from Sandy Needham

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Brazil Dispatch 17

March 27, 2008
The thing I really like about my ‘sabbatical’ in Brazil is the chance to ignore the clock and usually the calendar. These are just two more of the versions of liberation here for a person who usually had too much to do in too little time. That made me anxious. I do keep track of the days in order to water my various house plants properly – a rhythm that lovingly imposes the grid of the week on my schedule. Marcos waters the dozens of outdoor plants regularly. Even though I lose a plant here and there, I am adjusting to the role of plant guardian – new for me – where I can see that my watering and care in cutting off brown edges caused by the sea-salt ‘maresia’ give the plants their crucial self esteem.

We had ringside seats for the recent lunar eclipse. As the earth’s shadow crept over in a textbook arc, I couldn’t help but recall my favorite test question ever. My Astronomy professor at Northwestern was the adorable and brilliant astronomer, J. Allen Hynek, of Sputnik tracking stations, Project Blue Book, and “close encounters of the third kind” fame. Not only did he entertain us regularly with UFO sighting submissions and hilarious anecdotes to illustrate some phenomenon of physics, but he put the following question on a final exam: What do you have when the sun goes between the earth and the moon? A)a solar eclipse B) a lunar eclipse C) a particularly hot day.

Newton has begun to mismatch subjects and verbs in English lately, I imagine from hearing my mix-and-rarely-match Portuguese verbs. He continues to be questioned about his nationality with an unrecognizable Portuguese accent and some hesitation with Portuguese vocabulary after 28 years in the US. As I corrected his English once again the other day he lamented, ‘I’m just a man without a language! I’ve got three countries, but no language.” I have little hope for mastering Portuguese, partly because I can usually manage to communicate, if incorrectly, and I finally have all the time I want to read and write in English. Besides, the verbs are famously discouraging. After waiting for my turn at the counter to buy cheese, a man appeared out of nowhere and the clerk started helping him. Summoning the best of the feminist, assertiveness training tradition, I spoke right up with an air of justified indignation, “Eu estou próxima,” wishing to say “I am next.” Unfortunately, this idea requires the use of the “to be” verb ‘ser,’ being in a more permanent state, not the “to be” verb ‘estar’ which is for more temporary states, like being next in line, one would think. What I said with my nostrils flared amounted to “I am next… to the counter,” for example, or “I am next to the ham.” The man walked away.

I realized I should describe the city of Natal a little better after my mother was surprised that we could get new eye glasses here. I know that our tiny town by the beach, Pium, sounds totally third world, which it is, and that the bureaucracy problems and lack of roadwork sound third world, which they are, but Natal is a modern city of 700,000 people. Besides the many European tourists who are usually around Ponta Negra beach, there is a reasonably sized population of tremendously wealthy natives. Not ot be confused with 'indigenous,' this population tends to be whiter. They are concentrated in a particular part of the city called Petrópolis, with shops that are prohibitively expensive and great restaurants we add to our other favorites around Ponta Negra. As is usual for the third world (and has been coming to a neighborhood near you in the USA ever since Reagan), the division of wealth is dramatic here. These wealthy natives do not impress me much – you’ll recall they are our one-month-a-year neighbors at Cotovelo Beach. Perhaps being so rich among so many poor, they keep to themselves and are outwardly quite snobby, even in fancy restaurants. I am sure they are decent folks if one gets to know them, but I have been told by people who have rented out beach homes that among the rich are people who feel so entitled that they trash the houses and don’t always pay. The simpler, browner working natives of Pium, for example, are noted for their integrity and good manners. Natal has good medical care, and most anything is available for a price. We had a very nice eye doctor for our glasses and a nice place to buy them in a huge mall. We just had to wait a while for the lenses, from the city of Recife – south of here - to get sent down to Rio for the anti-glare feature and make their way back. Oh, and when we tried calling about them, the store’s listed number was a fax line, so we couldn’t talk to anyone. What does typify Brazil is the juxtaposition of something like a beautiful high-rise apartment building and something run-down, or a chic store and a two-week wait!

