With the news came more rain, soft and slow as I can ever remember in this City. It is nothing like our neighborhood back home.
I remember a few things I enjoyed about growing up there, not the least of which was mowing and raking Helen’s lawn. It was an excuse to force us kids into working, not for the money, but for the experience: pleasure and pain. A job well done is it’s own reward, and all that stuff. Mom’s usual psychology worked magic around our growing minds, but it was also a pleasure it was for Helen, to have two growing kids on which to dump her chocolate covered macademia nuts and Shasta Cola in between raking and mowing her lawn on brisk autumn days. Everyone was better off because of it. What a saint.
Growing up in the posh end of the East Bay didn’t give us many chances for this sort of thing as people are usually secluded and dead long before they ever die. Helen never gave that seclusion a chance. Like Bill, the firefighter and gardener across the street, seeing her out walking up and down that stretch no matter how slowly was a cherished routine. It helped assure us that things were as they should be, and going well at that.
–
Helen died today.
I just learned of it through a message I had been ignoring all day. They’ve already had her funeral back home, half a world away. She would have liked that it was done so soon after her passing, though. She may have moved slowly but she liked things to be done, and I can’t remember her ever being shy about it. I would have liked to have been there, of course, as I’m sure it was full of people celebrating her life, with smiles as bright as the summer that approaches, and plenty of tears as light as her white hair.
It’s comforting to remember that I will always have the fig tree, though. She used to give us loads of figs that she couldn’t handle off of her aging tree that apparently had learned over the years to produce the really good stuff. Later, she saw we liked them so much that she gave us a branch of her tree and we planted it in our front yard and watched it grow with inordinate speed. Already it produces such sweetness as hers and towers over our front yard. Already it has given a branch to another tree in our backyard. One day it will offer me another branch, and I will plant it with the care to which it is accustomed.
Life goes on, I suppose.
I would have liked to be kissed goodbye one last time though, as she invariably did, even if it was to cross the street on her way home.
I would have liked to hear her say one last time, that I’m a ‘good kid’, because she would say it with meaning whether I was doing what I could to make my family happy or bringing her some pao de queijo, or just telling her that the figs she gave us were out of sight. She was the kind of person that didn’t see the difference in the actions because the motivation was the same… I’m a ‘good kid’ and that’s that.
I will miss her dearly.
–
I perceive that but for the rain, the river Tiete is dulled and motionless, like a festering lagoon by the freeway. The sounds of the City have smoothed out a bit now and a fog has fallen over it such as to make San Francisco envious. It is not silent, nor is it still, but for a fleeting moment, or series of moments, all the noises - somehow in sync - go unheard.
An idle night for an idle day, it seems. Who knew so much peace could be had in a moment?
Maybe I will sleep tonight… maybe. Who knows?
Estanplaza Hotel, 12th floor balcony, Sao Paulo - March, 2006
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A surface storm stirs me from slumber and I cannot help but stay awake and watch. It’s not like I can TIVO this shit.
The sound is richer than any THX robot and the electricity lingers in the air long after the lightning strikes. I could really use some company on a night like this — not for conversation, mind you; there’s nothing to be said. No, the company would be more of a spot check that I’m real, that magic moments like this on the 12th floor of a posh hotel in the darkness of a city suddenly gone quiet do, indeed, exist.
But decent people are not awake at this kind of hour. It’s a dangerous time for me.
Deep into the night, amidst a rain that drowned São Paulo I stood on the 12th floor balcony of my room at the Estanplaza Hotel for what seemed like hours. There was no hope of sleep, not in that thunderous fury of lightning and wind. Someone was speaking to me that night, and I stood outside in the hopes of understanding what was being said.
The lighting and thunder was as I remember it. Threatening, vicious and impressive, but mostly distant, the warm breezes blew in from whatever direction they pleased. I was convinced that nature was doing all it could to keep me happy and distracted. Days like that don’t come very often, when the sky darkens in the middle of the afternoon and the wind is warm and refreshing. Days when the silent lighting over the tiny blue hills on the horizon tell of a storm on the way, and you feel it permeate your bones as the night rolls over the clouds.
I like that.
–
I gripped the rail tightly. I would hold on if the thunderous crash caused me to lose my balance, fall, or jump off. You can never be too careful when things are as weird as they have been for me lately. Much is on my mind, and despite the persistent discussions here I find it difficult to resolve the matters at hand as they are rooted within an intrinsic part of who I am today. It’s interesting how the mind can be so full at times, yet so light as to make little cause of movement or work against inertia. Still at at another time, a man may have but one issue at hand and be so weighed down by it that he can go no further, to say nothing of wandering between topics.
I realize that there is an annoying lack of specificity when I speak of such things but I have already dabbled too much into this matter, both in real life and here. And you can never be too careful concerning what is written, because no matter how much you alter the story or how many new characters you invent, you’re always drawing from somewhere. Like any joke, there is some hint, some foundation of truth in what we say, a sliver of reality that can just as easily betray the tale.
And that would be the end of that story.
–
The rain reacts with the smog differently here. The sky becomes fumous and black. It thickens with a castigating surrealism like some form of plasma.
Rain in the city…it never seems to fully stop at this time of year, but nobody can remember when it started. In the dark, my thoughts turn to dreams, or visions, rather. Black thoughts enshroud my mind as I walk down a poorly lit corridor, narrow and brown. Old fixtures give way to shadows and elevators that weep with age. It is narrower every day. Soon it will be upon me.
What’s it all for anyway? Where does this take me? In the morning, I will work as I have always done before, but night will bring these words again, these questions. And tonight will remain just another thought in the dark; another building in this Beast.
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Wholly uninspired by the affluence of this place, I am forced to explain how blasé it can be.
