The past two weeks have stretched out and felt like two months.
Friday, June 5th, I gave my second public lecture. “How I Wonder What You Are”, I called it. A response to an argument I’d had with my cousin, while sitting on the cut grass of a backyard at a family reunion last summer. We had been talking about films…“Wall-e”, “Bringing Up Baby”, “Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days”, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, among others.
We got to talking whether it’s worth it to analyze films, to talk about them at all, instead of just being quiet and trying to feel wonder, awe. He showed me Walt Whitman’s poem, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”.
The lecture I gave put together a lot of different things I’d read or seen in the past year.
I gave it in the Complejo Perón. About 25 people showed up. They liked it and followed it much better than the first one.
That night I went to a peña at UADER, with Daniel and some of his friends. The next night I visited Santa Fe, across the river, for the first time. I walked through the downtown, the pedestrian mall, stopping at some book stores and a Havana café, then spending the night at a professor’s house, with Daniel and his classmates, eating pizza, drinking, playing guitar, singing, talking. We took a 5AM bus back to Paraná.
* * *
I’d been assigned the cover story for the July issue of Barriletes, to write 2000 words about the Wal-Mart protests and reclamos and criticisms of the store in the U.S.
Because of classes, cooking, listening to new music, drawing, and…waiting, I didn’t get started on the story til Wednesday night.
Thursday morning I took a bus to Buenos Aires, for a Fulbright ETA conference in Sao Paolo, Brazil.
In the afternoon I walked through Palermo and stopped by Papelera Palermo, to buy some notebooks. I spent the night at Kathryn’s, again. Her mostly French roommates made a Christmas-in-June dinner. We started at 11 at night, eating cheese-stuffed dates and bruschetta. Then we had salmon stuffed with cream cheese and a starchy, crunchy vegetable. Next was the main course…roasted duck, in a sweet sauce with carrots and onions, served with rice and a baguette. Then some creamy brie cheese and bread. Then a lemon cake and cream. Then chocolate truffles.
There were long pauses in between each course, time to smoke a cigarette, chat, take pictures, drink some red wine. Everyone exchanged gifts afterwards. The best one was a second-hand black sweater with “Memento Mori” poorly stitched into the chest in white yarn.
We finished eating at 2. Kathryn and I went to bed by 4, waking up at 7 to go to a hotel and meet other Fulbrighters.
I wrote the first part of my piece at Kathryn’s Friday afternoon. At night, Hallock and I got dinner together, then tried to see some Buñuel shorts at an art theater. They were cancelled because of projector problems, so we walked around and talked instead.
Saturday we flew to Brazil, spending the night in a hotel near the airport, eating dinner at a steakhouse where they hurry around with the meat on skewers, placing different cuts beside you every few minutes.
Sunday we got to downtown Sao Paolo, our hotel a block away from where they’d had the Gay Pride Parade, the largest in the world. By the time we got there the parade had ended. Thousands of people were still around, drunk, wild, screaming, happy, pleased.
Barricades were knocked over. Girls were kissing girls, guys kissing guys. People were passed out on the ground, or sitting with their head between their knees. Vendors were selling corn-on-the-cob and beer and drinks out of Styrofoam boxes. Some people were dressed up in costumes and in drag. Others were topless.
There were some police around, making sure nothing got violent. It smelled like piss and vomit in a lot of places.
I went back to the hotel, to my room up on the sixth floor, and finished the rough draft of the Wal-Mart piece.
Monday we visited the U.S. Consulate and had some bureaucratic meetings and video conferences. That afternoon we took a bus up, over the mountains, through the jungle, and to the ocean. We stayed at a resort on the sea for the next four days.
There were ETAs from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil, and most of the time was spent presenting what our trip’s been like and what we’ve been working on.
They pampered us, serving us big meals and coffee and snack breaks every hour. We had nice cabanas, freshly painted, solidly built, hammocks in front, and more beds than people in each one.
The hotel was a short walk from the beach, which was surrounded by the green mountains, and looked out to an island in the distance.
I had long talks some of the other Fulbrighters, hearing where they’d come from, what they were up to, where they were headed.
B___, from the east coast, had been writing for the AP and the Wall Street Journal before he came to Chile for the grant.
M___, from the south, grew up on a commune, has hitchhiked through South America, and has now started a music project in a Brazilian prison with support of the Minister of Justice of her host city. She also teaches music lessons and plays her flute with a band of elderly men. She’s also translating a book of poetry by a Chilean author.
M___, now from Chicago, studied physics and philosophy at Yale, has been living with Carmelites in Hyde Park, and is thinking of joining a seminary.
B___, from California, did a Peace Corps tour on a farm in Nicaragua and is now in Brazil working with an NGO.
R___, a Fulbright director from Washington, had done two Peace Corps tours when he was young – one in Ecuador and one in Panama. He and a buddy drove motorcycles home from Panama to Ohio when the latter tour finished.
They served us rice and beans, roast beef and fish, potatoes and salads, and fruits like mangoes, bananas, passion fruit, apples, kiwis, papayas, melons, and grapes, and many others I can´t name. And coffee. And guarana soda. And desserts of flan, quiche, pineapple sprinkled with lime, fruit salad, chocolate mousse.
At night you could see the milky way up in the sky. The sand and the water had phosphorescent algae that glowed when you shook your hands and feet. Lightning bugs were flying around, too, making us think we’d seen shooting stars. We stripped down and went into the water in our underwear.
On Thursday we took motorboats to the island. We played catch with a Frisbee, swam in the ocean, ran along the shore trying not to let our feet get touched by the waves. Stephen and I climbed up some rocks and took pictures and looked out to the ocean, seeing other islands – with their forests and mountains – nearby and far-off on the horizon.
We danced a lot, too, at a local bar, and with a guitarist who came to the hotel, and with a capoeira group the final night. A lot of the locals showed up when the music started playing, kids and adults. They were nice to us, patient with us, trying to get us to move, to show us Samba and other steps. They looked a lot different, talked and acted differently, than Argentines.
Friday we took a bus back to Sao Paolo, to the airport, and said goodbye. I spent another night in Buenos Aires, tried to catch-up on some writing in the afternoon, then got on a bus back to Paraná Saturday night.
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