Five Years Dispatch

December 8, 2011 marked five years in our house on Cotovelo Beach in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. All the clichés about time apply.

 

 

 

 

Here is the city of Natal from the air, with the Potengi River in the foreground, the Atlantic Ocean in the background. Cotovelo is to the south.

 

 

We had relatives arriving within days, so bought mattresses and ordered beds to be made by the local rustic furniture makers. An old sofa, two old chairs and an old table had been left behind on the veranda, and the living room had a built-in sofa…that was IT. We scrambled to find dishes, sheets, towels, pots and pans and discovered that household items, no matter how shoddy, were costly here. We now know the Brazilian government taxes all items many times over.

We had no idea how long this experiment in Brazil would last, so I was cautious about adding too many things to the house that we would never be able to carry back, having arrived with suitcases only. Eventually, we furnished the place, though it had a sort of bank lobby sparseness. This look has since fallen subject to the laws of the universe, and little by little additional pieces of furniture, plants, and objets have materialized. On travels we took to stuffing suitcases with items from our upstate NY storage bin and with comparatively inexpensive treasures from Target and Ikea. This is really our home now, and we just bought actual flatware to replace the plastic-handled Brazilian version, to demonstrate our current commitment to who-knows-how many more years?

Comparing the early days to now, I think of how we decided to approach some people at the next table in a restaurant who were speaking a mix of Portuguese and English to see if we could kick-start a social life. All of our surrounding houses were empty beach houses, soon to be filled up with January relatives and guests – none of whom would even make eye contact on the way to the beach. Then my English antenna would go off in the supermarket and I’d get contact info for social opportunities, though the resulting chemistry was sometimes lacking a few molecules.

Our group of friends has since grown and grown; some move away, as Natal seems to attract a sort of gypsy spirit, and the wealthy natives (our beach neighbors in summer) still keep to themselves – but the explorers who arrive on this shore are curious, intelligent, fun and, oddly enough, physically beautiful. Sometimes we feel like there are not enough days in a week to celebrate this charmed life with all of the many friends we cherish!

We just partied this week with friends almost non-stop from Wednesday to Sunday. Whew. More than typical for a week, but was it ever fun! I rather recently have three girlfriends who lunch: (l to r) Faith – an American who has spent her whole life in Brazil; Vilma – a Potiquar from the interior of the state who was married to a Scottish entomologist (recently deceased) and lived 20 years in Manhattan, as well as consulted for many years in Africa for the United Nations. She divides life between Cotovelo Beach and Loch Ness, Scotland; and Mary, the rare American I’ve known for some time who just ‘retired’ from editing for the Stanford University Press. They all live nearby. Besides the fact that these friends are brilliant, my favorite part is that we belly-laugh for entire afternoons!

The culmination of the week was the wedding of our friends Hian and Ana Paula. They met 13 years ago in Stockholm and have an 8-year-old daughter, but had never tied the knot. Most of our friends were there, witnessing a ceremony beside the ocean with a full, golden moon rising on cue! What a delicious and romantic dress-up occasion for us all. I also participated in the bride’s “hen party” in the nearby beach town of Pipa!

In the early days here, I spent countless hours alone in the breeze on the veranda, hand-sewing my Japanese quilt, making jewelry, reading in the balcony hammock, following my yoga practice. I continue to consider such hours the gift of calm bequeathed to the frantic life I led prior to Brazil. I still respond to “what do you do here?” with “I am still resting from my life in the US.” Some people get it, and some get upset. How nice that it makes no difference to me and I embrace the contentment in ever deeper ways.

This reverie is punctuated with regular jaunts into town for my free semi-weekly Português por Estrangeiros class at the university. This class has produced lasting friends, if not lasting Portuguese! So far, I’ve aced the tests but still say whatever I need to with suspiciously English syntax. What has improved is my ability to follow a rapid conversation among several people…more or less. Some people also get upset that I’m not killing myself to speak as well as possible. If I forget to call a string bean a ‘she,’ I can live with it.

Nowadays, Newton and I have come to love our routines and rituals together. We would surely grow tired of them if our travels did not intervene, but they do!

