Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Last hiking in Chile
4 day trip up north to Antofagasta and then Socaire. Lots of instant soup and ramen and chocolate. rock climbing and a couple of hikes. The second peaked at 5020 meters/ 16,470 feet. Pretty high. I got altitude sickness at 4350 meters and had to return. We got up at 3am, left camp at 4, and started trekking at 5, about two hours in the dark with only the light of our lanterns and the full moon which didn't set until about 10 or 11am. Everything froze, including my water bottle on my waist. I'm not sure the coldest it got, but at 9am it was -4 celsius (about 25?). The water I tried to wash the plates with froze on the plate... Incredibly beautiful, colors, the pure white of the salt flats and the driest desert in the world. Headache the entire weekend (base camp at 3300 meters). A geologist's dream.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
If everyone looks for the exotic, what do you get when you find it? Yourself. It implies the ocular contortion of watching Friends as something exotic, because it's the exoticism of the object of your exoticism.
What you learn by trying to escape is that it's impossible. Why then do you study abroad?
And in the pairing of those two ideas lies a an immense web of irresolvable painful implications.
Every act of an United Statesian leaving the States for a Latin American country is interpretable as an assertion of hegemony.
If only it were that simple, if I could just blame the US government; if I could just blame us; just blame me.
What you learn by trying to escape is that it's impossible. Why then do you study abroad?
And in the pairing of those two ideas lies a an immense web of irresolvable painful implications.
Every act of an United Statesian leaving the States for a Latin American country is interpretable as an assertion of hegemony.
If only it were that simple, if I could just blame the US government; if I could just blame us; just blame me.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
a transition period. all my foreign friends have left, my two best friends leaving in the last 2 weeks, tami then, felix now, today. My best chilean friend moved to another city last month. Lucky died this week. Last night I dreamed that the pope was brutally assassinated, decapitated.
it's all chilean from here on out. but i now have a group of chilean friends in the U.
taking french classes which are very entertaining. teaching english by copying my french teacher. spontaneous and fun. there was no electricity so we did the lesson by the light of two cell phones.
a question. when was the first time you had a history class that reached the 20th century? they ought to reconsider the chronological priorities of the state curriculum. or is the priority fulfilled already? i find it hard to believe that's an accident.
what if you go back and the past closes itself off like a sphincter after a swallow? and the present swallows you like a minnow whale yesterday becomes never back then and with a goldish tint like a circus night and christmas lights the big ones size C-9 but they don't make them anymore but you might find them in an antique shop but there not more than a curiosity you plug it in and it reminds you reminds you and then you go on like the photo that pricks nostalgia nostalgia but but why look at it because there's nothing you can do. your a minnow in time's river and you don't escape and history pushes you forward and swallows the minnow because the river has no good neighbor policy. should you say that it should be that way? circle fountains and they throw trash in it like disillusioned wishpennies and teredé on the bench with ice. please forgive me, thoughts for myself so i can look back afterwards and feel the past's sepia prick. pastel de jaiva in the central market cocacola tooth aches hot days cold open door nights the bus full of earphones and eyes and you're never chilean unless you're chilean the beep in the metro station beep beep of the plastic cards with money kissing the scanners hello peek hour and you pack in like peas and lastarria the jutting bricked street and tourist venders and the italian man selling real coffee and books the elevator that smells distinctly the little wire sculpture tree and circle stains from water glasses the chair that must be fixed every time sat in or the seat threatens to split the frustrating curtain rod that falls when you open them and light that's not light enough always a water glass from the sink the toilet that goes on strike the gas space heater the shower with intermittent hot water sunday meal with the grandmother the undesired sound of blue metal gate shutting in the middle of the night the keys that are the same so they are tried until they work and the dark when you enter and