Tag Archives: in love

by

… george …

“Do you remember George?”  he asked…

It was late November, 2005,  and my plans had been set.
I would be in Rio for New Year’s Eve… and he had
Big Plans for the night.
As well, his studies were over, he had taken the Big Test back
in October, and although some relief had set in, the long wait
for results and his Captain’s License loomed ahead.

Remember George? I thought.  Of course I remember George….
George and Angela!  His long time friends in Ibicui, Angela with
her lessons in making…and drinking…Caipirinhas.
Ah, Caipirinhas, Brasil’s intoxicating drink, made from Cachaca
and fresh limes, (pronounced cashasa, a colorless liquor similar
to vodka and tequila, made from sugar cane) mashed to bring
out all those wonderful sparkling tangy flavors of pulp and peel,
with a touch of sugar, pounded over and over in mortar and
pestle, adding sugar, adding cachaca, pounding pounding,
until at last… ready! and strained over ice.
And it was the Best Cachaca…. I had bought the Brandy version
at the Cachaca Museum we’d visited the day before….
Wow, did we get ploughed that night!

“Remember him?  of course I remember George…why ?”

“George was shot.  He’s dead.”

The words hung in the air, from a long way off.  I couldn’t wrap my
mind around the words… I couldn’t speak.
“He was shot by two guys on motorcycles.  They just drove by and
shot him.  It happened back in August, but no body told me,
probably because I would go and take care of it.”

“NO…..!!!  No, oh No.”  I was instantly sobbing, and the memories
flooded back, of the time we stayed with them, of the boys coming
back from the bar all silly and tumbling into the upstairs apartment
like puppies.
Angela with her big smile and warm heart.
George with his roaming eyes, as he met me, taking me in
top to bottom.

“Angela!….”  …my heart leapt…  “what about Angela?”
“Oh she’s somewhere staying with friends.  She left ”

“Why? do you know why?”
“Oh…I guess he was doing something he shouldn’t be doing…”

I remembered sort of understanding that when the boys got
together and went off, there was more than beers and scotch
going on…
They both had a weakness for powders.  Angela and I had stayed
home, and although neither spoke the other’s language, we laughed
and traded words, laughed some more over our accented attempts,
and those Caipirinhas definitely rounded out any differences,
between smiles.

Now I realized that one area where Alcir and George bonded was
their bandido-ness.  When they were together, I saw the bad-boy
in each, paling around like school boys on a mission.

The next layer hit me.  It had been our dream to move to Ibiqui,
this tiny ancient fishing village along the coast north of Rio.
Quiet, quaint, slow…. as we’d walked the cobblestone streets, Alcir
smiled at me, his big arms around me, warmed by the sun and salty
air, sounds of the little boats bobbing.
Slowly, he shook his head…

“Oh Babe….this is Us, Babe.  We could get a little house an you
could sell your jewelry on a little cart on the beach.
I could make a big barbeque out of a barrel…I know how to do that…
an we could cook chicken outside in the yard, an sell it to the
tourists who come here on  the weekends.
I could get a little boat….. we’d always have fish to eat.
I could sell the extras…”

Our beautiful dream, out of time, slow and easy, a time to just
be together and float for a while…. our dream was gone.
Alcir could never live in that town, never again, connected with
George the way he’d been.
It was gone to us.  Ibicui was gone.

__________________________

by

… the anniversary …

It was the day they got together… hooked up… did it
for reals … and she always had remembered the day.
It was easy… the Fourth of July.

People joke about it, how getting together with someone
was like the Fourth, skyrockets, all that, but it was that
too… and on the very Day, with the sounds and flashes
still reverberating in the night skies.

That was a long time ago.. 1987… yet it was clear as spring
water on a summer’s day.

It’s 2005, and she called him all day.
It was the first time the date had come around since
they had found eachother again.

She called into the night, but no answer.  The phones
were often out in Brasil, but it was odd that no one
answered for so long.
It was mid morning on the Fifth that he picked up…
he’d not been home that long.

“How Are you?”… his jolly voice barked at her.
“Sad and lonely… not good this week” she drifted off.
“Really?” came the response.  Quiet…

“Where have you been?” she asked quietly, the first thing
on her mind, relief and strange wondering mixing in her.

