Brazil-My Second Wind

We all tire from the routine, the tedious and repetitive schedule that takes us through the weary day to day. At some point, everyone feels like life is a business and every choice is a calculated move to advance forward on some vague trajectory to some uncertain destination. The exhaustion is not for lack of energy or soul-but rather, lack of innovation. You have begun to let your role define you, and you are contented to sit silently by the thousand melting faces on the 5 train at 8am. And even if you like your life, love is a lot to say.

Even I, after 20 years, feel this exhaustion. Given the chance, I'd quit it all and sing. I'd drink orange juice with the pulp, ride a horse down the beach and a boat down the amazon. I was given the chance-but more than that-I was the agent of my opportunity. There are some responsibilities you should never drop-like your principles, your children, love-but if you see yourself as only a combination of all your current concerns, you are denying yourself the imagination of your soul. There are beautiful things in this world that you will never see with closed eyes. If I've learned anything on this trip, it's how to leave my identity open to interpretation.

There are little things and grandiose things. Like watching a tiny light rise out of a dead ant, it's hard to express which is which. As long as you let it thrill you, you know you're living. I was always afraid my personality was too open to ever become someone, but now I realize that I'm not as empty as I thought. I am filled with all of these experiences, I've consumed it all and my belly swells from the yin yang. It is a beautiful thing. I am not lost because this is where I'm supposed to be-anywhere. I could be in Atlanta, or Spain, or Mexico or right in the heart of Harlem and it won't distort my image.

But there was something particularly intense about the beauty of Brazil. The heat evaporates your thoughts and the colors incaptivate your mind. You could spend a century looking at a flower. Filled my every moment. All the reflection I've done in Brazil is on these blogs-here are my only dead moments where I tried desperately to explain to you how alive I am. When you are in a foreign country, you have a tendency to unravel yourself and fill all your days and enjoy everything. There are so many memories spinning through my head-so many that didn't fit into words or pictures. The sound of their voices, the inflection and the passion-I can never give you on the page.

The last day with them, I wrote this excerpt in my diary:

"The rain clouds welled up in my head and I was naucious from the weight of anxiety. A definite farewell is an entity that can not be summed up by the individual's experience with emotion, it becomes an astral body that overwhelms every encounter in the time-space continuoum that the original human source had touched. There are corners we frequented, where we purchased a newspaper once or twice, that miss the presence of our soles.

On this day, we are more conscious of our selves. But this consciousness does not create a vanity, rather it allows us to observe the spirit of our touch and the ripples we've created. I hear the finality of every step, and in this moment that i turn to you, I am really turning backwards. Looking in your eyes, I am already reminiscing. I am quietly memorizing the tears on your face so that I can hold them in my other home. In a moment, the world is still but for the sound of a door closing and another opening. The first I closed with my goodbye, the second is us arriving to the moment we are in now-abstracted from our corperal limitations to experience a definite farewell. It is an experience that brings us out of our worlds because it is not us-it only includes us. In this moment, we are as abstract as the concept of friendship, which we never considered sitting on the shade sharing fruit from the same tree.

Whats more is the emotion swells like tides. It is relentless. It is overbearing-much like your favorite song playing at the right moment quietly in the distance-you did not will it and it moves you. We are vulnerable, but blind to the other's vulnerability under the weight of loss. I had so many things to say that disappear into this loss. Yesterday we spoke about the trips we could have taken and never did. Today we wonder why we did not stay like this forever, greedily consuming the other's presence. The farewell is so intrusive that I do not know if you love me or it. The concrete emotion is so overbearing that I don't mind looking that possibility in the face. Touch me one last time, and I will memorize your touch forever. The pain is an incredible testimony to the helplessness of loving. In love, we are reminded of the interrelatedness of solitary thinking beings. 'There is something about the light of departure that reveals the true essence of things.'"


But after it all, they disappear leaving only echoes in my consciouness.I appreciate this experience from intro to conclusion, everything that hurt me and everything that rocked my world. I've never been touched so deeply. From Terra Vermelha to the Amazon river, from city to country, seas to stars, rain to sunshine, love to disdain-the tears, the laughter, the joy, the pain, the music, the poetry and the vulgar humanity, thank you for reminding me that I am my agent of change and my final destination. Everything comes full circle inside myself. I love you.


Beijos e Abraços do Brasil,
Agora i para sempre
Vou lembrar Vcs

Com tudo carinho i amor

-Nicoli Brown,
Sua Morena Americana

Flora, Fauna and Wild Animals

It is what you would have thought. An acre of land here can hold thousands of species of trees. I am sure there are species that have existed since prehistoric time and wood that is unique to this area alone. There are so many uses of the bark, the sap , the fruit , the flowers-herbal, healing, taste, color and even magical reasons. In Steven’s(one of the staff from the program grounds we were staying on) backyard, we found a tree that was a hallucinogen more powerful than peyote. And not illegal. We entered the jungle and I was damned happy I decided to wear long pants and long sleeves. This was the bug trap, spiders, flies, mosquitoes, snakes, turtles-and not all of them safe. This was that place where if you step wrong, you might be taking your last step. Of course we went with a guide.
(Rubber Trees-Back in the 1800's, rubber was the Brazil's main crop and it ruled the market. An englishman came to the amazon and stole the rubber plant so that it could be planted in other places. Now, Malaysia owns the rubber market because it was found that the soil there was optimal. These days Brazil uses their rubber to make condoms and doctor's gloves)
(she doesn't look safe, and she isn't. This baby's venom is deadly)
Yet the fruit was beyond delightful. I enjoyed tastes I never knew existed. Combinations of sweet and sour I don’t have a basis of comparison to explain. Many of them had native Indian names and were difficult to remember. I tried whichever ones didn’t have bugs in them.
(Copo Sul: Taste and Texture? Tropical...I have no basis of comparison really)
(Brazil Nuts-How Brazil got her name. LOL)