crash into the bench next to the door the whistling when juan enters the hello when cecilia enters the bike wheel plicking when nicol enters nothing when vivi enters and the disaster when cristian enters and makes toast and forgets them all 6 of them and puts jello in a bowl with yoghurt and sugar on top because he needs to go on crashing and he shows you all the food there is so you don't go hungry and you have to eat before you go out sundays reading the paper but working skype instant coffee and sweetener changed to mate for better the camera never used the jacket stolen the pants too small the fotocopied books ever read but its not illegal and the impossibility of doing everything the effort of making friends and feeling of stupidity in classes why do they know more about the us than i do? the us is disneyland not just a place to go and its for fantasies whats wrong here is right there and thats one day where well get to me and the country is it really like in the movies? new york or miami allende pinera pinochet bachelet spanish freeways and telephones and electricity and copper the south the farm metri and goats the light in the afternoon in the goat field and don eduardo the beard and checho. paul kalkbrenner berlin calling and the sickening clickishness of san joaquin the classrooms too hot too cold.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Hiking Punta Lagunas, Cajón del Maipo
Hiking just outside Santiago last weekend, 3171 meters of altitude. An 80 meter rock wall like a slice of bread, full of fossils; a condor, and the view.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Mostly in Santiago the aftershock is all political conflict. Warning systems and communication failed, the President reported when she shouldn't have and was misinformed by the Armada about their not being a tsunami even though there had already been several. Reluctance to send military aid because of political historical conflicts between the left and the military.... That's the cleanup in Santiago. There are still aftershocks (apparently they'll continue for at least 2 months) and occasional buildings evacuated because they are discovered to be about to fall. The grocery stores are rather empty and people are attempting to resell things to make money. Everyone still talks about nothing else even though everyone is sick of it (and not to sounds callous, it's just that much of the way it is talked about aggravates the conflict instead of supplying aid to those in need).....
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Farming in Metri
Life sweet life on the farm in Metri, southern Chile. My goats, squashes, the yellow house for volunteers, my french friends Antoine, Lena, Cami, and Nico, the famous Checho - the man I worked with every day for 8 hours, who has worked their for 20 years but done just about every type of hands on work on the farm, in the sea, with houses you can imagine, with whom I lunched and got to know his amazing children.... Castro and its all alerce wood church on the island of Chiloé. The lagoon and the ocean next to the farm, the water source and bathing pond.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
end of trip 1 Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil
The bay next to the flying saucer.
Inside the flying saucer.
Wandering the streets of Paraty, Brazil, a port town from colonial time that was then abandoned as a new roadway bypassed it. It was preserved for two centuries thereafter until "discovered" by artists in the mid 20th century. The Spaniard (Galician!) I was traveling with said it looked just like his grandmother's neighborhood in galicia and like Lisbon. Not bike friendly.
The always entertaining and colorful streets of Rio. The proprietor of the first one actually yelled at us because photos are NOT ALLOWED at her shop. It's private! And there was actually a sign, as you can see, hanging from the facade.
Niemeyer! His Museum of Contemporary Art in Niteroi, across the bay from Rio.
Inside the flying saucer.
Wandering the streets of Paraty, Brazil, a port town from colonial time that was then abandoned as a new roadway bypassed it. It was preserved for two centuries thereafter until "discovered" by artists in the mid 20th century. The Spaniard (Galician!) I was traveling with said it looked just like his grandmother's neighborhood in galicia and like Lisbon. Not bike friendly.
The always entertaining and colorful streets of Rio. The proprietor of the first one actually yelled at us because photos are NOT ALLOWED at her shop. It's private! And there was actually a sign, as you can see, hanging from the facade.
Niemeyer! His Museum of Contemporary Art in Niteroi, across the bay from Rio.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
installation part 2. trip 1 continued...
23 december.