“Oh, I was checking out a job, I was visiting a friend, I got
a haircut… I Knew it was our Day …blah blah …”
…..the list went on, but she wasn’t hearing the details,
only the tone.  A certain manic thing…

“Listen… I have to tell you.  I wasn’t looking, but I got
a haircut, and I ran into someone I’d known before…
(her heart suddenly went dead)

“well, I don’t have to tell you do I?
I’m not going to apologize.
It meant nothing…

“….Say something…!”

She was without words.  The sounds were there, but nothing
came from her lips.  Her breath came in shallow whispers.
(please allow me to absorb this, she thought, but could not say)

“If you go out and do something to retaliate, it’s over!”…
…he shot back at her over the line.

“It was just sex, tits and ass…”
Quickly he evaporated the subject, and his hurried voice
filled in the hollows.

“I want to buy a ticket for my wife to come here…
I caught a 30# fish, I’m good, you’re gonna be so
proud you chose me…”

Still she could not form words… everything was floating.

“I’m not going to say it was the alcohol or the drugs…
I wanted her, she appealed to me …
I’m being modest here…
I had a hard time.  I decided I needed a reward….

“Do you want to think about it and call me later…?

His voice went on in her ear, she doing her best to just
hear what the words were, and put them away for keeping,
to interpret them later…

“If you don’ wanna speak with me ever again, just let me know…
I’ll pay you back what I owe you.  I’ll sell my car, my watch…”

….”Do you love me?”….

While he waited for her to breath again, he started singing
Lou Reed’s  “Walk on the Wild Side”, and when he got to
…”an’ the colored girls sang do de doo de doo…”,
she almost threw up.

“I can’t do this right now” came out of her mouth instead,
and she hung up.

 

————————–

 

 

by

…making a move…

The weeks turned into months, with no solution.
She’d been living with a daughter, helping her settle into
a new house, but now the daughter was helping her, to
the point of exhaustion.  It was time to leave.

A direction was beckoning, with friends, work, and places
to stay…. Hawaii.  The tropics agreed with her.

She loved the way her skin felt after a day with sand and sea…
loved the shade she turned as the days turned to weeks.
The brilliant colors fed her eyes and inspired her to new
directions in her art.   It all made sense.
To just breathe…

Need Nothing…Desire Everything…Choose What Shows Up.

She liked that outlook.  OK…. the islands it would be.
As well, this would take the pressure off of him, leave him to
himself, without the pull of her needs, her emotional stress,
her questions.  Maybe that would allow him to relax and
figure out things, for he was still stuck.

He had vacillated continually, was often drunk when they
talked, frequently contradicting himself .
Getting away from all of this was just what she needed.
Taking action out of limbo land was the proper tack.

Her friend Eileen had an idea, and a good one.  A friend of hers
needed a house sitter for a month or two, there was a dog and
cat to watch, and perhaps even a car… a necessity on the big
island with its expanses.
The woman friend was nice enough at the onset, but seemed
intent on not only having her house and animals taken care of,
but also making money in the deal…
She wanted all her rent paid, and reneged on the car unless it
was rented at a separate rate.
Funny thing was, it became known that the woman received
most of her rent from government subsidies, only paying a small
amount herself.
This all began to feel uncomfortable, a certain used car salesman
aspect to an otherwise lovely adventure…
The Real funny thing was she went by one of those super cosmic
spiritual names, and did her very best to appear a super spiritual
gypsy, always dressing as if going to some reunion with
Swami Sensational and the Maha Rootietootie, and she was to be
their dancing girl, and crystal ball advisor.

Way too much jewelry, blackened Kole eyes, and … of course,
as it turned out… Pachouli.

… Goddess Beyondananda, she smiled to herself…..Perfect….

It became problematic at the onset, but eventually the woman
put away her sales talk about how special it was to be on the island,
and how lucky the girl would be, and realized she had the best deal
going to get a little bit of her rent paid, the amount she Actually
paid, and throw the car in the deal.
It would just be sitting there anyway!

She also knew very well that a great recommendation, a referral
with trust, and an animal person, was a priceless commodity.
There was just no other way for either of them.

She began to get excited.  Friends, places to go, nature everywhere,
a mellow dog for company, and her little monthly income covering
the basics.
She’d worked with Eileen before, so that might fit in as well… cool!