Inside of Steven’s little museum, he showed us ancient artifacts, spices and paintings of the amazon. I was especially interested in this one artifact that Steven introduced as a petrified breast of an Amazonian Indian woman. He then recounted the tale of the Amazon woman-where Amazonas got it’s name:
When the Spanish and Portuguese settlers landed here, they were enchanted by the tall, beautiful dark skinned women with long hair running naked through the jungle. These women took care of themselves, hunted, fished and killed for themselves-they were independent and wild. It is said that the Amazon women would cut of one of their breasts so that they could mount a bow and arrow properly without the hindrance of a boob as they were aiming. It’s ancient history now, so I can’t prove it but at the very least, I bet you they were pretty hardcore.
Later, we went to another churrasco, but I barely ate anything….I was still afraid since the last time I went to a churrasco and ate till I almost puked.

The last day, Geli, Caleb and I went to a local zoo that was filled with beautiful and interesting jungle animals. The monkeys were crazy. It’s insane how ugly some of their little faces are and how when they looking at you, you really feel like they’re looking at you. Like a human, we went by the gate and they shook our hands. They all wanted our attention. One of the females didn’t like me cuz her man was looking at me and jerking off so she kept trying to pull my hair when I walked by. If she was let out that cage, she def would have gotten my ass. And I wasn’t trying to lose my face like that poor woman who got her face attacked by that pet monkey in the states.
(this was the evil one)

The birds were weird to…the parrots were quite for a long time, but when I went to walk away and yelled “Tchau!” they all yelled “Tchau!!” I turned back and I swear I had a regular conversation with a hundred little birds. Caleb was loving every second of it because he’s into the biology thing. He said he could have stayed their forever admiring these animals.
(How pretty is a real toucan!)
I apparently agitated the porcupine, and if I didn't back away she would have shot her poisonous spikes at me. All did was walk next to her!
This funny little face is of a sloth! The symbol of the amazon...they call the Pregisas. They are slow in the trees and supersonic in the water...very funny to look at up close. Something cute and ugly at the same time. This one was hurt and was being domesticated, so he was safe to pick up. He's very scared and he uses his two little claws to find something to hold on to on you so that he doesn't fall. He then wraps his little legs around you.
But the panther was the most beautiful of all, she is calm when unprovoked. But she is a wild animal. You know, we never really do get a full concept of how wild this animals are when we see them in the zoo. Imagine if you were in their hood, how would they see you? Anyways, she was beautiful. We would have like to stay and admire these creatures forever, but eventually we had to leave to feed the little creatures in our stomachs.

In the Amazon

When you have a dream, know that it is a dream and that reality is always more vivid. Who knows which you will like better-when I dreampt of the Amazon, some 10-12 years ago, all I saw was green- I imagined it was where the world began. In truth, I went to the Amazons with a heavy heart, filled with the pain of walking away from all of my friends and family in Vila Velha.
The more you love, the more you feel this weight on your heart. I have really learned to live in the moment-the entire time in the airport, everyone was teary eyed and emotional minus myself. Yet when I crossed the other side of the airport and could not see them anymore, it was a waterworks. The fact that I was leaving did not set in until I literally could not see them anymore. My emotion has become so complex and circumstantial-on the way to the Amazons I had the longing to be with my boyfriend, family and friends in Espiritu Santo, the desire to return to my real family back in the states and the intense curiosity to see what was going to come next and what new culture I was walking into now. This mixed with the overwhelming fact that my program was coming to an end.

It was humid in Santarem, Para. The state borders the state of Amazonas and shares the thick jungle and the Amazon river. By the port in front of where we were staying, clear blue water of the Tapajos meets the dark brown waters of the Amazon river. The Amazon is dark and brown because of all the sediment that mixes around as it flows.
It was not a hot hellhouse in the middle of nowhere where I was devoured by mosquitoes or attacked by monkeys. I stayed in a nice air conditioned dormitory with no bugs, a kitchen staff and a washer. Damn your stereotypes!
There again were a barrage of moments that could not be fully and rightfully explained in a blog entry, but my favorite moment was certainly with Geli’s beautiful family riding in a barge down the Amazon. Can you imagine? We ate shrimp, feijao torpedo(an African style dish that is very popular in northern Brazil that included meat and sausage) and we had cake for desert. We fished over the side of the boat and I didn’t catch anything-but they caught catfish and pirana. (Yes, I thought of Lara Croft) I napped on a hammock and let the wind rock me to sleep. It was beautiful to say the least.
(Feijao torpedo, rice with farofa...beans mixed in with pork and pork fat for the taste, it's an african dish that has become a stapl in Brazil)
(The dude who mans the boat coat a catfish, and a couple of Geli's family members caught some piranhas...i didn't catch anything, but fish kept eating my meat. They kept telling me to stop nourishing the fish so they could catch something.)
You can not swim to the Amazon river around here for many reasons…it is deep, there are sharks and piranas and other stuff. There may be other places where you can swim in it, but here we swam in the Tapajos, played water volley ball and a little bit of soccer on the beach Brazillians wear me out, man. It was an incredible day and my favorite experience was here because, like my mother, I love the sea-I could lay in a hammock overlooking the water my whole life.