Marcelo. This kills me and I don’t think I can write about it much, but I will lay out a few notes. Tall, maybe 6’1” or 2”, shorthaired and thin. Sharp nose, sensitive eyes, etc. Sweating from the uphill bike ride back from the early morning chicken processing plant where he works each day from 4am to 4pm. We sit, Felix and I, with his mother and sister taking teredé – cold mate tea – and discussing. A woman or child pops through the gate periodically offering cakes or breads in exchange for a small sum of guaranís. Knocking on the door here means clapping five times rapidly. There look not to be gates to shut now on which to knock. We had hunted for this house for some time, trundling through small crop fields tied to the main road by a rust red dirt one, now partially paved with stones. The bus ride was over an hour and this green semi-urbanness on the outskirts is rejuvenating after Asuncion’s smoggy bustling. …. Marcelo has supported the family for the last five or so years – since he graduated from high school at the top of his class. He is bright and radiates upon seeing Felix, who attended the same high school during a portion of his study abroad in Paraguay some years ago. He is one of the few people my age I have heard during my time abroad care about his use of Spanish, that is, mold phrases and choose words, really use it. He is clever and can turn a phrase, is au courant with the proceedings at the international climate summit. …
We spend a deeply humbled bus trip back through the graffiti-lined streets, not crying but not not crying either. … The air is dark and enters through the bus windows partially slid open. Orbs of yellow light sidewalk barbecues and small plastic tables under glass leaders of beer. Reggaetón shouting from rooftop speakers seems to fill the streets with many more people than are actually there. Two teenagers dash across lanes of traffic, popping sandals with the assurance of sliding past a swerving motorbike. I wipe the orange grit from my right ankle to the roof of my left foot. People standing in the isle hold on to the metal support bar, brandishing their armpits to those seated beneath after hours of sweaty work. A man with deflated rubber skin slumps with the day’s exhaustion in the seat next to me like a crumpled butterfly. The bus too is tired and says so.
24 diciembre el jueves
Definitely the funniest Christmas eve I've ever passed (24 hour bud rise to Rio with friends. Beware, only crazies take the overnight XMAS eve route. Literally, smelly giant chinese men eating chicken legs out of a plastic bag and farting and sleeping in the passageway at my feet. A brazilian with a portentous tattoo pulls up his pants and straddles your seat to show you and tell you that it means he's killed Xnumber of people. Another collecting money from passengers to bribe the chauffeur not to stop at customs so they can pass through with what ever "goods" they might be bringing from Paraguay. Angry arguments between the Sao Paulo hairdresser and the Peruvian/Italian yoga teacher going to Rio for an undetermined amount of time to teach yoga on the beach. Reaches Rio, realizes that it's impossible to find a hotel at this time of year, and returns the same day to Buenos Aires, 48 more hours on the bus! (see santa cluas below) ha!)
With Felix, arrive at the sidewalk kiosk at 9.30am to buy the bus ticket from Asunción to Ciudad del Este, the eastern-most city in Paraguay on the way to Brazil. It’s Christmas eve and have a bus that leaves for Rio from Foz de Iguazu en Brazil at 6.45 in the afternoon. This first ride is 5 hours, but once I get to Ciudad del Este I have to take a bus to the bridge connecting Paraguay and Brazil (while skirting Paraguay customs since I entered illegally), and then take another moto to the bus terminal to catch the Pluma to Rio. To make things short, the sleezeball salesman sold me a ticket to C del Este at 10 on a bus that didn’t exist. Arguing does nothing against his sidestepping excuses and false business. Whatever, I have to get on any bus I can. IT doesn’t come until 12. In the end I get on another bus at 11, where I stand for three hours, sit for 2, and arrive at 6. I’m gonna make it to Rio!
Countryside leading into Rio:
26 diciembre el sábado
Morning at the beach beneath Caesar Park sunbrellas that cast a roving shade. We burn on our feet and shoulders as the sun slides across its blue arching track. Tourist Rio is a place of eyes and Ipanema (though less than neighboring Copacabana) beach is center stage. It’s a spectacle, scintillating with eye-to-body contact. Exteriority, glance, and performance. Though there is something wonderful here, liberating, because the gym geeks aren’t the only ones relishing in a dearth of swimwear fabric. THe proverbial all shapes and sizes, which seems quite fitting here in Brazil as in the US, bare their flesh to the greedy sun without being abashed by imperious corporal cultural norms. They’re like children in an odd fleshy way. And whoever coined the term “sun bathing” was being subversive. The cooking analogy is more apt. And it’s rare in Brazil that you’re anything less than well done. Superficially at least, it is a culture of bodies and physicality that is, I have to say again, the culture of Brazilian tourists with pockets deep enough to perform on Ipanema. The shoulders and abs are like the jutting hills along the coast and the bikinis are tricks played by Brazilian designers in attempt to market the skimpy vestiges of more important projects.
