Give thanks (and praises)

Things I am currently (perpetually) thankful for...

1) My amazing, loving, growing child who engages happily in (highly nerdy adult) conversations about astrophysics and the composition of the universe, social networking and more...

2) An abundance of amazing friends, strong, brilliant, beautiful women (and a few men, here and there) several of whom I am visiting this very weekend (Kirsten, Becca, Katie, Cheyla... and more)

3) My ability to accept the inevitability of pain, and still heal and forgive

4) A car to cruise up and down the coast.

5) The hope of a possible job and future.

6) Fabulous back massages (thanks!)

7) Having multiple points of potable water in my immediate vicinity, a high-speed internet connection and other such wonders of infrastructure available to me with little to no effort.

8) The ability to complain about trivial matters (because the big things are taken care of!)

9) Finding music in my life again.  And again.

10) Love in all its incarnations 

So I come back to this place.  Not a geographical location, but rather this head space, where I wonder: what am I doing, really?

To be fair, this is a question I ask of myself daily, in myriad situations, but right now, just now, as I speak to no one but myself, it refers to the BIG question.  Yes, that one.  When do we decide that we don't want to know someone, or when do we realize that we can't actually know them? Or more than that, when do we realize that our lives cannot be disentangled, nor truly bound to another life, not in an all-knowing way.

This may seem silly (or frighteningly precocious) but my almost 10-year-old daughter and I had what looks to be the first of our irrational adolescent fights.  That's not abnormal, her hormonal changes are all but visible, and the behaviors she displays are not shocking, but rather the topic of this particular "fight" was astounding.  To me at least.

"I don't really know you, mom," she states with a confidence in the correctness of this affirmation, "There is so much that I don't know about you.  You know almost everything about me, but there are entire parts of your life that I know nothing about."

"Well, yes, that's true, but those parts of my life don't pertain to you."

"You have friends I've never met.  Friends I don't even know."

"Also true."

"Most of your friends are men."

"What?"

"Well, they are."

"No they're not. I mean, some may be, but I have far more female friends, let's think."

We run through a list of all the friends that she knows, there is a relatively short list (I like to use the word "friend" sparingly). We discuss the difference between that and "people we are friendly with" and "acquaintance" etc.  She notices that, in fact, the majority of my friends are, actually women.  But I feel guilty.  Because in a way she is right.  Not about the men, but about the fact that there are whole universes of my existence that she will likely never have access to.  And it is better that way.  Still, there are people who matter so deeply to me that their essence is burned into my skin, their desires have embedded themselves in my own, in such a way as to render my own desires entirely indistinct, a line so blurred it is forever lost, and I fear that she will never know them.  And if that is true, does that mean that I will never truly know them either?  That thought frightens me, saddens me, eats at my insides.  And yet, the same can be said of the inverse.

So our conversation continues, I. and I, debating how well we know each other.  For anyone who knows us, both of us, or has watched us interact, it is the most ridiculous conversation (ridiculous in the sense of laughter producing) because a) she knows me better than just about anyone in the world if only because she copiously studies the most miniscule behaviors of mine and interprets them (generally correctly).  I am an open book for the astute observer, it would seem... and b) she is like a carbon copy of me, not necessarily in her likes and dislikes, but in her manner of expression, her gestures, her body language...  she knows me as she knows herself, to which degree, we will discover, is suddenly questionable.

"I know my Bobie better than I know you," she wails, "and I don't even live near her."

"What do you know about her?"

She begins enumerating facts about my mother.  I counterpoint with facts that she should (and does, but pretends not to for the sake of the argument) know about me.  "What do I like to eat?"

A petulant, "I don't know."

"Well what do I cook?"

"That doesn't mean that you like it..."

"Well if I am the one choosing the menu, don't you think I like what I make?"

"Maybe."

"Think about it.  What vegetable have I been totally in love with recently?"

"I don't know."

"Well at Jenny's wedding, what did I eat at the rehearsal lunch, when you had filet mignon?"

"I don't know!"

"Well," I point out unwelcomely, "is it my fault that you don't pay attention to what I do and I do pay attention to what you do?  How is it that I know what you ate, but you don't remember what I ate?  This is all observable information." She glowers at me, my logic is impeccable, but this is not what she wants to hear.  "All you have to do to know me is to watch me."  But this is a lie. Not a malicious one, maybe not even an intentional one, but a lie nonetheless: As much as I am an open book, there are secrets that reside under my skin, that only some people learn, and in partial snippets, shreds of myself that are released because their internalized pressure would be too great, but only partially released in order to protect my own sense of integrity.

