Tag Archives: rio de janeiro

by

…corcovado…

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A visit to Rio would not be complete without seeing a few
of the tourist spots.  Rio itself is a year’s viewing, but since
that’s more than I had, Alcir saw to it that I enjoyed that
Huge Guanabara Bay, 15 x 16 Miles, with scores of islands,
and the ferrys going to what they call Downtown Rio, and
what I called Mainland Rio…

Alcir had a theory that the Bay is a splash up from a giant
volcano… tossing up all those lumps that are so familiar
to us in pictures of Rio… a geological phenomenon that would
seem to be somewhat repeated on the NorCal Coast where I
used to live… although certainly not as massive or spectacular.

Corcovado is one of those hills behind and above Rio, and
back in 1931, they built the Concrete Christ, Cristo Redentor,
and at nearly 100 feet, the mass of it alone is rather awesome.
The day we visited it, his head was in the clouds.

Researching it, it sits on a base that adds 30 ft to the height,
but still it’s not as large as the Statue of Liberty, and dozens of
Jesuses and Buddhas and Quan Yins all over the world.
Still, in the presence of it, at the feet of it, and realizing the bulk
the mass, the scale…. quite wonderful.

A little side note:  it was recently voted to be one of the
New Seven Wonders of the World…

One of the other ‘Musts’ was Pao d’Azucar, what we call in the
States ‘Sugar Loaf’, and the whole experience of traveling on the
trams along steel cables, to the top of the largest of those Lumps
in the Bay… well that’s another day and another story.

 

 

by

…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….

 

 

by

…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.

 

 

by

…brasil at last…

Up until now, these last few entries were almost directly
from my journal in 2004 and 5.  Now, at this point, my journal
gets a little less continuous, a bit more sporatic.
I write here and there, when the moment moves me, but Now….
well, what can I say?  I am overwhelmed, in the moment, and
much too enveloped by the Now to take time out to write about it.

I remember arriving.  I remember going through customs…
I remember the rush of warm moist air, much like the first time
I arrived in Hawaii… like breathing steamy flowers.
I remember searching the crowd for The face …
And then, at last, I am out into the terminal, and as I scan the
crowd, I see him…. Dark glasses, serious face, and when we at last
acknowledge eachother, it is a Nod that I get… one of those
upsidedown nods, where the chin moves up, as in Hey… I See you.

At last we are there, face to face, and I move into his arms…
my head falls on his chest, and as I sigh, he says…. “I know….”.
Relief, joy, exhaustion, that ultimate ..oh god i’m here … all of it.

We have long looks at eachother, between casual chatter about
nothing, while we do all those obligatory things… get the baggage,
walk through mazes, find the car…

I’m sure we talked, but of what… who can recall.
What were my first impressions?  He looked ragged, tired, but still
looked like him, and I was relieved to see his face, though scared,
was still Him, that wonderful intensity and handsome grace still
present.
He said he hadn’t slept much, and I could see he was nervous,
and even parking had been stressful.  He was as nervous as I was.

At last we are on the highway, and I get my first glimpses of Rio.
This is a large island in the Guanabara Bay, and I am fascinated.
Actually, as we were banking in to circle and land at Jobim
International,
I remember taking in that view, at a low altitude, of that mythical
city, now real, but still not…. my heart pounded.
The International Airport, Aeroporto, is on this large island, the
largest in that Huge Bay, and Ilya do Governador was populated
long ago, as a suburb of Rio.
To venture to Downtown Rio, there was an old shuttle, in the
form of a Ferry, and it didn’t take cars.
Later they built a highway, but the ferry was so picturesque.

But that was saved for later… he only lived on the other side
of the island, and the tangle of little streets and clusters of
old houses, as we took the narrow road that circled the island…
my eyes just couldn’t take it all in.

This is Real, I kept on saying in my head…this is really happening…
My head could not keep up with reality… it was like there were
hiccups in the time warp web, and I struggled to keep hold.

Now we’re home to his house, this strange old place, the place
of his birth, a multi layered sort of grandiose manor with columns
and stone walks, with an aura of dark sadness and unkempt order,
like some aging Hollywood actress, far past her prime, yet doing
her best to keep up the face of elegance and regal charm.
It was set up high from the sidewalk, with wrought iron fences
and gates, locks and uneven stairs…
We unload my suitcases, go up and collapse into his tiny
basement abode.

