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Published: February 3rd 2011
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My time in Sampa is drawing to a close, and it's time I reflect a bit on my experiences here, while anxiously awaiting new ones in Bahia...
I arrived on January 14th, close to three week ago today. It is an interesting thing, getting to know a new place. While to me it seems like months since I got off the plane in Guarulhos and took that first exhilarating taxi ride into São Paulo, at the same time I can hardly believe how fast it has gone. A spacial and chronological oxymoron. It's seems like forever ago, and yet it feels like only yesterday. ???
Though I can't wait to do it all over again in Salvador; get to know the streets, the neighborhoods, the beaches, the people, then restaurants, the bars, and the schools; I will truly miss this place. I have always considered myself more comfortable in a smaller, more home-like place, I haven't felt displaced or distressed by the city at all. This, of course, is in great part due to my host-mother Fátima, such a wonderful and caring person. I know because of my connection with her that I will without a doubt
be returning here one day, be it very soon or not, and I can't wait to do so!
Thank you to all of the wonderful people I met here, it has been an experience that I won't forget for the rest of my life!
My flight leaves on Segunda-feira (monday) at 6 a.m., for Bahia! After a 3:30 or 4 a.m. taxi to the airport, I will board a plane, arrive in Salvador, drop off my belongings at the hotel, and continue on to the beach for the day (hopefully)! My host brother, Felipe, has already offered to take me after I expressed to him that the last time I saw a tropical beach was approximately 5 years ago and that there isn't anything in the world I want to do more right now.
As for São Paulo: 😊
Sampa - Caetano Veloso
Alguma coisa acontece no meu coração
Que só quando cruza a Ipiranga e a avenida São João
É que quando eu cheguei por aqui eu nada entendi
Da dura poesia concreta de tuas esquinas
Da deselegância discreta de tuas meninas
Ainda não havia para mim Rita Lee
A tua mais
completa tradução
Alguma coisa acontece no meu coração
Que só quando cruza a Ipiranga e a avenida São João
Quando eu te encarei frente a frente não vi o meu rosto
Chamei de mau gosto o que vi, de mau gosto, mau gosto
É que Narciso acha feio o que não é espelho
E à mente apavora o que ainda não é mesmo velho
Nada do que não era antes quando não somos mutantes
E foste um difícil começo
Afasto o que não conheço
E quem vende outro sonho feliz de cidade
Aprende depressa a chamar-te de realidade
Porque és o avesso do avesso do avesso do avesso
Do povo oprimido nas filas, nas vilas, favelas
Da força da grana que ergue e destrói coisas belas
Da feia fumaça que sobe, apagando as estrelas
Eu vejo surgir teus poetas de campos, espaços
Tuas oficinas de florestas, teus deuses da chuva
Pan-Américas de Áfricas utópicas, túmulo do samba
Mais possível novo quilombo de Zumbi
E os novos baianos passeiam na tua garoa
E novos baianos te podem curtir numa boa
Something happens in my heart
Only when it crosses Ipiranga and São João Avenue
When I
got here I didn't understand anything
Not the concrete poetry of your street corners
Not the discreet inelegance of your girls
I didn't know Rita Lee (a singer from São Paulo)
Your most thorough interpretation
Something happens in my heart
Only when it crosses Ipiranga and São João Avenue
When we were face to face I didn't recognized myself
I called what I saw bad taste, I called it bad taste, bad taste
Because Narcissus thinks that what is not a mirror is ugly
And what is not yet old scares the mind
Nothing from before when you are not a mutant (Mutantes was the name of Rita Lee's band)
And you were a difficult beginning
I get away from what I don't know
And those who sell a different dream of a happy city
Soon learn to call you reality
Because your are the other side of the other side of the other side
From the people oppressed in the waiting lines, in the small streets, in shanty towns
From the power of the money rising and destroying beauty
From the ugly smoke that rises and erases the stars
I can see your poets of
fields and space
Your forest factories, your rain gods rise
Pan-Americas from utopian Africas, tomb of samba
The newest of Zumbi's quilombo (a village created by escaped slaves)
And the new baianos “promenade” thru your garoa (a kind of rain typical from São Paulo, that doesn't really fall, almost like a very wet and windy mist)
And the new baianos can enjoy you leisurely
Bittersweet, living in this city, and Caetano would agree, but I have figured out that happiness exists in the littlest things. The beautiful little parrots yelling at me in the tree outside my window, (who prompted this entry,) are telling me that even in a city of contradictions, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, sun and rain; one can find their way. With buses that will take you anywhere you want to be, but on their time not yours, and a metro that won't take you where you want to go, but you will go somewhere you like, the city is begging you to explore. One is never alone here, and that gets to some people, including me. Even sitting here on my bed, home alone, on a misty, empty afternoon, I am
kept company by the constant noise of buses, cars, dogs, birds, drills?, honks, constant fiddling around on guitars, drums, and pianos (pun intended.) 11 stories up and in an empty apartment, I am surrounded by it all. Where does one go to be completely alone here, I wonder? I am alright with not knowing, though. I hear from Paulistanos every day how different Bahia is, but never with enough elaboration to satisfy my curiosity. "You will love Salvador!" "It is another world!" "The beaches are beautiful!" "It is nothing like São Paulo!" I suppose I will have to see all of that for myself. How lucky I am to live in two different worlds, though.
Like Venezuela, I have met people in Sampa that I know are my friends for life, whether or not we see each other, or even talk, again. That is what South America is to me, and the basic foundation for why I love it here so much.
See you again soon!
Brent (Brenchee)
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