Tag Archives: rio de janeiro

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…journal entry december 2004…

“My mind wandered past years of mind games, years of imaging,
and I wondered:  has all this thinking, remembering, replaying
old mind videos made it happen?  Or did I just Know to begin with?
Gazing continually at scenes of Rio, Pao d’Azucar, Corcovado,
Guanabara Bay, the Islands, the Music… and always him in each…
Think of Rio visit, and Always in my mind there’s the thought…
I want him to show it to me.
I want to be with him, and see His Brasil.

The days are getting longer again, and just the thought
makes me smile… Actually the thoughts of more than a few things
make me smile…
Such incredible things to look forward to, such possibilities…
My dear darling crazy Brasilian is down and wounded, and I
wonder why… His left knee is bad, and where did that old injury
come from, which dragon was he slaying?

Haven’t spoken with him in many days, and it actually feels better
to take a break.  The longing festers…
It’s only been 2 weeks since we first spoke, and so much already.
And I must wait 2 months for Passport, 2 months of selling,
2 months of workouts..
Last times I called, he wasn’t in a talking mood. I felt awkward, like
I was irritating him, and that just led to frustration and feelings
of rejection, so I do not call.  He’s in his cave, even though he says
‘call any time you want’…  I want Him to call Me.

So now, for one thing, I realize he lied to me when we were together
before.  He told me he was ‘tirty tree’, but his real birthdate is
four years later.  So he was only 29 when we met!  What a Brat!
A brash and bold, incredible Brat.

Now back to December 8th, his first call:

His questions came fast… Is your hair still long?  Do you still wear
those dresses and long skirts?  You sound the same, he said.
I can see you right now.  I always loved your voice…. he’d never
told me that …

“Yes, I remember the hot tub…” he continued.  “And it wasn’t just
the drugs… we went someplace else.”  (… we had smoked the kind,
but god only knows what else he had done…)
“That was the only time I had Peace.  I could fall asleep with my
head on you, on your lap.  I never did that.
I was drunk most of the time… I was drunk that first night, but
you sobered me up…”

“So….when are you coming to Brasil?  We can listen to Real Brasilian
music, and you can lay down beside me.
I’ll show you the Best of Brasil…”

He told me that after the first email, he had called my old number…
he still had my old shop card, from back in the eighties!
He read off the address, the phone… he’d kept it in a box since
the Legion.  He said it was now a store in town, and
they didn’t know me.
My shop had been called ‘Celestial Dreams’… and up floated the
memory of that time early on, when the phone rang…
“Hello..”
“Hallooo?  eees thees Celestial Dreeeems?”
“….yesss…?”
“Yes….. I’d like to order one celestial dreeeem, pleees….”
(snickers all around)
“Actually,” he added…. I’ll settle for an earthly one…”

So now he continued…  “Right now I am alone.  All the time.  I have a dog.
I swim everyday.  That’s Alone.  I want to get a Boat,
I want to sail and fish. ”   He said he was semi retired,
living on a small pension from the Legion…

“I have no enemies now” he shared.  “And you remember
All my names!  Only my grandmother knows all those names!
And I? ….I remember your taste…. you tasted so good….
…..you tasted like flowers.”

 

 

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…finding my way to Rio…

Suddenly my life had taken the turn to adventure.  I didn’t even have
a Passport!  The only places outside of the Mainland States that I had
ventured to were Hawaii and Alaska.
Loved Hawaii and could Live there, but Alaska? only wanted to visit.

My time was now laid out… I had 6 weeks to get my act together,
before I left for Rio for a month.
He had set the deadline as February 14th… his Birthday…and so
it was ordained.
I had things to pack and put in storage, for I was staying with one
of my daughters at the time, the one who had secured my ticket….
I had to ensure that my animals were safe and loved for the time,
the Passport App was mailed, and I began making money in earnest.

I am an artist, and have always been fond of a Bohemian life, living
day to day and on Trust.  It has always worked, although there are
drawbacks, to be sure.  Still, my freedom has always come first!
I was happy to learn that US dollars were doubled in Brasil, so that
made everything seem a little easier!

As I was impatiently awaiting the leave, while simultaneously and
quietly freaking out, I continued my ongoing studies of Brasil.

Through the past nearly 20 years since I first met Alcir, the Music has
largely been my passport to the culture, and it allowed me to share in
much of the passion, concern, and vibrations if you will, of Brasil,
and particularly Rio.

