wowmarch

'You'll never guess what's near here.'

'You're right. I won't even try. What?'

'Walmart. It's a five minute walk.'

This was almost a year ago, so I don't remember the actual conversation, but I remember thinking Mark was lying. Not just about the five minutes - Mark is amazingly ungood at 'time' and 'measuring it' - but about the Walmart too. I thought he was setting up a joke.

We had been in Brazil about two months before we moved to this neighborhood, and besides Coca Cola and McDonalds and sometimes Starbucks, very little looked familiar. I figured he was taking me to a junkyard or a coconut stand and calling it Walmart. you know, like how I used to tell people I was taking them to a fancy restaurant and then lead them to the dive bar under my apartment in Brooklyn (that didn't have food). The good old fashioned 'psych.'

Anyway, I felt even more sure of being bulshitted the more we walked - down a tiny one way street that ended at a T, the next street even tinier, small clusters of houses, left onto a street of apartment buildings, up a hill a little, and then on the right...

Indeed. Walmart.

Huge, and identical in logo and fanfare to any back in the US, whether upstate New York or Montana or New Mexico or Florida or ... anywhere, really. I looked up at this virtual portal to home and thought, "gross."

Seriously, why can't the Walmart corporation calm the F down? Why did they follow me to this otherwise cool neighborhood in Brazil?

I don't know why, but there's something gross about being able to go to one store and buy an apple, some sneakers, a quart of milk, a lawnmower, some string cheese, a bicycle, a bra, some cake mix and a shovel. I don't want a shovel that comes from the same place as cake mix.

And all this is gross and creepy even before you find out your total for all that stuff is like $39. All I see when I go into a Walmart is a blurry, foggy hell-cartoon of child factory workers and prison laborors and robots taking over earth. A horror-rolly-ball of how cheap things are made.

But I will say three things in its favor:
1. Hating on Walmart makes me feel at home.
2. It's pretty convenient if you have dogs who love gross meats.
3. The people here pronounce it 'WowMarch,' which is kind of great.

And the WowMarch of Santo Amaro is at least a little different than the Walmarts in the US. It has a weird mini-flea market in its parking garage, where dudes sell used antique furniture, paintings and mu-mus. So that's kind of cool. And inside there are chicks on roller skates zipping around helping people. I don't know if Walmarts in the US have roller-chicks, but this seems like a great idea. And their snack bar is a Casa do Pão de Queijo, instead of like, Arby's.

Oh, and across the street from it is a Shell station.

os PROTESTOS

A few months ago my Portuguese teacher told me about a personal tragedy he'd endured and seemed fascinated when I teared up and became outraged on his behalf.

'How the shit can that happen?' begged Cill. 'How the SHIT does that happen?'

('That' was a proven rapist/murderer walking free because he had good connections. This murderer's victim was my young professor's close friend.)

Up till then he and I had had uber-fun one-upping contests over whose country is more racist, more classist, more sexist, corrupt, unhealthy. (I think he gave me that the US is more racist. I conceded that the Brasileiros seem more classist. The rest we might never settle.)

But this noise about his friend just knocked the wind out of me.

'What about public outrage?' I asked, and BTW all of this was in shitty Portuguese. 'Didn't people fucking FLIP OUT?'

Professor shrugged. 'O publico aqui é passiva.' <--'Bitches here are passive.' There is no public outrage.

I've had several conversations like these with Brasilerios, exchanges that leave me feeling naive and kinda dumb. Like I grew up in a bubble for Stupidamericans. or just Dumbheads. Perhaps because I did.

The cynical ease with which my friends say 'well, the government here is corrupt and that will never, ever change,' would seem sad considering how much you read about Brazil changing every day with its burgeoning economy. You'd think this economic growth would be the exact moment TO change other stuff, or at least try planting seeds.

But a) I don't really know anything about this kind of stuff and b) I plan to stick to my policy of never, ever knowing relevant stuff.

And people would wave my hopeful notions away anyway, all: 'Não, the rich people will benefit from the rising economy. The poor will stay poor.'

O publico aqui é passiva.

Um, PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSYCH.

How goddamn cool are these people? Over a MILLION out in the streets to demand responsibility, ethics, and that their bus fare not go up by like 20 centavos. It seems like elsewhere you need major human rights atrocities to get people out in the streets. Sure, people in the US protest, but not in these numbers, and not with anywhere near the same rage against the 20 centavos.

It's true that tear gas is bad and violence is bad, and it's a tragic bummer that someone was killed in a car accident in the confusion.

