I STOLE THIS FROM KATRINA

it appears to me that people are actually subscribing to my inactive blog, so i feel i ought to make an entry after a couple months of inactivity. writing for me something i do very erratically, and go through phases of productivity and complete stillness. i often require feedback to continue going, and when my writing isn’t the funny stuff i tend to write, it tends to float by unnoticed.

To be entirely honest, the first month and a half spent here in this peculiar city of rio de janeiro was not a very happy month and a half. i felt none of the warmth and fun of Salvador and felt i was turning into some sort of alcoholic misanthrope with an increasingly active letter writing habit. i was constantly bombarded with this pressure to enjoy myself, to celebrate the many fine asses of this beautiful country, to dance and eat biscoitos on the beach, when in reality all i really wanted for myself was the familiarity of the co-op, or the feeling of cruising the streets of LA on my bike with my crew. my disappointment and saudade for salvador and california persisted until i finally said, “fuck! i am unhappy!” and things immediately began to improve, like an oppressive figure slowing getting up and leaving my life. i’ve lived what michelle has said has been a charmed life, and in many ways she’s right. my understanding of sadness and loneliness before this was only a fleeting one, and now i feel i have experienced it first hand. the richness of this emotion is a strange one, and i now understand why some people do want to be sad. sadness is something that needs to run its course and felt in its entirely.

i have also become overwhelmingly proud of the very fine place that california is. i have done my fair share of traveling and i can’t say i could imagine anywhere better to live than the golden state. i’ve always felt that california and the american west has produced some of my favourite literature, and the ideal of returning to california and living the californian experience is incredibly appealing to me. i want to go out to joshua tree, to big sur, to salvation mountain and feel the compound sensation of freedom and desolation that i feel persists throughout american west literature. i think i was too much enamoured with the glamour of paris or the alegria of salvador to remember that i live in what is called in chinese “mei guo”, or, beautiful country. and what a fucking beautiful country it is.

now that i have firmly established my boner for California in text, i have to say that brazil is the shit and i think that i have a brazilian soul.

my diet here in the land of samba and humongous asses consists primarily of: rice, beans, meat of some type, mango, sriracha and tuna sandwiches, acai, potato bread. oh, and an embarassing amount of beer, which is so cheap here. i’m still losing weight because i don’t work out (i can’t, unless i want to pay 180 reais) and it feels weird. i feel my muscles deflating daily, and i sometimes find myself stretching to remind myself that i have muscles. on a positive note i like that my Chun-Li legs are looking a little thinner, which i think looks better in tight pants. slender is nice! obviously my body type is anything but, but i can’t dream can’t i? being “built” or “buff” or whatever is odd when you are as short as i am.

i need to figure out how to be more like tony leung. what shall i do? i can’t grow a mustache. but otherwise he is an exemplrary cool asian guy. can i do that?

50s, 90s, 00s, brazil, cuba, america, japan.

ah, i’ve been neglecting this blog for a bit. when we arrived here, they warned us of these four H’s: Hysteria, Homesickness, Humour, and Home. the honest truth is i’ve skipped the Hysteria and been a bit homesick. having been here before i think i’ve used up my OMGI’MINBRAZIL juice, so i was already thinking of the people and things i don’t have here. i’ve since settled down and i feel much better, and i know i will be happy once i’ve moved to leblon by the beach. i think my isolation here in the leafily lined streets of gavea reminds me too much of my horrible experience in the single dorms, so i just need to return to where the noise of the street reminds me that i am not the only one alive.

i am currently continuing my run as the resident space cadet on my classes. we were going over idiomatic phrases pes no chao (feet on the ground) and “mora no mundo da lua” (lives in the moon world) and our professora began to explain the second one, saying, it’s someone who “is kinda looking at other things, kinda spacey, thinking elsewhere, not really paying attention….” she then looks at me and says “like you, jarret?” i got pretty called out on that one.

thursday night we went out to the infamous Lapa, which is notorious for it’s clubs, people selling booze and food everywhere, and random samba groups. it is also too dangerous to pee in isolated areas so the floor is very wet from piss. i can certainly see the appeal of lapa, but i think it’s a bit lost on me. i think its cool when people are all getting down and shit, but it isn’t for me. i guess i feel more comfortable in a mosh pit and less scrutinized by everyone else, who is also trying to hook up or whatever. too much pressure for something that is supposed to be fun.

well i’ve finally moved into my “host apartment” and while it isn’t ideal i certainly cannot complain.  i live in a very posh area of Gavea which is home to some famous TV personalities and judges, so it is very fancy and safe. i have deemed myself the Fresh Prince of Gavea, despite my own lodgings to be very modest.

the building is attractive from the outside and the street is pleasantly green, but the apartment itself is painfully spartan. the walls are completely bare and the place is more or less completely devoid of decoration. my room is the living room basically, and consists of a refrigerator, oddly placed armoire and a dining table. the apartment itself is shaped like a dumbell and my host “brother” lives in the otherside.

his name is rodrigo and he is a pleasant, plain looking guy with glasses. he studies metalurgy (which doesn’t involve metal music, to my dismay) and apparently has some important job with a gas manufacturer, so i won’t see him much. i basically have this place to myself, which i suppose is a blessing and a curse. i will hold judgement until after i have explored the region, but i intend to eventually live in the livelier Leblon. i can’t complain since other people are living 40 minute bus rides away from the school, where i can simply walk. i hope to find places to get active and such!

i miss a lot of people back home and i hope to get my life on track here so i can live like brazilian jarret. if anyone was curious my language skills have held up remarkably well. anyone is welcome to visit me once i’ve moved to my hip joint in Leblon.

The one book that i brought with me was Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. i felt it was important that if i was to bring a book it had to be something distinctly californian, and the way that Didion brings california to life helps when home is thousands of miles away. here is an excerpt from Notes from a Native Daughter.

It is very easy to sit at the bar in, say, La Scala in Beverly Hills, or Ernie’s in San Francisco, and to share in the pervasive….

i feel didion is a much less bombastic historian of the hippie era, less outrageous and less naively idealistic than her contemporaries. i remember i would break open Howl, or something by Oppen or Kerouac, and hope that this would be that bit of literature that i can carry around in my messenger bag and beat to hell untill the covers hang by the corners and the pages are littered with the detritus of my bag, but none of these authors really captured my imagination as they have others. in the end i just really like didion and those other people are terribly overrated.