It's 10pm here, which means that true cariocas are just taking their showers to get ready for a night out. I'm sitting in Luca's bedroom which is also the computer room. She's asleep on the bed behind me. Rocki is reading in our room. I've just been surfing the net for news about Rio.
We live on the far southern edge of Rio in Recreio, a town that used to be sleepy in a beach kind of way but is now witnessing the burst up of tall condominiums. If you go a few minutes down the road from where we live, you're in true country: hand threshing and horse-drawn wagons. This is what is meant by "developing world," this mix of SUVs and wireless internet in one building while on the corner there is no electricity or indoor toilet.
I went online to find out more about the latest in Rocinha. Rocinha is a favela - read "slum" - that we pass everytime we drive to Rocki's mother's house. It's huge - one of the largest in South America - and like any city, is a mixture of devout families and well entrenched drug lords.
And maybe it's different. After all, Rocinha has been able to close down the city of Rio on a number of occassions, by calling for a general strike. And the cabs stopped running and the stores were closed. They are not without power.
And in this city within a city, for the last few days there has been the full battle of a civil war. Drug lords in Rocinha fighting against drug lords in three other favelas.
Here is why I was looking online for more information. Here is what is so strange. I ride the buses here, I drive around with my family, I walk on some streets and I never see any of this. I have gone to Rocinha. I took Luca on a tour, called gaggingly enough "Exotic Tours" but a program in which Rocinha kids get job skills in tourism. I wanted to climb up the streets, to demystify this place that claims so many headlines. I knew that I would see the good Rocinha, the land of families and genuine people, because of course they are there, too. And like south central and the neighborhood in Cleveland where I spent part of my childhood, they don't get the press ink. And so I took Luca and we did the tour. And everyone loved that I brought my child and we got lots of attention and people were lovely and the streets felt sturdy and planted.
Boom crash fourteen dead and the military police have occupied the neighborhood where we were wandering. And I never see any of this and I don't want to see any of this and the older I get, the more used to privilege I get, but this is just too strange.
Even stranger, they are building a temple to the Rolling Stones on Copacabana Beach. This will be the largest Stones show in history and the city is giving it completely free "to the people." They are building a stage, there will be eight large screens to flash the show to the millions they expect to gather. They have built a walkway from Copacabana Palace and over the street to the stage for the VIPs. They are spending millions.
And they are cleaning up the city to make it beautiful. The Stones arrived today. They are waiting in town.
Is there any connection between Rocinha and the Stones or is it just the day's pattern?
Friday, February 17, 2006
Thursday, February 16, 2006
And my social security number is...
Ok, so I'm slow on the uptake with a lot of things. Usually they fall in the category of "the new paint color on your walls," "that change in the style of your glasses," and other visually subtle differences. Anything that has the faintest whiff of possible conspiracy, well I'm usually there pretty quickly.
So what took me so long to realize that I am probably the only blogger in a universe of bloggers who uses her real name for her profile and webpage? Everyone else seems to choose anonymity.
With no direspect to the Patriot Act, I hate these protect-my-privacy times. I am the kind of person who usually tells you how much I make, who I voted for, and what sort of sex I'm most interested in having. The US is too focused on protecting and extending the hyper-individualism that has isolated us fairly profoundly from each other. As a queer woman in a state that only very recently reversed the laws against sodomy (yes, I do), I can appreciate the importance of protecting privacy. I believe in protecting privacy. But within the context of the current United States of "this is mine, not yours", I don't believe it's the ideal starting point. Particularly when we no longer have a public to weigh against the private.
You can not stand on a street corner and orate about war, the new Wal Mart around the corner, the birth of your new child or Jesus Christ unless you have the necessary permit and, in many places, there are no permits available. The largest "public space" in Minneapolis, where I live, is sadly the Mall of America. In the frozen winter, the majority of Twin Cities residents spend some amount of time visiting this place where you can leave our jacket in the car. If you have small children but hate to shop - again, yes, me - you go just so your kids can run and get some energy off when it's too cold to be outside. But the mall is private space - as are all malls and increasingly parks, streets in front of any business, and so on. I can go there with my child so that she can get some exercize but I can't open my mouth about public education (I still believe in it), health care, the war in Iraq, or how silly the store is that only sells refrigerator magnets.
Those places that are public - parks, wilderness areas, etc - are usually places where individuals go to commune (individually) with nature or to strengthen their individual bodies with exercize. Other places - halls of government, etc - well, you can go and schedule your token protest, make sure the building has enough security to protect your safety, and take your litter with you when you leave.
I didn't buy my first car until I was 31 and the first time I got into that car, I burst into tears. Ok, for those of you who know me, as my partner says, I cry like I sweat. But still, I was "havin' a feelin'". I cried when I got into that car because after 31 years of public transportation and foot traffic, this symbol of my growing privilege gave me way too much control. I could get quickly and easily between two places, stay warm in winter, and have a complex agenda for the day with all of my crap in the back seat, but I was alone. Before, my day and life were unwillingly affected by the people who sat next to me or walked up to me outside. Their days, views, lives, and body odor affected mine. Half the time, this was neutral. A fourth of the time it was a pain in the ass but a fourth of the time it was positive - I became more than I had been before meeting this person. And I knew people, had learned of their lives in bits and pieces of bus rides and street walks, people who did not otherwise connect with my world in any way, shape or form.
Now, public space or "the right to be infringed on" is described as a mark of poverty. And it's true - the only folks who inhabit public space with all of its warts and without the ability to change tend to be folks who have no access to private space - a car, a home, an i-pod. My family uses one car in a city that was not built for walking - so we bike and bus to make up the difference, But these days it's choice. And that's an entirely different thing. There are too many times when I am lazy and pick up my option for easy.
I'll care more about protecting my privacy from internet terrors (I don't have credit cards for them to abuse, only a checking account and a cash card at my credit union and they call me when anything wierd happens on my account) and protecting my identity and protecting my privacy, when there's a public that is accountable to each other. When there is a public that exists more than on the fringes of our lives, that is not the realm of those with few resources, and one in which there is space for that dance between anarchy and democracy which has the potential of getting us somewhere.
Want to know how to find me, where I live - just give it a google.
So what took me so long to realize that I am probably the only blogger in a universe of bloggers who uses her real name for her profile and webpage? Everyone else seems to choose anonymity.