Mangoes and avocadoes like footballs, apples, Brazil nuts, and dried fruits arrayed in neat pyramiding lattices, price tags definitively centered beneath. Isles, shelves, rows, swept and shining tile floors, and space – most of all space. Space as a premium luxury and the atmosphere of space, of leisure, of disposal and limitlessness. Lazy green Christmas garlands loop down from hooks in the ceiling and numerous sharply uniformed employees solicit idly at corners or by stacks and rows. It’s 10pm in the grocery store and there are more of them than customers. Yesterday I saw a young skinny black guy setting up beach chairs for tourists and wearing a shirt imprinted with: “Welcome to Rio. Have a pleasant stay and I am at your disposal.” The next line, had there been one, would have read: “Ask me about my low prices.” Hand printed and locally translated, maybe, but the idea of a human as a hand wipe, as disposable and at your disposal doesn’t sound like luxury to me. Slavery? Now, I may be a slave to the oppression game, the most popular one in leftist ideological academic theory, but I can’t help but feel a strong visceral repulsion; what I felt when I had to leave the grocery store tonight. A shock, a contrast that splits you like dry pine under a hatchet strike.
What does it mean to be a tourist? What makes Corcavado a tourist attraction? Why was it built for the centennial, only 35 years after the official story’s end of slavery? Why is it a thing to go, as others go, to wait behind others in line, to snap the same photos everyone else will upload onto their computers and then make the same comments and tell the same story to their friends as everyone else just did? That’s why exactly, it’s the thing to, as Heidegger might say. Hammering is what makes it a hammer – it’s just what you do with hammers. It’s just what you do to make yourself a tourist. I ramble into fear and oppression games, perceiving oppression? Perceiving monetary problems means supplying monetary answers and the serpent bites its tail. To what degree is perceiving suffering useful? Just imagine the luxury imbedded in that question.
27 diciembre 2009
Man on high after stepping out on to the helipad after an as advertised 8-9 minute loop over Ipanema, Copacabana, the Sugar Loaf, and Corcavado – the exalted massive stone Christ spreading his arms high above Rio. It gives you sea legs. And it turns with its tail, the helicopter, which is disconcerting to us animals built to lead with our noses. It rolls barrel-like and leans like a top wobbling jus before nicking the floor and crashing. Rio is perfect terrain for a spin in a helicopter: ocean reflecting glassy blue and a serpentine tide line licking light sandy beaches, garlanded with high-rise apartment buildings and hotels bookended by egg-carton stone hills crowned in green. Whale-hump striped stone islands break the horizon, which melts as the Atlantic and the heavens shine to an equal silver. Disconcertingly thin black funicular cables tie the sugar loaf, which looks more like a dinosaur egg, to the shorter stouter sister mountain. Corcavado lords over the city and oval tourist lagoon laid in the basin between rising green stumps of land. For 8-9 minutes I forget the metaphor – the reality – of looking down upon the city: elite freedom, the masses of shoeless children and three-walled houses – and roll in the vertigo of this Einstein-haired crazed inventor’s dream machine.
29 diciembre 2009 el martes
In Buzios. The green bay shimmers like the diamond vestments the patrons decorating this boutique believe themselves to be wearing. It’s the spectacle of Copacabana but wrap the bronzed skin in hammocks of white silk. That is, antiqued stone tile floors lead to a rich wooden balcony yearning toward a bay of small tethered fishing schooners and dinosaur dorsal islets. The tinkling of polished silverware syncopates the smooth beat of 5th Ave. perfume shop music in the poolside restaurant above. Sleep or read while tanning? I’d rather be working, delivering the caipirinhas and limes. The bay from beneath a white awning is not the same bay seen from a bobbing fishing boat, is not the same bay seen from the summit after a sweaty hike, nor the same as from under the precarious weight of sweating glasses on a waiter’s tray. All white sarongs. Manikins frozen in the AC of their display windows. Buzios. This little town is great. This rotting stripmall land reaks with the ripe stench of the oppression of international exchange rates and power addictions. It is both I suppose. Do you feel powerful atop your summit? I feel powerless, debilitated, dependent on the working hands that realize the structure supporting such height. We on top, where did we begin our climb? Two steps down? Two steps up? Thanks to our parents. Thanks to our parents. But again, money fixation – from above or below – does little but self-perpetuate. Language is power.