But still.

I won't get too excited, esp. since everyone seems intent on warning me against ...

But for serious, here's a fantasy: what if this is exactly what dilma needs to actually change stuff? She can look at all her corrupt, entitled colleagues and say - about stuff she'd had to swallow before as 'never going to change' - and say, 'We have no choice. the people are roaring in the streets.'

I'm just saying.

Brazilians rule.

50 shades of cinza

Sometimes it's fun to see which pop culture trends cross borders.

But most of the time it's not.

Most of the time you wonder if pop culture everywhere is just a big international crap salad. Hot turds from England, dried deuces from Australia, dingleberries from Spain, squirts from Mexico. And embarrassingly, the heaviest slab of mudbunny is usually from my homeland.

This time England wins.

In hindsight I guess it makes sense that 50 Shades of Vag-Wrecking Orgasms hit it so big in the US. The US is kind of weird with sex, all bashful and PC and repressed, yet persistent and porny and rapy about it all at the same time. So it computes that a book that makes a whole lot of confused women masturbate would catch fire.

But here in Brazil, where the air screams SEX! SEX! SEX! FUCKING! SEX! APHRODISIACS! SWEATY DANCING! CATCALLS! WOMEN ARE SO BEAUTIFUL! MEN HAVE BIG MUSCLES! SEX! IS IT HOT ENOUGH FOR YOU? SEX! SEX! (and these are just the names of some of the stores on Avenida Santo Amaro), I don't know, I guess I thought these people would laugh at a lame-ass book about a virgin who gives her shit up to that idiot American female fantasy creature, the mythical Asshole With a Heart of Gold.

But i think every livraria i went into for months on end had what looked like a fort made out of those glinting silver-and-black tomes. (and they are tomes. the shits are loooong. but if you want to laugh, open one. the font  is huge, making it look creepily as though it's for toddlers. )

One shop had a 50 Shades pyramid. Another, what looked like a large family dinner table stacked a foot high with nothing but 50 Tonas de Cinza.

Don't get me wrong, I love reading trash and I'm all about people everywhere having fun. And the books are harmless. It's just… I don't know. They're so lame.

jungle survival

Another Amazon activity we signed up for: Survivor Day.

On Survivor Day some guides take you on a long hike through the jungle and show you how to do stuff like build a palm shelter and a make rotisserie out of sticks and rig an animal trap using just vines and branches and discern which trees will ooze vick's vap-o-rub and milk of magnensium and which twigs you can smoke like stoges. All you need is a machete.

The Ariau Treetop Hotel is very proud of having hosted a season of Survivor. And now i'm uber proud to have a certificate from Ariau that brags about how I, Cill, survived some serious shit too. The Surviver Day.

Our guide was this incredible dude named Gerson, a Manaus native who'd done a whole nightmarish military training in the jungle, in which he had to live off the land for weeks, distinguishing what stuff could be eaten and stepped on without getting the shits or getting killed or getting killed-by-way-of-the-shits.

And a big part of the training is to do all this while your military superiors yell at you. Like right into your face.

I don't like snakes or getting yelled at, so I had tremendous respect for Gerson. Plus I ate jungle stuff he approved of and I didn't get the shits.

But I felt kind of sad wondering what kind of warfare his rigorous training has prepared young Gerson for. I mean, he is without a doubt the most badass and resourceful rainforest magician ever, plus he's jacked and he has a machete. But what if like, a tank suddenly rolled in here? What then?

But then another part of me was just like duh, Gerson would build a foot trap out of some vines that would fucking flip tanks over and catapult them back to explode wherever they came from. He's pretty awesome.

Anyway, there's no story here. Tickby just thinks it's funny that I puked and I got a certificate anyway. The only thing ARGUABLY funny about how I puked is that I thought nobody knew I was puking because I snuck off into some bushes to puke. Tickby told me later that in fact everyone knew I was puking, and one of our co-survivors - an articulate and hilarious surgeon from Idaho - asked Tickby if I needed medical help.

But i didn't. Because I'm a survivor.

os dentes

As usual I don't know if this is a Brazil thing or a São Paulo thing or just a thing of the crowds we run with, but people here fucking LOVE brushing their teeth.

Public bathrooms are often equipped with mouthwash pumps and teeny-cups and sometimes baskets of dental floss. And people actually use them!

People also carry toothbrushes and little tubes of toothpaste in their purses and briefcases. It's unreal.

And i love it.

