Good News and Bad News

The good news is that I received an email from the Brasilean consulate in Los Angeles informing me that my application for a permanent visa has been approved. The bad news is that bureaucrats are in charge.

I assumed, silly me, that all I would have to do, after the approval was go to the consulate with my passport and have the visa inserted, along with paying the necessary fees etc. But no, I have to leave my passport with the conulate and wait "at least 10 working days." (Which makes me, cynically, wonder what they consider a working day.)

The approval took me by surprise and has caused some problems. Since my tourist visa is only good for 90 days per visit, I have already booked a return to the U.S. on Nov. 13th, and my return to São Paulo on Nov. 28th. That doesn´t give me enough time in the U.S. to fly out to Los Angeles and wait for two weeks (More than two weeks actually, because Thanksgiving isn´t a working day at the consulate. I already know that they are closed for both Brasilean and U.S. holidays.) So I will have to pay some penalties and change my flight schedules in order to get this thing, and impose on friends and relatives while I wait.

A reasonable person might wonder why this visa couldn´t be picked up here in São Paulo, or maybe in Brasilia. (I would love an excuse to see Brasilia.) I asked that question in July when I made the application. Bureaucrats don´t ever have to answer the question "why," so I only know that it can´t be done, no way, forget about it.

One last item, and then I´ll move on and let my blood pressure go down. There was a story in the NY Times this week about an Amazonian town with something like 45,000 people and 15,000 motorcycles. The town is situated on the border of both Columbia and Peru, and it is an open border. There were two things about the story that resonated with me. First, Japanese motorcycles are twice as expensive in Brasil as are the same bikes in Columbia. Second, the city doesn´t require the bikes to be licensed because "the process of applying for a license plate and insuring a motorbike is laden with bureaucracy, and costs about $500, more than most residents can afford."

Having gotten that off my chest, I will try to focus on the good news...namely, that the visa was approved.

And I am focusing on the good news that Obama was elected and not on the bad news that Prop 8 passed in California, or that Norm Coleman may still be a senator from Minnesota. Because my Republican friends who read this are dear to me, I will ask their indulgence this once and say no more about U.S. politics for at least a while.

The doctor calls his patient and says he has good news and bad news. "The good news is that your test results came back and you only have 24 hours to live. The bad news is that I meant to call you yesterday."

Tchau.

One Caipirinha After Another

For those of my American friends who think life here in paradise is just one continual party, you should know that my morning has consisted of doing the dishes, washing clothes by hand in the laundry sink and listening to a language CD and making a list of the verbs.

How long since you have washed clothes by hand? I think it is very common here. Every apartment and house I´ve been in has a laundry sink. Sure, some might have a washer and dryer, but it is just as frequent that they do not. Somebody want to come here and open a good old-fashioned american laundromat?

As for picking out those verbs, my language process seems Sisyphean at times. Sometimes I despair of ever learning this language, and sometimes I can see the progress I´m making. In any case, I continue with the effort. Yesterday i went to the park hoping to find some talkative old guy on a bench, but I wasn´t successful. Will give it another try this afternoon.

Stay in touch!

Oops...What Do I Know About Film Festivals?

A couple of entries ago, I wrote about seeing the Polish film ``Katyn´´ at the Rio film festival, and about how much I liked it. I noted that I had read it received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. So far, so good except that what I actually saw was that it had been nominated as BFF for the 80th Academy Awards...and the 80th Academy Awards were held last spring. It has already lost to ``The Counterfeiter.´´ What do I know about film festivals? I just sort of assumed that the entrants were newly-released films. Oh, well.

To everyone in the U.S. who likes to complain about the immigrants from Mexico who are still speaking Spanish or fractured English, I want to say ``lighten up.´´ I´m on the other side now, and I have a lot of sympathy (of course, being an empathetic kind of guy, I always did). I am working on my Português, and I´m making a little progress, but I´m never going to be fluent in this language and English speakers here probably are always going to be a welcome island of comfort whenever I encounter them. I can´t imagine being here in Brasil without computer access to the NY Times and the LA Times, or The Daily Show and Colbert Report. I might be learning Português a little slower than I would otherwise because of these security blankets, but I´m a lot more relaxed and comfortable. I just wish I had some local English-language TV options. :-)

And now I am going to cut this short so I can work on my Português exercises. My teacher gives me lots of home work.

Tchau.