31 diciembre 2009
Take the arranged car back from Buzios to the airport in Río, where I say goodbye to Nate and Laura before taking a bus to Copacabana for the massive Near Year’s Eve blowout. The driver is not happy about going into Río this day, as the traffic leaving is horrific. I arrive and walk to the Caesar Park where we had stayed earlier that week, hoping to stash my bag at the hotel in order to make the night possible. It works! I’m hungry so I wander over to the grocery store, no plans. And at the entrance I run into my friend Alex from Santiago (from Belgium) and her boyfriend Benoit! We do our shopping and they invite me back to their hostel. Hostels are ridiculous in Rio during the holidays. This one is 125 reals per night – about 75$ - and you have to commit to four nights in a row. Fortunately they have 2 beds, so they agree to share one and give me the other. What a charmed day! We hang out at the hostel with other hostelers and wander over to the beach between 10 and 11 with six others. There are three stages with music and we only make it to the first (about 2 miles of walking), which turns out to be the most fun anyway. I remember a really cool older lady dancing with us, Alex and Benoit whirling the swing together in the sand and the Brazilians around us all cheering them on. I love the reversal of roles. I lose my sandals in the ocean trying to complete the tradition of jumping over 7 waves. As the sky begins to glow with morning, we follow the curve of the coast in search of place to watch the sunrise. We find a rocky outcropping beyond the end of Ipanema where there are dozens of people grouped quietly, watching the purple orb rise out of the Atlantic.
Waking up on the beach in Paraty, Brazil after spending a restless sandy night in January, refusing to pay the outrageous sum for a hostel. A man worked all night near us raking sand like an tropical zen garden, and I awoke gradually to the sounds of metal teeth stroking neat particles of golden sand.
Marcelo. This kills me and I don’t think I can write about it much, but I will lay out a few notes. Tall, maybe 6’1” or 2”, shorthaired and thin. Sharp nose, sensitive eyes, etc. Sweating from the uphill bike ride back from the early morning chicken processing plant where he works each day from 4am to 4pm. We sit, Felix and I, with his mother and sister taking teredé – cold mate tea – and discussing. A woman or child pops through the gate periodically offering cakes or breads in exchange for a small sum of guaranís. Knocking on the door here means clapping five times rapidly. There look not to be gates to shut now on which to knock. We had hunted for this house for some time, trundling through small crop fields tied to the main road by a rust red dirt one, now partially paved with stones. The bus ride was over an hour and this green semi-urbanness on the outskirts is rejuvenating after Asuncion’s smoggy bustling. …. Marcelo has supported the family for the last five or so years – since he graduated from high school at the top of his class. He is bright and radiates upon seeing Felix, who attended the same high school during a portion of his study abroad in Paraguay some years ago. He is one of the few people my age I have heard during my time abroad care about his use of Spanish, that is, mold phrases and choose words, really use it. He is clever and can turn a phrase, is au courant with the proceedings at the international climate summit. …
We spend a deeply humbled bus trip back through the graffiti-lined streets, not crying but not not crying either. … The air is dark and enters through the bus windows partially slid open. Orbs of yellow light sidewalk barbecues and small plastic tables under glass leaders of beer. Reggaetón shouting from rooftop speakers seems to fill the streets with many more people than are actually there. Two teenagers dash across lanes of traffic, popping sandals with the assurance of sliding past a swerving motorbike. I wipe the orange grit from my right ankle to the roof of my left foot. People standing in the isle hold on to the metal support bar, brandishing their armpits to those seated beneath after hours of sweaty work. A man with deflated rubber skin slumps with the day’s exhaustion in the seat next to me like a crumpled butterfly. The bus too is tired and says so.
24 diciembre el jueves
Definitely the funniest Christmas eve I've ever passed (24 hour bud rise to Rio with friends. Beware, only crazies take the overnight XMAS eve route. Literally, smelly giant chinese men eating chicken legs out of a plastic bag and farting and sleeping in the passageway at my feet. A brazilian with a portentous tattoo pulls up his pants and straddles your seat to show you and tell you that it means he's killed Xnumber of people. Another collecting money from passengers to bribe the chauffeur not to stop at customs so they can pass through with what ever "goods" they might be bringing from Paraguay. Angry arguments between the Sao Paulo hairdresser and the Peruvian/Italian yoga teacher going to Rio for an undetermined amount of time to teach yoga on the beach. Reaches Rio, realizes that it's impossible to find a hotel at this time of year, and returns the same day to Buenos Aires, 48 more hours on the bus! (see santa cluas below) ha!)