I don’t remember much until it was time to change.  I had been in
my same clothes for maybe 18 hours, and moved into the next tiny
room, a hallway actually,  to find something cool and homey, from
the place he had offered me for my things…. I saw his Legion
jacket, next to his Futebol (foochibole)  jersey in black and white.

He followed me.  And as I undressed, he watched with eyes wide
and brilliant.  He never took his eyes off of me, his stare washing
over me like sweeping lazers.
I felt more naked than I actually was, which was pretty darned naked.

He surveyed every inch, taking in the reality, as the covers peeled
away…. which wasn’t too bad actually….
My daughter had exclaimed that I had an incredible body for
my age (oh thank you!), and my son had mentioned that I easily
could be 47, instead of my 60-something in earth years.
That helped, but still…

I was glad I’d worked out and exercised, tanned and dieted.
Come on!  this man lived in the city of some of the most gorgeous
women you’ve ever seen…. and when he’d last seen me,
I had definitely been in my prime.

I think we ate, I’m sure we drank, and he broke into the list of
things he’d been missing.  Scotch was shared, my space was allotted,
I bet we bit into one of those chocolates, and shared the
pungent green center.
And from there, well what would You do at this point?
We were like polarized magnets, unable to be apart long enough
to barely breath.

I remember his skin, that beautiful smooth brown tropical skin…
I remember his calling me Babe from the first day…

It was February…. our equivalent of August in the North….

It was a moist, humid, brilliant tropical air, soft breezes with palms
and flowers outside, gatherings of birds rushing by our windows,
and we had eachother.
At last, we had and held eachother.

 

 

by

…leaving on a jet plane…

February 9, 2005

OK… so here I am, sitting in the airport, all packed and ready to go…
It’s about 5:30 am, and the plane boards at 7.  > EGAD…!

The day is finally here, and I am a bit numb.  The last 24 hours
are a blur of lists and deadlines… I was up at 3am yesterday, and
I think I dozed a couple hours between 5 and 8.  Very physical day,
moving tons of boxes and furniture.  Last minute things all day,
finishing the animals and ebay, and mending,
cleaning, packing…all of it.

And now I’m here, waiting to begin my journey to my future.

She wondered how she ever got here… Looking ahead, to a future
unknown, yet so full of strange foreign fare.  Possibilities loomed…
She’d felt many things in the past 2 months…lately she’d been
saying she felt like the girl on the half shell.
Like a mail order bride. Like Grace Kelly leaving all she’d known,
to be with her man, in a strange country.
All pleasant……all prickly strange.

If it all were true, this would be the last hours of aloneness.
So many years seeing herself alone…how many? 21?  Lots of
false starts, lots of maybe – maybe nots….. And now?
Could this be a cosmic joke?  The signs were auspicious,
she had to admit.

Could things really just fall properly into place, and aside from
the usual day to day drab realities of really knowing someone,
is it possible, just possible that the two of them were inheriting
some sort of golden egg, laid how long ago, but now fully ripe
and hatching forth a creature of shimmering luminescence,
full of light and ready for action.

To see him finally face to face… His specter prowled
the cove of her heart, and she desperately desired
a peaceful resolution to her longing.

It would be many hours, stops in Chicago and Miami, time changes,
dozing and rousing in that dream state that travel creates…
And by late tomorrow afternoon, they would be together.

 

 

by

…a resume…

The time grows nearer to my departure.  Over the weeks we have
grown to know eachother better, and certainly talked more than
we ever had years ago.  Years ago,  the body did the talking.

When you want to be close to someone, and all you have is the
phone, you think of a lot of things to keep the voice on the air,
no matter what.

The old and new Alcir were merging now, and I was almost all done
with preparations, packing, passport, and practicing Portuguese…
Gee, that was a lot of P’s !…  and I was ready for
Whatever was coming.

I was thinner, tanner, more centered, and all there was to do now
was to get my stuff in storage, and out of my daughter’s house,
and to be sure my dogs and cats were going to be alright for the
month I would be gone.
I had no idea what would be the outcome, so I had prepared both
for coming home and continuing on my own private Idaho,
and for things to be ok for me to continue on this Brasil direction,
and ready myself for further adventures beyond.

