Are you freaking out of your mind?

I have always loved the beach. Yesterday, it was my birthday and I tried, I really did. I plopped my towl down on the deserted Ipanema beach and tried to appreciate the beauty of the waves and moutains. The huge drops of rain persisted in their insistance that I take the hint and have the good sense to desist. I gave up when the wind started lashing my face with sand. Oh well.

I settled into one of those ubiquitous little beach stands with the plastic table and chairs to read. Suddenly, I was surrounded by six large, loud American men. Four of them, from my own beloved Texas, were buying those crappy knock off soccer jerseys that fall apart the first time you wash them from a street vendor. They then began to complain about how the water made them sick. Right... (the water is absolutely fine and drinkable, I imagine the week of high risk sex, binge drinking and overeating they excitedly told me about had nothing to do with it...)

Despite the inclement weather the two Chicagoans had set up a large Bose iPod player on their table and were chilling to instrumental rock music.

Now. for context.

I wouldn't walk around in Rio with even a watch. When taking pictures, I use a disposable camera or take pains to hid my digital, only whipping it out quickly when I already have the shot planned, then promptly stuffing it back in my pocket. Brazilians shed all jewelry before going out and are careful to keep a low profile. In fact, during my taxi ride earlier that day, the driver and I congenially discussed strategies for best avoiding a mugging. While I emphatically do not share many Brazilians unfair characterization of Rio as a "very dangerous" city, I freely admit only an idiot would ignore its high crime rate.

People recount stories of kidnapping and muggings and murders with pain in their eyes I would never want to experience.

So imagine my absolute shock at seeing a piece of high technology worth multiple thousands of dollars displayed prominently in a public place. I absolutely could not resist the question... ummm? aren't you a little... er... worried about that?

The Chicagoan's response surprised me even more than the stereo. He was deeply offended and irritated with me. He had never had a problem, ever. He had never felt unsafe. And who do I think I am? As if he didn't know how to handle himself... As if he didn't know Rio... He had been coming down there for over a year, staying for long periods of time and he had a friend and he was learning Portuguese with Rosetta stone! He was not some inexperienced tourist and I might as well mind my own business, because he wanted to sit at the beach listing to music. Damn it.

Wow... very taken aback, I simply tried to explain where I was coming from. How every single one of my Brazilian friends (without exception) had been mugged at some point or threatened with a weapon as they tried to quietly go about their business. I told my own stories of close calls with fights and carjackings.

I live here. I have spoken Portuguese fluently for four years and while I too love this city, I have the humility to accept the rules that govern this place and the good senese to heed the advice of the natives who are only concerned with my wealfare. I freely admit I am a foreigner who has much to learn about life in Brazil.

By all means, display your material wealth prominently in the shadow of the one of the largest favelas in Latin America in the city with one of the world's highest violent crime rates.

Oh... and those men were laughing at you two because you were freaked out by that bug. It's called a dona joana and is basically a glorified lady bug. Have a nice stay.

Road hazards

Going ANYWHERE here includes a careful study of maps and bus routes. I then depart with the fare carefully divided in separate pockets for quick access. I always draw a map of the surrounding streets. As soon as I get on the bus, I ask the cashier to please alert me when we reach my street. Sometimes all this results in an easy trip to my destination.

MOST OF THE TIME I AM WANDERING STREETS ASKING UP TO THREE OR FOUR PEOPLE FOR DIRECTIONS IN THIS STUPID LABYRINTH OF A CITY AFTER I GET OFF.

I just can't understand how for all my maps and research I still get hopelessly lost... I think the streets are on a randomization algorithm.

I find it sometimes helps to pretend you're Mario and this is just another level to get to the castle. Instead of evil mushrooms and grainy pixel monsters I dodge muggers and psycho-motorcyclists. That princess I rescue had better be grateful, damn it!

I know it just takes time to figure this all out. However, it's getting hotter every day here, and these little peregrinations leave me drenched. The raining season starts in a few days... then I'll really know what "wet" is. Mamma mia! Ay Mario no lika the slushy sneakers!

Screaming vagabonds

Last night we went to the movies to celebrate Brazilian Independence Day. We saw Os Normais 2, a physical comedy shtick that taught me two new hilarious Portuguese slang words for "vagina," insulted the entire state of Bahia (racially?) and managed to work a baby sloth into the plot - brilliant.

