Surrealist Semiotics

Where's Waldo? And Laura? And Ronaldo? And Oscar? And Fred? And Paula? And Marcia? And João? And Olga? and Regina? And Clara, Fabio, Cleusa, Rodrigo, Gisela, André, Diego, Mariana...

Whenever I think about cities in the world I would like to see, the first one that comes to mind is Moscow.  There are many reasons but the main one is not Lenin's mausoleum, not the Red Square, not even its many beautiful, unusual churches; the single biggest attraction Moscow has to offer me is its Metro/Underground/Subway.  Whatever you want to call it.

I like public transportation. I especially like it when I don't have to get anywhere in a hurry, depending on where I am.  While in São Paulo, when I was alone I chose to take the metro.  It's clean, cheap, and safe.  Yes, safe. Believe it or not, one of the safest places one can be in this city is the metro.  Maybe it's because everyone's in such a hurry to get somewhere no one thinks about committing a crime; and plus which, why would a thief want to steal anything from someone who takes the metro in SP?  Rich ppl take helicopters these days, making it the city with the most heliports in the world. 

So as I was going from the West part of town to the South, to visit my mother, I took the metro, which got me there in exactly 1 hr 35mins, including walking time. With luggage.  Even a helicopter wouldn't have been this fast, if we count how long it'd have taken me to get to the heliport and wait till the pilot faffled about with the million little buttons on the control panel and got permission from whatever tower to take off blahblah etc.  And the price!! No comparison.  The metro is far more efficient than any other means of transportation.  And, according to me, more fun, too.  

One gets to observe so many unusual things, so many ppl, distracted by their mobile phones, or confused about how to get where, adapting to new stations and new lines, reading, listening to music... or, like me, taking photos.

Actually, just this one.  I hadn't been to this station yet or, if I had, it didn't have this "look".  I found it both interesting and perturbing.  It is v odd because there were no ppl in the carriage-- only these... specters, ppl who look like they belong in one of the video games I have seen ... Resident Evil or some such...  floating heads on Plexiglass; not a single human in sight.  How can this be?  It's SP, population 17million.  

Of course it got more and more full as it approached the center of the city.

We joke, us Paulistanos, about what one must do when one's feeling lonely, forgotten, feeling the vastness of the Universe and how disconnected and alone we all are in this world... how there is so little human warmth anymore.

We'll tell you, when you're feeling this way, you must head to Sé station at 6PM.

Passion & Peace

Perhaps the single best thing for me about being in Brazil was eating tropical fruit I used to eat as a kid.  One in particular made me a little nostalgic, the passion fruit.  I didn't like it much as a kid, and I still don't, but the smell is peculiar and fills the kitchen; not as much as ripe guavas do, but the guava season in Brazil is December...

The maracujà is known for its calming effect, and is popular during end-of-year exams among students of all ages.  The name in English is misleading to Brazilians;  at first, we think of passion in the romantic sense of the word when we become familiar with what Anglos call it.  Then we find out (if we care to) that it is the name given to this extraordinary looking fruit by XV century Jesuits attempting to convert Amerindians to Christianity.

If I were writing a sci-fi story, I would use this fruit instead of aliens.  Being taken over by an army of passion fruit and attached to each of these tentacle-like stems inside it beats coming up with yet another anthropomorphic version of extraterrestrial creatures.  Look, it even looks a little like an open mouth waiting to take you in and lower your blood pressure... combine that with poisonous frogs and it's a blockbuster.

Maracuja'

Samba do Avião

I'm back in Paris now.  Five weeks away taught me a lot. 

For example, I learned that going a long time without writing anything makes it harder to do it.  I'm finding it hard to write this blog now after such a long time away, and yet I really want to, I have things to share which I think are... well, if not deeply meaningful then true and easy to identify with -- I hope.

And having said that, I am quite conscious of the fact I'll probably write something that'll make ppl who read this think I am not who they thought I was.

