Archive for Transitions in Time
The Tragicomic Life of Intinerant Musicians
About two years ago I posted a story, nay, a real life saga in 8 parts, about getting my guitar from Toronto to Brazil on Air Canada.
The following video by David Carroll shows that I’m not alone!
Sevens and fourteens
In the last ten days, the number of groups of Brazilians I’ve run into — at Queen’s Park, Bloor Street, Younge Street, restaurants, libraries, coffee shops, various places on campus — must have surpassed 20. I say groups, because if I were to count individuals, the number would probably be close to a hundred. Some are families with kids, some are young people college age, and some look like they can’t be older than 15, and go around in groups of 10-15, with name tags hanging from their necks.
Reason? It’s July. That’s when Brazilians get their winter break from school. Brazilian economy is doing well — as mentioned by the New York Times on Monday, and on Yahoo! main page on Tuesday. And earlier today Yahoo! Brazil presented a little note on why “studying abroad rules.”
Now, when I first when saw these 15-year-old Brazilian boys and girls walking around St. Michael’s College last week, I thought to myself — “ah, July. School break. But gosh, these kids look awfully young to be here all by themselves!” But I then immediately censured myself: “Ester, what are you talking about? You really have turned into a regular grown-up, with all this but-they’re-too-young-for-that talk. When you first left Brazil, you were 14 years old yourself, you were completely alone, and you did not think it was a big deal at all.”
That was in July 1994. I left Brazil on the very same day they introduced the current currency, ”Real”, and a period of unprecedented financial stability started. I had been studying English for about a year, and 30 days in England did wonders to it. The family I stayed with was absolutely fantastic, and we’re still friends to this day. If that experience hadn’t been so positive, maybe I would have never made the decision to go abroad for university — and stay abroad for as long as I have.
An awful lot of things happened in those thirty days, and I can still remember the sequence of events, as if it had been last year. My learning curve back them was simply unbelievable. And this thought then gave rise to the following realization:
In July 1994, I was 14 years old. This was 14 years ago. I am now 28. So that trip marks the current mid-point of my life. Now, if we further break this span of 28 years into 4 times 7 years, we find the following:
- 0-7 years old: tons of things happened in my life. I arrived in the world. Learned to walk, to talk, to read, and many other fantastic things. The world went from the 1970′s into the 1980′s. Esterical learning curve: extremely steep.
- 7-14 years old: tons of things happened again. The whole passage from childhood to puberty to adolescence. First boyfriends. Starting to learn a foreign language. Going abroad for the first time. Starting to learn how to play the guitar. The 1990′s. Learning curve still quite steep.
- 14-21: again, tons of things. At 14 I hadn’t even started high school; seven years later I had already graduated from undergrad. Travelled some more. Learned some more languages. Moved to a different country. Started graduate school. Into the new millenium. Learning curve: still steep.
- 21-28: not much has happened. No new decade, no new millenium. I was in a PhD program at 21; I am still in a PhD program at 28, albeit not the same one. Living in North America then, still living in North America now. Sure, I’ve moved around a bit. Sure I’ve changed programs. But what baffles me is that for the past seven years — that is, most of my adult life and 25% of my entire life –I have been introducing myself as an international doctoral student. That’s a long time. Time to stop either being international or being a student, maybe both. Learning curve: seems to have gone completely flat.
The coincidences do not end here. July is the 7th month of the year. I was born on the 14th day of the month. It took me 3.5 years to do my undergraduate: half of the time I’ve already spent in graduate school. I think I really need to graduate before I turn 29 and disturb this lovely pattern. But will I be able to? I wish I could tell…
What baffles me that in the same period of seven years people who did even think of existing have managed not only to make their ways into existence, but also to walk and to read. And some others have gone from childhood through puberty through adolescence, and have started to learn a foreign language, and play the guitar and travel abroad; they have had their first kiss or their first child (or second, or third); they have got married and divorced; they have started and finished high school; they have started and finished university. As a matter of fact, someone I met in my first year as a graduate student at Massey College has gone from being a high school student to being a fellow graduate student at Massey College. And I’m still here! Esterical learning curve: completely stagnant.
So maybe I am growing old after all, displaying all that kind of begrudging envy that adults often display towards the younger generation. I have crossed the line from trying to act older than my age, to trying to act younger than my age. I wonder how old I’ll have to become to learn to be wise and patient? Obviously, I still have a long way to go before reaching that age yet. And part of me says “yeay!” to that, while the other part goes “bummer!.” Interesting creatures human beings are.