We finally put the street sign I made back up. I had left the background the natural wood so the sign would stand out when attached to a realtor’s white placard at the corner. Once that was ploughed down a day after affixing the street sign, I was stuck with a not very readable black-on-brown and an available fence post not all that close to the corner. Now every time Newt and I drive by, all we can think of is a cross trying to say, “Here lies Tereza Bezerra Salustino. R.I.P.” At least no one has torn it down yet!

My reading avocation has been very rich. I had Elise and Jake bring me some books I ordered off a list of reader’s favorites on National Public Radio ’s website. I just loved A Town Like Alice by Neville Shute –author of On the Beach. The PBS miniseries of this story back in the ‘80’s was one of my all-time favorites. Turns out that immediately after my going on and on to Newton about how romantic and wonderful the book is, he flew off to the US sitting next to a woman who wrote a book about women prisoners of war. She was on her way to a convention of an organization founded by the American woman featured in Ken Burns’ "The War" series who spent a chunk of her childhood at a Japanese prison camp in Manila. When a fellow passenger asked the author how she got interested in this subject, she replied that the book, A Town Like Alice had inspired her interest. Imagine the surprise of such a coincidence...the book was written in 1950.

I followed that with Evelyn Waugh’s WWII trilogy, Sword of Honour (Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, Unconditional Surrender). The straight-faced British humor is marvelous amidst the outrage of war waged by silly old men who have little regard for reality. Strangely enough, my next book – Denis Johnson’s wonderful mega-novel about Viet Nam, Tree of Smoke – had unexpected similarities, minus the humor. After such large doses of war I came to the conclusion that men need to be kept very busy competing in athletics, debate, cards, marbles - anything - so they stop messing up other people's countries and killing people.

Desperate for something life-affirming, I am now reading Vincent Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo. While his raw passion for nature, art and humanity are truly moving and heartbreaking, where the soldiers became too numb to function, Van Gogh’s sensitivity is too intense to function (beyond creating the most beautiful, breathing paintings in the world!). Think I’ll try some steamy pulp fiction next!

The rainy season is getting underway ahead of April here, but only at night, so far. More bugs are enjoying the indoors already, and the heat is now humid. Newton will have his final surfing lesson tomorrow, then must trade his new “hot dog” surfboard for a more prudent, longer board as he used for his lessons – if he plans to actually ride any waves. These 16-year-olds with the six-pack stomachs make it look too easy to weave around the waves on tiny pointy boards!

Hope you are seeing signs of spring each day -

Love,
Sandy

Monday, March 10, 2008

Brazil Dispatch 16

March 10, 2008

Carnaval came and went as a sort of nightmare. Newton traveled to the US on Wednesday before Carnaval, leaving me alone in our house for the first time. I was upstairs on Friday afternoon watching “Ratatouille” on DVD. The maid was traveling for Carnaval. The caretaker, Marcos, works at a nearby house in the afternoons. Someone was downstairs outside our office ripping wires out and carrying off our two laptops through the windows.

The night before Newton left he came downstairs and discovered a black cat leaping out the dining room windows. I guess that was the omen. So what I carefully did was leave all the windows – which swivel from the middle – only partially open so no cat could come in again. What I did not think about before going upstairs was that this was vacation time in Brazil when the neighborhood is full of people using their beach houses AND wandering robbers who try to drop in and grab what they can. I was accustomed to Newt working in that office every day. I heard the sound of the front gate. By the time I figured out how to push ’pause’ without my glasses on, there was no one to be seen, though the gate was uncharacteristically ajar. I went downstairs and soon noticed that the windows were no longer at my ‘no cat’ angle, but fully open. The sight of those loose microphone and speaker wires hanging out the window left me dazed.

I called Marcos. I also called the police and carefully described where our street is, since no one knows the names and we hadn’t yet re-installed the street sign I made. Marcos came right home and we studied foot prints outside the gate. I begged some guy in a hammock on the veranda of the neighboring house at the corner to get up and come to his wall to talk to me, thinking he may have seen someone. These neighbors who come from the city for one month out of the year are NOT friendly. Finally when he sent the maid and I told her I needed to speak to him about a robbery at my house, THIS was interesting enough to get him up. Then his relatives came out of the woodwork to see what had happened. They were helpful, calling the security service to come by (I did not have the alarm on, so did not call them myself), but never did any of them introduce themselves. The security man spoke English and was terrifically kind to me. Of course it came out that I was here alone, so he encouraged me to call him if I needed to. Newton was on a flight from NY to California at that time.