With no direspect to the Patriot Act, I hate these protect-my-privacy times. I am the kind of person who usually tells you how much I make, who I voted for, and what sort of sex I'm most interested in having. The US is too focused on protecting and extending the hyper-individualism that has isolated us fairly profoundly from each other. As a queer woman in a state that only very recently reversed the laws against sodomy (yes, I do), I can appreciate the importance of protecting privacy. I believe in protecting privacy. But within the context of the current United States of "this is mine, not yours", I don't believe it's the ideal starting point. Particularly when we no longer have a public to weigh against the private.
You can not stand on a street corner and orate about war, the new Wal Mart around the corner, the birth of your new child or Jesus Christ unless you have the necessary permit and, in many places, there are no permits available. The largest "public space" in Minneapolis, where I live, is sadly the Mall of America. In the frozen winter, the majority of Twin Cities residents spend some amount of time visiting this place where you can leave our jacket in the car. If you have small children but hate to shop - again, yes, me - you go just so your kids can run and get some energy off when it's too cold to be outside. But the mall is private space - as are all malls and increasingly parks, streets in front of any business, and so on. I can go there with my child so that she can get some exercize but I can't open my mouth about public education (I still believe in it), health care, the war in Iraq, or how silly the store is that only sells refrigerator magnets.
Those places that are public - parks, wilderness areas, etc - are usually places where individuals go to commune (individually) with nature or to strengthen their individual bodies with exercize. Other places - halls of government, etc - well, you can go and schedule your token protest, make sure the building has enough security to protect your safety, and take your litter with you when you leave.
I didn't buy my first car until I was 31 and the first time I got into that car, I burst into tears. Ok, for those of you who know me, as my partner says, I cry like I sweat. But still, I was "havin' a feelin'". I cried when I got into that car because after 31 years of public transportation and foot traffic, this symbol of my growing privilege gave me way too much control. I could get quickly and easily between two places, stay warm in winter, and have a complex agenda for the day with all of my crap in the back seat, but I was alone. Before, my day and life were unwillingly affected by the people who sat next to me or walked up to me outside. Their days, views, lives, and body odor affected mine. Half the time, this was neutral. A fourth of the time it was a pain in the ass but a fourth of the time it was positive - I became more than I had been before meeting this person. And I knew people, had learned of their lives in bits and pieces of bus rides and street walks, people who did not otherwise connect with my world in any way, shape or form.
Now, public space or "the right to be infringed on" is described as a mark of poverty. And it's true - the only folks who inhabit public space with all of its warts and without the ability to change tend to be folks who have no access to private space - a car, a home, an i-pod. My family uses one car in a city that was not built for walking - so we bike and bus to make up the difference, But these days it's choice. And that's an entirely different thing. There are too many times when I am lazy and pick up my option for easy.
I'll care more about protecting my privacy from internet terrors (I don't have credit cards for them to abuse, only a checking account and a cash card at my credit union and they call me when anything wierd happens on my account) and protecting my identity and protecting my privacy, when there's a public that is accountable to each other. When there is a public that exists more than on the fringes of our lives, that is not the realm of those with few resources, and one in which there is space for that dance between anarchy and democracy which has the potential of getting us somewhere.
Want to know how to find me, where I live - just give it a google.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
This one's for Luisa
I walked into Zona Sul, purposefully and with head held high, meandered to the back of the store and there I met its baleful stare. That big red sea bass - peixe vermelha - was going to be mine tonight and not in any wimpy American way - prefilleted and wrapped in plastic before bringing it home. No, I was going to buy it the honest Brazilian way - barely after its last breath with its eyes only just filming up.
What the hell, I decide to do it the middle class Brazilian way: "Pode limpar essa para mim?" Of course the guy behind the counter could clean it, that's why he was covered in rubber and plastic and sparkled with fish scales. "Enteiro o de costas?" he asked. Ok, he got me. I know what those words mean literally - "Entire or of/from/be (I hate prepositions) the back" but what does that mean? If you're like me and learning a second language, you overthink things. While my first thought was "Oh, entire means keep the fish in one whole fish and not cut in pieces and of the back means cut along the back and split." But then I thought further, maybe it means "entirely done or just done along the back" oh shit, maybe he's saying to me, "do you want me to do it with my entire body or just use the muscles of my back?"
I could have smiled at him, batted my gringa eyelashes, and admitted to being the naive foreigner. I could have smiled and asked him to explain, but he had looked annoyed when I asked him to clean the bloody red thing and now he was just standing there, spiritually tapping his foot and waiting for my reply.
"De costas," I said first, smiling and acting all sure of myself. "Nao, espara, enteiro." I said, changing my mind.
He went in the back room, although I could see him through the glass, and pulled out this mother of a long knife and then another one and then a third. Goodness, Susan, don't try this at home.
And then he bent over and I could see him no more. So I wandered off to pick up a pineapple, some limes, some sweet corn, and a few other bits and bobs, checking every few minutes to see what he was up to. Finally, I saw his head pop up, walked over and then heard the plastic roll going round and round and round and with each rotation, the chunk of a big ass fish hitting the chopper block.
And he gave it to me. And it was a whole fish. And it was still staring at me.
And I brought it home and while Rocki went to pick up Luca from school, I ran to the kitchen and got out my knives. "Have you ever cut a whole fish before?" she had asked and I had nonchalantly replied, "Sure but years ago" which translates to once I helped someone else while I was in college. Come on, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Fish to me meant Mrs. Paul's Fish Sticks. My partner was not going to watch what happened when me and the peixe vermelha got friendly.
Of course, before Rocki left, I was on the internet googling "filleting fish" and "how to clean a sea bass" and they all called for special filleting knives and who knows what else so I decided to just wing it.
Even as we speak, I have two highly uneven and very scraggly looking peixe vermelha fillets baking in the oven, covered gently and lovingly with olive oil, sea salt, lime juice and garlic. Luca loves fish. So do I. My Brazilian lover hates it. She's having leftover pasta tonight.
Tenho saudades, Luisa.
What the hell, I decide to do it the middle class Brazilian way: "Pode limpar essa para mim?" Of course the guy behind the counter could clean it, that's why he was covered in rubber and plastic and sparkled with fish scales. "Enteiro o de costas?" he asked. Ok, he got me. I know what those words mean literally - "Entire or of/from/be (I hate prepositions) the back" but what does that mean? If you're like me and learning a second language, you overthink things. While my first thought was "Oh, entire means keep the fish in one whole fish and not cut in pieces and of the back means cut along the back and split." But then I thought further, maybe it means "entirely done or just done along the back" oh shit, maybe he's saying to me, "do you want me to do it with my entire body or just use the muscles of my back?"