“Sudden Changes” or “Perpetual Adolescence”
A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with my friend Danilo – I hadn’t talked to him since I visited him in Montreal in back in February. Having nothing but good intentions, he asked me what anyone would think was a perfectly harmless question: “So, what’s new?”
I sighed. And from the inner depths of my soul I found mustered the energy to whisper, almost guiltily: ”Nothing.”
“What do you mean by ‘nothing’? Three months have come and gone, you’ve been to Brazil and back, and you tell me nothing’s happened?”
”Exactly… [sigh] I mean, my thesis continues to be at the same point, my uncertainties and worries and agonies still the same. The computer I bought when you last saw me still hasn’t been setup to work properly. And even my toe, which I hurt that day we went iceskating together is still bruised.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. Seasons have changed, but everything else is the same. Actually not even the season seems to have changed that much, given that it’s freezing, and it’s late May already.”
“I know, it is super cold. But listen, is it really true your toe hasn’t healed yet?”
“It hasn’t. The nail on the big toe on my right foot fell late April — a couple of days before I came back to Canada. The one on the left foot has 50% of its surfaced tinged in some type of bluish-purple — and I’m not talking nail-polish here. As a matter of fact, before the other nail fell, I was keeping them both (and the other eight) covered with dark nail polish, which makes them not only look nice, but it makes me forget that they’re hurt. Were it not for that, I’d be limping to this day, just from the sight of them.”
“How about you computer?”
“Ah, that’s another soap opera in and of itself. That Windows Vista is absolutely horrible. Completely dysfunctional. And Microsoft Office 2007… I mean, if I wanted to completely re-learn everything I know about using a computer, I’d rather have bought a Mac. But I don’t have time for this right now, I have a thesis to finish. Anyways, my original copies of XP and Office 2003 are in a storage box in Oshawa, and I still haven’t managed to go get them — and they’re not that easy to find for purchase either (nor are they that cheap when found).
“On top of this, as soon as I got to Toronto the computer decided to crash completely — a day before I start working — a job for which I need a functional computer! In the middle of the emergency, a friend of mine lent me her installation cds, and it was a team effort to get the hard disk reformatted and then collecting all the drivers to make the computer work… And all of this just as a quick band-aid fix: the code I had didn’t match her disks, which means I had 30 days to go get my own copies and then restart the whole reformatting procedure again. ”29 days left for activation… 28… 27… 13..12…11.. 5..4…3… 2…1…0…0…0…”
***
In the week following this conversation, several sudden changes started to severally suddenly happen, which makes me believe that things do not always develop linearly, but in discreet (and sometime not very discreet) jumps:
1) It all began with the big tree in front of where I live and work. One day it was there: big, leafy, emblematic. Then two hours later, there’s only a stump — a diametrically significant stump, but still just a stump — all rotten inside too.
2) Then a guest who had repeatedly confirmed his stay with us ended up not showing up. Motive: heart attack. Which made me think that no plan is so rigid that cannot be changed last minute. Also reinforces the whole carpe diem thing. (For those who are worried: the ex-future-guest is recovering well, and is already back home from the hospital).
3) The weather changed literally overnight: one day it was 12 degrees, the next was 36. That’s right: 12 to 36 (and now we’re back to 12, which proves that sudden changes are not necessarily irreversible).
4) My computer did crash as expected, except for it being three days after the expected (Monday morning, and not Friday night… just to keep me on my toes). But then it so happened that my other friend had brought my boxes from Oshawa, including the one with my computer disks. In two hours, I managed to reinstall the operational system, and all the drivers and everything, all by myself this time (the experience of how to do it was still fresh in my memory, and the drivers all ready to go on my USB). The good news was that this time around the product key I had was the right one – which meant that after three months wondering why I had bought a new computer when the old obsolete one I had worked so much better, I finally finally felt the satisfaction I expected to feel from purchasing a brand new computer.
And so we lived happily ever after. Or sort of. I’m still struggling with the new WordPress (what with all the computer difficulties I just had a perfect excuse not to blog, and now that I’m back, it all looks so different!) and Windows Player 11 also requires some adjusting (it’s like, all white! No psychedelic patterns going round and round! So strange!”) But I’m so happy to have a new computer that finally works!
5) My supervisor went from ”skeptical that my proposed changes to my dissertation were either necessary, desirable or feasible” to “very excited about the new direction my dissertation is going” Yeay! Given the insight gained in 3) above, I’ll carpe that whenever it comes by (which is not as often as I’d wish).
