Paying Homage

"This is the highest cost,
take you and make you off,
love you and leave you lost,
will you forgive me?" -Maxwell

Rural visit to Ituvera tomorrow. Pictures to brighten the blog today.

Walking in the street alone, as a woman, at night, in a big city, where one doesn´t know the language, when there is poverty, homelessness, crime and desperation, is not a good idea. And I know this, even when the city is enthralling to me. Within that desperation and sadness, there is perserverance, dignity, and beauty people so often overlook. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea of race in Brazil, and how it is similar and different from conceptions of race in the United States.

It's evident through even conversations with close friends that, even as an Anthropology major who considers herself socially conscious, there's so much about race I don't understand or am misunderstanding or hold ignorance toward. I appreciate the opportunity to have my eyes open even further.

We live with relatively well off homestay families so going to the Nigerian neighborhood, going to areas where homelessness runs rampant, going to an NGO which helps provide a safe space for drug addicts who are often homeless is eye-opening to me. I almost feel like a privileged white anthropologist, driving past so many favelas, knowing that I, as a student can study in four countries over the course of one program, and be shown the realities and lack of health experienced by so many different people.

When the classroom doesn't knock in enough knowledge, the world always compensates for that. Now the struggle is how to put this privilege and knowledge to use when I get home. To re-examine the idea of blackness and color, because my understanding is lacking, and to start my senior thesis. Learning about these health issues creates more opportunities for careers in the future, more choices-- more complexities. The idea of social work and social justice is present in my mind today when in January it wasn't.

But the struggle has always been to balance my privilege and power with my desire to help others without exploiting that privilege or power, and without making it condescending.

Once again, I stress the city is beautiful and lively. Many bars, stylish women, live music, art, markets, shopping centers and people here tend to live life day by day. They're more relaxed than people in Ha Noi. The calm exhuberance makes me smile.

Lost on the bus....

in a big city, as I must get in every big city, DC, Ha Noi, New York. What´s more hiliarious is not knowing any Portugese and trying to navigate my way from one bus to another bus... one street to another street. People trying to help from every direction but no comprende.

But the city is beautiful and I break through the language barrier here to find the kindness that exists. I find my way home to the homestay and I walk around this neighborhood, watching people and their connections with one another. Watch the diversity interact here. Me, my braces, my curvaceousness, my lack of language skills, feel completely at home in Brazil even as an undeniable ´tourist´.

Music store after music store selling guitars and compact discs,; it makes me nostalgic. I would travel forever and escape from Maine if friends and family weren´t there.

Emotionally I´ve grown and that includes the complicated stuff-- because in the past six months I´ve been blessed with people who care and friendships that I feel will last a long time if not a life time-- despite anything and everything-- and i~m so thankful for that when it was once what I feared, and what I thought I couldn~t have.

The big buildings are overwhelming; I must move to a big city just so I could admire them and the people in them. My friend says I have a fetish for it. What I have a fetish for is the lights at night and the energy 24/7 and the ART.

I like Sao Paulo because you learn from it by being in it. I was privileged enough to be in Mai Chau, Viet Nam immersed by mountains and green pastures and I loved that too but only as a sanctuary... somewhere I could hide from the organized chaos that I love in my life.

When writing a poem beginning with the idea of love, it´s a cliche but the line...

´there´s no lover lovlier´

maybe

´than the taste of my fingers on your lips´
as though they were dipped in chocolate
and I was that delectable´

and then go with it

´and let you savour all that~s emotional
from my pores clogging your escape from
my feelings that are now yours´

and if i want to get really spoken word, i~ll go


´like my body and my mind and the design
of my soul that you´ve navigated until I lost all control
of my muscles and my tendons and my toes
and my heart still
believing there´s no lover lovlier
than the taste of my fingers in your mouth
and the air of your aura keeping my being
breathing.´


Completely lame, but something like that, it´s what Sao Paulo does to me. I get to look at the situation of violence and gender here soon. I get to truly grasp my privilege as an American woman here and try to investigate why I feel almost at home in a city in which im a stranger. The point of this post, as always, i~m growing.

OK- end with some Jigga lyrics
"I move onward, the only direction,
can´t be scared to fail, searching for perfection´
precisely!

Sao Paulo

Poetry from the top of the dome, those who it's for know it well.

Poem 1:

From my chest to the breasts
every syllable from the wave
lengths of your voice penetrates
from my periphery
to my center piece
baby, my heart
maybe, my spirit is symbolic
of cymbals rushing down your wave
lengths like
water to your fiending lips

Poem 2:

Arms folded
ending the stroking of the finger tips
once molded
onto knots of human shoulders until
they untangle
but the pain is
residual
and it'll penetrate like a virus

Dear my loves,

I'm back to the mental space where I can write mediocre little poems which means I'm at a good place. There's so much about Viet Nam, about care, about friendship which I should write but as I digest that, I want to speak of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

It reminds of DC. Although the city is beautiful,the homeless are laying on the street being covered by blankets. The economic, systemic, social dichotomy between black/brown and white exists. There's a beauty, there's a fierceness, but there's also a story and a sadness.

One of the things that has been missing this whole trip for me was the focus on mental health and the health concerns of men and boys who are often ignored and I pray Brazil will address that. Violence was the first concern coming out of the coordinator's mouth, but also men are dying seven years younger than women. Let's look at the relationship between social status, cultural ideas of masculinity, and of course, race.

It reminds me of DC. It reminds me of New York. The beautiful grafitti which tells so many stories and leaves a symbol of a person and his/her uniqueness onto the world. I admire the passion, the directness, the ability of this country to admit faults, the way Viet Nam could not.

I want to perform spoken word, I want to make love, and I want a tatoo. And I want to analyze all that Viet Nam, South Africa, and Washington DC has done to me, has done for me. The friends that I made with passion for all that they believe, with glaringly distinct smiles, and hilarious personalities, are people I wish I had known all my life and who I want to hold onto forever. They pushed me through four countries without "family" or previous friends.

I'm nostalgic already because I don't want this to end, Brazil is too beautiful, its pain is too real, and the friends and experiences which make me think and challenge me, I pray to hold onto to the day I die.