I could have smiled at him, batted my gringa eyelashes, and admitted to being the naive foreigner. I could have smiled and asked him to explain, but he had looked annoyed when I asked him to clean the bloody red thing and now he was just standing there, spiritually tapping his foot and waiting for my reply.
"De costas," I said first, smiling and acting all sure of myself. "Nao, espara, enteiro." I said, changing my mind.
He went in the back room, although I could see him through the glass, and pulled out this mother of a long knife and then another one and then a third. Goodness, Susan, don't try this at home.
And then he bent over and I could see him no more. So I wandered off to pick up a pineapple, some limes, some sweet corn, and a few other bits and bobs, checking every few minutes to see what he was up to. Finally, I saw his head pop up, walked over and then heard the plastic roll going round and round and round and with each rotation, the chunk of a big ass fish hitting the chopper block.
And he gave it to me. And it was a whole fish. And it was still staring at me.
And I brought it home and while Rocki went to pick up Luca from school, I ran to the kitchen and got out my knives. "Have you ever cut a whole fish before?" she had asked and I had nonchalantly replied, "Sure but years ago" which translates to once I helped someone else while I was in college. Come on, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Fish to me meant Mrs. Paul's Fish Sticks. My partner was not going to watch what happened when me and the peixe vermelha got friendly.
Of course, before Rocki left, I was on the internet googling "filleting fish" and "how to clean a sea bass" and they all called for special filleting knives and who knows what else so I decided to just wing it.
Even as we speak, I have two highly uneven and very scraggly looking peixe vermelha fillets baking in the oven, covered gently and lovingly with olive oil, sea salt, lime juice and garlic. Luca loves fish. So do I. My Brazilian lover hates it. She's having leftover pasta tonight.
Tenho saudades, Luisa.
Monday, February 13, 2006
What a woman carries inside
When I walk into a pharmacy in Brazil, move through the aisles past the beauty creams and pampers, I come upon the same thing time and time again: twenty to thirty different packages of sanitary pads and maybe, if I'm lucky, one very expensive kind of imported tampons. Why do women in Brazil not wear tampons?
I've asked a lot of women here already but no one has an answer for me. There are pads for all sizes and flows, brands I recognize from the United States and brands that are home spun or grown or synthesized. But usually only a few OBs or the occassional Tampax for catching the flow further upstream.
This really makes no sense to me. It is hot here. Very hot. And more women on average wear clothes that are either cut tight or cut short or barely there. Skimpy for sweat support. Living in Rio means living near an ocean. Swimming pools are in abundunce and on the weekends, you can barely find space for another body whether on the sand or poolside. And bikinis here, well, the majority are made from dental floss and cotton balls.
Where do they hide the pads?
When I was a tadpole, tampons were just moving from those things that liberated sexual women wore to those things that every woman who didn't want to feel like she was wearing diapers could now choose. This was before toxic shock when fear struck deep into the national vagina. No, television and magazines had pictures of thin thin white women with tight white clothes bending over to pick up golf balls from the green. Look! No bulky pad! No embarrassing red spots in the crotch line!!
I embraced my tampon self, except for the period in my 20s when I opted for natural sea sponges. I still prefer them, but I got tired of going into public toilets and walking through the doors with a bloody red mound in my hand, wringing and rinsing in the sink along with my unwilling sisters, and then going back into my stall to reinsert. For most of my life, I've been a tampon kind of girl.
Have I been misled? Is there something that women here know that I don't know? Has marketing gone so deeply to my brain that I don't realize that even with dioxin-free Nature's Choice tampons, I am still causing some profound bodily harm?
A month or so ago, I asked a woman who was sitting and sweating next to the pool - and wearing shorts which she never does - why she didn't get in the cool refreshing water. It's lovely, I told her, and the sun is so hot. She glanced left and right and then leaned in to explain that she was mensturating (I don't know the slang in Portuguese, I only know menstruating which might sound normal to a Brazilian ear but always sounds Victorian to mine). She couldn't go in to the pool - "get myself wet" was actually what she said - until she was finished.
There I sat, on the steps leading in to the pool, my vagina safely submerged with a tampon tucked carefully away inside, and I wondered if she could see those small microbes of blood that, along with my other womanly juices, must be slipping from the sodden white cotton and delicately polluting the pool.
I never drip, I never stain. And I stay swimming, even when my uterus is cramping up to beat the band. If anything, water pressure like orgasm can really help a girl get through her monthlies.
Why don't women in Brazil use tampons?
And no, don't blame it on Catholicism. You should see the bottle dance. They can aim their girl-bits over the lip of a bottle - from three year old children to happy grandmotherly types - and writhe along with the rest of the family. How come they can't soak up the love with a bit of white cotton?
PS: This is just a side question but when I click on the button at the top right of the page - next blog - about half of the blogs it takes me to are in Portuguese. Does the blogger man know that I am in Brazil and assume my billngualism? Are you all getting the same thing? This is very odd to me, as the internet is not physically located anywhere.
I've asked a lot of women here already but no one has an answer for me. There are pads for all sizes and flows, brands I recognize from the United States and brands that are home spun or grown or synthesized. But usually only a few OBs or the occassional Tampax for catching the flow further upstream.
This really makes no sense to me. It is hot here. Very hot. And more women on average wear clothes that are either cut tight or cut short or barely there. Skimpy for sweat support. Living in Rio means living near an ocean. Swimming pools are in abundunce and on the weekends, you can barely find space for another body whether on the sand or poolside. And bikinis here, well, the majority are made from dental floss and cotton balls.
Where do they hide the pads?
When I was a tadpole, tampons were just moving from those things that liberated sexual women wore to those things that every woman who didn't want to feel like she was wearing diapers could now choose. This was before toxic shock when fear struck deep into the national vagina. No, television and magazines had pictures of thin thin white women with tight white clothes bending over to pick up golf balls from the green. Look! No bulky pad! No embarrassing red spots in the crotch line!!
I embraced my tampon self, except for the period in my 20s when I opted for natural sea sponges. I still prefer them, but I got tired of going into public toilets and walking through the doors with a bloody red mound in my hand, wringing and rinsing in the sink along with my unwilling sisters, and then going back into my stall to reinsert. For most of my life, I've been a tampon kind of girl.
Have I been misled? Is there something that women here know that I don't know? Has marketing gone so deeply to my brain that I don't realize that even with dioxin-free Nature's Choice tampons, I am still causing some profound bodily harm?