The theater is near the top of a tall hill, and by the time we had lopped to the bottom, those potatoes I had pealed and cut up for dinner were simply not going to do the trick. Fortunately, there is a cheap restaurant at the bottom of the hill.

Now, this street during the day is a busy shop lined avenue. At night, however, it is the great divide between light and dark. Marginal and mainstream. Vagrancy and... dinner.

Basically the street lights on the side of the road opposite the restaurant have been burned out since I got here shrouding the area in darkness. This has facilitated the growth of a HOBO COLONY.

I'm not sure when they set up shop or where they go during the day, but after dark a cardboard city springs up. Pedestrians cross over to the well-lit restaurant side, which conducts a lively business. Well, my laziness landed us there last night as well.

It was disconcerting to say the least to eat dinner some 20 feet away from a homeless person, cracked out and screaming incomprehensibly for a good ten minutes at his friends. The entire restaurant collectively shuddered when he stormed off down the street flailing his arms and sputtering.

City dwellers can sympathize with scenes like this one that push you towards the "clean up the rabble" argument. Then there are the little moments that remind you of their humanity like the ancient woman napping on a door step that makes you wish you could "do something." Like poverty, tacky clothing and other social problems, I'm sure the solution is complex.

In the meanwhile, I sure do hope they managed to resolve their problem last night. A HOBO WAR just doesn't seem like it'd be in anyone's interests.

Gyms+Egos: the neverending saga

Ordinarily, I work out almost every week day. Rather high-strung, it's crucial for maintaining my stress levels and emotional stability.

I haven't worked out in two months. Imagine. Also, my normal healthy eating habits have been utterly disregarded in favor of large amounts of cheese, fried garbage and meat slathered in grease. This move/unemployment/new country gig has been so stressful I've been breaking out like an eighth grader.

This morning, I trouped upstairs for my mandatory physical at Alta Energia.

Oooooh boy.

I am amazed at how thorough the doc was. In a small, scuffed up room decorated with an ancient diagram of the human skeleton, this guy took my blood pressure, measurements, fat ratios, flexibility, resting/active heart rate, and on and on.... I'm in decent shape, but I've gotten a little pudgy around the middle. Is there any way to say that without making someone feel dispirted?

I then resolutely marched in to actually work out and was met by Paulo, six feet tall, moreno with great arms and a half-sleeve tribal tatoo that made me wonder how many bar fights he's been in this month. Sweet guy, very helpful... too helpful...

In the U.S., unless you pay for it, you go into a gym, do whatever and leave. People who talk too much or bother you are avoided at all costs. The gym is the pennicle of American independence. Now, I'm no model, but I feel after seven going on eight years of working out, I at least know what I'm doing enough to be left alone... right?

Wrong. In Brazil you let the gym "professors" prepare workouts for you, monitor you, and basically take care of you to the fullest. For me, it was a weird experience trying to do what I wanted, but also incorporating his advice (which is probably pretty well-informed...) I compare it to climbing into a pool raft. You know it'll hold you up, but you wobble around when you lower yourself down just the same.

I also had to resist the temptation to show-off... "see, I don't need your help; I got this..." In the end, he just left me go do what I wanted and took care of other people. To assert myself, I put all my intensity into it and it turned out to be a good workout. Then I nearly threw up afterwards... embarassing. "Start slowly, David," they said. "Ease back into it," they said.

Me and my ego have a long, hard couple of months ahead.

Peace, love and laziness in Hippie Hallow

Today I packed up most of my apartment.

It's unsettling, really: bare bookshelves, rooms suddenly filled with space, my cat chasing huge dust bunnies unleashed from dark corners by the hubbub.

Hippie Hallow has now been my home for over a year.

Upon moving in, much to my dismay I discovered a gelatinous goo covering much of the stove and cabinets. But we learned what we were really up against when we found the [used] condom, which had melted onto the window sill, eventually fusing with the paint over time.

Mass graves of dead fruit fly carcasses rotted on every shelf of the refrigerator. They were presumably lured in by the uncovered stick of butter left there God knows how long by the previous tenant. Roaches scurried in all directions whenever you flipped on the lights in the kitchen. One time, one of them paused, craned its neck around slowly to face me and audibly hissed, "Our name is Legion, for we are many."