I settled on Jobim as my groundwater.  The Carioca accent, the deep
warm voice, full of passionate joy and melancholic nuance.
He was the one to bring Brasil to the US, and his melodies are almost
cliche now…. but no, never trite.
It’s odd, because still a lot of Americans (and I hesitate using that
misnomer, as Alcir would laugh his deep and heartful laugh and
remind me…. “don’ call them Americans!  We’re American too!!)  …

A lot of the US knows the songs if you hum them, but have no idea
of who he is.  They still play “Quiet Nights and Quiet Stars”,
“Meditation”, and of course “Girl from Ipanema” as background…!

As soon as it gets romantic or sexy seductive in a film, here comes
one of the familiars, and I’ve often heard them in the supermarket
(the elevator equivalent these days).

So…. since 1985 it’s been my mission to know just what Brasil was
about, hear the language, feel the voices, and get into the mindset.

Beyond that, it was that incredible Guanabara Bay, with Pao d’Azucar,
the islands, the views of Rio with the Concrete Christ, arms spread
and embracing that dear, ancient city, that mesmerized me.

The populace is as varied as the US in some ways… a mixture of the
Indigenous, the conquering Portuguese, and the Africans they brought
in as slaves.  Fascinating mixtures that creates this race of people
where each face is completely different from the next.
I was intriqued to see that one or the other had lead in the genetic
makeup, with nuance of the others in the back-ground.  Because I’d
lived in Hawaii and saw the same phenomenon, this only continued
the anthropological studies I had begun long ago.

The Indigenous contributed their fierce, wild, free spirit, along with
wonderful instruments and sounds that had worked their way into the
fusion jazz of today…. an area where Brasil excelled with their contribution.
Many of their sounds mimic and include the forest of their origin.

African rhythms are the basis of much that comes out of Brasil, and
the influence in new Jazz directions is obvious.  As well, as in many
other Latin countries, the Africans brought their ancient religion,
there called Macumba and Candomble, as well as Capoeira, the
martial arts practice that will blow your mind!

And lastly, there are the many representatives of so many other
countries who have moved there, run away there, or just somehow
found themselves there… particularly the Japanese and the Germans.
Interestingly enough to me, Everyone speaks Portuguese, which
must be a very unifying happenstance.  But it always provided a
little laugh for me, to see blue eyed Arians and Japanese speaking
Portuguese, and likely with their own accents.

And then the Portuguese.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve felt that they are the Gypsies, the ones
who were out there so many centuries ago, meeting, mixing, mating
and gathering other cultures.   They seem to have brought back many
subtle flavors to mix in, along with the Latin soul and Catholic
mythology that is still so prevalent today.
And I must add here that it has been my experience that the
Portuguese have a superiority complex, and I was to know that
better as I truly met the Real Alcir.

So there I was.  Filling my senses with as much of Brasil that I could.
Learning some Portuguese, understanding the Carioca accent and
style,  (Rio has it’s own regional dialect)… and realizing Rio was
Ancient in so many ways, and with so much history, and learning
more and more about Alcir, and who he Really was, and had become.

 

 

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…the waiting begins…

Oh my, where was I?  I do leave this Tale of Love from time to time,
for a break in the effort, which is a little arduous, but don’t you find
you can’t wait for the next Chapter?  Good!
As I recall, I was having heart palpitations over the poem sent
to me from Brasil.
Passionate and completely mad, still my girlish heart had been
captured, and the desire to share swept over me til I drowned in it.
Girls just Have to share…

There was one person who could grok the moment, and that was
my daughter Piney.

I was living with her at the time, before, during and after she moved
into a new house in our area of Oregon, and she’d been kept abreast
of the goings-on with him.
She had known him during the times he visited me back in the eighties,
and was quite fond of him.  She found him funny, smart and playful,
and a rather exciting character to a kid.
Sort of like a real life Jack Sparrow, all dashing and full of tall tales
of courage and wild adventures… but not so much eye makeup…

It wasn’t long before I got an email from the little miss… who was
now a bit of an international, as her work (promotion for big companies) lead her to travel.

“Re:   sugar and spice and…GET OFF THE INTERNET!”  read the line,
so I did…
…but only after I read the note:

“hey mom,

trying to call you, you must be on line. give me a call when you
get this e-mail.
i have something to tell you…. something you’ll like….a lot.

love,
-pine”

What she had to tell me would now stop my breath as well…. Great…
now I can’t breath, And my heart has already stopped..

She had Tons of Miles to spare, and offered me a Ticket to Brasil…

Oh Good Grief.  Not only him, but Brasil too?  Completely Unreal.
Brain Overload, tape loops, wake up sweats…

So now the plans began, and I had Two Months to wrap up my life,
get ready for another reality, and of course…loose a few pounds…
I Am a girl after all.
He desperately wanted me to be there for his Birthday…Feb 14th…

He was ecstatic, I swung between several states of mind, but mostly
I worked on bringing my brain to the present, and …..
Just What was this Reality that I had called to myself…?