A month or so ago, I asked a woman who was sitting and sweating next to the pool - and wearing shorts which she never does - why she didn't get in the cool refreshing water. It's lovely, I told her, and the sun is so hot. She glanced left and right and then leaned in to explain that she was mensturating (I don't know the slang in Portuguese, I only know menstruating which might sound normal to a Brazilian ear but always sounds Victorian to mine). She couldn't go in to the pool - "get myself wet" was actually what she said - until she was finished.
There I sat, on the steps leading in to the pool, my vagina safely submerged with a tampon tucked carefully away inside, and I wondered if she could see those small microbes of blood that, along with my other womanly juices, must be slipping from the sodden white cotton and delicately polluting the pool.
I never drip, I never stain. And I stay swimming, even when my uterus is cramping up to beat the band. If anything, water pressure like orgasm can really help a girl get through her monthlies.
Why don't women in Brazil use tampons?
And no, don't blame it on Catholicism. You should see the bottle dance. They can aim their girl-bits over the lip of a bottle - from three year old children to happy grandmotherly types - and writhe along with the rest of the family. How come they can't soak up the love with a bit of white cotton?
PS: This is just a side question but when I click on the button at the top right of the page - next blog - about half of the blogs it takes me to are in Portuguese. Does the blogger man know that I am in Brazil and assume my billngualism? Are you all getting the same thing? This is very odd to me, as the internet is not physically located anywhere.
good will hunting
So, there we were, sitting at the grandmother´s house last night, watching bad cable and cuddling on the couch. After watching The Day After Tomorrow - that classic end of the world tale complete with NYC under a newly forming glacier - we shut off the tube to go to bed. Quickly checking email - it´s an addiction that is even more pronounced here in Brazil where we are constantly searching for notes from friends - I saw a CNN Breaking News announcement. Dick Cheney accidently shoots and injures companion in hunting accident.
Thank you, God. In some very strange way, that little bit of electronic information just shone like a beacon on my screen.
Why? Is it that real life finally - for a brief moment - mirrors real life? And that the man who seems to have no emotion, no depth, nothing other than a propensity for ending up in the right contract at the right time, well, he showed his fumble fingeredness.
And shooting quail? So genteel, so effete, so silly.
I´m glad his friend is fine - only so much as I wouldn´t wish ill on another - but to have a face and chest full of buckshot, a gift from the man who has filled all of our faces and chests with something closer to nuclear, well, there is poetry here.
Thank you, God. In some very strange way, that little bit of electronic information just shone like a beacon on my screen.
Why? Is it that real life finally - for a brief moment - mirrors real life? And that the man who seems to have no emotion, no depth, nothing other than a propensity for ending up in the right contract at the right time, well, he showed his fumble fingeredness.
And shooting quail? So genteel, so effete, so silly.
I´m glad his friend is fine - only so much as I wouldn´t wish ill on another - but to have a face and chest full of buckshot, a gift from the man who has filled all of our faces and chests with something closer to nuclear, well, there is poetry here.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Body memory
Grief is such a strange thing. This skin-wringing emotion that pulls you out - toe end to scalp - and literally empties you. Then you rest. Then some time later, after gathering in pools you can't see, it wrings you out again.
Grief makes me believe or understand or more importantly FEEL that time is not linear. Instead, it's a woven thing. Today, we went to see Walking the Line. Yep, we're in Rio without having to work too many hours, Luca is in school in the afternoons, so I am determined to see all of the Academy Award nominated films this year. Why not? We all need goals.
Anyhow, today we saw Walking the Line. I knew nothing about Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash before seeing this film (I know, I still might not know anything, but I imagine that I do). In high school I had the album "Live at Folsom Prison" and listened to it until it was worn transluscent but I didn't pay much attention to the life of the singer. The early part of the film deals primarily with J.C's relationship with his older brother, Jack. When he was 12 or 13, Jack died horribly and suddenly in a buzzsaw accident. His father was a drinker, had no emotional skills, Johnny felt guilty his whole life, bla bla bla, that part isn't that important. Right after Jack dies, there is a scene with the young Johnny in bed and crying, "Jack, please don't leave me alone." And that was it. Wham-o, right in the kisser.
Warp and weave and time twisted and I was missing my brother horribly. My brother, PJ, died when he was five and I was seven. We were both in a car accident - our whole family was in a car accident, but that's for another blog - and PJ and I were thrown into a river, I tried to pull him out but couldn't (I think he was already dead as his eyes were closed but will never be sure), he drowned.
I don't usually miss PJ. I most often miss my father - he died at the same accident. But this afternoon, I could FEEL PJ. My body knew him. My arms could feel the soft of his pyjamas when I was hugging him, I could smell his hair. It felt that real, something that happened 35 years ago felt that absurdly completely real. As real as Rocki holding my hand, as the sharp edges of the balled up popcorn bag in my other hand. And the grief that came along with the memory - is it as strong as grief so many years ago? I don't know, these things don't compare - but I cried in that bone way.
I think this is some of my current obsession with trying to understand the biochemical piece of emotion. I believe in bodymemory. When neuroscience now says that you don't "think" with your brain, you think with a cognitive system that includes your brain, your lymph system, your glands and that these are connected to every cell in your body. That your cells can and do have memory and your cognition system's role is to turn that memory (color, sound, smell, touch, pacing) into a narrative that you then "understand": well, it makes me breathe easier. Rocki keeps asking me why I put so much stock in science, when all along I "knew" this was true in that I perceived it to be so. Suddenly, though, "science" puts the great big check mark on what I have already felt and I breathe comfortably. It's like, the books I am reading give me a map and a language, one where I can say, "oh, yes, I've visited here before, Didn't know the history or why the buildings were built the way they were, but I've certainly seen it." It fleshes things out - pun intended.
I am reading books on neurochemistry and the cognition system, the history of storytelling and the history of myth, a wee bit of highly pedestrian quantum physics, rereading Hannah Arendt's work on totalitarianism, and somewhere in all of this, there is something I am supposed to understand. Karen Armstrong - one of my favorite authors, she's a religious historian - was once asked after all of her work on the three primary monotheistic belief systems, which one does she feel the most connected to. She neatly sidestepped the question by replying that she has become more herself - spiritually, intellectually, emotionally - through gifts she has received from all. Then she said that the gift she gained from Judaism was to have a deeper understanding of what it means to be a "People of the Book." "When I am lost," she said, "I start to read and I read and I read and I read and in the middle of all of that reading, I make lots of time for silence. Sometimes, in the midst of all of this, there is a light that comes, an understanding that goes far deeper than understanding, than anything of the intellect, and at that moment, I feel God."