6) Three months after stopping taking my anti-acne medication (I’d stopped taking it when I was in Toronto back in February because of the extreme cold, thus interrupting a six-month treatment half-way through), my acne is now coming back, like flowers in the spring. Graduate school will do that to you: prolong your adolescence beyond what’s reasonable. Oh the joys.
7) And the most recent sudden change in the last couple of weeks (and final item on the list): the nail on the big toe on my left foot has fallen. All by itself. I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t even see when it happened. I was wearing sandals. It was night. It was raining. I got home. I took off the wet sandals and started drying my feet. And then I notice that half a toenail had gone MIA. It hadn’t even hurt. When morning came, I didn’t think twice before going getting a pedicure. Hide it beneath bright pink nail polish, I say. It is, after all, summertime: time when you can actually go outside without every inch of your body needing to be covered. I’m carpe diem-ing that, missing toenails and returning acne notwithstanding.
Moral of the story: ok, so somethings have changed. Good. If only all the booboos in the world could be fixed with a touch of bright pink nail polish… And it’s the realization that they can’t that drives home the point that maybe I’ve given the adolescent in me too much of a free reign.
A new approach to deja vu
Back in Toronto. Again. Living in the same place as this time last year. Same job as last year too. Dissertation? A bit different, but still seems at the same stage. You’re back again? But were you not in Brazil? Changed your mind? Yes, yes, and no. This was the plan. Just not sure it was the best plan ever.
I plan too much, and analyse the past too much too. Which means there’s very little energy to live in the present a little. New resolution: to live in the present for a change. To accept the moment, instead of always rushing to the next stage. In this, I’m copycatting a friend of mine who has planned that, from now on, she will be more spontaneous. Deliberate spontaneity. Paradoxical? Will have to do for now.
In my eight years in North America, I never felt homesick, except for the last winter, when I was counting the days to go back home. So back home I went and having spent the last few months there, it took me less than a week back in Toronto to feel homesicker than I’ve ever been ever. Funny. But here’s where the whole live in the moment thing helps.
I saw my boss yesterday for the first time since I’ve been back. He says to me out of the blue: “Ester, I don’t know whether you’re happy to be back, but we’re sure happy that you’re back!” I hadn’t even been complaining or anything. He just said that out of nowhere. “Glad someone at least is happy,” was my first thought. But then I suddenly realized that people seemed generally pleased to see me again. Not over-the-moon happy, but still not at all unhappy. Even the owner of a restaurant I used to go to frequently said that he had noticed my absence. If restaurant owners said they noticed your absence, that meant that you couldn’t have been completely invisible. A little eccentric maybe, but invisible no. And if your boss said he’s happy to see you again, then you weren’t completely useless. A little off there somewhere, but still capable of making a difference. And that felt good. Dissertation writing is not always as flattering.
Yesterday I got an email turning down a paper I submitted for publication last year. It was surreal to see that the reviewer’s comments were almost identical to what my committee members’ comments on the same piece of work. It felt like a deja vu, but, oddly enough, it also had a surprisingly reassuring effect on me. By this I mean the same kind of reassurance one might feel when a second medical opinion confirms an unfavourable diagnosis. But still, that’s something.
Still on the deja vu theme, today was my first class back in Tai Chi. Same instructor as last summer, same introductory class as last summer. His didactic skills are not the most remarkable, and standing like a scarecrow still makes three minutes feel like three hours, but hey, that’s really good for keeping my tendinitis away. And to think that this time last year I didn’t even know what tendinitis was. So something have actually changed in the last year. Good. I think I’ll stop keeping tabs now. Seize the day, they say. As long as the tendinitis be kept away, the day shall be seized. Now back to work.
Month IV
In “About a Boy,” Hugh Grant´s character has so much time in his hands that he decides to divide it in units of 30 minutes. Shower, 1 unit. Hair cut, 2 units. Playing pool, 5 units.
I suspect that my unit of time is 4 months. Not to repeat what I said about this last year, let us have a look at 2008.
We now begin the fourth month of the current year. I spent the first of these four months in Brasília. The second I spent in Canada, and now it´s been a month already since I returned to Brasília. At the end of this month, I go to Canada again, this time to spend a bit longer there. Did you guess how long? Four months.
My year of 2008 will therefore be neatly divided into three units of four months: the first unit going to and fro, the second to, and the third, fro. Curious, isn´t it? Or is it that I too have too much time on my hands?