Now there were three things:  her stuff, her animals, and money.

The stuff got packed into storage.  The animals were to stay with the
daughter, and with her son in the woods.  The money came in…

As the time neared, Alcir seemed to be more receptive, even
leaning in as she pulled back… and isn’t that a typical response in
relationships?  the old dance of energies.

Journal…May 5, 2006

Alcir proposed on the phone tonite.  He said he wants to adopt
a black boy, to give one the advantages, to make up for the things
he’d done in war.  She thought that was sweet, and also knew that
tomorrow the thought would be replaced with another…
both curse and blessing with ADD…

“Do you know what I want?” he began.  “I want Peace.
I want to wake up every morning, and kiss you on the mouth,
and tell  you I love you.”
That made her smile…

He’s looking for a place in Ibicui… July is the goal.
“Sell your ticket…!  When are you coming?”…
But she says ‘no…you don’t have a place for me yet.’

Journal entry… May 7

She was scared…scared shitless.. scared beyond scared…
It was big…biggest…A change of life beyond what she’d ever
known, or imagined.
She drank Vodka tonics… she’d never drank like this.
And he?  He was a drunk.  The last two talks were impossible.

He couldn’t talk about reality at all… only bullshit.
His ups and downs were exhausting.

There were two things he said stuck in her mind, made her
laugh, and she noted them in her journal…

“I’m a mixture of Homer Simpson and Melvin Udall…
most men are…”  he said one night …
…”and I’m the only one who’ll admit it.”
She pictured Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets…

…and the best of all …

“I can never be someone else, because I will fail”

So it’s off to the healing balm of the islands, to clear the
mind and find center.

Maybe in a month or two, there will be a clearer path to him
and Brasil.  He had to find himself and his way, before he could
ever be fully with her, but she admitted to being eager to begin
this new chapter in their mutual life.

 

 

by

…ten days later…

She was feeling a little more like herself now, a bit more like
she was pulling her molecules together to become a whole,
after the presence of someone’s strong and compelling aura.
Like moving out of the influence of another planetary pull.
A month was a long long time….

Still fighting the bladder infection that had attacked her in
Brasil, her skin was hived and the body did its best to rid itself
of toxins by sweats and exhaustion.
Medications were in order…

Meanwhile, the questions just compounded themselves, one
upon another, and the more they stacked up, the more confusing
her future looked.  How could she even make plans for anything?

Every Two Days he changed his thoughts of how
this should proceed:
First… she was going back, as soon as her life was processed
and in order … and the house in Ibicui beckoned sweetly…

Then …he decided he would just get the hell out of Brasil,
and come to her and the States.  She loved that idea.

It was obvious he needed to leave that prison he resided in,
the place of his birth, with the presence of parents and all the
hated and hateful memories the place embodied…
…and all the negative habits and connections that were
so easy for him to fall back to…

He had loved it here… she could easily set up a life in her little
seaport of that NorCal coastal town… she was well established
there, lots of friends and contacts, and moving back was a dream
of hers anyway.   He could get back into diving, get his boat…

But then!… Now…. he has decided he needs to get a boat, and
sail here …and it will take time… two years maybe, he says!
What ?  Some sort of odyssey that he now must fulfill?
This was getting crazy making, and her head spun.

What his motivations were, how sound his thinking was, how
clear his mind…or unclear… was out of reach and unknowable.
She wondered if legalities, the wars, the extreme way the US
was behaving, what with Little Bush and the Terrorism Fiasco.
Maybe he was thinking he wouldn’t be able to get into the
US, with his past history in the Legion, and his
Revolutionary actions as a youth…

It seemed like he was loosing faith in all of it, and once she
was gone, it was like he slipped back into confused whirlpools
of old ghost shadows.
Of course he needed to do whatever he needed to do, and she
was quite willing to wait for his own personal resolutions…
But… things had become so unclear…

Journal, March 22…
“Two Years?  What the heck does that mean?  I feel he’s leaving
it all up to me, I feel like he’s not really done anything he said
he’d do… I don’t know how I feel about marriage anymore, as
now, from what he has said, I think he has been married several
times, and never divorced!