He works at his big desk, communicating at all hours with various spots on the globe. I spend far too much time on the computer at my little desk next to his. The computer used to make me physically sicker than it does now, an acclimation about which I am ambivalent…this can’t be good for me! Not to mention that when I am not communicating with far-flung relatives and friends via e-mail or Facebook – connections crucial to this move – I am monitoring the sad slippage of American democracy further into oligarchy/corporatocracy in the countless, inescapable ways this is documented online. It is painful-yet-compelling (compulsive?). I find that people are registering anti-American remarks increasingly.

On Fridays¸ I usher in the weekend by going to the next beach town south for produce at the little grocery, for shrimp at the fish store, and for a container of açaí berry sherbet at the beach. We pack up hot buffalo chicken wings our empregada has learned to make perfectly and consistently (a Potiquar feat), some cucumber salad with two toothpicks, beer out of the freezer in stryro holders along with two frosted glasses, also in stryo holders (‘estupidamente gelada:’ ‘ridiculously cold’). We grab two beach chairs and head off for the shady grassy knoll above the sandy beach below. Back home is the açaí dessert (Newton adds the granola and banana) and perfect espresso from our Nespresso machine.

The shrimp, you ask? That gets cooked and shelled early Saturday morning by the caretaker. Newton buys the lettuce/arugula/parsley/collard greens just delivered to the local bodega from the nearby fields in Pium Valley. While he deveins the shrimp, I wash all the greens. He steams the cut-up collard greens and cuts up loads of garlic. THEN we grab the same two beach chairs, the umbrella, my hat, and a small cooler of beer and head down to the beach by the water. Lunchtime: I make a salad while Newt sautés the collard greens with garlic and the shrimp with garlic. This is our lunch menu for every Saturday and Sunday after the beach.

We’ve been following several US cable series on DVD over the five years (The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Treme, Boardwalk Empire, and Damages, so far), along with sanity-preserving Jon Stewart and thought-provoking (with an adolescent slant) Bill Maher. We often set up the projector and pull down the screen Newton mounted near the living room ceiling to create our ‘theater.’

And we go out. A lot.

Early on, when we had made friends with several musicians who play rock and blues regularly around town, I made the offer to help a couple of singers with their pronunciation of English lyrics free of charge, as a ‘patron of the arts.’ Finally, just the other day, Gustavo of “Blue Mountain” blues band called me up to accompany him to the recording studio to lay down the vocal track over the instrumental for their first CD! It was such a fun afternoon and evening. First we went over lyrics he had collected while listening to quite a good, classic blues repertoire. I was able to correct many phrases and attempted to explain the meaning of such things as “warm or chill” or “ol’ van’s racking up the miles.” There were also instances of incorrect lyrics from online, not to mention pronunciation problems. Even with the slightly slurred diction of authentic Delta blues, Gustavo was making a mess of “pretty little.” I had no idea about the incredible recording technology nowadays, where Gustavo could literally redo just the smallest phrase and have it all blend. We said “pret-ty lit-tle, pret-ty lit-tle” together a few times, and then he would record that lyric immediately before the impression left him! He was a bit nervous recording for the first time, so the larger problem became his tendency to sometimes sing off-key. I really thought it important that the recording be right, so I started trying to help him with this, having a pretty good ear myself after an entire childhood in church choir. He tended to sing sharp, so I kept trying to get him to feel his feet on the floor, to take deep breaths and relax, but the improvement was random. What amazed me was that the recording technology actually allows for a degree of correction in the tone, so the playback always improved on the live voice! A free CD awaits me the next time I see Gustavo.