Montreal
Montreal is cool. Even when the temperature is minus 40, there’s something in the city that always warms my heart. When I was 19 I went there to spend four months. I ended up staying two years, and was really sad I could no longer stay. I ended up moving to Toronto, thinking that it would be just as cool. But it wasn’t. It’s hard for a city to be as cool as Montreal.
When I lived in Montreal, people would often tell me that they’d seen me walking all by myself with a big smile on my face. I was much grumpier in Toronto. I don’t know whether the difference was in the actual place, or in my life circumstances; whether the external or internal landscape. But there’s something about Montreal that makes me at easy within minutes of my arrival, no matter how stressed I am on my way there.
I lived in Toronto for much longer, and made more friends there. But Montreal always made me feel more at home. I wonder whether I would have decided to return to Brazil if I’d stayed there. There’s no way to know.
The closest friends I had when I lived in Montreal actually lived in Campinas, Brazil. Even though they were so far away, they were the people with whom I shared all my adventures and new experiences in Canada.
It’s then an interesting coincidence that about the time last year that I decided to return to Brazil, independently of one another they both ended up moving to Montreal. I must have said good things about the place.
I wonder what it would have been like if we had manage to live in Montreal all at the same time. This was all that I wanted when I lived there. But who knows: maybe we needed to go separately, so that each could get most out of the experience.
Impossible to know. But I was happy to spend a few days in Montreal in this winter visit to Canada. Montreal always makes me nostalgic, and now that my friends from back when are living there, the feeling of nostalgia was even more intense. There’s no way of knowing what would have happened if what actually happened hadn’t happened. Subjunctives are merely subjunctives, and the variables are many. But to see people who knew me back at a time when I walked down streets with a broad smile on my face and to walk those smile-inducing streets did me a lot of good. And I mean it not in the subjunctive. I mean real, actual, tangible good. Which is one of the best kinds of good.
Experiential learning
This week I went to Sao Paulo to renew my visa. It was a good trip, and I did a ton of things, except for renewing my visa (through my own incompetence: I forgot to book an appointment, and the next one would be for mid-November).
After crying a bit over the spilled milk, I decided to do something useful with the trip. I took the opportunity to pay a visit to the Paulo Freire Institute, where his archives are (http://www.paulofreire.org/).
It is an very unpretentious building in a very unpretentious neighbourhood. The people inside the building are also very unpretentious. I asked the secretary if I could take a tour of the building even though I hadn’t booked an appointment. She called to a guy next door, and ask him if he could do it. He said sure, and asked me take a seat around a table in tiny room filled of books. Both people’s clothes and manners were very plain and simple, as was everything in and about the room.
He said that the Institute was founded in 1991 when his father came back from a lecture at UCLA. I had no idea who his father was. Then he said that in the first five years his father was very active in the life of the Institute, until he passed away in 1997. Then I started to have a strong suspicion of who his father was. Then he said that after his father passed away, all his books were taken to the room where we were. At this point I was filled with goosebumps.
Turns out he is the youngest of Paulo Freire’s children, and the books in the room belonged to Paulo Freire’s personal collection, going back to the 40′s. I found a copy of Karl Popper’s “Open Society and its Enemies” from 1959, and another from Jaeger’s “Paideia” from 1963, all filled with marginal notes and a summary at the end, in Freire’s own hand! Interestingly enough, I cite both these books in my thesis, and on the back cover of Popper’s book Freire makes a reference to Jaeger, which is extra cool! In the other couple of minutes that I perused the library I also saw Russell and Freud, and many others. Definitely have to go back for more.
Lut, Freire’s son, gave me a brief tour of the archives, and introduced me to everyone he saw, telling jokes and stories along the way, as if we were childhood friends. Then he offered to give me a tour of the offices upstairs, but remembered that he had to rush to pick up his daughter from school. He asked the secretary to continue the tour, and asked me if I could go back the next day, so he could show me a school nearby where they develop some of their programs. I nodded enthusiastically.
Lizeth, the secretary, took me upstairs, where all the administrative offices are. Everywhere she’d stop (treasury, communications, publishing department, distance learning, kitchen, international relations) she’d introduce me almost solemnly, and they would welcome me again as if I were a family friend, and my interrupting them were part of the script. And it wasn´t like I had booked a time or anything, nor even said much about what I do or come from.
I was sad not to have taken a camera, but decided to go back the next day, before returning to Brasilia in the evening. Unfortunately, Lut wasn´t able to come, which frustrated me a little, because now that I was expecting to speak to someone so close to Freire, I had a lot of personal questions to ask. But this only last a couple of seconds: I already felt too lucky about how available he´d been the previous day, when I had no appointment nor the vaguest expectation to speak to anyone like him.