Reading Jane Austen in São Paulo

Apologies to the woman who wrote ``Reading Lolita in Tehran,´´ but I couldn´t resist. My novel reading is limited to what I can find in the local used bookstores,. Mind you, I´m not complaining; sometimes it just strikes me as odd to be reaing ``Persuasion´´ on a park bench in São Paulo. Or Thomas Hardy, or Charlotte Bronte, or Graham Greene and Gore Vidal for that matter. Which reminds me: I had to come all the way to Brasil to learn that Charlotte Bronte wrote a book called ``Shirley.´´

I feel bad to have neglected this space for so long. While I was in Rio, my laptop wasn´t working and that limited my opportunities. Brasil seems to be crazy for film festivals, by the way. I thought the one in Rio was large, but next week the 30-somethingth (?) São Paulo festival starts, and it has over 400 movies on its schedule. And I know there are smaller annual festivals in Recife, Forteleza and Porto Alegre. I suppose the U.S. has a gazillion festivals too, to which I have always been oblivious.

I have met several of Heitor´s charming friends and colleagues who are in the film-journalism biz, all of whom are considerate enough to speak perfect English. Since none of them will read this, I will go ahead and say it: My favorite is Neusa Barbosa, an energetic pixie who seemed to be always on her way to or from one film or another in Rio, and still had time to sit in the bar and drink caipirinhas after the last movie of the day. And presumably she did some writing sometime too. She has covered Cannes each of the last eight years, but somehow has never made it to Sundance. I think it is just a matter of nobody has paid her to go there. In 2002 she published a book about Woody Allen´s movies which (I just learned by using Google) was the first in some publisher´s series of People in Cinema. It is odd, isn´t it? I bet the first book in a U.S. series of People in Cinema would not be about Woody Allen.

Maybe one day I´ll be able to read Neusa´s book (ha!). Finally I found the Português teacher I´ve been looking for. She speaks practically no English and that is a good thing. I wanted to find a class with a few other people, because I just think I learn faster in that type of setting....you know, competing to be the best student. But I finally just gave up that idea, because it was going nowhere. So I´m the only student in my class, sitting at my little desk with the teacher giving all of her attention to me. Yesterday was our second meeting and my first official class. We will meet every Monday and Wednesday. I will need to end this soon because she gave me a lot of homework.

Thanks for reading. Stay in touch.

My life in São Paulo goes to Rio

I´ve been neglecting this space for the last several days. I´ve been in Rio since 29 Sep because of the Rio International Film Festival, which runs from 25 Sep to 9 Oct, with over 350 films and something like 20 theaters all over town participating. Heitor has been here since the beginning, and his journalism credentials get him into everything free. They have gotten me into a few things free.

The two most powerful movies I´ve seen are ``Katyn,´´ from Poland and ``Dancing with Bashir,´´from Israel. The former is about the systematic Soviet massacre of thousands of Polish army officers (prisoners) in 1941 and the attempt until fairly recently to pretend it was done by the Nazis. The latter is technically an animated film about the massacre of 2000 Palestinians in the Lebanese refugee camps in 1982. It combines elements of drama with documentary and it is all animated. I won´t try to describe it further; google it. We saw ``Katyn´´ a couple of days ago, and just this morning saw a flyer which said it has been nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film.

If a simple head count of audiences determines anything, the big winner will be Woody Allen´s ``Vicky Christina Barcelona.´´ I won´t be able to see it, as all of its showings are sold out.

Rio is a much more touristy city than São Paulo and I like it better (at least after a few days) although I have only been to the Copabanana and Ipanema beaches, the real tourist centers, once. Most of the theaters we´ve been attending are either in the downtown or in some of the more middle class neighborhoods. The plan right now is to return to São Paulo tomorrow (before the end of the festival), just as I´m beginning to understand the Rio buses and subway.

Gotta run.

Random Thoughts/Observations

I need to know more about Brasil´s recent history. I don´t think I´ve ever made a trip here, even one of only two weeks, in which I didn´t here some reference to the military dictatorship that only ended in the mid 1980s.


Yesterday there was a story in the leading São Paulo newspaper about a lawsuit which was dismissed yesterday on procedural technicalities. A Brasilean couple were suing a leading official from the dictatorship for the torture and murder of their son, a São Paulo journalist, in the 1970´s. Of course, I couldn´t read it myself, but Heitor summarized it for me, and he was pissed. My sense is that nobody has ever been held accountable for numerous human rights abuses that occured during those years, and it is a very sore spot for Brasilians with a social conscious and a desire for justice. Those with the most to lose of course argue that the national interest is best served by letting some things lie undisturbed, by not opening up old wounds, looking forward and not backward and all that crap... apparently with a great deal of success.