I'm just trying to understand something - and missing my brother today - well, it's all in the same territory.
Grief makes me believe or understand or more importantly FEEL that time is not linear. Instead, it's a woven thing. Today, we went to see Walking the Line. Yep, we're in Rio without having to work too many hours, Luca is in school in the afternoons, so I am determined to see all of the Academy Award nominated films this year. Why not? We all need goals.
Anyhow, today we saw Walking the Line. I knew nothing about Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash before seeing this film (I know, I still might not know anything, but I imagine that I do). In high school I had the album "Live at Folsom Prison" and listened to it until it was worn transluscent but I didn't pay much attention to the life of the singer. The early part of the film deals primarily with J.C's relationship with his older brother, Jack. When he was 12 or 13, Jack died horribly and suddenly in a buzzsaw accident. His father was a drinker, had no emotional skills, Johnny felt guilty his whole life, bla bla bla, that part isn't that important. Right after Jack dies, there is a scene with the young Johnny in bed and crying, "Jack, please don't leave me alone." And that was it. Wham-o, right in the kisser.
Warp and weave and time twisted and I was missing my brother horribly. My brother, PJ, died when he was five and I was seven. We were both in a car accident - our whole family was in a car accident, but that's for another blog - and PJ and I were thrown into a river, I tried to pull him out but couldn't (I think he was already dead as his eyes were closed but will never be sure), he drowned.
I don't usually miss PJ. I most often miss my father - he died at the same accident. But this afternoon, I could FEEL PJ. My body knew him. My arms could feel the soft of his pyjamas when I was hugging him, I could smell his hair. It felt that real, something that happened 35 years ago felt that absurdly completely real. As real as Rocki holding my hand, as the sharp edges of the balled up popcorn bag in my other hand. And the grief that came along with the memory - is it as strong as grief so many years ago? I don't know, these things don't compare - but I cried in that bone way.
I think this is some of my current obsession with trying to understand the biochemical piece of emotion. I believe in bodymemory. When neuroscience now says that you don't "think" with your brain, you think with a cognitive system that includes your brain, your lymph system, your glands and that these are connected to every cell in your body. That your cells can and do have memory and your cognition system's role is to turn that memory (color, sound, smell, touch, pacing) into a narrative that you then "understand": well, it makes me breathe easier. Rocki keeps asking me why I put so much stock in science, when all along I "knew" this was true in that I perceived it to be so. Suddenly, though, "science" puts the great big check mark on what I have already felt and I breathe comfortably. It's like, the books I am reading give me a map and a language, one where I can say, "oh, yes, I've visited here before, Didn't know the history or why the buildings were built the way they were, but I've certainly seen it." It fleshes things out - pun intended.
I am reading books on neurochemistry and the cognition system, the history of storytelling and the history of myth, a wee bit of highly pedestrian quantum physics, rereading Hannah Arendt's work on totalitarianism, and somewhere in all of this, there is something I am supposed to understand. Karen Armstrong - one of my favorite authors, she's a religious historian - was once asked after all of her work on the three primary monotheistic belief systems, which one does she feel the most connected to. She neatly sidestepped the question by replying that she has become more herself - spiritually, intellectually, emotionally - through gifts she has received from all. Then she said that the gift she gained from Judaism was to have a deeper understanding of what it means to be a "People of the Book." "When I am lost," she said, "I start to read and I read and I read and I read and in the middle of all of that reading, I make lots of time for silence. Sometimes, in the midst of all of this, there is a light that comes, an understanding that goes far deeper than understanding, than anything of the intellect, and at that moment, I feel God."
I'm just trying to understand something - and missing my brother today - well, it's all in the same territory.
O Dia Abufado
I am tired of people apologizing to me because they don't speak English. I am living in Brazil, the language here is Portuguese, not English. And yet I am constantly running into people who feel badly - inept, even - because they don't speak English.
As one friend pointed out, you have no hope of really advancing to any meaningful level in any kind of career or work place without speaking English. Look, said another friend, you need English to understand half of the signs on shops these days, or to understand most of the gadgets in the marketplace.
I know this is true. I know that in the increasingly interdependant global market, global culture, global environment where English - and the United States - reigns most powerful, speaking English is a very good skill to have.
Marco didn't understand when I told him the thousands of English courses on every street corner, the compulsion to speak English, embarrasses me. Even makes me sad. I explained that the reverse is not true in the United States. Quite the opposite. Most folks expect everyone else to speak English and don't bother to learn other languages, unless they have to. He still didn't understand when I explained that I don't like the power differential - we can be lazy, you have to apply yourself to succeed. He mostly laughed and said, but that's just the way it is. You're just lucky that English is the language you learned first.
I get so many strokes from strangers here because I speak any Portuguese at all. "But you're American. No one from the US ever speaks Portuguese," they say. I explain that after ten years of being partnered to a Brazilian, I am ashamed that I don't speak better Portuguese. I should be able to communicate far more than I do. "But you speak some Portuguese, that's amazing." they say, "No one from the US ever speaks Portuguese."
It's true - the more privilege or power that you have, the more that just gathers around your body. It's like a man who gets applauded because he takes his kid to the playground - oh, you're so special, such a good daddy, I wish I had a husband like you - when mommy dearest takes the kid to the playground every other day. Daddy has an unfair advantage in child-rearing (my brother always talks about how annoyed he gets when he gets all of this glowing praise for just loving his son and caring for him) just like English-speaking American has an unfair advantage in the world of multilingualism.
Oh well, lest I ever start believing it when people tell me I'm awesome because I can order coffee in Portuguese, I only have to remember the countless times I've screwed up. Like when we first arrived on this trip and we went to eat in a restaurant. It was a rodizio which means, among other things, the staff walk around with plates of food and you select the things you want to eat. I was getting some spaghetti alho olho. He put some on my plate and I said, "Bastante" which literally means, "enough." So he gave me some more. "Bastante," I said again. He put more on my plate. "Bastante" and then more and back and forth until I was desperate to stop this growing mountain of pasta. Finally I said, "para, por favor," stop please, and he did.
In explaining this to a friend, she started laughing crazily. While "bastante" literally means "enough," you use it here to mean enough like it was a lot and that's a pleasurable thing. Repeating "bastante" to the waiter made him think that I was reveling in my gluttony, wanting a whole mountain of spaghetti, that gobs of food would be enough for me.
I have a long way to go towards fluency.
As one friend pointed out, you have no hope of really advancing to any meaningful level in any kind of career or work place without speaking English. Look, said another friend, you need English to understand half of the signs on shops these days, or to understand most of the gadgets in the marketplace.