Besides, there was plenty to do at the Institute, and Lizeth made sure I was never bored. I was shown the school all the same, saw many interesting things (including a copy of the manuscript of the 1968 original of “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”!!!) and spoke to many interesting people, from people in the board of directors to researchers from across the Atlantic.
It was one of those trips where the detour is so much more memorable than what you had bargained for!!! But I´ll still have to bargain for a visa… Such is life!
While my guitar gently weeps (part 3)
Part 3
Travelling in Time
So we went for a snack: my friend empty handed offering to help me who, with a guitar and a backpack on my shoulders, refused his help. Reasons for said refusal: I am so used to carrying my backpack that without it I feel naked. As for guitar, customary jealousy (“nobody touches my guitar!”) was accentuated by the imminent separation (“let me just say goodbye to Archimedes…”).
Since we gave ourselves plenty of time going to the airport, there were still another couple of hours to kill before boarding time. We strolled leisurely to the other extremity of the terminal (where snacks could be found) stopping to admire the permanent exhibit on the way (I really love those floating cubes! Sooo relaxing…). We finally sat down to eat something overpriced and unsatisfactory just to kill time (the options for food at the Toronto airport are terrible. The airport in Brasilia is a thousand times better. There’s even a cinema!)
We chatted and we chatted. We compared our pasts, presents and futures as travelers. We reminisced about the days when we enjoyed bragging about “our favorite airport” and exchanging notes on how to avoid jet lag or tricks to manage to fall asleep in a transcontinental flight.
We reflected nostalgically about a time when we thought someone was just being snobbish when she said she had grown tired of flying. How can anyone grow tired of flying? We laughed thinking of those distant days when the mere thought of flying gave us goose bumps; a time when we would count the days until flying, our dreamy eyes already greedy for the little sachets and other flight goodies to be collected like a trophy.
Those days are gone. The future is now. To our surprise we find that those snobbish people whining about being tired of flying are ourselves. Our turn has arrived. I dared say to my friend something I had long felt, but had never had the courage to say out loud: that if I had to spend the next five years without flying anywhere at all, I would not complain a bit. I saw in my friend’s eyes that I had hit a nerve: I had expressed a feeling of his that he did not know he had. He smiled gratefully.
Turns out this trilogy follows Star Wars, in that it is composed of more than three parts.
Don’t miss the next episode of this fascinating journey through time, space, bureaucracy and esterical brains.
It was so strange that it rained…
In Brazil, to indicate surprise
we sometimes use the expression:
“Wow! I think it’s gonna rain!”
I don’t know why or how
this expression came to be.
The fact is that we use it
Even when it has nothing
to do with the weather
(something that really used to puzzle me
as a child
and still does).
Sometimes it’s an unexpected phone call.
Sometimes a long-promised visit.
Sometimes a spouse, sibling, child or the like
Who out of the blue
Decides to do the dishes.
Or make the bed.
On this first day of October
something extraordinary occurred.
It rained.
For the first time since May 29th.
Sunday had brought rumours
of brief scattered showers
here and there
just to make you want it more.
I myself didn’t see any
Nor did I believe anyone
Who said they’d seen.
The forecast was for the end of the month
Maybe mid-October
if we were lucky.
But as the evening fell on Monday
It was neither rumour nor scattered.
The whole sky came down
All at once
Including thunders and lightenings.
It was just like a quadrille
During the feast of St. Jean-Baptiste
One side of the street cried out:
“Look, it’s raining!”
And the other side replied:
“It cannot be!”
In no time, everyone was staring
out of the window,
Thinking the rain much more thrilling
than the evening news
Children bounced up and down
Adults cried for joy
There were even fireworks
Pretending to be lightening and thunder
It was just like we had won
The World Cup Final
And my father, who had always been hurt
whenever anyone referred to “rain”
as “bad” or “ugly” weather
admired, along with the rest of the city
the beauty of the storm,
the birthday present
he had desired the most.
The evening was more festive
than winning a Championship
More festive than a birthday party
Or the feast of St. Jean-Baptiste
It was the end of the winter
And the rain had conquered the drought
The feast was called “spring”
The party was called “rain”
The weather could not be more beautiful
It was a visit much waited for
A long needed shower
Cleasing and refreshing
Bodies, streets and souls.
It was Thanksgiving
and Thanksgetting