With Felix, arrive at the sidewalk kiosk at 9.30am to buy the bus ticket from Asunción to Ciudad del Este, the eastern-most city in Paraguay on the way to Brazil. It’s Christmas eve and have a bus that leaves for Rio from Foz de Iguazu en Brazil at 6.45 in the afternoon. This first ride is 5 hours, but once I get to Ciudad del Este I have to take a bus to the bridge connecting Paraguay and Brazil (while skirting Paraguay customs since I entered illegally), and then take another moto to the bus terminal to catch the Pluma to Rio. To make things short, the sleezeball salesman sold me a ticket to C del Este at 10 on a bus that didn’t exist. Arguing does nothing against his sidestepping excuses and false business. Whatever, I have to get on any bus I can. IT doesn’t come until 12. In the end I get on another bus at 11, where I stand for three hours, sit for 2, and arrive at 6. I’m gonna make it to Rio!
Countryside leading into Rio:
26 diciembre el sábado
Morning at the beach beneath Caesar Park sunbrellas that cast a roving shade. We burn on our feet and shoulders as the sun slides across its blue arching track. Tourist Rio is a place of eyes and Ipanema (though less than neighboring Copacabana) beach is center stage. It’s a spectacle, scintillating with eye-to-body contact. Exteriority, glance, and performance. Though there is something wonderful here, liberating, because the gym geeks aren’t the only ones relishing in a dearth of swimwear fabric. THe proverbial all shapes and sizes, which seems quite fitting here in Brazil as in the US, bare their flesh to the greedy sun without being abashed by imperious corporal cultural norms. They’re like children in an odd fleshy way. And whoever coined the term “sun bathing” was being subversive. The cooking analogy is more apt. And it’s rare in Brazil that you’re anything less than well done. Superficially at least, it is a culture of bodies and physicality that is, I have to say again, the culture of Brazilian tourists with pockets deep enough to perform on Ipanema. The shoulders and abs are like the jutting hills along the coast and the bikinis are tricks played by Brazilian designers in attempt to market the skimpy vestiges of more important projects.
Mangoes and avocadoes like footballs, apples, Brazil nuts, and dried fruits arrayed in neat pyramiding lattices, price tags definitively centered beneath. Isles, shelves, rows, swept and shining tile floors, and space – most of all space. Space as a premium luxury and the atmosphere of space, of leisure, of disposal and limitlessness. Lazy green Christmas garlands loop down from hooks in the ceiling and numerous sharply uniformed employees solicit idly at corners or by stacks and rows. It’s 10pm in the grocery store and there are more of them than customers. Yesterday I saw a young skinny black guy setting up beach chairs for tourists and wearing a shirt imprinted with: “Welcome to Rio. Have a pleasant stay and I am at your disposal.” The next line, had there been one, would have read: “Ask me about my low prices.” Hand printed and locally translated, maybe, but the idea of a human as a hand wipe, as disposable and at your disposal doesn’t sound like luxury to me. Slavery? Now, I may be a slave to the oppression game, the most popular one in leftist ideological academic theory, but I can’t help but feel a strong visceral repulsion; what I felt when I had to leave the grocery store tonight. A shock, a contrast that splits you like dry pine under a hatchet strike.
What does it mean to be a tourist? What makes Corcavado a tourist attraction? Why was it built for the centennial, only 35 years after the official story’s end of slavery? Why is it a thing to go, as others go, to wait behind others in line, to snap the same photos everyone else will upload onto their computers and then make the same comments and tell the same story to their friends as everyone else just did? That’s why exactly, it’s the thing to, as Heidegger might say. Hammering is what makes it a hammer – it’s just what you do with hammers. It’s just what you do to make yourself a tourist. I ramble into fear and oppression games, perceiving oppression? Perceiving monetary problems means supplying monetary answers and the serpent bites its tail. To what degree is perceiving suffering useful? Just imagine the luxury imbedded in that question.
