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