yoga class in years. Now I'm drinking some kind of coffee called "European" that consists of egg white and half-and-half and vanilla and attempting to plan a passable paper on the history of childhood in Brazil. (The coffee in my favorite local Chicago cafe is always really funny tasting but I'm mainly here for the calm, studious atmosphere and the soothing young Russian couple who runs it anyway...the caffeine boost can come in odd flavors and I don't mind too much.) Hardly easy considering kids aren't exactly anyone's focus most of the time historically unless considered a problem. My idea wasn't to write about pedophiles or child abandonment...though there it is, entire chapters dedicated to poverty and perversion.

I did however manage to find a subletter within about a day of advertising my place. It is a lovely apartment and made me feel so good to find a thrilled tenant in oh, about 5 seconds.

I also have a sperm donor in case I decide to have a child on my own. I like him a lot, I may be in love with him in a way, whatever that everlastingly loaded term means. God knows I freak out enough for my potential sperm donor and I and our beautiful unborn multi-ethnic babies combined. No committed partner as of yet, but hey Cinderella did you know that modern life would be so darn difficult to navigate for women with standards and brains?

The shoe might fit but we're a little past comparing men to shoes aren't we? Unless you're looking for a two-dimensional life, and some people do of course, a consumer metaphor is hardly appropriate. Fuck the fairy shoe and it's fatalistic implications. Of course, I'm a terrible shoe shopper though when I do find shoes I like they tend to be awesome shoes complimented by strangers so maybe it's not the worst metaphor in the world. But it's not just about taste. It's not just about a Bourdieun understanding of choice and class. There is something else some of us seek, something like the soul that cannot be pinpointed in music and food and the societal niche occupied by the Prince or the Pauper (whoever you happen to fall for.) There's something deep and terribly poetic and painful and inappropriate at the bottom of it all. Your mother probably wouldn't approve of it because it isn't right. It's uncomfortable. The connection with those we have that funny feeling for is somewhere in the neighborhood of the Id and some fairy space called Romance Fantasy and this fairy space is only somewhat rooted in practical teachings and tangible truths. We try not to Peter Pan into the great wide unknown but we do anyway, we have a mutual drugging experience that feeds into the fairy space. We float off. Things don't make sense. We try to explain it to our friends but we can't. We're self-fulfilling madmen.

On that note I'm going back to work, good evening fellow fruit loops. 

chocolate pie ...and this title is complete

I'm wearing a goofy shirt that reads "I <3 Capoeira". It's for a 7-8 year old boy and so it's a tiny bit tight around the sleeves. It reminds me of how when I was a teenager it was popular to wear itsy bitsy shirts and show off your midriff. I have backpedaled into my teenage self and my midriff is slightly on display in this way too small thing I'm not sure why I bought it (except that the mestre with the Arnold Shwarzenegger accent who sold it to me has a charm about him, so if he says it's woman's shirt maybe I'll believe it for a little while,) but maybe I should cut the sleeves off....my little sisters wouldn't approve. It's a high school thing, it's a petty thing, it's a family thing, how to display myself, it's a fashion thing, it's a bullshit, bullshit thing. They always judged me so harshly, my mom and sisters, ridiculing me like a gang of popular bossy girls on the playground. I always succumbed, if not in action, then in hurt feelings. Very hurt feelings and a very sore ego.

I had my first Batizado this past weekend. Mestres and students flew into Chicago from all over the country and world to teach workshops and to graduate students in an order of dancefightloving....I somehow passed, graduated into a level. A white-yellow cord signifying that I have some level of skill: totally unexpected.

I'm in from the "beach," the Lake Michigan Shore...this whole Chicago summer thing is a new and interesting experience for me. It's the first time I've experienced it at all...I'm meeting a lot of nice, fun people in this warm version of Chicago. Well I can befriend for a little while before I re-Brazil my life. Chicago will never be Brazilian or tropical or warm enough anyway. A part of my heart has given up on it even as I discover lovely new nooks and crannies and finally meet the kind of folks I could enjoy myself with.