I poured over my journals, and re-viewed the things that I had
found about him and those 18 years we had been apart…
One of the first things I had found was a Resume he had put on
the internet, and I read it once again… the robot had translated,
so any possible poetics were gone, but the essence was there…
It had given me a snapshot of his life somewhat, after he left.

“Been born on 14/02/1958, former Rio de Janeiro pupil of the
Collegio Pedro II, former urban guerilla during periodo of the
dictatorship, exiled em 1979, having lived in 5 paises, and
transited by others the 43 in all continents.

Having worked as Fishing of Ouricos of Mar (Professional Diver)
of the coast north of the State of California.  He ties the Alaska,
where I lived per 4 years having worked there tambien as
Fishing of King Crab, that and considered the profession most
dangerous of the world, and having served per 5 years in the
French Foreign Legion, in the Duzieme Regiment Etrangere
de Parachoutists of where I gave low with apos metals of bravery
to have passed for tres great conflicts, as:  Chad, Djbouty, and
finally in the Gulf War Desert Storm.
Eximio sailor, having crossed the horn four times, two times
being ground.

The unica reason pra that I bring everything this tone, and so
that can subsidize what I believe gives a success, my book of
memories that would like to see published, as much how much
the remain of my tedious workmanship would literaria.
None ties the moment, but I wait to revert this picture how
much before.
In the truth, I have dues letters and an article on fishes of
ouricos of the sea, and the Exon Valdez, published in the
periodical San Francisco Chronical.
I Wait Contacts…”

So from what I could glean, he’d attended the most prestigious
school in Rio, which meant Brasil, where when a student graduates,
they are already at the level of 2 years of college.  I knew now
that he spoke Brasilian Portuguese, English, French, and I
believe also touches of several other languages, as well as some
of the Indiginous dialects.
He’d been diving for Urchins on our coast, and going to Alaska
for four seasons  of the King Crab (and the show called the
World’s Most Dangerous Catch had filled me in on That life!
I certainly could envision him on the deck, whipped by giant and
frigid waves, while working 20 hours a day, that Permagrin
melding his face) and he Loved it!

He’d joined the Legion, and although he’d gotten out in two years
and returned to Brasil, still I guess he continued to serve for three
more years somehow…maybe as part of his agreement for going
home early.
He’d been back in Brasil since 1989, and now had a daughter.
His two sons from two different marriages were now grown, and
they were somewhat estranged from him.

I recalled how he had told me the story of his enlistment…
The fellow had been distracted with other things, screens, pages….
and when he finally saw and interviewed Alcir, the guy gave him a
name… in the Legion you loose all history, can make No contracts,
and there is a new name given.

I seem to remember that something was on the TV screen, likely
the series, for the fellow decided that Alcir was to be Scott Austin….
Steve Austin’s brother…. you remember the Six Million Dollar Man?
He said he was his Brother….
And Usually, you don’t get out for seven years.  Period.

He told me that his regiment was the most exclusive, and they
dropped out of planes at such an altitude, they wore oxygen masks.
They were sent in on secret black opp missions, and he had begun
to tell me just a little about those ventures.
I’d known about the Revolutionary thing, and why he was exiled
after some daring stunts, including robbing banks to subsidize
the Revolution.
I remember his tale of doing Two Banks at a time, in the middle of
the street, guns in each hand, and I saw this crazy movie in my
head, with Antonio Banderos, grinning the whole while.

He got very discouraged after learning that the money wasn’t all
going where it was supposed to go, and once again ideals fall prey
to the reality of corruption and lies… the very things he had been
fighting against.  He left on a small boat that his grandfather had
paid for, and came to Norway, Hawaii, and then NorCal.

My time flew at the end… too much to gather together, too many
lists and minutiae… trying to think of things I had to have, things
I couldn’t get in Rio… my CDs, my vitamins and supplements,
cameras, film, watercolors, brushes and paper, journals, stuff for
the sun life (Hawaii helped with that, as Rio is on the same lattitude in
the south)…and I wrapped presents for his birthday…Valentines Day!

I’d found him some vintage sunglasses on ebay, and was quite pleased
with myself.  He had looked great in his Vuarnets, and I knew the 60s
Raybans would certainly do the trick.