It creates a wonderful slumber party atmosphere in the public restrooms of Brazil. You walk into a restaurant or an office shizzad and find a gaggle of women chatting and laughing and brushing their dentes and spitting minty foam into the sinks.

It all feels so wholesome and warm. I wish I could stay I've started carrying around a tooth-cleaning kit myself, but it'll be too damn much fun to tell my dentist in the states about all this and watch his hopes soar and then tell him I'm still not into it because I don't like how mouthwash ruins the taste of Diet Coke.

pilates

Here in Brazil it is pronounced 'pee-LOTS', which is apt because I always drink a lot of water before class and pee out lots afterwards.

And it's awesome. My fondest memories of Brazil will be of the ceilings and roof beams at the Kaizen studio, where I've learned more Portuguese than Rosetta Stone and Muito Prazer combined.

Thanks to Pilates I can count to twelve, or at least know when someone else is doing it. I also know all kinds of key vocab like glutes, abs, knees, breathe in, breath out, and 'Let's go!'

It's not just the weird machines with pulleys and springs and rolly-carts that rule. It's also the bouncy balls and bean balls and foam noodles and plastic arc-y things. And also that I love exercise that you do while lying down.

The teachers are also pretty fantastic, not just in their knowledge of anatomy and rolly-carts, but also in their ability to put up with how weak i am. (Machines and rolly-carts often have to be adjusted and sometimes disassembled and reassembled to accommodate my 'arms-of-a-six-year-old.')

I like my Pilates teachers so much that I do odd little things to be considerate of them.

The first time Mark saw me spritzing perfume onto the crotch of my pants he asked - with his eyebrows -  'But why?'

And i explained that often while adjusting springs on the rolly carts a Pilates teacher's head can come awful close to one's chach and that I want mine to like me.

It's not that I think I smell. Or even that they'd care if I did. Or notice.

But like, what if I did, and they did, and then I was kicked out and put in jail and told to never come back to the best Pilates studio in São Paulo? Where then would I learn Portuguese?

rio sem poop

‘Wait, so there’s no poop in it?’ 

I was amazed! Fascinated and excited. How could something smell so much like poop and not be at least partially composed of poop? 

Such is the real-life mystery-science of the river Tiete, which is pronounced Chee-Eh-Tay, or, as it should perhaps be called, Shit Creek. 

There’s also the Pinheiros, pronounced Peen-yay-roos, or Shit Creek 2. 

These are the two rivers running through Sāo Paulo, and they look and smell like oozing poop lava. 

But awe-inspiringly, as my friend was explaining that day in his car, the filth and the stink are actually not poop! 

Credit is rather due to microbial microbes or something. (I missed it, I stopped listening so I could marvel at the magic non-poop.) Some small life forms that like...feed on the opposite of oxygen. Or something. ? Microscopic creatures who, at their flourishing thriving optimal best, smell like rancid farts. 

There are actually tons of scientists and environmental activists working to clean up both rivers, and they've apparently had a whole bunch of triumphs in the last few years, mainly upping the percentage of treated sewage, whatever the F that means. 

The poop-critters were born of environmental degradation, the degradation from pollution, the pollution from rapid city expansion over a small amount of time, and so on. I'm going to write a children's song about this soon, but not now. It's uber complex. 

My friend in the car said that some of the cleanup efforts were silly, like that they paid a bunch of dudes to pull trash out of the river but those people just left the trash on the side of the river and then it rained and the trash slid back in. 

He said 'like FDR's New Deal in the US, how they paid men to build things and then take them apart.'

I was about to retort 'um helLO, FDR's New Deal only got the US economy out of the Great Depression so I don't know where you get off bringing that noise up as like futility context things stuff.' 

But then I realized that I didn't actually know anything about the New Deal and the only reason I thought I did was because I played an orphan in the musical Annie in middle school and in it FDR is a character and sings a song about the New Deal and it's actually the mega-uber-happy ending of the play. So why would he and the New Deal be immortalized in Annie if neither had successfully ended the Great Depression?

Sorry, back to the ghost-poop. 

The most remarkable thing about it I think is that you get used to it. Mark and I wanted to walk some long distance one morning early on in our Brazil days, and this distance involved walking over one of the bridges. The stench was alarming as we got closer to the river, but I think only because your logic brain panics because it can only deduce that a Tyrannosaurus Rex just took a dump nearby and will step on you next. 

But then you realize it's not danger. It's just microbial microbes or something. It's just how the river is. (Though only for now. The eco-friends are scrambling hard to make it clean and great again.) And then you kind of stop noticing. Sort of.

*Also later i found out there is some poop in it.