Undeterred, armed with paint and Pinesol, I set to work. After an extensive fumigation, I filled the rooms with furniture scrounged from a dusty warehouse. Sitting in my office chair (a product of that raid) I look around now at a relatively clean apartment, free from significant insect life, the walls bright colors of my choosing.

When I moved in, a giant mirror leaned against the carport. It used to reflect our legs on the porch usually hidden beneath a forest of empty beer bottles that set the rhythm of countless drunken summer conversations. It shattered during Hurricane Ike because no one thought to secure it.

Recently, inspired by the surging vigor of spring, the hippies started construction of a rock-lined garden - abortive like all their attempts at productivity. Pretty much all they accomplished was uprooting my thriving cucumber plants and installing a border around this year's freshly sprouting crop of weeds. Yep. It's time to go...

I will miss neither the cold-shower-already-sweating-in-the-dark-ceiling-fan-drowning AC-less summer heat, nor the rub-your-fingers-before-the-pathetic-space-heater-so-you-can-keep-typing cold of winter.

I will not miss the doghair-cathair-hairyhair-lint-and-leaves laundromat that costs two dollars a load even if you mess up. I'm still irritated it didn't burn down in that dryer fire.

I will not miss the bone-thin, squirrelly-eyed meth heads who lived across the way and used to shriek at me (really there's no other word for it) when I sat on the porch alone. They finally got evicted when a flaming pillow went sailing out their front window. I'm glad I didn't have to clean that apartment...

I feel I can honestly make myself comfortable in any setting - no matter how woebegone, there is a way to bring beauty and comfort with you. You can't romanticize poverty, but there is a certain honesty here that made me really face my middle-class mediocrity. There's also a sweaty, alcoholic apathy here that has converted me into an almost manically ambitious person.

Whatever Hippie Hallow has done for the formation of my current psyche, it saw me through the most exhilarating and difficult period of my life so far. I made my first real home here. I became an adult here.

I will miss the sunlight filtered through a hundred different shades and shapes of green waving in the breeze out my front window - ineffable shine that gilds my (uniquely) audacious youth.

Trying to be cool, I fall from grace

I knew we were in for it, when our instructor sauntered over, a smug look on her face and two Santa Claus hats in her hands. We were waiting for her in Spence Park where she had crypticly instructed us to meet for Health class last Wednesday. So great was our apathy (verging on self-hatred), we started to bond as classmates for the first time since January.

Fortunate, since we were paired off into teams and informed we would be playing Capture the Santa Hat in lieu of our normal workout. Oh happy day.


My strategy to best avoid any unnecessary physical exertion was to make an early haphazard break for the hat, get tagged, and saunter off to jail from where I could view the action and make snarky comments about the players. I was in my element: I had an audience, I was bored and feeling highly "above all this childish crap." [Ironic since I spent yesterday morning blowing bubbles in the park with Alycia]

No more is required to get my caustic creativity going.


Why do I never realize, as I become more of an outspoken asshole, I am actually stacking on layers of negativity to the lameness of the situation?


I got my comeuppance though... Oh boy, did I ever. As she took role at the end of class, a random bird (apparently flightless) started squawking hysterically. I mean this thing was having a conniption fit. So I kicked at it and yelled to make it shut up (I was really thinking I was cool... remember, in my element).

Weirdly, the bird didn't really move at first, but continued squawking now joined by the shrill protestations of several classmates. I had kind of a sinking feeling as I finally spotted the four, well-camouflaged eggs tenderly nestled into the mulch that momma bird had been guarding.

Fail.

As I rode away on my bicycle the bird's desperate pleas for mercy still ringing in my ears, two of my female classmates shot me death glares... "bird-kicker." I could almost hear their vaginas snapping shut to me forever... kind of like a bear trap.

Nonplussed, I rode forward to ride like an eager little puppy starved for approval next to a male classmate with whom only minutes earlier I had enjoyed a lively rapport. I mocked the bird and my classmates' disdain only to be tolerated briefly and dispensed with. Smiling self-consciously like I was back in junior high [shudder] I rode off to take a hot shower and contemplate my fall from grace.

It's amazing how quickly you can move from cool, edgy guy to Satan's least favorite dickhead just for overlooking some freaking eggs. Geez...