Brazil by Accident

Wow… the first ever known “Not Hiring” sign. That’s what I just saw on NYT online and ugh! Words are so futile to explain what’s happening around the world. Call me impressionable, but when the word ” depression ” gets thrown around globally left and right, I get a bit down too. I woke up this morning from a vivid dream about the desolation that must be being laid to my old neighborhood. I always dream about Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It’s like it sprung roots in my heart and I can’t wash ‘em out. Spring was trying to get in on every side, it being April and all. But it was just not having any luck. The streets were intent on maintaing their barren, wide, windy air and the buds didn’t seem to be anywhere near sprouting in order to replace the tree cover stolen by winter. Part of it, I realize, might just have something to do with the fact that I miss winter. Brazilian winters are like Spring or Autumn to someone raised in the Northern Hemisphere. I feel a slow kind of hatred toward the seasons here growing on me, in fact. Like it’s stolen some vital part of my living experience. There is just something special and important about having rain and cold trap you in your house. You end up reading a lot and thinking more. Here, nobody reads. Magazine racks and book shops in Brazil are like corner stores in America – just a few key items for the odd man out who didn’t do his shopping elsewhere. Except, there is no elsewhere, unless you’re from the city of São Paulo. And yet, this country seems to be the place to be during these desperate times. Things here aren’t crashing as they are in the US. Partly, because Brazil has always been in a permanent state of denoument and everyone’s used to operating on panic mode. They panic with a lot of grace, actually. All Brazilians, to me, seem like those old time Philly public school teachers, whom you never see running or rushing anywhere, even though the whole place is burning around them. I actually took quite a few tips from those people, when I was a school teacher in Queens. The stress of the DOE diminished in droves the moment I discovered that a languid walk resolved it all. Here in Brazil, the strategy’s doing a swell job of stamming the blood loss of the global panic. Some people are getting laid off, it’s true, but lots are just taking reduced salaries and reduced hours, and keeping their posts at various firms around the country. The “make-do” culture of Brazilians has a lot to do with it. They are always willing to survive. Something us Americans never had to ponder, we just took it for granted that survival was in the cards and chose to brood over our our artistic souls, our individualities. It’s a bit uncomfortable to be a reader in a whole country of people not accustomed to sitting down and pondering stuff – be it the financial situation, the weather that permits outside activities year-round, or a languidity that lulls – but in the end, I think I’m lucky to be here, especially after seeing the “Not Hiring” signs back home.

Extroversion results were moderately high which suggests you are, at times, overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.

Neuroticism results were medium which suggests you are moderately worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious.

Psychoticism results were moderately low which suggests you are, at times, overly kind natured, trusting, and helpful at the expense of your own individual development (martyr complex).

Prior to Eysenck’s discovery of Psychoticism, he correlated his original two traits (introversion and neuroticism) with an ancient greek personality system known as the Galen types (Melancholic, Choleric, Sanguine, Phlegmatic).

V is S’s mother and bestest girlfriend in the world, the kind my mommy could be if she weren’t a million light years away. Unlike mine, though, S’s progenitress is also a sexy esoteric with a penchant for cosmology.  Her other monumental passion is theater, which I now understand includes circus acts.

Yesterday was V’s birthday celebration. An all girls tea-party, catered with rarities of dish and beverage that the average Brazilian might mistake for alien vocabulary. I ate a rucula and bacon quisch and it just wasn’t from this earth. The crew was composed of about 20 ladies of all sorts of cuts – from farmers’ wives to grannies to sexy, plastic richésses to a yoga guru-cum-psychologist I intend on making my shrink ASAP . Everyone sat about delighting in the fare, smiles and gushes everywhere. Bruno, the only boy available for cheek squeezing and hair ruffling, was quickly sequestered to a safe-zone of X-box adoration by my very own JL. And the only male left in the estrogen filled zone turned out to be a very handsome young man  in suspenders. I’d seen him arrive, and thought kind of odd that he drove a lemon-lime Fiat in a country where a car can be, under no circumstances, a hue other than black, white, gray… or yellow if, and only if, you’re a sports or beach buff.

It was very odd, too, that this handsome person went off into a corner and didn’t come to say hello. Failing to greet even total strangers in a friend’s house is akin to murder in Brazil, and with that caipirinha colored car…well, that was two strikes I couldn’t imagine V allowing in her decorous abode.

But all was resolved when a flap-toed whitefaced thing bounded into the livingroom where we sat reveling one after another, in champagne-spiked strawberry punch, batida, and passion fruit iced tea. 

“I’m a mime, not a mute,” he started off explaining and proceeded to guffaw and cavort in front of the guests. He pranced around and started to get into people’s faces, which I immediately deduced would lead to picking victims out of the room for unwitting participation in his antics. I did my best to avert his gaze, as it seemed that whoever locked eyes with him became part of the show, but it didn’t work and I, too, was pulled in.

And to my horror, and the gall of everything jaded and unfluffy about me, I ended up enjoying myself. I was made a prop in an imaginary house the mime built, along with some five other guests. At first, I couldn’t imagine how V, such a sexy thing, would be into the mimery circuit, but then I realized that theater isn’t so far off from it and that is her big thing. She was nearly dying of laughter and the tears of joy that streamed down her face made her tanned skin shiny with rivulets. It was sweet to see an adulty-adult like her turn into a child in an almost literal sense. That, and liking theater are some of the interesting things Brazil has made me learn in recent days.

Later, S tried to pick up the mime, but it turned out he was married with children.