I know this is true. I know that in the increasingly interdependant global market, global culture, global environment where English - and the United States - reigns most powerful, speaking English is a very good skill to have.
Marco didn't understand when I told him the thousands of English courses on every street corner, the compulsion to speak English, embarrasses me. Even makes me sad. I explained that the reverse is not true in the United States. Quite the opposite. Most folks expect everyone else to speak English and don't bother to learn other languages, unless they have to. He still didn't understand when I explained that I don't like the power differential - we can be lazy, you have to apply yourself to succeed. He mostly laughed and said, but that's just the way it is. You're just lucky that English is the language you learned first.
I get so many strokes from strangers here because I speak any Portuguese at all. "But you're American. No one from the US ever speaks Portuguese," they say. I explain that after ten years of being partnered to a Brazilian, I am ashamed that I don't speak better Portuguese. I should be able to communicate far more than I do. "But you speak some Portuguese, that's amazing." they say, "No one from the US ever speaks Portuguese."
It's true - the more privilege or power that you have, the more that just gathers around your body. It's like a man who gets applauded because he takes his kid to the playground - oh, you're so special, such a good daddy, I wish I had a husband like you - when mommy dearest takes the kid to the playground every other day. Daddy has an unfair advantage in child-rearing (my brother always talks about how annoyed he gets when he gets all of this glowing praise for just loving his son and caring for him) just like English-speaking American has an unfair advantage in the world of multilingualism.
Oh well, lest I ever start believing it when people tell me I'm awesome because I can order coffee in Portuguese, I only have to remember the countless times I've screwed up. Like when we first arrived on this trip and we went to eat in a restaurant. It was a rodizio which means, among other things, the staff walk around with plates of food and you select the things you want to eat. I was getting some spaghetti alho olho. He put some on my plate and I said, "Bastante" which literally means, "enough." So he gave me some more. "Bastante," I said again. He put more on my plate. "Bastante" and then more and back and forth until I was desperate to stop this growing mountain of pasta. Finally I said, "para, por favor," stop please, and he did.
In explaining this to a friend, she started laughing crazily. While "bastante" literally means "enough," you use it here to mean enough like it was a lot and that's a pleasurable thing. Repeating "bastante" to the waiter made him think that I was reveling in my gluttony, wanting a whole mountain of spaghetti, that gobs of food would be enough for me.
I have a long way to go towards fluency.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Who's your daddy?
Yesterday, while browsing through my friend, Vikki's, blog, I saw that someone none of us knew, yes, a stranger, had posted a comment. Suddenly my world shifted. Oh, you mean random people, folks from OUT THERE, might actually read these things. People who don't know Luca, Stella, Miguel, Augie and the host of other small fry that I refer to?
What does that do to this whole blogging thing?
I'm reading a book called Us and Them. It's part of my current obsession: a rash of books on brain chemistry and the neurochemical background to emotion, thought and culture. Us and Them examines how each of us is constantly continually unceasingly responding to our environment by figuring out who is like us - at least at this moment - and who isn't. It describes this not through an analysis of culture and society - my usual path - but through looking at what goes on in your brain in these moments. And how, bottom line, this is something we all do, across culture, across nation, across age.
And then came the blog. After seeing this "post by a stranger," all of us - the Vikki community - went running to see his blog. Who is this interloper? Is he like us? Do we like what he has to say? Because this will, of course, determine whether or not we hold any stock in his comments.
Yes, it's true, if said Empty Man were a rabid right winger crying for the death and destruction of homosekshality (many although not all of Vikki's community are of some form of queer expression), well, his words would be read through that lens. Instead, he was this incredibly thoughtful and creative thinker. So suddenly, his words take on a different slant. Hey Mikey, we like him.
If there's a sign of maturity that I am aspiring to gain, it's the ability to really hear what an individual says for the specificity of that moment and not by hearing said person and looking for clues, hints as to whether or not I am going to agree with the words before I even hear them. The whole left/right thing feels generally more problematic to me, in terms of leading to change that makes sense. There are plenty of closed minded lefties and open minded righties. I guess if I had to pick a closed minded person, I'd pick a leftie any day. But if I'm hoping for real change - something that really exists to discover some kind of functional democracy - then the willingness to think outside of what we currently know seems like a great benefit. Especially since all that we know - left and right - are failed democracies that only privilege whoever is currently in power. And while I would prefer the lefties were in power, once we're in power within this profoundly flawed system, the seconds are ticking until we get too glamoured by the power and then, yes, fuck up.
Left and right rhetoric usually exists within the current system - the system whose linear landscape gave birth to the two directions.
What does that do to this whole blogging thing?
I'm reading a book called Us and Them. It's part of my current obsession: a rash of books on brain chemistry and the neurochemical background to emotion, thought and culture. Us and Them examines how each of us is constantly continually unceasingly responding to our environment by figuring out who is like us - at least at this moment - and who isn't. It describes this not through an analysis of culture and society - my usual path - but through looking at what goes on in your brain in these moments. And how, bottom line, this is something we all do, across culture, across nation, across age.
And then came the blog. After seeing this "post by a stranger," all of us - the Vikki community - went running to see his blog. Who is this interloper? Is he like us? Do we like what he has to say? Because this will, of course, determine whether or not we hold any stock in his comments.
Yes, it's true, if said Empty Man were a rabid right winger crying for the death and destruction of homosekshality (many although not all of Vikki's community are of some form of queer expression), well, his words would be read through that lens. Instead, he was this incredibly thoughtful and creative thinker. So suddenly, his words take on a different slant. Hey Mikey, we like him.
If there's a sign of maturity that I am aspiring to gain, it's the ability to really hear what an individual says for the specificity of that moment and not by hearing said person and looking for clues, hints as to whether or not I am going to agree with the words before I even hear them. The whole left/right thing feels generally more problematic to me, in terms of leading to change that makes sense. There are plenty of closed minded lefties and open minded righties. I guess if I had to pick a closed minded person, I'd pick a leftie any day. But if I'm hoping for real change - something that really exists to discover some kind of functional democracy - then the willingness to think outside of what we currently know seems like a great benefit. Especially since all that we know - left and right - are failed democracies that only privilege whoever is currently in power. And while I would prefer the lefties were in power, once we're in power within this profoundly flawed system, the seconds are ticking until we get too glamoured by the power and then, yes, fuck up.