"I don't know, mommy. See, your friends know more about you than I do."

"I ate eggplant.  Eggplant.  So now you know.  My most recent favorite vegetable is eggplant, ok?" My voice rises in pitch and I am frustrated and exhausted.  My child is weeping and holding her head in her hands. 

"What's going on, baby? Why are you doing this?  Of course  you know me!" I try to approach her, to soften this painful truth that she has stumbled upon, the fact that she doesn't get to know me as "well" as I know her.  This is the basic inequity of a parent-child relationship. I try to explain that it is better this way, that there are things that she is not equipped to know or understand about me.  I try to convince her to come down from her perch halfway up the stairs, her jeans rubbing against the sandpaper edges that I will not miss once I leave this place, but she resists.  

"I just want to be alone!" she wails into her hand.

"Come here, baby, it's ok..." I coax, "I love you stinky... it doesn't have to be like this."

She mumbles something unintelligible but decidedly negative towards herself, and I see the currents of adolescent self-loathing descending upon her, in oozing waves of invisible virulence.  

"What was that?" I push. I shouldn't push, but I can't bear this. Can't bear her to feel bad about herself.  She resists and I push harder, and she resists some more, digging her heels in.

"I just want to be alone."

"Then go!" I exclaim, exasperated and perplexed.

When she comes back she says, "I don't know why I do these things..."  and nuzzles in against me, still much smaller than I am, though she is only 6 inches shorter.  "I wish I didn't do this... we were having such a nice day and then I had to ruin it..."

So I let her cling to me, and I tell her it is ok.  And the next day when I make a joke about her knowing me, she rolls her eyes in laughter and says, "don't start that again!"

But I am left with a gaping hole, a question mark, a perplexed silence.  How well can we really know even those that are closest to us?  We can live an entire life next to someone that wouldn't like us if they knew what was inside.  We can spend forever filling the emotional void with inane sideline identities, conversations whose whole is less than their sum.  Or, we can deeply connect with others, about whom we know only a sliver, but that sliver is direct line to the core of their being.  I don't have an answer.  I am here, in that place.  

But today I played music, sang, fed friends, remembered some people who have touched me and passed.  Today I tried to do the best I could to fill the void.  

A dream

Sergio's fingers intertwined delicately with Xenia's, the tighter, shinier skin around his knuckles slackening as he found comfort in her warm, soft hand. He could hear her breathing, regular, then short and shallow, then regular, as her grip tightened and released, lost in a universe of sleep.

Is this what he had meant when he had invoked intimacy? Her damp hair, pooled at the nape of her neck, smelling slightly fruity, slightly musky. His breath held, watching her in silence, in the half light, the wrinkles that formed between her thick eyebrows from her laughter, or her quizzical, pensive gestures, inescapable indicators of her mood. His airless lips, moist and glistening, pressed against her moonlit skin.

She shuddered in sleep, her muscular legs kicking and extending, unaware of his bated breath, or his questions. A smile flitted across her face, she pulled his arms in around her like a blanket, his chest against her lumbar curve, and settled back into sleep. She seemed so infinitely far away, even now that their skin vibrated in sympathetic waves, cell membranes that separated the blood of one from the other. He reached below, felt the beguiling hardness of her belly as it contracted against his touch. Yes, this must be intimacy, he accepted, kissing gently between her shoulder blades, tickling her into a brief shiver with his scratchy chin.  The rest, he would have to figure out tomorrow.

on the road again...

No matter how minimal, my body always ties itself up in nervous anticipatory knots before I travel.

Tomorrow I leave for a brief jaunt to Morelia. I will present a paper, which has been neatly dispatched, over 36 hours before flying. This is good.

Meanwhile, and perhaps precisely because I have trying to at least make a half-assed effort toward religious observance, or at least quiet, community self-reflection, I feel like I am falling behind in every way.

The dissertation wall of immobility has given way to a wave of onward rushing waters, but meanwhile the minefield of the job market haunts me, if quietly, subterranean bombs requiring my detonation pulse.