As well, there was the Green issue, and since they only had something
the equivelent of what we called Mexican Dirt weed, I bought some
Sees Chocolates, hollowed them out, and put a little Bud in each one,
sealing them up with warmed dark chocolate.
His bandido was rubbing off…
Still, I had this funny movie in my head, these big Brasilians, smelling
and tasting the chocolates, and dragging me away….

And now He had a list for Me… things he couldn’t get there…
a Living Color tape, Marshall Tucker Band tape, the Bill Murray
film, Where the Buffalo Roam…High Times with some Sailing article
he’d  seen, a can of zippo (no can take on plane), and some
good Scotch…of course.

I told him I would do what I could.   He was pretty poor, but although
I was relatively the same, still I knew there were many more options
for me, and I had no problem in fulfilling wishes that would make both
of our lives better….

Details, details, details…. notes to myself all over the place.
And that feeling of Can’t Wait in back of it all….
It was all going like a bus out of control, and at this point, there
was nothing I could do but hurry up! and all I could do was wait
and go with the flow.

 

 

by

…a carnaval birth…

The story of his birth during Carnaval, an incredible time in Brasil,
had the doctor watching Samba Schools pass by out the window…
Each Samba School has lots and lots of members, and they each take
their own special time to show their stuff.

The doctor said he would wait until ‘his’ Samba School passed by.
(this confused me, because he had told me a long time ago that
he was born in Honolulu.  Sometimes I have to question his stories…)
“So my fader got his pistol and held it to the doctor’s head and said ..
“Let’s do it Now!”…”

“So what could come from such a beginning?” he puzzled…
“I came out all tangled in the cord around my neck and I looked
like a wreck, my fader said.
One side of my face was all messed up, from how I had laid or som’thing.
My grandmother was there.  When people kept coming by to see me,
she kept putting the good side up”

And then there was the popcorn issue… when I’d first met him, I had
offered him popcorn, a popular food at my house.  His response was
to tell me stories, that when the doctor birthed him, he’d said
“This Baby Cannot Eat Popcorn!”

Actually, I guess several Santerias did tell him that.  He added that
once after he ate some, and he crashed his car or something,
he then decided that was IT.  Never eat popcorn!

He says he’s not drinking, and he’s working out every day.
“I wan’ to look good for you.  I’ve shaved off my beard, I was looking
like Buffalo Bill or som’thing.  I don’ wan’ to look old…”

Martha Stewart just got out of Camp Cupcake, and he commented …
“Martha Stewart is going to rise like a Phoenix… but not just Any
Phoenix…. no…. but one she’s Made Herself!”

We remembered that night on the beach, the July 4th night, and
how he had ambled up to me, and joined me and the girls on that
huge log near the fire.

“How are you?”
“Oh, I don’ know…. new kid on the block”
“What do you want?”
“To be happy…”
“What makes you happy?”
“I don’ know…”
“How’s your spiritual life?”
“Oh it’s going right along I guess…. I don’ know…”

So now I ask … “If I ask you today, what would be your answer?”
and he said he thinks he now knows what makes him happy.
Today he said he is happy when he is on or near water.
I wan’ my boat, to sail anywhere.  To maybe live on it, to make
money with charters, to live minimalistically, no luxuries,
just simple.”
“Vitoria can come with me if she want to, or she can stay with
her mother….”
And me?  I didn’t ask.  I know the answer.  I can come.

He has it in his mind that he wants to make money hunting for
sunken treasure.  By now, I think well….yes, if anyone can…
He has maps of over 70 sunken ships… oh god, I think…here we
go again… Does he ever stop?
Can you imagine?  He’s a world class diver…why not…?
Maybe I can make videos, and we can work with National Geo,
or something….
He says he’ll start by going and picking up what he already Knows
is there…. even Piney is ready to go on That expedition!

This is a man who thinks of himself as alone.  Probably always has,
and he may always…
But he has never had a real partner in his life.  If it’s there, if it’s
as I believe it to be, then will he be able to prioritize it?

Right now, he is saying “It’s a new year, a new beginning,
an’ I wan’ to do things right.”
but he also says…”I’m not going to change…..
and so you just have to find a way to live with who I am.”

 

 

by

…internal journal…

  January 6, 2005

So… the talks we have, long and into the night, are frequented
with lots of booze, but when he’s inebriated, he really talks,
expounds with theories and diatribes, on ethics and commitments,
on his mind set and why.

