The Shoes Make the Outfit

When I need a little pick-me-up, I like logging in to WordPress and looking on my dashboard to see my “Top Searches”. Today, for example, my top searches were: animals binocular vision; nudists; brigitte bardot fat; paperkite bike.

Brigitte Bardot comes up frequently, as does binocular vision, (interestingly enough, so does nudists). Each time, the context is slightly different. Today I wonder if the person looking for “paperboy bike” was actually looking for The Paper Kites ...

…I am, often beyond reason, detail oriented. Not just any details though. …Totally (or almost totally) inconsequential ones. (I could see you were starting to wondering what the point was).

To date, I have met very few people who I feel I can truly relate to in this way: the majority of the people who love me just smile and tell me what a weirdo I am. …If I am ever caught laughing at my “top searches” –  and I believe it’s only a matter of time – I would wager that most of my friends would smile fondly  and shake their heads.

My affinity for and delight in inconsequential details is, I think, something of a cardinal idiosyncrasy. (On the flip-side, so too would be my perseverance and obstinate attitude vis-a-vis many other inconsequential details).

Quant à language learning… there are many details. There are grammatical details… and vocabulary details… and pronunciation details. I spend six hours a day in a Portuguese language class here: too many details. Something had to give. In my case, grammar continues to eat it.

…In the past week or so, I have had a number of fantastic language-learning-related compliments: (I am, naturally, going to itemize them here below):

(1) at the beach… somebody spoke to me in Spanish and asked if I was Argentinian; (2) at the grocery store… the clerk laughed and said [in portuguese] that “everybody must think I am from Portugual, right?”; (3) at the botanical gardens… a Brazilian person asked me if I was Brazilian.

Guys. Ladies. (Mans. Womans): Do you know what this means?! (My work here is done) (…Kidding).

This means that… (as long as I don’t do anything beyond: exchange niceties & talk about what I study), I don’t just sound like another anglophone! or another francophone! I sound… not from here but not from anywhere in particular. (Fact…I am equally flattered when people ask me where I am from: it tells me they can’t tell from my accent).

(Wait, I need to say it again: A BRAZILIAN PERSON ASKED ME IF I WAS BRAZILIAN. I CAN’T EVEN CONJUGATE VERBS PROPERLY, but DANG IF I CAN’T FAKE A GREAT ACCENT).

(I already knew this, and you may not care, but, since you’ve already seen my nerd show once or twice before:…My long-lasting elation from these compliments serves to confirm that my interests continue to remain more heavily invested in the phon[ology][etics] side of things, rather than the syntax side of things).

I am trying to remember that however nice it is to have a passable accent, the foundation starts with grammar and understanding vocabulary. (Case in point, this “English” version of a Sertanejo hit).

If the accent is the accessories, I am all decked out. Unfortunately, I’m also wearing the world’s ugliest runners. (With skinny jeans.) (At a chique lounge.) (The runners may or may not have a platform heel and may or may not also have a hole in the toe with duct tape on it (I digress that this can be cool, maybe, if I was being outdoorsy))…

(…I may or may not (also) be trying to convince myself to memorize verb conjugations by evoking feelings of embarrassment generally reserved for times of fashion faux-pas. Let me spell shallow for you…)

ENFIM. …I am busy learning a lot of Portuguese (the language), and a lot of Brazilian (the culture). My head is so stuffed with details I don’t even know where to begin. There are about 100 details that I want to share with you every single day. Some day, they’ll make their way from my brain to my tongue…

{Detail: I met this and several other monkey friends while “hiking” on Sugar Loaf. I loved their hairy ears – just like Mo! …If only Mo was as expressive as a monkey…}

MMMulticolorida

Today I ate the largest avocado of my life. The photos I took don’t begin to do it justice. It is (was?) almost as large as my face. Melon-sized.

Na verdade, I did not eat the whole thing. I stuffed myself and managed only about one third. Who has experience with various varieties of avocados? Anyone? There is NO WAY that this was the same kind of avocado that we get at home.

Besides the size, the taste and texture were different. It was… sweet. Somewhat harder. Less….greasy, more watery, but no less flavourful. Truly …delightful! A fruit. I ate it with sweetened condensed milk – something you probably couldn’t pay me to do in Canada.

Tomorrow, I have to be at PUC (say it with me: “POOKIE” ) (the campus), at: 06:15 AM. I’m going with a group of students to register with the Federal Police (something my Visa requires), which means I actually have to shower and look put together, lest they throw me in jail for looking like a slob (I’m not sure that this has happened before, but a plunging v-neck has indeed landed a student there in the past…).

All of the above means leaving the house at oh-dark-hundred. Perhaps, though, (I will try to report back), the streets will be silent when I “go out the house”  (or, in English…’leave’). I hope so. I am so craving even five moments of still quiet.