On my flight to Brazil I found myself sitting on row 20 which I was v thankful for until I got there.  To my right I had the window; to my left, a girl in her 20s (to match the row) looking miserable but past her Emo phase, so just unattractively sulky (which is fine by me, I don't want to talk on a flight); in front of me, a charming young couple in their twenties with a newborn baby, then uberly quiet; past sulky girl, another baby, whose mother was well into her 30, perhaps early 40s, treating her baby as though it were a cocktail shaker, hoping it'd stop whatever process was turning him into a noisy purple turnip, and failing miserably.  On the other end of the aircraft was another couple with yet another newborn baby, who was, it, too, yelling more than any soldier during the US civil war yelled while it had one of his lower limbs amputated without anesthetic.   

I put my earphones in and turned my iPod on.   It didn't keep all the noise out, but it distracted me for a bit.  Until the safety announcements.

After "dinner"  ("chicken or beef, Madam?"  -- always chicken, always) the sulky 20-something next to me disappeared into the posterior part of the aircraft, leaving me to stretch across her seat and to tell myself I was real lucky to have got all that space!!  Until... all three infants started to cry and a person on the other side of the craft started to threaten some other person with physical violence in a well-known Brazilian Portuguese accent (same as mine)...  More noise.  But that one at least articulated her misforture in actual words.

So... after twelve long hours we land; and guess what, most of the trip was quiet.  I don't know if it is because I was so tired after several days faffling about preparing for such a long trip or if it was because ppl stopped making noise. The fact is, even an hour of loud noise one has no control over is extremely disturbing.

When I arrived in Brazil, I took a bus to the countryside town of Avaré, in the state of São Paulo.  As the bus arrived in this town, it made its way to the bus station which is off the one main avenue--one out of three.  Usually, when I go, nothing changes much there, so I have a keen sense for the changes when they happen, as opposed to whatever remains the same, which I hardly see, if I am honest.   

Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw the following sign, right on the main avenue...

A fertility clinic, but... my mind, used to English as it is... reads this sign and sniggers...  How telling!  How appropriate.  Ppl who cannot have kids and yet try.  I thought about the kids on the plane but especially about their parents.  I wondered about how many parents force their small, defenseless children onto and into airplanes;  I thought about how uncomfortable *I* feel, an adult in her 30s, able to choose whether I'm going to fly or not, and put up with the horrible sensation of having my ears pop every so many minutes when the plane takes off or lands;  I wondered about how kids, whose mental faculties aren't yet developed properly, feel when they sense this unpleasant effect which seems never will go away but will perpetuate itself in one's brain until one finally succumbs to the fear and asks to be thrown off the aircraft as a pestilent, unworthy beast.

And instead, the baby gets a relentless boob popped in its mouth whenever it fears for its body.

And if it throws up?  It is told off or tutted at.  

Why??  So relatives who live far away experience the joys of being thrown up on and coughed and sneezed at?  Why don't these, adult, relatives, fly, instead, to the baby??

Or, failing that, why can't ppl with kids form an association demanding airlines bunch them in ONE part of the plane, leaving the rest of us deficient childless ppl to our selfish pleasures and/or rest?  We pay a lot of money to be uncomfortable!!  The least we can have is the right to be uncomfortable in the relative noise of the airplane engines without the added crying, yelling, shushing, embarrassed and utterly fake excuses (tell the truth, don't parents believe we should all be glad they had kids?), immediately replaced with indignation whenever someone complains about their kids' behaviour? 

On my way back, I had an 18-month old baby, crying loudly, screaming defiantly and relentlessly, while splayed on his mother's lap; she was sitting right next to me.  When I displayed how displeased I was about this (Mr. Flight Attendant, please move me, I paid a lot of money only to have my ears abused for hrs?) she started to ask me if I had children, do I not like them, did I not think they're wonderful creatures capable of immense, selfless love, and disinterested affection?  Sure, I answered.  What I don't like is their parents, who put them through unnecessary discomfort for convention's sake.

AyeAye Carambola, Capt'n

I have only a few days left in my country... I know I didn't even mention I was going away but, nearly two months later, I'm going back to France.

Many moments and laughs have been recorded. All the evidence will be presented at a later date when I am back home.  For now, I will then share what I have chosen to eat on my last full day in Avaré, a small city in the countryside of the state of São Paulo.

Carambola

Tart & bright.