Another adventure was a weekend trip with our new Spanish friends (from my class) who live in Natal, but own a beautiful pousada (sort of like a motel/beach hotel) in Baia Formosa, a quiet little town and beach near the popular tourist destination of Pipa. Ernesto and Alicia have completely engaged themselves in the local life of their beach. It was really special to witness the way their six-year-old son Carlito studies jujitsu, surfing and futebol (soccer) on the beach with the natives, receiving the kindest help from some of the accomplished local athletes. Their daughter, Alicita, 4, is taken for walks by the young adolescent girls, who love nothing more than babysitting; Alicia takes a capoeira lesson (Brazilian martial art/dance) from the beach-roving instructor; Ernesto is in the middle of all of the above, an enthusiastic friend to everyone. There is no way to describe the particular local life that is buzzing on this beach and the simultaneous serenity of it. As Alicia said, “You have to see it to know.” We’ll never forget the spectacle at the far end of the beach when a small truck sunk lower and lower with the weight of load after load of fresh-caught fish (aceoba and tuna) that were carried by way of poles across two men’s shoulders from the boat to the shore. The vehicle strained off to market with the additional burden of four men, but that gleaming, silvery, slippery cargo miraculously stayed put!

From the beginning in our paradise, we expected an annual rhythm of rain and wind, of those swarms of yellow butterflies that made us feel like we were in the middle of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, of recurring birds passing through with their distinctive songs, of an end to the mosquitoes after ‘winter.’ While there is a slight change of temperature between July and January which we can count on, we have found that the rainy season begins and ends in an unidentifiable, spotty way; the windy season hardly begins or ends – rather just shows up in more or less strident, random ways. We never saw the swarms of yellow butterflies again, though this year a gigantic yellow and black specimen has been spotted a couple of times. The hummingbirds of two-different-tails have ceased to vie for the hibiscus bush, though the stubby one has appeared a bit this year; the parade of birds has rarely formed a pattern, which means we hear new songs on any given morning. I’m not sure if global warming has hampered the predictability of recurrence, along with causing beaches to shrink, but I suspect. We have retired our mosquito net in September every year until this very itchy year. We experimented last night by not re-installing the newly washed net, this being mid-December. At 3:00 am - being still-awake swatting and thoroughly bitten - we had a snack, pulled the bed out a bit and installed the damn thing, then finally slept like rocks.

The rich observation of nature and its profound way of teaching has been one of the biggest surprises and bonuses of these five years. The ants, lizards, frogs, large ‘water bug’ cock roaches and mosquitoes that share our house now seem like the normal consequence of all this beauty and burgeoning life around us. There is not a morning that I am not conscious of taking my time, stretching and twisting out the cricks while in bed with no thought of the clock, continuing the morning stretches on the balcony with the panoply of sea and sky and tropical foliage greeting me. Bursting into the light on the front garden as I round the corner of the house to the veranda with the breakfast tray gives me a daily fix. Gathering laundry off the clothesline beside a full moon on the ocean...yes. I wish I had an album of the hundreds of changing moods of the horizon. And I wish the iguana would stop shitting by the front gate!

I recently read an exciting article in The New Yorker about the Roman poet, Lucretius, who documented in a poem, “On the Nature of Things,” the epicurean philosophy of pleasure in all of life’s offerings. The debauched impression we have of this philosophy was manufactured by the church that followed, its doctrines of sin and punishment threatened by this embracing of joy and pleasure in the beauty of the elements of which we are physically a part; the stars, the here and now. I am an epicurean. It was thrilling for me to find an actual name for what I have discovered about myself in this place.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_greenblatt?currentPage=all 

Every morning when I’m trying to work some of the tension out of my neck and shoulder muscles, what I want after five years is to be more Potiguar. I’m not sure I’ll ever succeed in eradicating these muscle knots, these emblems of such earnest striving to do…what was it again? And as much as I can become frustrated by the Potiguar tortoise pace, the lack of logic, the non-linear way of driving or even cutting a cake, I get the distinct sense that Potiguars do not have tension in their necks.

Here are some highlights from five years on Cotovelo Beach:

Our son Jake in the dunes:                                                                                     Our daughter Elise at Tabatinga Beach:                      

My three sisters, Donna, Janet & Dorothy, on a visit in 2008:                              My best friend, Lenna Baranoff Kottke, celebrating our 60th’s in 2009:

Newton on Zumbi Beach:                                                                                    The Nigerian fishermen who lost power and washed up on the beach south of here in 2009:

The moon out our bedroom window:

Our kids are arriving for Christmas this week. Let the holidays begin!