Left and right rhetoric usually exists within the current system - the system whose linear landscape gave birth to the two directions.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
An ode to Luca
She's home sickish today. While she was resting, she climbed up on top of my belly to lie - body to body. She loves to do this - she tries to get our heartbeats to go at the same pace or our breathing to follow the same pattern. While she was there, smashed on top of my body, I could feel the length of her. She has grown so much. And every cliche about how quickly they change, about how when these days of long body hugs and simple love are over, you will miss them. And I already do, even before they are gone.
She is changing so much. The first few months here were so hard for her and now, she is a different person. Through the fire and out the other side, she is stronger. That is clear, that she is stronger. Somehow this experience has taken some of those smaller parts of her, those more often afraid parts of her, and teased them out. She is so much clearer about belonging.
I love the days when she is chatty, when she sits down next to me, puts one hand on my knee and says, "Mama, let's have a good conversation, ok?" And then she usually starts right away by asking me about me, "Mama, how are you? How was your day?" She asks me questions, wants to know why I did the things I did, and then when it's her turn, she says things like, "Now, mama, I want you to pay attention because I'm going to tell you some important things." And then she talks. About school. About missing her friends in Minneapolis. About death. About children and babies. About really good orange juice. About anything.
I am most curious to see her when we get home to Minneapolis. Her changes start to feel visible to me here already. What will they look like when they show up against her old environment? How will she be when the real Stella, Georgia, Augie, Miguel, Jasper, Winston, T'Kai are sitting across from her? They all live in her days here so intensely. They are included in her conversations, in her thoughts.
And now she just came in and grabbed me, "Mama, venha rapido. E muito engracado, essa programa. Precisa ver." And so I am going. There is an animal show on that I clearly have to see.
She is changing so much. The first few months here were so hard for her and now, she is a different person. Through the fire and out the other side, she is stronger. That is clear, that she is stronger. Somehow this experience has taken some of those smaller parts of her, those more often afraid parts of her, and teased them out. She is so much clearer about belonging.
I love the days when she is chatty, when she sits down next to me, puts one hand on my knee and says, "Mama, let's have a good conversation, ok?" And then she usually starts right away by asking me about me, "Mama, how are you? How was your day?" She asks me questions, wants to know why I did the things I did, and then when it's her turn, she says things like, "Now, mama, I want you to pay attention because I'm going to tell you some important things." And then she talks. About school. About missing her friends in Minneapolis. About death. About children and babies. About really good orange juice. About anything.
I am most curious to see her when we get home to Minneapolis. Her changes start to feel visible to me here already. What will they look like when they show up against her old environment? How will she be when the real Stella, Georgia, Augie, Miguel, Jasper, Winston, T'Kai are sitting across from her? They all live in her days here so intensely. They are included in her conversations, in her thoughts.
And now she just came in and grabbed me, "Mama, venha rapido. E muito engracado, essa programa. Precisa ver." And so I am going. There is an animal show on that I clearly have to see.
Monday, February 06, 2006
While Rocki reads in bed
A few days ago, my brother-in-law Mauricio asked me what I thought was a primary difference between Brazil and the United States. "Besides language?" I asked smart-assedly. He meant culturally.
That's a hard one. Because of language, it is usually far easier to see differences than to see similarities. But the primary difference? There are so many Brazils, like there are so many USs and every other country. I live in one of them - a middle class and Euro-Brazilian culture, and then witness lots of others through riding the bus, walking the streets, watching the news and other shows, listening to the radio.
But even though it's a hard question, there was an image that came up for me right away. Driving from Rio to Sao Paulo, we passed the skeletons of almost-projects - big cement monoliths that looked like the struts of never-finished factories or colleges or stadiums. So many of them littering the landscape, they have that 1970s World Bank feel - when the dollars flowed but the planning didn't. Great big projects were begun but then, money or enthusiasm or vision was lost in the process and you were left with a cement scar. Passing by these monoliths made me think a lot about cultural imperialism and its long term effect.
If there was one thing I have noticed that exists across class in Brazil, it's an unashamed ability to appreciate pleasure. Pleasure in the company of people you love, pleasure at the beach, in good food, in good music, in children, in just being together. In the states, we are still pretty mainstream-Calvinist where those who can afford pleasure either carefully hide it away or else assert it in a loud bombastic kind of way. Just plain straight up no holds barred enjoyment of the pleasures - from the simplest to the most expensive - well, we don't do that well in the States. But here, I think, people do a better job.
What we do well in the States - and oh lord, please know I'm always talking mainstream or generally with a zillion and one exceptions to prove the rule - is plan. You won't see cement monoliths littering the landscape because you don't start a multimillion dollar project without having it all planned out. (Like I would know what that looks like).
We plan things - new projects, political movements, weekends away, responses to the Bush administrations LACK of planning for Hurricane Katrina. Here, with the intensity of the poverty sitting right in your face, you don't see the kind of pedestrian political reaction that you see in the states. There are millions of political and community organizations from every political and cultural spectrum in the US. From church based to labor to identity based to neighborhood or issue based, at any given moment, lots of people are organizing things. And are given credibility one way or another for working so hard, even if they are not working to get rich. Our work ethic filters across politics to those who want to gain wealth, those who want to change the world and those who want to buy a car.
Planning is not a big Brazilian thing - with all of the stereotypes involved in this statement, there is more of a cultural "live for the moment" than there is in the US. Which brings me to cultural imperialism.
On every television station, on every corner, everywhere you see manifestations of the supposed "American Dream" continuing to be the biggest US export. Mostly, the idea of accessible wealth which is different from traditional Brazilian wealth in a class system that strongly separates wealth and poverty.
So, what do you have to do to "get rich"? Living for the moment and getting lucky with a lottery ticket, well, it don't happen much. There is a kind of planfulness - which might or might not be successful as there are other factors involved with not having things - but the belief in a kind of necessary planfulness is part of the picture. Planfulness does not easily allow for living in the moment.
It's a great big gain and loss picture, isn't it? You gain to lose and lose to gain - no matter what the choice and the change. Gain planfulness and the belief that you might gain wealth, lose some of that present-mindedness. And vice versa.
Somewhere in this muddle of words was my answer to Mauricio.
That's a hard one. Because of language, it is usually far easier to see differences than to see similarities. But the primary difference? There are so many Brazils, like there are so many USs and every other country. I live in one of them - a middle class and Euro-Brazilian culture, and then witness lots of others through riding the bus, walking the streets, watching the news and other shows, listening to the radio.