I have no idea what the truth is.  I feel manipulated again, and
I cannot allow that to happen.
I need to write clearly what I need to ask and say,  as my life
hangs in the balance… I literally cannot move left or right
until we have some sort of a plan. ”

She had been in a temporary situation when she’d found him, and
now that she was back, it was time to make a move of some sort.
But how could she decide, when all this hung in the balance?

She made a giant list of all the questions raging in her mind …
Basically she wanted the Plan… if he had one.  Something tangible.
When she’d left, he had told her his plans…

*We’d each find out information about marriages such as theirs.
*He’d stop drinking, swim everyday, and loose weight.
*He’d start to create a new way of thinking…

She spoke to him in her mind…
“I don’t see anything of this from you…. I feel like it’s now
all up to me…
You are thinking in the old way, stuck in a defeatist place,
in the toxic environment that you’re used to…
Has anything changed at all…?

I feel like You’re thinking like a LONER, and like,
I can come along if I want…
But you set no timeline, nor make any real commitment…
What has changed for you, since I left…?

I still feel you need to get out of there, to clear your mind…
I need you to meet me halfway, and think in new ways …

We could make money here, convert to Twice that in Brasilian
Reis, and buy our fantasy place, boat, whatever we want…

Three months is my limit to float and wait… beyond that I will
have to set up my own place here, and my income will go for that,
and not our future….

My entire life is on hold, in limbo, and completely confusing…

What do you want?  How do you want that to happen…and
Can you make a plan and hold to it?”

She waited for his answer… in whatever form it might come.

 

 

by

…babe…

It’s March 9th…2005

We’re at the aeroporto… we cling to eachother like frightened
children…. or frightened old people…..
we’re too quiet to be children…

I can only hold onto him, hold his hands, touch his borders,
until the very last minute, knowing full well that time just keeps
moving on, and soon all this will be gone…the now of now
will soon be the now of the future, evaporated
but for foggy memories.

He sits beside me, and we are quiet together, our last moments
before the long distance once again pulls us to someplace else.
I lay my head against his maleness, holding to his arm,
head on his shoulder, my hands absorbing all I can of him.
He feels solid, grounded, calm, sad and resolved.
He says nothing… there is nothing to say.

I cannot hold the tears that fall down my face, and onto our
mutual hands…… and he looks long at me…

“Oh…I think thees separation ees going to be harder on
you than me…..”
He trails off …… I hold tight.

He takes my journal, borrows my pen, and writes
one last message to take home …

I remember turning to him for one last look, after I walked away,
before I moved into customs, and readied myself for the long trip home…

I may not see his face again for a long time… and for all that life offers..
….and for the way he is… it could be never.

The old panic buttons send their blaring sirens off into my nervous
system, for the so-many-times he’d left before, all of it coming up
like a slide show carousel on the dark wall of my brainscape.

I remember boarding the plane, and asking the assistant to please
bring me some kleenex…
“I am leaving my fiancee,” I tell her…” and I know I’m going to cry…”

And I did.  I cried as the wheels left the runway, as the plane banked
for the last time over that city, over that bay, and away from that
magical place…my magical place…..until I could no longer see
that city, that bay, that coastline, or Brasil at all.

And then I wiped my eyes, sat up a bit, pulled out my book and
began the long journey home.

 

 

by

…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.

 

 

by

…the waiting begins…

After we hung up the phone, I lay in trance momentarily, to come back into my body once more, left for what seemed like an eternity.  Where I had been had no relation to where my corporeal self floated, and there were other people out there in my living room.  Gather it together…..

My good friend D was looking super casual and uninterested… His suit of armor, worn habitually and defensively.  He and I had a long history which included much intimacy, yet he was one of those terrified of real intimacy, real love, and so a show of emotion was forbidden.  Even curiosity meant he might care, and that was one thing he didn’t want to do or show.  That was saved for the few he couldn’t reel in.

The classic Fear of Intimacy embodiment, and I must say I Wondered, as in Being in Wonder, at the Universe and Her sense of timing and humor, for D seldom came out and stayed with me, lovers or not, and to have Alcir call from Brasil on this day was pure and Brilliant Orchestration.