What doesn´t seem to be disputed is that in 1964 the Brasilean military overthrew a legally elected government and that Lyndon Johnson´s was one of, if not the, first governments to recognize the new dictatorship, and was probably (no surprise) involved in the planning and execution of the coup. Apparently the U.S. ambassador has admitted as much, and acknowledged the presence of the U.S. navy off shore at the time of the coup, in case it was needed. This shouldn´t surprise anyone, because it should be pretty well known by now that the prism of anti-communism, through which we viewed everything that went on in the world at that time, caused a few, shall we say, distortions. Any concern for social justice and addresing the issue of economic inequities was, ipso facto (or ipso fatso as Archie Bunker put it), evidence of support from Moscow (or Peking, or Havana etc.) What I read on the internet (yes, I know,...) is that all the evidence now says that the only outside government involved in Brasilean politics at the time was Washington.

Under the umbrella of the dictatorship, the fabric of democracy was maintained and political parties were apparently still allowed to operate. The two principal parties were known at the time as the ``Yes´´ party and the ``Yes, Sir´´ party.

According to Wikipedia, ``a government-sponsored truth and reconciliation commission in 2007, by the end of the dictatorship there were at least 339 documented cases of government-sponsored political assassinations or disappearances. Countless more were questioned, tortured, and jailed.´´ I want to know more about this, but haven´t been able to find much about it on line...other than the admission that no country, other than South Africa, has really made truth and reconciliation commissions work well enough to satisfy the majority of people.

Heitor has several books to recommend about that period, but I don´t know if any of them have been translated into English. And I let him leave for 10 days of work in Rio without remembering to get the titles from him. Long term, if I stay in Brasil, I need to have a better understanding of its politics and history...can´t help it, just need to. And then, of course, I will expect you to consider me the expert and defer to me in all matters Brasilean.

The newspaper article I mentioned about the dismissal of a lawsuit is not the only reason this is on my mind at the moment. Heitor´s sister, Sueli, is recently returned from a vacation in Europe and she was showing me pictures and telling me of her time in Barcelona, which whe loved. I mentioned that I had been in Barcelona once, but that it was so long ago that Franco was still in power. I said that I enjoyed my time in the city, but one of my most enduring memories is the omnipresence of Franco´s military....how so many buildings had military guards stationed in their front. Aside from the communication issues caused by my crappy Português and her crappier English, it was clear that Sueli just didn´t understand what I was talking about, why this was an issue, and we went on to other things. It only occurred to me a few days later that the reason she couldn´t understand what I was trying to say is because São Paulo, too, has military police stationed everywhere, maybe even more so than in Franco´s Spain. I had always noticed them; why I had never questioned them is hard to say. But, frankly, they look more like ``Police´´ than ``Military´´ so I know that is part of the reason. Heitor, my resource for all things Brasilean, understands my north american distinctions between civil and military police, and he says they are a remnant from the days of the dictatorship...that they were an institution nobody quite knew how to deal with. So now, instead of torturing people, they´re directing traffic.
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And now for something entirely different: I finally found the cachaça Heitor has been recommending for the last month. A 600 ml bottle, which looks like an over-sized beer bottle, costs $R18.00 and I have to admit it is better than the other brands I´ve tried so far. But it also has a cap like a beer bottle (at least it isn´t a twist off), which makes me wonder if anybody actually pops off the cap and drinks a whole bottle of this stuff. Heitor says it is bottled by a small operation which has never spent a dime on marketing and is only known because of word of mouth (unlike, shall we say, Bombay Blue Sapphire?). He went on to say it was a ``hand job,´´ by which we ascertained he meant it was made by hand. He will kill me if he ever reads this.

A Night at the Opera

I didn´t know last night if I was going to an Opera or a Symphonic Tone Poem. Turned out it was sort of a hybrid of the two. It was billed as an opera, but was unlike any others I know. I guess I´d call it a tone poem with words.

Very early on I thought to myself that the singing wasn´t very good, but I thought maybe I should be more generous. Maybe it was just bad sound technology. At the intermission, the man sitting next to me said something which I took to be ``can you believe how hideous this is?´´ He continued talking about it and I explained that my Português wasn´t adequate for this discussion. He asked what language I preferred and, when I said English, that is what he started using. We trashed the performance for a while, and then he told me more about the composer, Carlos Gomes, who he said has been virutally ignored by opera companies since WWII even though he was once very popular.

At some point he asked if I was living here in São Paulo. He said ``I hate this city. I live in Rio.´´ Nice of him to say, don´t you think? That was about the time the 2nd act began. Now that we´d connected, so to speak, he would look at me and roll his eyes whenever the soprano was finished singing. When it was over, I said that I hoped he hadn´t come from Rio just to see this production. He chuckled and in a can-you-believe-how-stupid-I-am tone, he said that, yes, he had done exactly that. He had taken a 5.5 hour bus trip to come here, and was going to take a taxi back to the bus station and go home yet that night. He said this had been the 60th opera he had seen this year, and would have preferred to still be at 59.

And I was grateful it had only cost R$20.