So, after a weekend spent in the sun, watching water polo, I keep her home with me, this one last night, so we can finish her book report, and put her homework in order. I feed her a special meal of Indian food (mine is not nearly as good as what we can eat at a restaurant, but she concurs that it is better to eat up what is already in the house). My work is done, and the next few weeks are neatly laid before me, prepared, over-prepared.... and yet, I feel a vague nausea, or perhaps a prickly itch, I want to go, want to be removed from my current reality, if only for a few days, back to a place where colonial architecture surrounds me, and sounds and smells, familiar and forgotten, inundate my senses.

So we curl up together for our nightly chat(ter) and we talk about the ways in which friendships sometimes need to evolve. And I wish I didn't have to leave her behind because I am, indeed, quite fond of her.

Sunday subtleties

Sunday used to be a day of melancholy. Perhaps it still is.

There was the euphoria that waned as the weekend did the same. The nervous flutter of anticipation about the recommencing social networks, activated in person, with the start of a school day.

When I became a teacher, the pleasurable flutter was replaced by a knot of cold, angry dread, a precipitate fallen from the ethereal suspension of the interstitial Saturday, a day of rest, of freedom, of boredom. Or peace? Perhaps not that.

I hear a voice from below.

"Mama, when are we going to buy my school supplies?"

Ah yes, the sound of the season.

And then, of course, there is the disconnect. She is starting her fall, and my summer continues, albeit tenuously, as I teach an intensive summer class to a group far smaller than is custom, and far more eager than even I could have hoped. I don't mind. I am learning to embrace this limbo, the eternal limbo of my existence.

I take a deep breath. When my summer ends, it will signal the beginning of the final stretch. I envision horse necks, pulling, shiny with sweat, racing, racing into nothingness... a deep fog, a dash from fear or simply habit. And yet, there, too, shall I go.

So we will buy sweet smelling erasers, pencils with bright colors to assuage the glitter-seeking magpie that I have raised. She astounds me every day. I don't mind the changes, I tell myself. I don't mind the uncertainty. There is still a mooring of sorts. Her brown eyes shine, and her incessant chatter cuts across my thoughts like a knife. I will grade compositions, and launder the linens that have been soiled in the course of the week. I will be grateful that my child's fever spiked only for the emotional duress of her grandmother leaving. I will think fondly of the hours of sunshine that my mother and I shared, in the Santa Ynez valley, by ourselves, like all those years ago, racing across the Iberian peninsula. The solitary bull against the sea of golden grass. The endless blue of possibility.

Such innocuous choices we make. And yet, they can change the course of a lifetime. Simple choices, that can shatter the illusion of stability in which we engulf ourselves, or that can explode with unexpected emotion, elation, music and joy. Guitar strings plucking at chords that our hearts had forgotten, or buried, or denied. Every day that we get up, and face the universe. Every day that is borrowed, or snatched from the abismal jaws of meaningless. And so it goes.

summer wanderings, ponderings and joy

It is the moment when the plane pitches forward that always gets me. This time it wasn't a panic level, in fact, it wasn't much of a gripping fear, just a lurch in my stomach that makes me wish I was holding someone's hand.  Anyone's really.  Perhaps that's not entirely true.

My summer of mad travel and cultural dabbling has come haltingly to an end.  I am alone, in my apartment, but my sublet has not ended, and the house smells pleasantly of someone else's family.  They are not here, of course, but they will not be gone for another few days. Thus my limbo continues, if briefly.

I spent the last month with I. at my parents' house.  I need not describe the surroundings, as they are always the same.  A house that seems (to me) painfully over-size for the two people (and two fat cats) that generally occupy it, with towering piles of paperwork, boxes and other tchakes taking over the space that under other circumstances ought to be wide open.  Part of the techniques for work avoidance that I regularly employ while visiting them, thus, is to clean.  This visit was no different, although when stepping into the house, after an overnight flight from Rio (my last stop in Brazil, just a month ago, and yet it seems like a life-time has passed), I discovered that there was no bedroom available to me.  Task one, clearing out a space.

This time I chose to sleep in my old bed room, the one that was my teenage respite, out of whose window I would lay quietly and stare at the soft summer rain falling on the gently curved hill, and the marshland behind the forest on the horizon.  I traveled back in time for a bit.  This summer was, in fact, a bit about cleaning up old spaces.  Loved, and missed, forgotten and rediscovered.  If my house were a metaphor for my heart,  the arranging and cleaning, dusting off, shelving, perusing and discarding of objects has been a successful step in preparing me for the next phase of my life.

