Notes from Brazil
Pencil notes on caparina cocktail napkin (just recovered)
On tram up to old town of St. Theresa:
The incongruity of the rickety, wood-lined, slat-seated tram car up to to St. Theresa (.60) that leaves from a station dwarfed by the fiercely modern glass and steel office building. Reminds me most of the movie (Brazil)--the unsettling possibility that we'll be swallowed whole by an inhuman form of the future.
Fourth day:
Now a few days in, just beginning to make sense of the circling layout of the city, the beaches and bays. Just barely familiar, on edge, and so watching our cab driver's eyes in the rear view as we pass through the tunnel and so leave the city's south.
On appearances:
Looking the same as the natives strikes me as a sort of double whammy of alienation. First you're assumed to be local (almost any race or size could be) and so are ignored. Then you're addressed with a question in Portuguese and so unmasked. Feeling an unwitting fraud you're further ignored, but there's an extra edge of resentment now - you've become an interloper.
The hotel pool:
Tourists are incidental poolside at The Copacopana Palace. The real players are the locals, and the top rung is the Fellini-esque, tightly tan-paunched gentleman who hold court from breakfast's end till dusk each day. Monopolizing certain key tables, they reign, smoke and share a collective eye for the ladies who pass. When they rise (rare) they don short sleeved cotton bush shirts, but leave their tan mid-drifts available.
The Copa's staff
The hotel's front desk staff, so ready to suggest a hotel car and English speaking driver, perpetrates the myth of dangerous Rio. They render every cab driver, and helpful Brazilian, suspect.
On tram up to old town of St. Theresa:
The incongruity of the rickety, wood-lined, slat-seated tram car up to to St. Theresa (.60) that leaves from a station dwarfed by the fiercely modern glass and steel office building. Reminds me most of the movie (Brazil)--the unsettling possibility that we'll be swallowed whole by an inhuman form of the future.
Fourth day:
Now a few days in, just beginning to make sense of the circling layout of the city, the beaches and bays. Just barely familiar, on edge, and so watching our cab driver's eyes in the rear view as we pass through the tunnel and so leave the city's south.
On appearances:
Looking the same as the natives strikes me as a sort of double whammy of alienation. First you're assumed to be local (almost any race or size could be) and so are ignored. Then you're addressed with a question in Portuguese and so unmasked. Feeling an unwitting fraud you're further ignored, but there's an extra edge of resentment now - you've become an interloper.
The hotel pool:
Tourists are incidental poolside at The Copacopana Palace. The real players are the locals, and the top rung is the Fellini-esque, tightly tan-paunched gentleman who hold court from breakfast's end till dusk each day. Monopolizing certain key tables, they reign, smoke and share a collective eye for the ladies who pass. When they rise (rare) they don short sleeved cotton bush shirts, but leave their tan mid-drifts available.
The Copa's staff
The hotel's front desk staff, so ready to suggest a hotel car and English speaking driver, perpetrates the myth of dangerous Rio. They render every cab driver, and helpful Brazilian, suspect.
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