Category Archives: brasil

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…greener grass…

 “A man chooses a great woman as part of a Spiritual journey
to bump up to a higher level.  A great woman is the inspiration.
If a man chooses a lesser woman for lower chakra reasons…
ie.. casual sex for example, he does not want to do the work
required to shift his consciousness into being a great man.
You can always see the character of the man by the woman
he chooses.  We live in a throw away society.  Most don’t want
to work hard to grow, when the grass is always greener…”
~ John Dean
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…the hero…

Ayn Rand is not someone I was familiar with.
I had heard of her of course.  And I was aware that
her writing was important.
But I never read anything of hers.

“The Passion of Ayn Rand”, brilliantly played by Helen Mirren,
convinced me that I need to start reading, especially since
a core in her writings refers directly to the heroic character
that plays the lead in my book.

“Are you happy?” she asked in the film.
“You’re a heroic being.
It is the moral purpose of your life.
And the man must have the woman who reflects
his deepest vision of himself,
and in her surrender is his deepest happiness…”
“and the woman?” asked her friend.
“…the woman must worship the hero.”

I remember so many years ago, when I’d first known him…
I asked him that very question…
“What do you want?”
“To be happy.”
“What makes you happy?”
“I don’t know”…but still, his soul knew that was his purpose.
And I knew my purpose for him when, without a thought,
I asked   …”How’s your spiritual life?”

Love for me has always only felt right with surrender.
And the ultimate high is complete surrender.
How her words struck home.

“I’m looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient,
consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love.” said Carrie …

I was dealing with a genius with such high ideals, vast education,
and with the physical prowess and unique gifts to accomplish
whatever it was he came here for.  And he knew it.

He knew he had a bigger purpose, and deeply desired to fulfill it.
The feeling that I was there to be the One who really Saw him,
perhaps the first one… and that by my presence I might encourage
and affect the course of this truly heroic being …
Intoxicating.

A purpose beyond me, bigger than me.
Failure never entered my mind, really.
I knew it was bigger than the two.
It was something beyond, that had to be acted out,
in order for some larger picture to coalesce.

There was no doubt.  The compelling conviction lingered
much too long to be anything less than something beyond us.

I still don’t know what the effect or purpose was and is,
but I think for now it just can’t be known.
Something shifted, something altered.
But we are not perfect, and our actions were not always perfect…
or perhaps…
Perhaps they were, and it’s just that we can’t see it yet.

Some heroic dance being enacted, imparting a feeling of
eternity for both, a role being played out greater than either,
something beyond the day, the moment,
beyond the persons themselves.

This was and is the conviction of some sort of
ultimate truth between us.

My fulfillment was the part I was playing in bringing out and
seeing clearly his heroic dreams, his path of righteousness,
the pieces in him that were the truth,
the best elements of his very core.

Holding him to the course the true north, embodying that,
as in the Poem he sent to me; this challenged me to a new
height of My truth.

My search for something larger than myself was just that… holding
to that north that was his vision, what he’d been trained for, born for.

And I found two quotes from Ayn that speak to me…

“What is the nature of Love?
Love is a command to rise to one’s highest potential.
The best and noblest vision of ourselves.
Love is a reward.  The greatest we can earn.
Granted to us for the moral quality we have achieved in our lives. ”

“My philosophy in essence is the concept of man as a heroic being,
with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life,
with productive achievement as his noblest activity,
and reason as his only absolute.”

……….Ayn Rand

I’m still working on all of it.

 

 

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…the daughter …

Thunder rolled over the favellas, and dogs went crazed.
The sky was a thick paste of grey, and the wind spoke of rain.

She sat on the steps of her boat, her island of sanity in a
world gone crazy.  This man was sane.  How rare…

Someone brave enough to continue that sanity through a lifetime,
no matter the outcome, no matter the cost.

She explored his face.  He’d blown half of it apart in a diving accident,
a pressurized problem upon resurfacing, some sort of explosion,
something about oxygen that I can’t recall now.
He’s said his left eye was hanging down, and when he closed
the right one, he could see his feet….

They put it back together, one of the best surgeons ever did the work,
and now only a scar across the left cheek, from above the bridge
of the nose to down below his cheekbone.  A miracle really.

She could see that the damage had extended into the jaw, for
the teeth were no longer perfectly symmetrical, yet still and all,
he was a handsome devil, with some of the edges rounded out.
The Perfect was gone forever, but enough was true North to believe.

This man, punching himself silly, and still he demands the Truth.

Before I’d come, he’d said his daughter V would be there the
28th Jan, and go home the 9th of Feb, the day before I arrived.
“Not for your birthday?” I’d asked.
“No,” he said, “I don’ wan’ to get her involved right now,” and that
“if someone ends up in my life, then she will…”

But he said he had never had her with another woman, that her
mother had been pretty loose about men, and he will not subject
her to that.
I did respect that, and admit I’d been wondering how all that
would work… whenever he mentioned the mother, great tension
built in the air, the tone of the voice changed, and unpleasant
adjectives  inserted themselves.