I re-entered my world, and shared a few of the best parts…. The Legion, of course…. And I remember his reaction at the poetry of his words:

“I Love You….and I always Deeed…. And I would not wan’ you to think something different.”  I said it with my best Brasilian accent.  When I got to:

“I’ve never forgotten….. It is not often that a man can find Peace…”,  D feigned falling backwards, stabbing himself in the heart. He absolutely Got it, and it was a most satisfying moment.   To make even more of this magical thing was something I could never have imagined, or even ask for.
D was such an enigma in my life, and for more years than I could have figured, and this was the whipped cream with a cherry on top, of an already overwhelmingly intoxicating dessert.

Many years passed, many phases gone through, so much belief  in that first year, that he would return to me.  I visualized being down at the wharf in a crowd…. smokey scene at the bar, some country western song playing, me behind my second pint, when there… across the room… that face… the voice… eyes locking on mine….

Or how ‘bout walking down Main Street midday, and suddenly from my right, a whistle…. Glance across the street… pause in mid glance… No…. Yes…. What?…. Blurrr……You get the idea.  It was always a movie with him, and by now I’m sure you understand why the movie romance fantasies lingered.  The magic in the timings, the comings and goings of him, of us.         It was an encounter unlike any other… Iconic characters in a dance through time.

To this day, I know we will be together again, although I have let go of even the possibility of continuation in this life.  It will be another, and perhaps then we will have our timing just a little more on spot.  But the magnetic pull lingers, like the taste of bitter coffee, the cream coating tongue for the creamy softening, and to hold it there just a while longer.

By the time he had left the first time, the time when he sat in his truck and we stared so long… by that time I was catching every nuance in music I heard, learning about the role Brasil had played in World Beat and Jazz… falling in love with Djavan, Luis Bonfa, Nascimento, and of course Jobim.

Antonio Carlos Jobim, the untouchable, the delight of Brasil.  They named their International Airport for him.  The author of so many classics that have been heard for more than half a century… ones you would recognize after one phrase,  after three notes, ones heard in elevators, and frequently  background music even now, when the movie gets romantic and sexy.

He, Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto INVENTED the Bossa Nova back in the fifties.

So I was on a mission.  Grok Brasil.  Because I had never met a Brasilian before, and it wasn’t just about Him…. There was a wild and fierce spirit there that I knew I had to understand, because Brasil was something quite different from the world I’d known.  I added the fantasy of someday visiting Brasil, and being shown it by Him.
When we had said Goodbye on that telephone line, our Last words were:
“Maybe I’ll see you in Rio…my Crazy Brasilian!”……… and he answered:
“Maybe I’ll see you in the States, my Looney American!”

There were moments where I felt I was Getting It.  The Music of course was a big one.  When I was in the Brasilian Music Trance, I was touching him, feeling his core self.  My kids got so, whenever Brasilian music came on, they called it “Mom Music”.

But then things would happen…. Like when I was waitressing at a local place, where the Gualala River meets the Sea, with a wonderful view and interesting people.
I met people visiting the famous NorCal Coast, and the notorious Hwy 1, from all over the world.

And the staff always sent me out to deal with the tables full of ‘foreigners’.

I seemed to understand them more easily, as accents didn’t throw me, and sometimes I’d play with them, shooting the accents back.  It was fun, and part of the theater of waiting tables.

I went out to a table of three, up and out of the way in the back, two men and a woman, and quickly realized I was waiting on Brasilians  !!!  oh I was so excited!

The sound of that accent sent me into apoplectic bliss…  They were fun, playful, hilarious, and taught me how to order Beer in Brasil.

Later I realized they had the Carioca dialect…. That’s the name they call Brasilians from Rio …. Cariocas.  And so, there I was, practicing                              “Dois Mais Cervezas, por favor” with my new friends…
“…for when you visit Rio”… they told me.
Turns out, this is a Basic Survival Skill…. Brasil drinks more beer than Any Other Country…!  Ha!

An important part of Rio Portuguese, Carioca, is that you put sssshhhhh sounds in everywhere you can…. Doish maish cerveshas, pooor favooor …. Such a sensual and sexy language, that goes with the people… but in Rio they dial it up just a bit more, your tongue almost Tasting the sounds.

When they were leaving, they threw me a compliment that stayed with me always….

“We’ve beeen eeen the US… (they never say America…as Alcir said, We’re America too..)  “We’ve been in the US for seven months, and you’re the First person we’ve met who is Like a Brasilian!”

Couldn’t get any better than that….
I must be making progress in my quest…