Noise. This is something I notice a lot when I travel. What kinds of noises. How many. From where/who. Are they people noises or machine noises or noises from nature. Sometimes there are no noises.

I remember distinctly a moment of no noise some weeks after I arrived in Belgium in 2005. I had been having trouble falling asleep at night – trouble that persisted beyond the normal period of jetlag.

I was staying with a family who lived several kilometers outside of the town. At a certain moment, laying in bed, it dawned on me that I couldn’t fall asleep because it was too quiet. There were no sirens. No cars. Nothing. There were no sounds at all. It was perfectly silent. It was strange.

In Rio, I am discovering a different kind of strange, a louder one: The neighbourhood in which I am living does not sleep and it is never silent. It might sound odd, but the noise makes me feel …claustrophobic. I feel like I have ADD – I can’t think quite clearly because I’m trying to pay attention to all the noises all the time.

I like it here. I like the hustle and bustle, and I love that people sit out on the street and chat with one another. People are happy here. Rio is laid back. Nobody moves particularly fast, unless they’re running or biking or surfing…

And still… the noise makes me feel claustrophobic. There is probably another word – a better word – to describe this feeling of being uncomfortably surrounded by noise… perhaps not in English, but in some language.

Our apartment is on the edge of Ipanema. Walk one block East and you’re in Cocacabana. We are three doors down from a hospital; immediately behind the metro station; one block from the central square (& bus central) of Ipanema. We are also at the base of a favela, whose sounds waft down from on high.

People litter the streets and beaches and they talk. They talk and talk and talk. And they laugh. They watch novelas with the volume turned up high, and the plots find their way into my little room. And then…if a person can manage to escape or ignore the urban noise, there is still more noise: the ocean hums a constant rhythm; the jungles and green spaces buzz with life.

We are inundated with noise in all directions, and with Rio’s tropical climate… people leave the windows open all the time. The sounds know no boundaries …nor do they have time limits:

In this, a big city full of tourists, the cabs rumble along the cobblestones at break-neck speeds, screeching ‘stop’ when they meet one another, even into the wee hours of the madrugada.

After a time, a person would get used to the noise. If I lived here permanently, I’d live in the tallest tower I could find… at the top. (In the penthouse, obviously, and we would have a pool up there as well).

For the time being, I’m working on finding my inner silence. If the weather man is wrong, Saturday might be a day to fly. Those in Edmonton: wear sunscreen – it just takes a few bad burns to get cancer!

PS. The crappy bike? Crappy. …The ride along the beach on the crappy bike? Hopes and dreams, folks. Hopes and dreams.

Jeitinho (1); Tan (0)

Guess what guys. GUESS WHAT. (What? <– that’s you, asking). Well. I found them. I found *them* … *them* the people that exist in every place everywhere. The people who, despite linguistic difficulty and cultural differences … just want everybody who wants to ride a bike… to ride a bike.

I have a bike. (!!) I found the bike store with the guy who, down the street, has, with his buddy, an underground garage full of bikes. They rented me a get-around bike for ~50 bucks (I negotiated the price down with my sweet face). If anything goes wrong, I’ll bring it back and they’ll fix it or find me a new bike to ride.

Tomorrow, I’m riding to campus along Ipanema and the Beach of Leblon. It will be heavenly. It is suppose to be warmer tomorrow (it’s a “cold” 18 degrees here right now), so tomorrow afternoon will be for the beach.

I procured an appropriately TINY bikini. My whiteness makes me feel like the boy in the cartoon above, sometimes. Tomorrow might be the day I find the courage to ask to play volleyball with some hot tanned people on the beach. If I fall out of the tiny bikini, well. It will be a show. Perhaps my whiteness will blind them, in which case, they won’t see anything anyway. Done. Tomorrow is for volei.

Speaking of shows, well. Not quite. But music. Here is a song that frequents the radio around here. Someone is always singing it non-stop. Ai ai… anyway. To bed, I go. It is late. Maybe (maybe) I’ll write something concise one of these days ;) … or maybe not.

xx

{Image via Three Word Phrase: Go there now. It is funny, I promise, really.}

Chapter 1: In Which Flirting with Strangers Yeilds Profit; Contains Risk

I feel like I’d like to start this post with a catchy phrase in Portuguese, but alas, Brian is currently a stew of English and French and Portuguese, and so, instead of catch-phrases, I will just start from the beginning:

HOLY SHIT GUYS… I AM IN BRAZIL? …THAT IS NOT A QUESTION MARK (!!)

I would like to say that I have been too busy to share with you, but that’s not 100% true. The 100% truth is that … travel blogging is stressful. I mean, not, really. As with most other (every) thing(s), the stress is 90% in my head. BUT! But. But indeed…

…I feel I should be writing to you and making only earnest and heartfelt reflections about the culture and the people and the landscape and/or the global economy.