It was obvious there were many unresolved issues between them.
I remember thinking that part of him was still in love with this
likely beautiful blonde that he had been so crazy about, the one
who had given him a third chance at really being a father, present
and deeply involved this time……for surely it is true….
The opposite of love is not hate… it’s apathy.

So now, suddenly after only three days, he tells me he wants V
to come here for his birthday, and stay a few days.
His way of telling me, I guess, that what he feels is real.
I take this to be a good sign.

So we go to the house of her mother in Sao Paolo… a ride on a long
long bridge across the bay to Rio’s twin city, newer and more
commercial, and certainly not as picturesque.

Actually, when Piney had visited Brasil for some business there,
she stayed in Sao Paolo.
“Ha!”  he exclaimed. ” An’ she thinks she’s seen Brasil?
No, I don’ thin’ so!”  and his laughter exploded through the phone.
“Oh that’s funny.”

So the daughter hops into “Pai’s” car…. a little jeep like thing called
a Gervel, produced in Brasil by Volkswagon.
Cute, sporty, good mileage……top on, top off, quite fun really.

She eyes me suspiciously, while simultaneously smiling and enduring introductions.   Since I don’t actually speak Portuguese, they chatter
away, and I do my best to just take it all in.

She has his huge dark eyes, brown skin, long thick hair.   Her mother
is the blue eyed blonde, and I watch to see where she fits in the mix.

Very self possessed, confident, dramatic, expressive and smart.
And obviously in love with her Pai.
She has his wild, and something else…
Something seductive and coy,  with great feminine wiles.

Oh this is going to be interesting….

 

 

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…a sweetness…

“These are the little things that make life so good.

The simple little things.

One must live life this way each day.

And then, when you die, everyone else is crying…but

you have a permanent grin on your face, forever. ”

 

 

…Alcir

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…bobo de camarao…

 

Bobó de camarão, sometimes referred to as shrimp bobó
in English, is a Brasilian dish in a purée of manioc (a.k.a. casava)
meal, coconut milk, and other ingredients.

Shrimp bobó is nearly identical to the West African dish Ipetê,
and is one of the many iconic recipes from the Bahia region of Brazil,
which is known for its heavy Afro-Brazilian characteristics.
Bahia is a region on the Coast,  far North of Rio.

INGREDIENTS  in Alcir’s Bobo…

onions, garlic, tomatoes, coconut milk, sour cream,
cream cheese, olive oil, yuca root and prawns or shrimp.

***note: there are many kinds of yuca or yucca  (they call
it Yooka), and you just have to find what you can locally.
In Rio, we had a brown one with thin skins, which we peeled
before boiling.  When I made in the US, I could only find
darker ones with thicker skins, but after peeling, they
were pretty much the same.

**Peel Yuca, and Boil til soft… then mash up leaving chunks.
**Chop and cook tomatoes til very soft.
**Sauce… add coconut milk to tomatoes, plus sour cream,
cream cheese, and salt.
He also took all the shrimp heads, and cooked them for a long
time, then strained them and used this liquid in the sauce.
**Cut onions in circles, chop garlic, and saute in olive oil
til very soft.
**Clean Prawns, add to onions, and saute briefly.
**Add yuca to sauce, simmer and mix.
*Lastly, add prawns and onions, and season.

Serve over Rice of any kind.

As side dishes, he served his bobo with :
**French fried finely shredded batatas…..potatoes…

**Mashed batatas and cenoura…. boil potatoes and carrots in a
two to one ratio, mash leaving chunks, and season with butter,
salt and sour cream.

**Watercress Salad…. just wash and dry, then drizzle with olive oil.

A delicious and satisfying dinner, and a great treat for guests!

 

 

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…chef Alcir…

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Is it Wednesday?  time had lost it’s power, finally.  There were no
day-names, only days.  So much touching, after so long without.
The desert of loneliness, although accepted at the time, now
thirsted beyond bounds.

What was enough now.  The chasm was dark and deep, and knew
no bottom.  His eyes made her know, made her surrender to him,
to them, to It.

The Sade songs rang in her heart from so many years ago, and
just last night… Those words of sadness and comfort now came from
his own lips, as he sang to her, his voice like his eyes, deep and dark
and touching her very core.

“I want to stab you with my brown knife… to go in where there is
already a little hole…”  he whispered…  cuxixos means whispers.
A lovely sexy word…. Kushishooos.

The incredible and instant intimacies within these walls drowned
out all boundaries.  The natural physicality.  The messages sent
through touch and look, the dances without words… vertically
and horizontally…
They’d had enough words.  But she had to admit the ones he gave
her shimmered like gold.

Mind Images from the past, with their little spaces unfinished,
now filled in, blended, completed themselves in bits and parts.
The feelings of reaching, leaning in, waiting for him to leave and
return endlessly then, had now softened their sharp cutting edges,
now filling her heart with pounding waves of nourishment.