Despite the amazing amounts of papaya and mangoes and various other fruits and juices with which I am not presently equipped with names, despite the copious amounts of all things good like pão de queijo and coffee that doesn’t taste like ass, despite the 12th floor balcony overlooking one of the world’s largest metropoli — it’s all little more than a Marriott with a nice facade; a bed & breakfast with too much space and little charm. Really. People, in general, have no concept of real luxury. It’s incredible how far a little gold trim goes for some people.
And for what? $450 a night? More? It’s unreasonable, and spectacularly so at that. If it weren’t for fiscally irresponsible clients, I don’t see how a place like this could even exist.
Moreover, there is scum in this place who think this is great, or worse, who think this is normal. These are the same jerks and idiots who don’t notice the favela across the street. These are the same assholes who will return to their respective foreign nations without their laptops or wristwatches and a tell a tall tale of how they were brutally robbed by a street kid. These same fat men in cheap suits with matching mustaches and large expense accounts will describe the beautiful women they watched dancing (if they were cultured enough to go out) and the delicious food that later gave them the runs that can make a educated man learn to pray.
Fuckwads.
There is, of course, a whole other perspective on the favelas that I don’t share, either because I’ve been too far from these shores for too long or because I’m just not that obtuse. Maybe both.
In any case, most people are disgusted by the presence of the favelas in the cities. Some are even in search of a solution, a method to get the people out of there (for better or for worse, and mostly for worse). I find it interesting that few, if any, are in search of a way to stop people from getting into that state of necessity and desperation in the first place. Interesting that for all the compassion people have for the poor, it doesn’t translate if the poor are in favelas.
Maybe that’s not fair, and maybe it is. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Since when have people as a whole had enough forward-thinking vision to solve problems instead of symptoms, right? Even the favela folk are guilty of that.
–
Let’s back up a step. For those not in the know, a favela is an area (usually a few blocks or more) in which haphazard, incomplete, illegal construction has been erected, residences established and a community formed. Often these were people that came down south from the northeast of Brazil for construction jobs and other such political wash basins. Electrical wires are spliced and electricity is stolen from the municipality. Streams are rerouted and water is stolen as well. Some abodes are worse than others, made of wood and cardboard while others have brick and mortar that depict an ongoing construction, sometimes for decades, perhaps.
They build over themselves, because unless they’re on the fringe of the city swallowing other satellites there is no where to go but up. At least two things they all share are clothes hanging out to dry in the hot, muggy air, and extreme poverty, the likes of which I wouldn’t dare describe here beyond being terribly immense and fantastically immeasurable.
This would be, of course, a natural segway point into the obvious discussion of the drug trafficking and the opportunity for organized crime that such an environment harbors and fosters but I just don’t have the strength to go into that mess right now.
In any case, I feel I should note (since no one else has) that the people who live in favelas are just that: people. And it’s amazing what little influence or effect that fact has on perspectives of these places. They are so blind to their anger and hate of the em>favela, so lacking in their compassion for the people that the fact is almost nullified, almost ceases to be a fact.
And maybe sometimes it does, a little.
Fucking people, man.
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If nature were to one day be fed up with man for the obscene amounts of pollutants we toss into the mix, Cubatão would be the first place to be removed from the surface like picking a scab.
Sometimes I think it’s a good thing I can’t will mountains to crumble over an entire city.
Then I see Cubatão in the shadow of the dying serra smack in the middle of the Mata Atlantica, and it’s obvious that we simply don’t need the help.
Anchieta SP-150, Cubatão - March, 2006
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Silence, finally.
A rare moment these days, when one’s sleep is disrupted over so trivial a thing as breakfast, which I’m capable of preparing myself, thanks. I brood over the necessity of such a disruption but the brooding doesn’t fix it. Oh well. At least it doesn’t last long either.
I’m not much of a brooder. I think it’s because there are too many people in my life that require too much of my attention. I guess you could say I’ve learned to brood in short bursts, since brooding is somewhat unavoidable.
–
Random thoughts again in the morning. They come at me like the salty air from the beach comes at my face when I scope out the waves prior to jumping in. Questions abound over the nature of this trip, its purpose, if any exists. Is this really just another business trip that happened to be to a familiar place? Or is it an opportunity to be shown a bigger picture? To see the repercussions of the choices I’ve made?
I’m not one for chance, and I loathe the idea of destiny. But the alternative - right now — is somewhat terrifying.
–
Everywhere on the beach there are girls, surfers, mothers, madams, chicks and useless dependent, bikini-filling masses. Most cling to their respective husbands and boyfriends and another majority of the rest look desperately for their own before they lose their appeal. It is this dependence that is beyond my tolerance.
It is not in my nature to understand this need people seem to have, this affinity for dependence. I would just as soon turn a need into a want, even if I have to sell it to myself. A need is a weakness; a want is avoidable. You can choose to suffer, and I’d prefer to suffer a want than to crave a need.
How could you want to need someone? That just seems like the longest way possible through the mud — small-minded thinking rooted in a smaller view of a larger image.
What then, am I seeing here? What am I doing here? Am I here to discover this, or is the causality all mixed up in these words? And more importantly, if there is no purpose, can I still fail?
That would be inconceivable; so much is riding on the outcome, so many future paths depend on these choices…
Failure, although my biggest, and oldest fear is not the worst consequence. The worst part of it all is the fear that can come to govern this existence. The fear of the rot that follows failure, the apathetic mediocrity that follows complacency - this sickness consumes more than we care to count. I fight for the strength to rise above it.
–
Excuse me. I have to jump in the water for a sec ’cause life ain’t all just a string of words for you to read.
And now I’m brooding too long when the water feels this good. You suckers keep reading. I’m going surfing.
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