It’s pretty darned interesting, but it’s also a lot of work.  I feel
exhausted from it, and I’m not quite sure of the whys.
I feel like I need to record this, and that it is important somehow.
But why do I feel this way?

It is important because he is a movie in the making, because his
voice is a broad band of incomparable experience of Maleness
in this world.
.. or am I just puffing it all up with importance…?

You can see the cover of my old journal, and it speaks for itself.
I knew what I was getting in to, yet there was no going back.

Interesting things are occurring in my brain throughout all of this…
First there was the fantasy, the romantic movies that were left in
my storehouse, replayed so many times that I was truly unsure of
what was the truth anymore.

I remember writing quickly, to remember clearly, so as not to distort
it, but still after all this time, I am no longer assured it is the truth.
No one else even knew him, except my daughter Piney a little, and
she adored him.  A couple people MET him, but I know no one else
now who Knew him then.

So as these weeks have passed, I notice the old movies fading, and
a new gathering image formulating before me.   One based on bits
and pieces, gleaned from long conversations, one building upon
another, like pixels filling in the dots to dots, and a new man begins
to emerge before me, in my mind’s eye.

Yet these eyes, which lived to eat up his countenance, these eyes
which were so delightfully pleased with the sensual pleasures of his
physical self…….they are not allowed to be involved in this re-
formulation yet, this complete re-assembling of information.

And now I see the brain attempting to overlay one upon the other,
the  old, or rather Younger Alcir, the iconic hero character who
flashed in and out of my reality…overlayed like images on Velum…
over this new Alcir, the more complex and complete picture of the
man, without the eyes filling in and informing my soul.

These eyes see much, and I depend on them to grant me information
that they grasp on so many levels.  Will they adore what they see,
or will they speak of pain and sadness, and too much to handle?

This other life that I head towards, this being that impacted my orbit
with great explosions and re-adjustments…that in effect changed
some of my life’s directions..  enlarging my horizons, and filled in
spaces by his very existence..can I now integrate him into my
daily life, can I hold it all, and still keep hold of myself?

We are tumbling towards eachother, as surely as stars on trajectory
into a future that holds more explosions and murgings, to
create a new being, a new reality, a new star in the night sky.
What will this star pour out into the universe?
And what is IT’s life about?

This particular evening, after he’s heard I have a ticket,
a date, a plan…
…..after he’s been back in the shadows smoking his cigar,
hiding his hopes…
After spreading himself like jam on my  toast …
with that poem, that said his heart was new and open…
….after the shared heart stories…
….his youthful joy renewed…

He’s been back there, waiting for my true reply, waiting to SEE…
“I want to SEE it”   he’s said, over and over.

So he leaves the phone to pee…and when he comes back,
his voice is insistent…
“One thing just occurred to me…
You’re not Bullshitting me, are you?”

It was a statement, not a question.

 

 

by

… first journal entry of 2005 …

I’ve been thinking about how I got into Brasil, how much the world
has opened up to me since Alcir first stepped into my life.

After him, it was the music first, that caught me.  I would hear a
voice like his, hear that accent.  That music station I found that
played global fusion jazz stuff, where I first heard Djavan.
The world beat program from Mendo, with Lilia, a Brasiliera.
The diversity of music blew me away…

The African beats, the syncopation, the many layered subtleties…
I’d never heard anything like it.  From there, of course the next
was the language.
I could hear the like-Spanish sounds, but again so many more levels
and intricacies … more like a combination of Spanish and French…
it tickled my ear, and brought back his memories… the sound
of his accent… so I got some Portuguese Language tapes, and
began understanding a little.

I began collecting CDs, and saw the faces of Brasil, understood the
cultural mix of Portuguese, gypsies in a way, having been on the sea for forever…the Latin feels… the Indigenous, from the Amazon with
their wild and savage ferocity and their forest sounds, and African
rhythms from the slaves they brought in and screwed.

I learned of the vastness and diversity of the country itself, noticing
programs on Brasil, the Rainforst, the Amazon, the abundance and
the pillaging of resources.
No one had ever taught me that Brasil is Bigger than the States!

I got a couple movies, after the Bravo Station TV showed me
‘ Dona Flora and Her Two Husbands’  (with Sonya Bragga),
‘Bye Bye Brasil’,
‘Xica do Silva’,
and of course Raoul Julia in ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’.