 

Love,

Sandy

Santarém Dispatch

So there I was at last at high noon at Milan’s Malpensa Airport after the train delay, one half-hour ahead of my flight to Lisbon – my last stop on our fall trip. The check-in counter was already closed, so I was directed to another special services counter. There I waited for my turn, fantasizing that I could get all of my stuff through security (maybe losing those nice scissors?), make a mad run for the gate and still make the flight. Think again. My ticket was a mileage ticket through Continental, so I was directed to the Continental counter, “which may be closed, in which case you can call them about the next flight to Lisbon at 7:00pm.”

Closed. But with two numbers listed. I was unable to get through, being a rookie on the i-phone and I also could not get through to Julio and Gib, my expectant hosts near Lisbon, because I didn’t know how to get a “+” on the phone pad. I had just learned how to text, so Newton received my SOS while in a meeting in Gliwice, Poland. I asked him to reach extremely low-tech Julio and Gib ASAP before they left for the airport, then begged to receive instructions for that damn “+” so I could reach Continental. Eventually I was confirmed for the 7:00pm flight. I reached Gib to apologize and share the amazement that on my second visit to them in 34 years, I had, AGAIN, missed my flight. Last time was in 1977 when I flew from NY to vacation with them in Portugal and Morocco. The flight was oversold and I got bumped, but I had not known how to reach Julio and Gib outside Lisbon. Fortunately, they returned to the airport the next day to see if I would materialize. Needless to say, my reputation as a hopeless flake is well established with these two.

I passed the six hours till flight time shopping in the duty-free and having one last unforgettable Italian meal. I schlepped all my bags and carry-ons through the airport until I came to a bona fide sit-down restaurant with waiters and spent a couple of hours savoring a plate of assorted pecorino cheeses – including the peppercorn one – and white wine.

I did land in Lisbon (Lisboa…“Leesh-BOW-a”) that evening at 9:00, and there were my old friends whom I hadn’t seen since they visited NY in the ‘90’s. Julio and Gib had been my neighbors when I lived in Cleveland, Ohio in the ‘70’s. An old neighborhood called Ohio City was undergoing extensive restoration and gentrification, and Julio was the most famous host of the extremely arty neighborhood, full of architects and designers (my early textile design days). He is a creative genius as well as an outstanding chef (he was the chef at the coolest restaurant in the neighborhood). Julio could transform any room with truckloads of flowers and candles and put on legendary dinners. Then, at the end of every feast he created, he would go on about “Deed you loave eet? Was eet fahbulous?” [pause] “I sing, too.” And he would launch a cappella into Jobim’s haunting “Tristesa Não Tem Fim” from the film ‘Black Orpheus.’ There is only one Julio.

He and Gib became a couple back in these Ohio City days, buying up several houses together on which Julio worked his magic to restore and rent, and jointly owning a shop of home décor treasures called – you guessed it: ‘Julio’s Fabulous Things.’

In the early ‘90’s the two moved to Portugal permanently, where Julio had inherited his grandmother’s house.

We eventually found the old Mercedes in the airport parking lot and had a harrowing ride home to their great villa outside the city of Santarém. I knew vaguely that Julio and Gib were older than me without ever thinking much about it. Well, they don’t look it, but they are 78 and 80 respectively. Gib drove, and it was easier to sense his age in this respect.

Amidst the amazement at the beauty of their villa, the quantity of ‘fabulous things’ they have collected, the delicious soup made from a chicken Julio had hack-hacked the day before, there were numerous comments about how Gib’s back was aching – a condition that results from stress, the stress being caused by driving at night, the night driving caused by my missed flight. It was pretty uncomfortable, and my gifts from Italy were not making a big impression since Julio is relentlessly insistent on Portugal’s superiority. At least I was flying home to Brazil after two days. EXCEPT…I then received a call from Newton explaining that when I missed my Milan-Lisbon connection, my remaining flight reservation was automatically cancelled. He could only secure me a seat on his flight back to Brazil four days later. I did not think Julio and Gib would consider this any better news than I did. It turned out that with 35,000 additional award miles I could take my original flight back in first class. I said to Newton: DO IT.

I then had two lovely days with Julio and Gib. I studied the fabulous things in their house and pigged out on their delicious food.