Things, in some way only have substance if you believe in their thingy-ness. If you believe in them. And I make-believe my own things all the time and that's a good escape from the confines of a mostly senseless world. The only parts that matter are the warm ones. Not their substance but their temperature. Touch my forehead. 

reefed in Recife

I'm sitting at the moment in a dark (because the bulb is apparently dead), quiet professor's study in Recife. Tomorrow mid day I will travel on to Aracaju for a long layover and some crab and then finally in the wee hours I will fly back to Salvador. It is becoming more uncertain whether I'll land back in Mama America on the 26th or 27th or what depending on my weird ticket, but somehow it will be fine. Recife gave me space to think and look at myself and Brazil and such. Though too much and too little space. I'm possibly in love with a wonderful man and I have no idea when I'll see him again but I will see him for several days starting tomorrow. You know there is a short story by Vonnegut called Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. You should read it if you haven't. I know that I will let myself be sucked into the rising tide of Chicago again. But this time I will get a much better apartment. And it will probably be in Ukrainian Village. And I will set up shop in this lovely apartment in this chique neighborhood and focus on my studies and plan my ambitious career and imagine how I will come up with something good and useful and insightful for people by the lamplight as the Chicago snow falls outside my window like a spectre and I will imagine the wonderful man in Salvador as he plays capoeira in the summer heat and kisses some other beautiful woman under the sweat of carnival as I sweat under the lamplight from the thought of it and pour myself some wine and the academic musings will turn into poetry on my computer screen as they always do and I will think about love and whether sitting here under the lamplight slaving away for some unseen goal is worth it when I could be holding you right now. Tangibility, friends. It is the difference between dreaming and having. Oh Brazil, thank you for letting me have. Though now I can think ahead how it will feed my dreams. And so the cycle goes. Why is it so rare to have both, and maybe my melancholy will turn into something stronger and I won't feel stuck in some cyclical poetic musing in which love is tragic but the dragon....Cimorene will fly off on his back, I mean maybe some unexpected bizarre fairytale will still come true in my life. I'll lower my hair or weave gold or simply become an empowered heroine. Nevertheless, we're always looking for some expected ending before anything has a chance to happen because we're so damn afraid to turn the page----

12 minutes or less

until a few new friends come to my apartment in Salvador and we spend an evening drinking and simply enjoying. Maybe forro, maybe just caipirinha.
I have no idea if anyone reads this blog at this point but it's a fun outlet at moments. When I have enough time to stop to think about myself, I remember that I think in narrative form. As if I'm writing the book of my life as I live it. I write as I live in my head. If only I could insert a little laptop up there. Maybe someone will invent that one day. I only re-realize this about myself when I have time to. If I'm moving about frantically, there is no time for head narration and I am simply swimming in somebody else's book.
Since I have a few quicky minutes and a rising mood because I'm about to see lovely people....
Brazil, what I love: a gazillion fruit and plants I've never heard of before that make it all the more dr.seussy exotic like cupuacu and guarana and cacau, people that are blunt and sexual and sometimes even more starving for human connection than I am, music-making in all corners, attempts at creativity and sweetness by strangers, trustworthy friends made within a few minutes time, men who zip up my backpack as I walk down the street, capoeira - a fleshy celebration of every muscle that hurts so good the next day....
what I don't love: being pegged as a money pot and stalked, attempts at thievery and deceit, racism, lack of hot water, electric showers that can easily shock and kill you, hungry children, terrifying cops, crack everywhere popped like a tic tac

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.

Brazilian dreams

I found out today that I won a fellowship that's gonna send me to the beautiful Brazil this summer. I'm going to ride this happy wave of anticipation for all it's worth, baby yeah!!!
I've never been to Brazil, and the goals for this summer could include:
1. Improve Portuguese (well this is obvious and the point)
2. Check out potential dissertation research sites and ideas (the second obvious point)
3. Write a novel
4. Learn the capoeira
5. Fall in love
6. Enjoy life
7. Write a novel about:
    a. falling in love to the beat of a Brazilian drum
    b. autoethnographic self-fun
    c. something wildly fictional where Kurt Vonnegut meets J.D. Salinger meet Lev Tolstoy meet Emily Dickinson meet Louise Gluck meet my mother
8. write poems and prose-poems, and stories, and articles and other fun things
9. draw, paint, dance, smile, laugh

I'm into lists at the moment. Lists this organizational thought process where numbering and sub-numbering is supposed to provide order. I'm so damn excited!!!!