Tag Archives: moving to brazil

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…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.

 

 

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….. in a Rio cafe…

As I proof read these pages, I think to myself that no one will actually believe this is real.  I know, it sounds like a movie.  And I’m not even referring back to my journals right now, because somehow as I take it step by step, it all comes back in its most minute details, and I can hear his voice, and know exactly the words he chose, and when a word isn’t quite right, I just know it.  That’s how deep the cut was…

Many years later, as we sat drinking ice cold beer in the little café bar with one side open to the wandering street, the cobblestone street, the one that winds up the hill to one of the oldest districts in Rio, the one that, as the story goes, that woman came down after the wild party, walking on her hands, to save the precious nectar inside her.  Later she would produce a child who sprang from the loins of the king of Rock n Roll… Mick the man.

Yes indeedy, sprang from a party up that hill, in some luxurious mansion, and now whenever the Stones play Rio, he visits the kid at his exclusive school.  And she?  She now has a talk show, and is an edgy bitchy and rich celebrity with very stripey like a zebra, highlighted hair.

Go figure.

Anyways, so he’s telling me these tales of Rio and streets and the kids at his school, and it’s hot and steamy, and the beer is so cold it’s almost a slushy, and it feels like we could be anywhere right now.  There are these darling young women sitting nearby, they have accents,  obviously European, and now and then they glance at us and smile.  Alcir of course thinks it’s because he’s so cute ….  Soon they join us at the table, and they are tittering away with soft giggles, telling us that they are on a journey from Germany, and staying in Brasil for a couple weeks.  They are intelligent, well educated, and speak very good English.  We begin to  answer their questions of who and why We are…..how an American comes to be here with a Brasilian in Rio, and I mention that it is all a movie, that it needs to Be a movie, and then of course, Alcir smiles and asks…

”So….. who weeell play Meee?”  ……and we all laugh.

“Benicio del Toro” return the girls, and there is a pause… Alcir obviously approves, smiles, nods his head, and the chatter turns to travels and more stories.

That was his edgy side, the side those girls picked up on.  The side that was more than a little dangerous, mysterious, thrilling and scarey…… and scarred.  He loved danger.  Craved it.

His family was an old aristocratic group that had pretty much lost it all.  They lived in a multi level home, with rooms and shuttered windows, each staying away from the other, hate and disgust seething from every floor.  The house was unkempt, and slowly melting away, but at one time exemplified class and grandeur.

A karmic layer cake, I used to call it.

When he was 14, he and his buddies used to steal cars and drive them to Uruguay to sell.  He didn’t need the money, just the thrills, the bad boy thrills.  His dad paid the tab at the local bar, but he needed more.  Defiant, he was beaten continually as a child until he stood up one day at 15 and announced to his father that right now,  if he laid a hand on him, he would beat the holy crap out of him.  And he never touched him again, not physically anyway.

But cruelty ran in the group, a very convoluted history that went back generations.

His mother never wanted a child, tried to rid herself of this creature inside her that would ruin her life and her figure, was unsuccessful, and never stopped reminding him of that.  Once while I was there, she came beating on his door at 6 am, screaming that she should have killed him then, she wished she had, and now she hated him, that he was ruining her life.

His grandmother had been his salvation….. his mother’s mother.  She adored him, somehow instinctively understood him, and from the pictures I’ve seen, she was a very sad woman later in life.  But absolutely Gorgeous as a young Indian woman.  Haunting…And that is another chapter in itself, the story of the young Indian girl, and the man who waited and watched for two years, until her father gave permission for him to marry her….  that was one set of grandparents.

When she died, Alcir was the one to wash her body, dress her, and make her ready to be laid down.  She had given him his haunting, dark slanting eyes, and his ferocious spirit, wild and untamable.  She had loved him singularly, and was quite alone in her understanding.

See?  That’s what I mean.  So many facets to this man, so much anger and pain, so much tenderness and depth, so much beauty.  It was a puzzlement that I had to unwind.