…I should be posting national geographic-worthy candids of cariocas on the avenidas. I should be having some kind of quarter-life-epiphany about the state of humanity and my place in the world.

(Alternatively, I should be posting beautiful cryptic inspirational phrases accompanied by hazy overexposed beach photos of my perfectly pedi’d toes, and/or my svelte shadow jumping for joy, the sunset illuminating me from behind. Right? Right… A little bit that’s what you want).

Nada Nada Nada. I want nada of thisso!

(…That’s a half-lie, actually. If we are totally honest – and we are honest – I do in fact want to be able to make these sorts of wise reflections and I do in fact want to take nat-geo worthy photos of myself and others.)

(and, semi-unrelated: Dear God, Let me, please, someday, have a few photos of myself that could turn me into a full-blown narcissist).

BUT. What. I. Mean. What I mean is that being here is bringing to the forefront a blogging challenge I’ve been feeling for some time. The name of the challenge is: authenticity. Did you know….It’s hard to write a good blog (i.e: concise; themed; well voiced; …read etc.)  …and also be candid and open and honest?

I follow a number of beautiful blogs on the internet. They are beautiful. Truly. Works of ART (A-majuscule). They are beautiful, and yet, sometimes, I find myself getting, well … bored. One blog in particular comes to mind (don’t worry it’s not yours, yours is never boring).

The blog I am thinking about (which, il faut dire, I *do* enjoy reading) is centered on the theme of zen/minimalist living/mindfulness, etc.

Often I walk away from the posts feeling refreshed and thoughtful, but, there also usually a voice in the back of my head (the cynic; most active in the afternoon when hanger sets in) that, with pompous attitude, says: “OK. SERIOUSLY?! YOUR LIFE. IS. NOT. THAT. HAPPY. AND. ZEN. ALL. THE. TIME.

whycantyoutalkabouthowshittyoufeelsometimesbecausethatwillmakemebelievethatwhatyouaretalkingaboutactuallyworks.plz.

I am maybe calling all sorts of kettles black here, since I also sometimes use blogging as a tool to re-frame life’s more miserable moments. By the time you read about my woes, I’ve spend a long time thinking and writing and reflecting: what you read is fairly pretty, fairly concise (sort-of usually, though I admit I never proof read). You get a reasonably arms-length assessment of a particular life event.

In addition: If I am particularly anxious or sad or angry (or) I have diarrhea or pink eye (or both? ew.) – or I am having the same problem with my dainty ankles/weak shoulder ….I don’t blog. I sit around and tell myself a story about how nobody wants to hear about how difficult your (my?) very privileged life is (and) nobody wants to hear about the same problem over and over again.

In this sense, I feel like blogging is a bit like travel (or) your best friend’s relationship. At the end of the day, most people only really want to hear that you had a good time, see 20% of your pretty pictures, know that you are happy. … They don’t (when we are honest) really usually want to hear about how awesome/shitty Mr(s). Right/Wrong is …500 times a day.

You might have already apercevoir’ed that this is an “it’s been coming for a while” rant.

For some time I’ve been wanting to take this blog from the zone of 80% reality, 20% “photoshop”… (as much as some of the photos I take could use some help, I mean this figuratively – I actually have no effing clue how to use photoshop) (And don’t roll your eyes: I only post the top 10 percentile of photos on this blog, but there are many unmentionables that never see the light of day…case in point!).

…Where was I? Right. I’d like to take this blog from the zone of 80% reality, 20% “photoshop” … into the zone of 95% reality, 5% privacy.

After some reflection… this blog is (actually) about me, not about you (I do like you though, quite a lot, and you keep me writing). At any rate… this is meant to be a life-documenting place. And my life isn’t always pretty. And so… I’m going to try to be brave on the internet.

…I’m going to try not to worry so much about being pretty. …I’m not going to worry that if I don’t post nice photos, some of you won’t make it through my words (I’m just going to rant, no breaks).

…I’m going to try not to worry so much about being diplomatic, because I know (and y’all who count also know), I don’t have a problem with open-mindedness or sensitivity or acceptance.

If you are offended when I mention my bowels or my eye problems, and etc. ….I mean no harm, I just, well. This blog is named after ME after all, not YOU.

(On the subject of candid, did I mention that all the skin on my feet is peeling off and it is really gross, especially since there is sand stuck in it – in everything – and I have no tools with which to fix the problem and don’t want to buy anything here?)

Right. Anyway. You are probably wanting some nat-geo type shots. I’ve opted for the hazy sunset variety this time – several shots of Rio de Janeiro from the plane flying in. Oh. And also. Did you know that Copacabana Beach celebrated its 120th birthday yesterday? ..and that I was there?… no big deal. xxoo

This is Why:

This is why I have been absent: I am busy applying sun-block.

I won’t promise, (but I’ll try very hard) to write some more interesting things (or) upload some real-true-jealousy-photos… and soon. xxoo