 

 

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…be careful what you ask for…

Journal entry…
December, 2004
“She paged down through the poem…
CAROL!… and as she read each line, it dawned on her like a
velvet sledgehammer… It just built and built…
no wishywashy here…  here’s a man of action…and….
oh shit…I have a tiger by the tail.
Holy shit…. to be the love of my life?  … Be Mine…?
Her heart beat itself out of it’s chambers, and flew round the room.
Oh my God, oh my God…she paced, she emphatically pulled her
hair back, she swore…
She wanted to call someone, anyone close, closest, must share,
must pour out, must have support…
But then she stopped.
Whoa girlie, just slow down here, just stop for a minute…
This is big.  This is something entirely different.  Not high school,
not movie romance…
This is the most devistating man she had ever met, coming back
after 15, no 18 years, and basically proposing to her.
Too much, must absorb, must breath, must take time here.
She decided to put the lid on, turn down the heat, let it
percolate a while.
Let it sink in, let this mortal mind wrap around this here thing…
Hours passed before she slept.  Waves crashed on shores of sanity,
dreams washed over her, past footage reviewing itself,
replay, replay… then….now…..then……now….
Him then….him now….. melding, morphing…pulling itself through
a wormhole, to pop up into Now.
On the phone, she could hear the change in his voice.  Softer,
a little weary, not so testosterone based, so deep and insistent,
the ego had polished up it’s edges a bit.
His daughter interrupted, and it pleased her to no end to hear him
pattering with her in Portuguese, hear the patience, the tenderness,
the Realness that he shared with her…
He talked freely with her in spite of the fact that she was there.
He’s so comfortable with his animal…
“I’m a millenium father… my daughter will know about things…
Know how to handle herself in situations, know how to give pleasure
and not endanger herself…”
“She’s very jealous”, he told her… “All little girls are having sex
with their fathers…Oh I don’t mean literally, but in their mind…”
He was right, I guess.  She thought of her father, and how being
with him had made her feel as a child.
He was safe, comfortable, warm, unthreatened and unthreatening.
And Physical… they’d wrestle and tickle and horse around, and she
loved it…when she heard of other girls having creepy feelings
with their dad, she couldn’t even relate… he was never like that.
“And I always wanted to win over Mom,”  she thought to herself….
I thought I was better for him…….Mom was mean, she didn’t
understand him and me…”   All her life, she realized, all her life she’d
had some competition for the daddy going on, in one place or another.
But it was hard for her to think of her daddy as a sex object… it just
wasn’t there at all… she wanted his focus, his attention, but not that…
Maybe that was why short men never did it for her.  Or maybe
it was because the more ineffectual her daddy became under the
duress of years, the more she fixed on tallness in a man.
“Oh give me a big yummy alpha… make him smarter and stronger,
please dear God I can’t do to him what my mother did to daddy..”
And now… Alcir is here.  Mr Alpha Man big Alcir…
He is back and is ready …
He is asking me to come and live with him in Rio.
Oh, I need to write it every once in a while, because my poor brain
is having a contortionist’s challenge, wrapping around this one…
I’m rushing toward it, and
I’m terrified.
I’m hiding while …. I can’t wait.”
by

…a name by anyother…

By now, perhaps you’re getting a sense of that which had accosted me.
I believe most adjectives would fall short, and my heart was set adrift
with both nostalgic yearnings and terrified anticipation.

I fondled the photo he’d sent me. I found scraps of memories in my
journals…
This one still is particularly poignant, from when he wrote out his
full name in his bewitching script… he did it for Piney, but I took
ownership immediately.

I stared at his picture now.  I saw the same man, a different man,
a different world, with twenty years and 14,000 miles between us.
Was this even possible… was I crazy…?

 

 

 

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…his old jacket…

One afternoon, he decided to pull out the old Legionnaires’ uniform, and here he is looking pleased with himself… after 18 years, he can still Almost button it closed… double click to enlarge the brat.   This was 2006 in Rio.

I’m anticipating going through my storage soon, finding my old journals, and beginning to review the days when I was seeing Alcir.  It’s not all pleasure, be assured, for I will likely never see him again, and in some ways that chapter of my life is closed forever.  Stirring the memories is stirring the emotions, and they run deep and technicolor vivid.