I missed catching the men with their olive pickers in these trees, but the pastoral scene out the kitchen window was worthy of Millet or Van Gogh:

Here is Gib, preferring his seat by the fan to a hot hike through a nearby town.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Julio took me to an amazing produce market and then to the lovely town of Óbidos, where we had some beers and reminisced about our old neighborhood and all the fun friends we had there. I bought some small colorful cotton rugs for almost nothing.

You can see how hardy and fit Julio is at 78:

Here is an old interior in Óbidos. These blue tiles from Portugal are so famous that all tiles in Brazil are called “azulejos,” even if they are not blue.

I took Julio and Gib to lunch in Santarém, then was able to catch a train back to the Lisbon airport (whew) and fly home after some long delay on TAP airlines.

This time the first class service was even worse than on the way over, but we did have our own bathroom this flight AND – I must give credit where it is due – I had absolutely perfectly prepared octopus…on an airplane! My complaints would be deafening if I had actually come up with money for this first class ticket. The stewardess was so rough and gruff, she almost tore my big paper lantern shade when she grabbed my fragile shopping bag – also containing a wedding present sculpture – and swung it into the overhead bin, my water bottle rolling out and hitting me on the head. Then she disappeared for four hours and I finally flagged down a steward and asked for a beer. But my personal favorite moment was after the meal when Ms. Rough-n-Gruff lined up my retractable tray with the storage slot in the arm of my seat and let go, allowing it to violently crash into place. My startled chest-tightening reaction eventually eased, and once again, I was saved by a good nap in my low-reclining seat!

And then…ahhhhh. Home.

Love,

Sandy

PS I know complaining about a first-class flight has to be the epitome of spoiled. If the shoe fits…

Milan Dispatch

On this year’s fall business trip to Europe, a weekend in Milan provided the crossroads between our vacation in Prague, Newton’s connections to Poland and then Greece for meetings, and my connection to Lisbon to visit old friends. Besides, it gave us yet another chance to relish some Italian meals!

Having given away to friends the book that we consider our sacred guide to Italy: Fred Plotkin’s Italy for the Gourmet Traveler, but having received a response from that very Fred on one of my Italian blog dispatches featuring him, I was able to e-mail Fred ahead of time for a couple of dining recommendations in Milano. Our other priorities were to see the Piazza Duomo with the famous Milan Cathedral and Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, and to do some serious shopping.

A lovely tram adventure led us to Nespresso capsules for our machine (these cost three times more in Brazil). We had to settle for a non-Fred restaurant for our first dinner, as L’Osteria del Treno near our hotel required reservations and was booked. But we were lucky to select a place filled with natives, delicious food and free prosecco.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We decided to climb the exhilarating – if slightly claustrophobic – tower to the roof of Milan Cathedral. The pay-off was the huge blue sky and panorama of the city through the lacey flying buttresses. Sandblasting had rendered that black multi-spired Gothic icon from my college art history days into a glimmering ivory wedding cake! We got the same glorious blue sky we had in Prague, though in Milan it does wax brown around the horizon. The temperatures were actually in the ‘80’s, despite it being autumn…flip-flops and tank top all the way!

 

Here is the Galleria, considered by some to be the oldest shopping mall. It is surrounded by palaces, including a neoclassical built by Napoleon. Even MacDonald’s looks pretty good here:

         

Here is a typical study of Newton, studying locations and info on his i-phone.

No one really needs a reason to go to IKEA, but there are no well-designed, low-priced housewares in Brazil. We caught a subway to an IKEA bus on the surreal, garbage-strewn outskirts of something (I thought Fellini would materialize) and now we own loads more housewares, including bona fide flatware, limoncello glasses, a cheese slicer, a 220 voltage lamp and a new huge rice paper lantern shade (the old one’s frame is rusted out – the fate of all metal by-the-sea in the Northeast).