But even though it's a hard question, there was an image that came up for me right away. Driving from Rio to Sao Paulo, we passed the skeletons of almost-projects - big cement monoliths that looked like the struts of never-finished factories or colleges or stadiums. So many of them littering the landscape, they have that 1970s World Bank feel - when the dollars flowed but the planning didn't. Great big projects were begun but then, money or enthusiasm or vision was lost in the process and you were left with a cement scar. Passing by these monoliths made me think a lot about cultural imperialism and its long term effect.
If there was one thing I have noticed that exists across class in Brazil, it's an unashamed ability to appreciate pleasure. Pleasure in the company of people you love, pleasure at the beach, in good food, in good music, in children, in just being together. In the states, we are still pretty mainstream-Calvinist where those who can afford pleasure either carefully hide it away or else assert it in a loud bombastic kind of way. Just plain straight up no holds barred enjoyment of the pleasures - from the simplest to the most expensive - well, we don't do that well in the States. But here, I think, people do a better job.
What we do well in the States - and oh lord, please know I'm always talking mainstream or generally with a zillion and one exceptions to prove the rule - is plan. You won't see cement monoliths littering the landscape because you don't start a multimillion dollar project without having it all planned out. (Like I would know what that looks like).
We plan things - new projects, political movements, weekends away, responses to the Bush administrations LACK of planning for Hurricane Katrina. Here, with the intensity of the poverty sitting right in your face, you don't see the kind of pedestrian political reaction that you see in the states. There are millions of political and community organizations from every political and cultural spectrum in the US. From church based to labor to identity based to neighborhood or issue based, at any given moment, lots of people are organizing things. And are given credibility one way or another for working so hard, even if they are not working to get rich. Our work ethic filters across politics to those who want to gain wealth, those who want to change the world and those who want to buy a car.
Planning is not a big Brazilian thing - with all of the stereotypes involved in this statement, there is more of a cultural "live for the moment" than there is in the US. Which brings me to cultural imperialism.
On every television station, on every corner, everywhere you see manifestations of the supposed "American Dream" continuing to be the biggest US export. Mostly, the idea of accessible wealth which is different from traditional Brazilian wealth in a class system that strongly separates wealth and poverty.
So, what do you have to do to "get rich"? Living for the moment and getting lucky with a lottery ticket, well, it don't happen much. There is a kind of planfulness - which might or might not be successful as there are other factors involved with not having things - but the belief in a kind of necessary planfulness is part of the picture. Planfulness does not easily allow for living in the moment.
It's a great big gain and loss picture, isn't it? You gain to lose and lose to gain - no matter what the choice and the change. Gain planfulness and the belief that you might gain wealth, lose some of that present-mindedness. And vice versa.
Somewhere in this muddle of words was my answer to Mauricio.
Friday, February 03, 2006
oh dear, it was obvious
Isn't it funny how you can feel completely homesick after seeing something that has nothing to do with home at all? Yes, watching Brokeback Mountain, the high plains of Wyoming, sheep herding, two highly closeted and confused rugged cowboys - why did this movie make me feel homesick for the States rather than reflective of the life of homoeroticized rural men in the 1960s? I mean, why Brokeback Mountain and not Friends or any of the other English language US based television I've seen while watching here.
But it did - make me feel homesick. That camera sweeping in on the rolling hills leading up to the mountains, those high valleys, those horses: there I was, stuck in the romance of the American frontier and getting completely choked up by someone else's unreal experience.
And it spilled into my first post - something I intended to be pithy and intelligent and warm and wise. Instead, a beating fist against the chest calling out "I want my mommy."
Just after Brokeback Mountain
Unsurprisingly, this blog has been created for a week and I am only now posting to it. No one yet knows I've created a blog - I suppose part of doing this is telling people. Creating a blog seems like the right thing to do. Here we are, living in Brazil, far away from the large majority of friends and family. Most of the time I manage to write emails - quick news bites letting people know how Luca is growing, how tan we're all getting, what trips we've been on. Sometimes they go deeper than that. But lots of days pass without really talking to anyone. Writing in this blog gives the illusion that someone is listening.
What is it like to live here - in Rio de Janeiro - right now? Being here for six months is this strange thing - it is too long to be a vacation, way too long to just sit on the beach and read novels. But it is too short to really create the kind of new life that means putting down roots. As it's summer, I go to the pool in the mornings with Luca. There, we play with and talk to some of the other children and adults who live in the condominium. We are social. Sometimes we laugh. But neither of us - me or Luca - have found the kind of people we want to invite upstairs to our apartment.
We play until lunch time when we go inside to eat and then Luca goes off to school. Raquel usually stays inside reading or working on the computer while we swim. Sometimes she has surfing lessons and then she comes back, all salt encrusted and happy, and jumps in the pool with us.
I like the afternoons when Luca is at school. She's almost four and I love her dearly but it is so nice to have time without children. I think so often of how, when I was a kid, the majority of the moms stayed home with the kids - until we started kindergarden. How come they didn't kill us? Or kill themselves?
In the afternoon when I'm working at the computer, it can feel quite odd. I will be working on grant proposals for District 202 or emailing back and forth with folks from rTransitions, and intellectually I am in Minneapolis. After a few hours I look up and there we are, the sun blazing through the window, the sound of Portuguese coming up from the courtyard and a kind of quiet in the house that is different from quiet at home.
I miss my people. A lot. It will be good to go back home.
What is it like to live here - in Rio de Janeiro - right now? Being here for six months is this strange thing - it is too long to be a vacation, way too long to just sit on the beach and read novels. But it is too short to really create the kind of new life that means putting down roots. As it's summer, I go to the pool in the mornings with Luca. There, we play with and talk to some of the other children and adults who live in the condominium. We are social. Sometimes we laugh. But neither of us - me or Luca - have found the kind of people we want to invite upstairs to our apartment.
We play until lunch time when we go inside to eat and then Luca goes off to school. Raquel usually stays inside reading or working on the computer while we swim. Sometimes she has surfing lessons and then she comes back, all salt encrusted and happy, and jumps in the pool with us.
I like the afternoons when Luca is at school. She's almost four and I love her dearly but it is so nice to have time without children. I think so often of how, when I was a kid, the majority of the moms stayed home with the kids - until we started kindergarden. How come they didn't kill us? Or kill themselves?
In the afternoon when I'm working at the computer, it can feel quite odd. I will be working on grant proposals for District 202 or emailing back and forth with folks from rTransitions, and intellectually I am in Minneapolis. After a few hours I look up and there we are, the sun blazing through the window, the sound of Portuguese coming up from the courtyard and a kind of quiet in the house that is different from quiet at home.
I miss my people. A lot. It will be good to go back home.
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