I have rediscovered joy.  I know this sounds a bit declarative and perhaps shamelessly so.  Better to keep happiness secret, not announce it too loudly, lest a piano fall from the heavens and crush you in your blissful ignorance.  I suppose that could happen, but I think that maybe, just maybe, the piano can fall at any time, whether I am happy or not, whether I declare it to the world or not, and if it crushes me flat (which, if it falls, it will undoubtedly do), I would rather be crushed with a not-so-secret smile on my lips.  There was a lot of clean-up to do, and there was a lot of dust stirred around me, but there are now open spaces and instead of angsty obsession, there is a peaceful enjoyment of culture to which I previously had no knowledge.

I suppose that this whole journey began a long time before now, and I could hardly name the moment, but I look about me, here in my home town (for however much longer this holds true) and I feel substantively different than I did before.

There is so much that I am carrying with me, sounds, and smells that I held inside me, experiences that I never imagined I would have, and others that I opted not to.  In Río, Selene and I wandered around and visited the botanical gardens, as well as the Instituto Moreira Salles, where we saw a photo exhibit of Paul Strand's work, that I believe I may have seen elsewhere, Boston? San Francisco? but that was captivating once again.  (I am fascinated too by the idea that silver nitrate could have been used to capture images of such sharpness and fix them on paper...)  

With Nina I was reminded that there are true friends that we find along the way, and despite the difference of cultures, or languages, or the distance of time or space, we find them, and can hold on to them if we are gentle, and know how.  In Brasilia, I met her friends, and her family, visited the congress and International relations palace with her grandmother, sampled the foods of the Bahian "Festas juninas" in honor of São João, and discovered the deliciousness of "canjica" (a large-grained hominy type corn in a sweet hot coconut/ milky broth) and tapioca (which is from the mandioca - manioc or yucca plant, and is a fine grained flour that is made into crepe-like pancakes that are chewy and white and delicious, with cheese, much like a quesadilla, or just butter...).  I was mildly (and pleasantly) surprised by the pervasiveness of middle-eastern culture in Brazil, and the prevalence of Kibe as a snack/ appetizer at all sorts of restaurants.  It was a pleasure to be in a house, and not have to eat three meals a day on the road (I thought I might be intoxicated by an over-abundance of ham and cheese sandwiches for breakfast), although the "pão de queijo" may be one of my favorite snacks ever when at bars.

What I think was most important for my sense of emotional realignment, really, was the ability to partake of culture in such a profound way. Something not so possible, I find in the U.S., or at least not in the small towns...

One evening in Brasilia, we went to the Clube de Choro, a small, relatively ill-placed, but excellent venue for music of all kinds (not just Choro which is a traditional music, a pre-cursor to Samba).  We saw an amazing child piano virtuoso, Vitor Araújo (who, as I was flying within the country, I noticed was featured in the airline's travel magazine).  Here's an example, but he is worth seeing in person, absolutely. 

On an earlier occasion, Nina's mother, who works for a non-profit, but for years was a professional actress as well, got us tickets to see an amazing Russian clown tragi-comedy at the Centro de Cultura Banco do Brasil.  It was called Semianyki (The family) and below is a video of the entire show... It was unbelievably well put together, and in the spirit of physical comedy (and I daresay a Brechtian bent that requires audience participation at the most superficial and profound levels).

In São Paulo our quest for culture continued, and in search of a good Saturday night concert, we stumbled upon a gem of a museum, really a privately owned foundation: "Fundação Maria Luisa e Oscar Americano", far outside the center of the city, in the commerce-free, land of walled residences and private security.  We were somewhat surprised when we were met by a ten person security team at the entrance, but soon discovered that there was enough colonial Brazilian art, and contemporary treasures (original Portinari's and DiCavalcanti to name a few notable artists) to warrant such excessive precaution.  We were by far the youngest (and poorest? likely) concert-goers, to see the legendary João Bosco.

As we bought ourselves a glass of wine, and swirled it, smelled it, eyed it,  and approved it with knowing gestures, we discovered that we didn't know if we were more uncomfortable because we felt we didn't belong in such a social milieu, or that, in fact, we did.  There is a somewhat crushing self-knowledge that comes with one's acceptance of their uber-cultured bourgeois status, and a painfully binding discomfort when one's social reality is, in fact, not necessarily in line with their ideological beliefs or political tendencies or alliances.  Never is this more apparent than in countries in which the disparity between the wealthy and the poor is marked geographically and architecturally... with walls that keep in and keep out.

