Cheese and Lunar Travel
Brazil! What’s not to like about Brazil? Well, there’s the crime, the long lines waiting for things, and the crushing masses, trash, and poverty in some places. But other than there is very little not to like. The people are warm, friendly, and so… alive. They dance and sing anywhere for any reason, and there is music constantly blaring from several sources, it’s like Brazil is running it’s own soundtrack at all hours.
“Where are you from?” The grilled cheese guy’s cart smelled like stinky feet. People could smell him coming from down the beach. He held the pungent cheese impaled on the sticks over the fire with one hand, wiping the sweat from his brow with another. The one block of cheese in question he grilled next to it’s much larger brother. I’d expressed dismay at the size of the former, which prompted his query. I didn’t really see what his question had to do with much of anything.
“New York,” I said. He wore a big smile on his face, and the ubiquitous uniform of the working man on the beach: board shorts, A-frame shirt, Havianas, and a hat for the fierce sun.
“Yes,” he said. He smiled and looked down at the cheese, careful to turn it over the hot coals before it blackened. “I have a good friend in New York. He works there and sometimes he sends me money to try to help me out. In brazil, most people make just 200 Reales a month (about $100 US), he said. You can make that in just one day, no?”
I regarded him for a moment. The truth is that some people can make $100. Many people can make a lot more than that if they were lucky enough to have been educated well. Of course I got his point. I simply nodded and decided I’d not quibble over the relative mass of a piece of cheese that cost me a dollar.
He told me about the beauty of the ability to have so much, such access to wealth where life was so much easier. I listened but wasn’t so sure it was such an improvement. I’d no intention of falling into the noble savage trap; certainly life here could be hard. But why did everyone smile? Why the “alegria?” I told him about the many people I knew in the US with strange maladies of the mind and soul, they have money, nice cars, all kinds of material success. But there is an emptiness. They lack the ability to make themselves satisfied otherwise. They don’t have love relationships, they have people of the opposite sex that they complain about. You will almost never see them walking down the street singing and dancing, unless you stumble onto a strange parade in New York City or Miami.
My friend Curtis, a five-time visitor to Morro de Salvadore, and short-term expat to Brazil knows a lot about the country. Already in some ways more Brazilian than American, he even married Rosie, a Paulista (a girl from Sao Paulo), and now speaks pretty decent Portuguese. Anyway, as my resident Brazil adviser on the beach Curt was philosophical about the place.
“We [Americans] are the kind of people that go to the moon. They could never do that here in Brazil” Curt said. “But what they can do here on the beach, the way they can be and live, the way they can enjoy the place they are in right this moment, we can never do that in the US.” Perhaps that is why we work so hard; because we have so little else but work? Perhaps that is why we always look for our happiness in other places, some as far as the moon?
I went back under the sheltering umbrella with my people, two Brazilians and North American taking shade together, and I laid back and forgot everything. I lost myself in my moment with the soft sand, the water, and my half-sized piece of stinky, grilled cheese. And I was satisfied.
“Where are you from?” The grilled cheese guy’s cart smelled like stinky feet. People could smell him coming from down the beach. He held the pungent cheese impaled on the sticks over the fire with one hand, wiping the sweat from his brow with another. The one block of cheese in question he grilled next to it’s much larger brother. I’d expressed dismay at the size of the former, which prompted his query. I didn’t really see what his question had to do with much of anything.
“New York,” I said. He wore a big smile on his face, and the ubiquitous uniform of the working man on the beach: board shorts, A-frame shirt, Havianas, and a hat for the fierce sun.
“Yes,” he said. He smiled and looked down at the cheese, careful to turn it over the hot coals before it blackened. “I have a good friend in New York. He works there and sometimes he sends me money to try to help me out. In brazil, most people make just 200 Reales a month (about $100 US), he said. You can make that in just one day, no?”
I regarded him for a moment. The truth is that some people can make $100. Many people can make a lot more than that if they were lucky enough to have been educated well. Of course I got his point. I simply nodded and decided I’d not quibble over the relative mass of a piece of cheese that cost me a dollar.
He told me about the beauty of the ability to have so much, such access to wealth where life was so much easier. I listened but wasn’t so sure it was such an improvement. I’d no intention of falling into the noble savage trap; certainly life here could be hard. But why did everyone smile? Why the “alegria?” I told him about the many people I knew in the US with strange maladies of the mind and soul, they have money, nice cars, all kinds of material success. But there is an emptiness. They lack the ability to make themselves satisfied otherwise. They don’t have love relationships, they have people of the opposite sex that they complain about. You will almost never see them walking down the street singing and dancing, unless you stumble onto a strange parade in New York City or Miami.
My friend Curtis, a five-time visitor to Morro de Salvadore, and short-term expat to Brazil knows a lot about the country. Already in some ways more Brazilian than American, he even married Rosie, a Paulista (a girl from Sao Paulo), and now speaks pretty decent Portuguese. Anyway, as my resident Brazil adviser on the beach Curt was philosophical about the place.
“We [Americans] are the kind of people that go to the moon. They could never do that here in Brazil” Curt said. “But what they can do here on the beach, the way they can be and live, the way they can enjoy the place they are in right this moment, we can never do that in the US.” Perhaps that is why we work so hard; because we have so little else but work? Perhaps that is why we always look for our happiness in other places, some as far as the moon?
I went back under the sheltering umbrella with my people, two Brazilians and North American taking shade together, and I laid back and forgot everything. I lost myself in my moment with the soft sand, the water, and my half-sized piece of stinky, grilled cheese. And I was satisfied.
posted by goat hill dreamer @ 10:41 AM
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