Marcos and I went to the police station to fill out a report. The police had never arrived here, but the policeman said he had gone to a different street. Then Marcos told them I was German! It is sometimes a shock to understand how ignorant some of these locals are. Luckily, he kept quiet after I corrected that misinformation. I filed a report and we got home just as the electricity went out in the whole neighborhood. There were ten minutes left of daylight.

Newt was probably driving from San Francisco Airport to Lake Tahoe for the annual company ski weekend at that moment. I didn’t know how to call internationally on the home phone because we always use the Skype phone on the two (missing) laptops, but not on Newton’s large computer, which was still here. After I frantically searched the phone book for international calling instructions (there were none), the house became pitch black. I felt my way to the bedroom upstairs where we had a flashlight. The computer also shut down. I realized I knew Newton’s US cell number, so when the lights came on again I tried to reach him on the large computer Skype phone, only without any mike for him to hear me. So I kept calling until he suspected he should call here on the home phone – and he did. By this time the power had gone off again, but the home phone worked! He received the bad news. The power came on and stayed on. I was still shocked and scared, but not in the dark.

By Saturday evening I felt the need to venture out. It was 5:00pm, my favorite time on the beach – short-lived as it is before dark. Sometimes the tide is too high to even walk down to the restaurant at the end; on this first day of Carnaval the tide was very low and a wide promenade of sand allowed small crowds of people to go every which way. Almost every house along the beachfront, and these are large houses, had people partying on the decorated verandas and streaming down the slope to the sand. One house had fancy tables and chairs out for a large party and a live Carnaval samba band of brass and percussion. I made my way to the end of the beach, passing a girl playing a pipe on the low cliff, two guys scoring the boundaries of a paddle ball court in the sand, and some children wearing casual costumes - just a feather boa, for instance, over a bathing suit. The restaurant had stacked away all their beach tables and chairs, leaving only the nicer sections above, which overlook the entire beach. I chose a corner table and tried to just be inconspicuous there alone. After a caipirinha and chocolate ice cream, I made my way back home in the dusky light. I approached the brass and percussion band, which had come down to the sand and was leading a growing parade towards me. A guy literally took me by the hand and pulled me into the parade going the opposite direction. He had taken on the job of beckoning participants all along and was having pretty good success. Everyone was doing a sort of walking samba to the trumpet, trombone and saxophone, snare and bass drums. The lighting made the scene feel like a black-and-white film. Before long the whole crowd followed the band in an about-face and I was doing an anonymous samba home! The musicians returned en route to the party-house as I continued in rhythm down the beach to our street.

Even though I thought I’d dread returning to an empty house if I went out, I was happy I got to start Carnaval off right. Then I was back to what became my default position in front of Newton’s large computer screen, windows shut against the trickster shadows of plants outside, the fan on full blast, watching movies Newt had explained how to download but not how to turn into DVD’s for the player upstairs. I was constantly gasping for air, but afraid to open a window. There was always music and activity in the surrounding houses. The security company had a man driving around this neighborhood all night every night. On Ash Wednesday it all came to a halt. By evening there was no one in any of the houses, the street was deserted, and no security car came around. I was plenty scared. By Thursday night I had to get out, so went to a restaurant where we know the sweet little night manager who lived in London and likes to speak English. He was extremely kind and attentive to me. We invited him to lunch this week.

You may ask why I did not contact any of our other acquaintances during this 10-day solitude. One, none of them, so far, have good friend-potential; two, everyone always has big Carnaval plans of their own on which I did not wish to impose; and three, I was feeling very down and disoriented with Newt away and my laptop missing. I was asking myself, "what the hell am I doing in Brazil?" Our move was a joint venture!

Yes, Newton did come home. He brought a new laptop. I feel normal by now, except for this new-fangled Office 2007! It is hot this summer with very little breeze at some moments, so the bugs and the truck motors sound lazier. Newt has a new surf board and is taking lessons, so the season is ripe with hope! Dozens of yellow butterflies swarming around our yard and over the road make us feel like we’re in the middle of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. We keep the windows open, other than locking them whenever we leave the office. The black cat seems to have found a new beat.

Love,
Sandy
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