Nevertheless, (and how easy for me to say so blithely!) we forgave ourselves for such privilege and enjoyed the concert with baited breath. This was my favorite song, I think, in which, I was moved to tears, not because of any real sadness, for me, but for humanity:

In São Paulo we experienced the typical drizzle, "a garoa" of grey eternity.  We had Italian food for a midnight dinner, (and packed up the huge amount of leftovers to give to someone on the street) ate breakfast at the Bella Paulista, and wandered the city, visited the artisans of A benedictina, where I procured some beautiful leather carnaval masks, made by hand and sold with love.  We listened to Gregorian chant on Sunday morning, and visited the Museo da língua portuguesa, which was a fabulous introduction to the particularities of Brazilian portuguese and the myriad influences from an abundance of African languages (Yoruba being one of the greatest influences), as well as indigenous ones, most notably the Tupi-Guaraní, which was the lingua franca (not Portuguese) for the first three centuries of Portuguese colonial rule.  We ate amazing Greek food at the Restaurante Acrópolis, and experienced a mix of Japanese and Brazilian culture in "A liberdade" section of the city, where, curiously enough, there was a massive presence (a recent immigration trend that will likely grow stronger) of Andean textile workers from Bolivia and Perú, lining the streets and selling their wares to the Sunday tourists.  Blistering feet and motorcycle conventions, throngs of Michael Jackson fans in mourning, and two girls, walking, walking walking.  

The most unexpected and delicious artistic discovery we made, however, was toward the end of our visit.  On a whim we stopped at the MASP (pronounced maspey) Museo de Arte São Paulo, and the special exhibit was a true revolutionary of contemporary art. Vic Muñiz, born in Brazil, and making art out of every day objects, especially those that are considered trash, refuse, and waste by others.  I am so infrequently moved by the sterile spaces of museums, but, here, the concept of the installation itself and the curation of the exhibit was done by the artist, and in such a way as to move things in me that I hadn't remembered existed, much in the way that a good massage will make things hurt that you didn't know you had in your musculature.  There was such love in his work, photos of wire made to look like landscapes, plates with peanut butter and jelly faces in negative space... huge piles of trash sketching the faces of those who collect it, and recycle it... not beauty, not in the traditional sense, but something deeper and astoundingly, powerfully creative, such that you (or I, at least) felt moved to create something real, from the shreds and scraps and crumbling, decaying walls of our lives...  Here he talks a bit:

My travel concluded with two lusciously devoured novels, as recommended by Nina, and purchased for perusal on the Río beaches, Moacyr Scliar's "A mulher que escreveu a Bíblia" perhaps one of the most amusing and thoughtful books I have read in ages, about a very ugly woman, who in a past life was King Solomon's 300th wife, and Martha Medeiros' "Divã" (which was recently adapted to film, but I was unable to see...) about an upper middle-class woman coming to grips with her own mid-life crisis, through a monologue with a purported therapist, López...

I also managed to see a few more films, beyond the films I had seen early on, with Emily, in Río: the commercial "A Mulher invisível" in which Selto Melo stars as a moony-eyed, self-indulgent man who invents the perfect woman, his alter-ego, it turns out, because he cannot commit to a real one, or even really see a woman as anything but an idealized object onto which he must thrust his love.

Also previously viewed at the Latin American Studies Association Conference, of special note: Mariana Rondón's "Postales de Leningrado" a "true story" told through the eyes of a child, with beguiling graphics and innocent take on the armed conflict of the 60's in Venezuela, tinged with the myth of family lore, and Luis Ospina's "Un tigre de papel," an equally engrossing mockumentary about an invented collage-artist, Pedro Manrique Figueroa, a man who was always there when anything big happened... who really could have been any bohemian artist, torn by the ideologies of the liberation movements of Latin America (in this case, Colombia) and the hedonistic lifestyle and drug culture of the intellectual 60's and 70's...

So, Nina and I went to the Belas Artes Cinema, just around the corner from our hotel on Rua Consolação, as a last stop before taking the taxi to the airport and part ways... We watched the Brazil/USA soccer game and were shocked to see the US score first, (but all was well in the universe when we returned and Brazil had scored three goals to win!) while we sipped coffee and waited for a student project which had been commercially distributed, and curiously enough, had been filmed at the PUC- Río (where my conference had just taken place, so I recognized all the locals) "Apenas o fim" directed by Matheus Souza. There was promise, and I would like to see what projects this kid creates in the future, but we agreed that while it encapsulated a post-adolescent moment quintessentially, it lacked some sort of deep emotional thread that would justify the random ramblings of a pair of (not entirely convincingly) fallen-out-of-love 20-year-olds...