Here he plays a Brasilian Revolutionary in a Sao Paolo prison.
He So reminded me of Alcir, so angry and discouraged, his young
ideals dashed like stormy waves on the rocks of reality….and
with Sonia Bragga as three different women: the real one,
the imagined one in the romantic story related  to him by his
gay cell mate, and the morphine dream one, well,
I immediately identified, and watched it more than several times.

In the scene where he is dreaming, after pain and morphine have
taken over, in that dream she comes into the hospital and whisks
him away to a small row boat… and she rows him out onto the water,
and although deeply in pain, he begins to relax… and she says:
“This dream is short, but it is happy”  …
well, the parallel was uncanny.

From there, it was Payakan, one leader of the Kayapo trying to
save their villages from the disasters of logging and gold mining…
and more CDs from the different areas and varieties of style.

Sting and Trudy, and the Rainforest Foundation…and then
The Djavan Concert !  that was maybe ’89 or ’90… took Piney and Lily,
danced shoulder to shoulder with a huge room of crazy Brasilians,
and grokked the energies for real.   Such a filling of knowing.

Met Piney in the city at a Brasilian nite club, and drank their fruity
Rum drinks, ate fried Yucca with hot salsa… I was hooked big time.

Oh The Feojoada!  I invited about 25 of my friends for a nite of the
whole real deal, with the many traditional dishes,
…and with Brasilian Movies, and Music playing in
the background all night.  It was a sensational success!
(it’s sort of like their version of Thanksgiving, but I discovered later
that because it is a meal based on African roots and foods… poor…
it is Not enjoyed by more Aristocratic Brasilians!)

The David Byrns compilations, and beginning to understand the
differences between the regions, Rio and Bahia, and all those
reflections in the music styles.
After a few years, I focused more on certain singers and composers,
especially Jobim, Caetano Veloso, Milton Nacimiento, Joao Gilberto,
and of course the old Samba stuff, both traditional street samba and
Bossa Nova, with Jobim, Joao and Stan Getz, from the sixties.
Terrific stuff.
Back in the sixties, I’d seen Brasil 66 at the Hollywood Bowl, with
no clue whatsoever on who they were at all.
Now I listened and Got it all.

**JAN 4th… by now Piney has offered me her Travel Miles, and I
have told him the news.  It’s really happening now.
Well…. he called tonite, and asked if I could call him back, because
his rates are so high there.  It was nice to have him call and miss me.

It seems he had a story to relate to me…  TWO of his exes came by
to see him at the same time, and after fighting with eachother
(scarey women), they Both turned on Him!
Ha ha ha…wish I could have watched!  Brasilian Novellas are
really really melodramatic and full of sound and fury.
So now he’s been drinking Vodka, and was very talkative and funny,
as well as rather philosophical.

He started talking about Colin Powell and Congoleeza, and said
he didn’t trust women who don’t have orgasms… which led to
having a hard on, which he called ‘a woodie’…. whereupon he said
“Oh, this isn’t a woodie…. this is Hardwood” and
so I added ‘tropical hardwood’… mmmmm!

He began reminiscing… “when I kissed you, I felt life.  I was Alive.
We found eachother in a very common way.
With you, I was fucking Life.
I was filling up myself with Life, I was mesmerized by you.
I was not amused with life at that time.

I am not the person I Am right now.
I’m just a regular Joe Drunk… I do nothing.  I don’ have to work,
I do drougs…
But with other weemen, they don’ add anythin’…
they take…I take…
a little piece of ass or sometheen… But…I’ve seen beyond.

Oh, I have a big hardon, where you can sit and make yourself
comfortable.   We’re just a couple of Sr Citizens….”

“NO!  I’m not a senior citizen!” I jumped in…

“I wouldn’t be fucking a Sr Citizen!” he laughed…
” I would be expecting a Boy Scout to come by an say ‘NO!…
you can’ Do that!…. oh here, can I help you across the street?’ ”

We were both laughing now.  He said his bottle of Vodka was
half empty, and with the talk about his cynicism, I chided him
with the old…  ” it’s half Full ” thing…
“Well,”  he said…”if we put you an me together, we have
a Whole Fucking Bottle!”