27 diciembre 2009
Man on high after stepping out on to the helipad after an as advertised 8-9 minute loop over Ipanema, Copacabana, the Sugar Loaf, and Corcavado – the exalted massive stone Christ spreading his arms high above Rio. It gives you sea legs. And it turns with its tail, the helicopter, which is disconcerting to us animals built to lead with our noses. It rolls barrel-like and leans like a top wobbling jus before nicking the floor and crashing. Rio is perfect terrain for a spin in a helicopter: ocean reflecting glassy blue and a serpentine tide line licking light sandy beaches, garlanded with high-rise apartment buildings and hotels bookended by egg-carton stone hills crowned in green. Whale-hump striped stone islands break the horizon, which melts as the Atlantic and the heavens shine to an equal silver. Disconcertingly thin black funicular cables tie the sugar loaf, which looks more like a dinosaur egg, to the shorter stouter sister mountain. Corcavado lords over the city and oval tourist lagoon laid in the basin between rising green stumps of land. For 8-9 minutes I forget the metaphor – the reality – of looking down upon the city: elite freedom, the masses of shoeless children and three-walled houses – and roll in the vertigo of this Einstein-haired crazed inventor’s dream machine.
29 diciembre 2009 el martes
In Buzios. The green bay shimmers like the diamond vestments the patrons decorating this boutique believe themselves to be wearing. It’s the spectacle of Copacabana but wrap the bronzed skin in hammocks of white silk. That is, antiqued stone tile floors lead to a rich wooden balcony yearning toward a bay of small tethered fishing schooners and dinosaur dorsal islets. The tinkling of polished silverware syncopates the smooth beat of 5th Ave. perfume shop music in the poolside restaurant above. Sleep or read while tanning? I’d rather be working, delivering the caipirinhas and limes. The bay from beneath a white awning is not the same bay seen from a bobbing fishing boat, is not the same bay seen from the summit after a sweaty hike, nor the same as from under the precarious weight of sweating glasses on a waiter’s tray. All white sarongs. Manikins frozen in the AC of their display windows. Buzios. This little town is great. This rotting stripmall land reaks with the ripe stench of the oppression of international exchange rates and power addictions. It is both I suppose. Do you feel powerful atop your summit? I feel powerless, debilitated, dependent on the working hands that realize the structure supporting such height. We on top, where did we begin our climb? Two steps down? Two steps up? Thanks to our parents. Thanks to our parents. But again, money fixation – from above or below – does little but self-perpetuate. Language is power.
31 diciembre 2009
Take the arranged car back from Buzios to the airport in Río, where I say goodbye to Nate and Laura before taking a bus to Copacabana for the massive Near Year’s Eve blowout. The driver is not happy about going into Río this day, as the traffic leaving is horrific. I arrive and walk to the Caesar Park where we had stayed earlier that week, hoping to stash my bag at the hotel in order to make the night possible. It works! I’m hungry so I wander over to the grocery store, no plans. And at the entrance I run into my friend Alex from Santiago (from Belgium) and her boyfriend Benoit! We do our shopping and they invite me back to their hostel. Hostels are ridiculous in Rio during the holidays. This one is 125 reals per night – about 75$ - and you have to commit to four nights in a row. Fortunately they have 2 beds, so they agree to share one and give me the other. What a charmed day! We hang out at the hostel with other hostelers and wander over to the beach between 10 and 11 with six others. There are three stages with music and we only make it to the first (about 2 miles of walking), which turns out to be the most fun anyway. I remember a really cool older lady dancing with us, Alex and Benoit whirling the swing together in the sand and the Brazilians around us all cheering them on. I love the reversal of roles. I lose my sandals in the ocean trying to complete the tradition of jumping over 7 waves. As the sky begins to glow with morning, we follow the curve of the coast in search of place to watch the sunrise. We find a rocky outcropping beyond the end of Ipanema where there are dozens of people grouped quietly, watching the purple orb rise out of the Atlantic.
Waking up on the beach in Paraty, Brazil after spending a restless sandy night in January, refusing to pay the outrageous sum for a hostel. A man worked all night near us raking sand like an tropical zen garden, and I awoke gradually to the sounds of metal teeth stroking neat particles of golden sand.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)