We managed a reservation for dinner this time at L’Osteria del Treno. Though from the street it appears to be a simple osteria near the central train station, once you pass through the front room a certain elegance ensues, with warmly lit peach walls, cloth tablecloths and napkins. We took the occasion to order a bottle of our favorite Italian wine, Brunello di Montalcino from Tuscany. It cost several hundred dollars less than in Brazil! The menu mentions “Slow Food,” the movement in Italy symbolized with a snail, which counters fast food with the traditional preparations of each region. I had a delicious codfish casserole with wild fennel – fennel alone is worth a trip to Italy! The night before I had ordered “baccalà” at the other restaurant and assumed it was “bacalhau” – codfish in Portuguese, though the menu translated it as “fly fish” and it did not taste like codfish. At del Treno, the name for the codfish was “merluzzo,” which is the name of a different fish in Brazil, not the ever-popular bacalhau imported from Portugal. This time it was truly codfish. It’s confusing, but Fred Plotkin was kind enough to explain it all to me after I reported back to him: merluzzo would be fresh cod, baccalà would be salted cod (what we know in Brazil) and then there is stoccafisso (stockfish) which is dried cod without added salt that must go through days of soaking to revive. Newton and I shared a lovely chocolate mousse in a pie crust, then coffee and…once Newton was having a limoncello, the owner came over and offered the ‘superior’ Sicilian dessert wine, Zibibbo, whose lovely subtleties did render limoncello a bit crass (but we will always love it!!). At this point we closed the place, but I felt I should mention Fred to the owner since that front room has a table along the aisle displaying several guidebooks that mention del Treno. They all happen to be in Italian, but I thought Fred’s book in English should have the exposure, so I gave the owner Fred’s name and book title. He said they were checking the internet as we were leaving! Fred informed me that he generally eats ‘under cover’ in Italy to get the authentic take on eating establishments. Maybe a wig, Fred?

Newton had to fly off on business, so I moved into a single room in the hotel for one additional day in Milan. I had a morning of much needed girly-shopping along the huge Corso Buenos Aires for shoes, underwear and make-up. Can you believe that they only sell black eyeliner in Natal, as if everyone here has black hair?? Brazilians, not to mention Europeans, come in all shades. I’m talking about the inexpensive general store, the expensive cosmetics store and the exorbitant imported cosmetics store. I have mixed feelings about the Potiguars’ (citizens of the state of Rio Grande do Norte) lack of entrepreneurial acumen. They miss so many obvious chances to make money, but then again, they do not think that making the most profit possible is the key to life, as in the US…so there is a refreshing aspect. Still, one needs eyeliner.

I didn’t want to travel by metro alone at night in Milan, so decided to go to Fred’s suggestion, Piero e Pia, for Monday lunch. Two metro stations (great-looking in that contemporary Milano way) and a long trek through a wonderful university neighborhood got me there just ahead of lunchtime cut-off. Only one table of business men and me were eating in the outdoor sidewalk section. The owner brought me a simple-but-perfect salami on bread and a glass of great white house wine, then I had perfectly cooked bronzino filet (sea bass – always a favorite of ours in Italy) on a bed of veggies – zucchini, carrots, celery, etc. (I can’t get celery in the Northeast of Brazil, so I was thrilling to the delicate sweetness of it!). I was slightly surprised to find the zucchini as cooked as it was, but the veggies could not have tasted more delectable (you could taste them up the insides of your face – my benchmark), and Fred later explained this about the zucchini: “Italians cook their zucchini more than we do. Have you noticed that when it is softer it has more flavor?” When I expressed my frustration at having to select sorbet or gelato for dessert from a long list (it was down to the mandarino sorbet from Sicily or the pistachio gelato, also from Sicily), the owner offered a bowl of half and half. The pistachio won; that was the most exquisite pistachio ice cream EVER. Not green, covered in grated pistachios, and yes – I could taste it up the insides of my face!

The next morning I checked out of the hotel to catch the Malpensa Express train to the airport for my flight to Lisbon. We had taken this train on the way in - a very fast 45 minute ride, and Newton had explained that arriving at the airport one hour in advance of these short European flights was adequate. Some guy helped me buy my train ticket from a machine, wanting a euro in return (worth it), and I managed to schlep my bags and large rice paper lantern shade onto the train in time. What I had not anticipated was the 35-minute breakdown of the train en route.

Next chapter: after 34 years, Sandra AGAIN misses a flight to Lisbon to visit her old friends Julio and Gib.

Love,

Sandy