“I need to get my ass kicked by a polar bear.” he began one day.
“That’s what I need!  The first time he wouldn’t Eat me.  He’d say
OK stupid, I won’t eat you this time, but next time….”

He Loved to cook, was a beautiful cook, trained at the Grandmother’s
side, and I watched him slice the scored onion, to create little squares.
Often I would hear singing coming from the cooking place,

“Oh Solo Mio……. ” would drift through the walls, the melody line
correct and continuous, but the words repeated over and over…
“Oh solo mio….. oh solo mio…… oh solo mio….. la la la laaaaa”.
It was pretty darned adorable…

Sauces were a specialty, and I learned that in Brasil, most sauces
begin with Olive Oil, Onions, Garlic, sweet peppers and tomatoes.
From there it goes in whatever direction it will.
“It’s so good, you’re gonna drip,” he said, meaning  ‘drool’.

He began with creating a meal that took him all day.  I was his
assistant, which meant I not only chopped, I also cleaned shrimp
and cleaned up the mess.
The kitchen was a converted laundry room on the basement level,
just large enough to hold the machines, a makeshift shower, and
a sink with cold water.   The cold cement floor felt good to my
frequently bare feet, in the heat of summer.
All of it used to be the maid’s quarters, and now was his.
He told me later that that was where he was sent for isolation
when he was bad, which I gathered was a frequent occurance.
Now the two little rooms were his cave, and the kitchen/laundry
was shared with his Aunt Maria.
Maria lived in the front part of that same level, and would bang
on the common wall between us, when she wanted him.

It was the tropics, and I was concerned about sanitary conditions,
but he assured me if we used enough soap, the cold water
didn’t matter…. I wasn’t so sure, especially since Maria loved to do
the dishes, which was nice, but her eyesight wasn’t great, and often
I would find food on dishes, if I was the one to put them away.
I mentioned it to him, but he said I’d hurt her feelings if I said anything.

In the first couple days he made a magnificent feast for us….

**Bobo Camarao… using that sauce he’d cooked all day, that also
had reduced liquid from the boiled shrimp heads…
coconut milk, sour cream, and lots of cream cheese.   Lots.
There were chunks of Yucca, and lots of shrimp, added at
the last moment.

**Mashed Potatoes and Carrots…. called batata e cenoura.
The two are boiled together, then mashed leaving chunks, and
adding butter, salt and sour cream.  Fabulous.

**Fresh fried potatoes …. all finely shredded, and fried with olive oil.

**Salad, consisting of piles of watercress… that was brasilian salad….
drizzled with olive oil.

Turns out watercress is one amazing anti oxidant and detoxifier,
and that is good because fresh vegetables, at least in this house,
were sorely missing.
I remember Maria cooking cauliflower in a Pressure Cooker til it
was unrecognizable.  For someone used to under cooked veggies
a la West Coast Cuizine, it was really hard to get excited about.
To me that wasn’t vegetables, and I did my best to taste it…
She ate it with a spoon….

But at the Super Mercado, we could buy Huge Bouquets of
Watercress for 2 Reis, the equivient of $1 American, and slowly
I brought in more veggies, many of them Organic, and cooked
them My way.  He scoffed at the organic signs, but I tried to let
him know that we had to at least try to believe it.

I began a campaign, and introduced him and Aunt Maria to salad
everyday.  Eventually they learned to love it, although I usually
ate three quarters of the bowl myself.

Brasilians love heavy foods…. spicey meats especially, marinated
and barbequed on a grill, and rich foods more suited to the
Mediterranean clime, carried over from Portugal, in spite of the fact
of heat and humidity.

The other ingredient of every day was
Frozen-to-Slushy Brasilian Beer.
We drank it every afternoon, and into the night.  It was light,
with Lots of flavor and nuance, not like our light beers.
In the summer heat, we looked forward to this treat, and it always
jollied up our evenings.

We both were very happy, and seldom were apart, with lots of
touching and hand holding, showers together, with Sade as our muse,
and oh, so much joy.

 

 

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…the days…

He slept now, and she went to find herself once again.
To feel need, to feel wanting seemed foreign to her now, and it
disturbed the center achieved in three years’ aloneness.

Tears rose up, and she pondered the strangeness of the day’s
passages.  Each day rolled like waves upon one another, creating
a layered mass of nothing but change.

She was in search of self here, and togetherness only spurred
on the quest… Contrasts creating stretch…

A blue truck drew away her focus.  Old blue truck, careening
down the winding stone street, large warm drops touched her
hungry skin, cool point of light on browning edges, edges of her
self…where she stopped …where other began.

So immersed was she in it now.  There was no room for thoughts.
She reached for words, familiar touchstones to what she knew,
to what she had known, but three days ago.  And now what?
No clues, only moment on moment, flesh touched for the first
time in so many how longs.
Skin hungry yet hiding…for fear.. for fear of what?
Discovery…real discovery.

 

 

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…the house on the hill…

Here she sits, in her grandeur of yesteryear.

Double Click to get the larger picture…