As a being, he is etched upon my brain pans, like one of those movies you see over and over through the years, always creating the sensory overload, the tastes and smells, the cocktail chemistry, the brain bath rushing over skin, through veins, visions of sugar plum fantasies with someone who came so close to being a perfect match, yet membraned apart just enough to never quite get there.  There were moments, flashes of paradise…

Heart breakingly almost, tantalizingly dancing just out of reach, touching in and running away.  Begging for help, longing for true love, believing in conjoined souls, and terrified of love, that was he.

 

 

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…a new post on a new year…

Rio is the Hawaii of the Southern Hemisphere…

The same warm and comfortable.

The same body relax of mother warmth that says ‘all is well’.

The same Mix of world, clash of race and culture.

But with Nature, the Art of the gods… could they do better?

All the world of faces….skins …and…. cultures

There………For the taking..

Mixin it up.

It isn’t easy … going back to where I was…

Feeling and reviewing all of it.

But then again, it’s a good movie that I don’t mind sharing.

I think of my first impressions of Brasil, as i got off the plane… and later, as i walked the winding streets of the island we lived on…  The people are so individuated in their appearance.  Somehow the combination of races and cultures gives so much a variety to choose from when designing a body.  Indiginous, Portuguese, and African…. but then the place became a glamor spot in the twenties, where movie stars and the rich came to play, a glorious background to all their party pictures.

After WWII, the Japanese and the Germans came in droves.  One could escape to Brasil and never be seen again, it’s so huge.  So you see Asian faces and blue eyed blondes, full figured blacks and sinuwy brown skins.  The women for some reason have turned out to be some of the most gorgeous creatures on the planet, and they show it off, flaunt it, display their power fully, and it is likely their grandest power.   They shop at the local markets in skin tight pants, yet never shorts… that’s the sign of the professional.  Oh no, no shorts!  Just skin tight down to below the knees or longer.

Their hair is long, full and big, frequently lightly colored in stripes, as that’s what the news ladies on TV were wearing at the time.  Lots of Stripes.  Wild things!  And at one point, all those gorgeous news ladies also wore hair that curved in to the face in long curled, knife-like blades, five and six levels, all curving in like scythes, like Forks, ready to Bite you.  Fierce!

Their tops showed lots of cleavage and skin….after all, it is the Tropics, humid and hot.  They were Fully made up, with big hoop earrings, and heeled sandals….always heels, which accentuated their butts, jutting out to balance, the way heels make you do.  Not that they needed accentuating.  Most of the women had the most gorgeous asses the world has ever known.  That was the Black part that they all seemed to get, no matter what the rest of the creature chose.  Fabulous high round cantilevered asses that you just couldn’t Not look at.  I did not see Cracker asses, nope, just these great big perfectly proportioned booties.

The culture is backwards when it comes to male-female roles, and the men are not about to let it go.  Latin men do what they want, when they want, and they all drink together at the street pubs open to the sidewalks.  It’s an evening ritual, and although you do see couples mingling about, strolling the walks late at night, after the day has cooled, still it’s the men who are out late, talking story endlessly into the night.

My Alcir was steeped in the tradition, and seldom a night passed that he didn’t leave for a while.  “I’ll be back” became a joke, for the fact was once he left, i never knew when I’d see him again.  Sometimes he’d come back for a while, and then leave again.  Other times he’d be content to come home after a little, two or three liter bottles of  ‘Chops’ under his arm, the favorite beer locally, and freezing to the point of slushies… he’d shove it into the freezer to keep it that way, and we’d drink into the night, laughing and dancing wildly.  He got jolly when medium drunk, with lots of stories and tenderness.  But in the late nights, when he’d visited the favellas and scored the white powder he called coke, but knew better, he’d get mean.  I realized later that he snorted to get straight, so he could get drunk twice.

Yet through all this self abuse, he remained sinfully good looking.  Six foot, swimmers’ body, a natural grace and classic proportions.  Brown skin, white teeth, snapping dark brown, slightly slanted eyes, and thick salt and pepper hair, by then.  He was used to the female attention he’d gotten all his life, took it for granted, yet boasted on it too.  I remember one time in some charming bar, and when i returned from the restroom, he informed me that two blondes had chatted him up, and invited him to join them.

“Geeeesh,” I smiled…”I can’t leave you alone for five minutes!”

“Naaaa,” he’d reply, the smug creeping into his smile…
“I’m a gooood boy.
I tole them i was waiting for my fiancee…”   and looked proud
of himself.
I gave him a squeeze.

It was true, he was a good boy when I was there.  When I was gone was another matter.  A doctor’s visit proceeded my return, and although nothing was found, still his concern made it quite clear to me what he’d been up to.

Next…. the Second Time, which makes up for the First.

 

 

by

….. 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.