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----

too good to leave

Though in other ways a fantastic beginning to the rest of this living. I'm stretching out the time in Salvador more just like I did in Rio I can tell that I will. Though the "flexibilidade" in my airplane ticket and my life only goes so far. Classes will start, a new Chicago move awaits, and I absolutely must visit my grandma the minute I get back. I will insert a few more blissful, tropical weeks --->there. And then we'll see.
I've been waiting and waiting and I'm blooming.

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

pulled into context and loving the living

I'm boiling water without olive oil. It's a kind of useless traveler's way to make pasta but will work just fine. Especially as there is still tomato sauce in the fridge and tomato sauce has oil and salt and all the fixings in its fine little packet.
I mainly blog on slow or tired days when I either really feel like writing something creative or want to procrastinate from doing something else. This is a rainy, tummy achey kinda day.
I can hear the sounds of traffic 13 floors down. I could go over to Carlos' house for wine and snacks and random company. I could keep working on an essay I owe a kind professor, fascinating I swear, on the body in lusophone space.
I also, should get back to writing that groundbreaking novel the world will so love eventually and which will so improve my lifestyle. Mhm. The question is always finding the time and space, mental and physical to produce. To do. Do. Do.
There's some low budget Brazilian soap opera playing on low volume on my tv, there's a woman attempting to melodramatically jump out of a lexus to proclaim her anger as she parades down the highway in stilettos only to stop a giant yellow truck in and jump in. I plan on a less dramatic evening of pasta and writing but who knows, I'm constantly pulled into context these days. ;)

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.