When I got to Río, I was alone for my last two days, and they were diligently spent walking along miles of beach, curling up in the sand and bobbing in the tepid water, reading the aforementioned books and sampling the last tastes of Brazilian food, the mandioca that I love and will always miss, the sharp tangy greens, rice, beans and beef (akin to the butter-smooth beef of the Argentine pampas). There I discovered, just blocks from my hostel, on the main coastal thoroughfare - Río Visc. de Pirajá - a cultural center and art cinema, where I watched a documentary on Wilson Simonal: (Simonal-Ninguém Sabe o Duro que Dei, directed by Claudio Manoel) the first Afro-Brazilian musical superstar to take on pop music of the 50s and 60s and 70s, and his tragic decline, and purported association with the repressive dictatorial government police.

Here's a clip similar to those that appeared in the film:


It was only a month ago that I stumbled through customs in Atlanta, Georgia, waded through the airport and touched down in Boston, and then, almost immediately found myself in Montreal for a few days of JazzFest with my parents, my girl and some dear old friends, Paul and Veronica, who I hadn't seen in almost 9 years... On the one evening that they were otherwise indisposed, after a marvelous Belgian meal at L'Actuel (Just off René Levesque on Rue Peel) I walked myself to the Jazz Fest venues and just opened my eyes, my ears, my feelings. Of course, a woman alone is never really a woman alone, but rather, an invitation to someone else to try and keep her company (I still wonder if this will always be true, and am grateful that, at least, in this case, my interloper was pleasant enough, and did not make too much of a fuss when I took my leave). I saw three concerts, a fusion rock/Latin band from NYC - Cordero, which, while they had a rocking female lead guitarist and singer, fell just a bit short when it came to the depth of their lyrics, and their managing to keep in time with one another... though I think they are a young band and show promise, an excellent band that played Jazz standards: Lily Frost and the Debonairs, and finally, one group that knocked my proverbial (and not really present) socks off: a young Argentine band that was intent on reviving the tango as not just Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzola (both of whom I very much enjoy, but still, the purpose is to renovate, and rejuvenate the genre, and they did so, powerfully:





So, all told, I think that part of what has made me take stock of my situation is the mixing of old and new, the revisiting of people (some not mentioned here, but present in my heart and mind, nonetheless) and places, the rewriting, in positive terms of my history, the immersing myself in music and feeling that is outside of myself, outside of my head. I am reminded that I am alone in this world, and at the same time, not. That my places are mine, and they are shared, and they can be reworked, and renegotiated. I can be forgiven for mistakes and I can forgive myself, too. And, most of all, I can admit a tentative happiness without fear of cosmic repercussions...

Partida (de novo)

In less than 12 hours my flight leaves for Atlanta, Georgia. Then Boston... In 6 hours I need to be showered, and perhaps see one last film at the quaint cultural center where I wandered, yesterday, just off the beachfront in Ipanema. But between now and then, there is a universe of contemplation to be had. I will meander the mosaic sidewalk, massage my feet in the pristine (and imported, I might add) sand. I may even spend my last Reais... or not. I will stare into the endless and ever changing abyss that is the ocean.

When I was a child, before I had the certainty of my eternal uncertainty, when God was a concept that still felt untainted, and distant from its present cliché, I decided that if I were to choose a temple for my religion, whatever form it might take, it would be there, alone, facing the vast throbbing ocean, feeling its cool pulse seep into my bones. The palpitations of my (even then) searching heart aligning themselves with the rush of the water, the pull of the tide, the thrust of the waves crashing in circular imperfection. My God, if I were to find it, would be an imperfect one. Not much has changed.

The southern stars were beautiful, as I remembered, but sadly, I was unable to lie, back to the cold pavement, with only the sound and fury of the ocean´s symphony in my ears. Not this time. This time I played it safe. I kept to myself, but strayed not from the lighted paths. I drank in silence with my book for company, an unfaltering companion. I watched girls and boys train their bodies in the darkness... and I walked home, to a bed that was clean, but not mine.

Today I will walk out into the crashing surf, for a few brief moments, pay homage to my chosen temple, give thanks for the bounty to which I am privvy. I will not say goodbye, but até mais...