I went running a lot in Brazil. A lot. I put all of my focus into the physical aspect of my life, and put my brain on the backburner. Whenever it resurfaced, I summoned more energy.
Seconds would tick by without me realizing it. Breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Rhythm. Control. Pace. Endurance. All things that we need.
When you're in exchange, everything is going by so fast, and your mind can't keep up with it all. There's no way. I am a solid month behind on my journal, still writing about those last weeks. There's a pile of papers on my desk that I brought back from Brazil that I haven't even touched, except to separate them from what I need for college.
My books are in my closet. I thought I'd want to read them, but I haven't gone near them, except to revisit the one I'm still reading, A Batalha do Apocalypse, every now and then, so I don't completely lose the story. I crack open the cover, find my bookmark, and read another of the short chapters in that massive tome. Then, satisfied that I am having no more difficulty than before, I put it down and do something else.
It's a constant tug of war between the two halves of my brain. What's in the United States is taking control, but what's in Brazil, man, it's fighting.
And it means that, in my own way, I'm still there.
.......
I just got my roommate and rooming selection for college. I'm back to my old ways, eagerly analyzing the catalog, plotting the next four years of my life. It never works that way, of course. But it's good to have an idea. Plans can be changed.
Plans can be changed. That's what I tell myself. Sometimes it's hard to believe. I write it down. Plans can be changed. Take it and mold it in your hands. Melt it down and recast it. It's malleable.
But now, it's just becoming so concrete.
.......
Half of it is waking up. My mother gave my bed away and replaced it with a futon, which I never knew could be so comfortable.
I've already gone into town three or four times, just like I used to do last summer, when I realized that Main Street is really only three miles of a hilly walk from my house. I had already gotten my placement in Fortaleza. Better start walking, I thought to myself. You'll be doing a lot of it in Brazil.
Except I didn't, really. Not nearly as much as I thought I would.
But at the same time, way more than I'd imagined.
There's really no preparing for living abroad. No amount of research that you do, no amount of blogs that you read, or language that you learn, can prepare you. It is something to be lived.
.......
Rhythm. This is what keeps up going. It pounds like a drum, perhaps the last steady thing in the muck. It's the only thing of which we're certain. Night before day, day before night.
This was my schedule, in it's more basic forms. I would wake up. I'd eat. I'd do something. I'd eat again. I'd do more. Then eat. Then I'd keep doing stuff until I slept.
I always slept, even if it was just for two hours.
Sleep is good.
.......
Getting a roommate is like getting a host family. You know you're going to a new place, one that you've most certainly never been. You're going to be living with people you don't know.
But it doesn't reek of déjà vu. It's like what Disney did to Hamlet. They dressed it down, changed a few details, and called it The Lion King.
At least I'm staying in the country.
.......
But there are times where I don't know what I'm doing. My body remembers, but my mind doesn't.
How many steps there are that lead to the basement. I counted them one time, when I was taking the dogs out. The dog didn't want to do. So I coaxed her with every step she took.
How to play the piano with the pedals. I had a keyboard, but no pedals. I was worried I'd forget how to play with my entire body. If I don't think about it, the muscle memory kicks in. But I can't remember what I did unless I read the notes off the page.
I take solace in the fact that I am still shocked by how flimsy our doorknobs are. And I swear, the sheets of toilet paper here are smaller. Bigger rolls, smaller sheets.
My dogs remembered me. Isn't that cute?
There are very few things that I control.
.......
The whole thing is ironic. You go away to a foreign land, without knowing anybody, without knowing the language, without having much to anchor yourself to.
Night before day, day before night. That was my anchor.
This is crazy, I thought on the shuttle bus to the hotel in Miami. I had just arrived, July 27th, 2011, sometime in the early afternoon. I sat in that seat, thinking about how many other people had sat in that very seat, imagining their stories and histories, as if they left some kind of ghostly imprint. This is crazy. I am crazy.
The world is full of crazy people.
Crazy is good. Crazy makes things work.
I am still in awe that anything still works, really. You can't see the forest for the trees? I wish I had your problem. I can't see the trees for the forest.
It's a jungle out there.
.......
Everything goes by so quickly, especially in today, where people around the world are accessible by just a few taps of a button. I've never thought of that before. Not really.
Not until I play it through my memory. It's never occurred to me to ask. It's everyday life. Nothing I've ever felt compelled to examine.
Everything travels so quickly now. Even the mail is faster. Fourteen business days to go anywhere in the world. That's only three weeks.
The days of the week pass by faster than I ever thought they would. Monday bleeds into Thursday. The past two weeks might as well be in the point of a tesseract. I swear we went to dance forró in Brazil after my plane touched down in Dulles.
It's a matter of which memories are brighter. I remember being in the Miami International Airport (also known as MIA, or Missing In Action) and staring at the little stands. I remember going through customs and speaking Portuguese. I remember making my way through Dulles, after having convinced everybody that I don't speak English, in that removed state. I played the part so well, if it wasn't for the electronic voices kindly reminding me that the walkway was going to end, I wouldn't have been able to follow the signs to get to the baggage claim.
Perhaps it was juvenile, but it was fun. Sometimes, I just need to set my own pace in the way I do things.
.......
Facebook stalking. That's the first thing that came to mind. I did this with my host family too. I took their email and plugged it in the search function on Facebook.
But then I thought of an article I read a few weeks ago. It was on the correlation between social networking and loneliness. We spend so much time representing ourselves online, the article said.
We show what we want people to see. What we want people to access in those few taps of a button. But is it the best representation of ourselves?
Probably not.
I sent my roommate an email.
This was, actually, the first thing I did with my host family. Facebook waited.
I want it noted that I use the term "Facebook stalking" in the most colloquial way possible. I want that on the record.
.......
One year is a long time. A really long time. People ask me, "A whole year without your mother? Didn't you miss her?"
Yes, I did. I missed her terribly. Yet at the same time, no, I didn't miss her at all. My mind was on a million other different things. There was just no time to miss my mother.
It was a long time coming.
.......
I still remind myself. Plans can be changed.
But who am I to know if they should be?
Laura has a meme on her computer that I thought was hilarious. It says: "Keep Calm and Be Brazilian."
.......
Life goes on. Life doesn't care about your troubles, or whatever you've built for yourself. Life is that anchor that keeps us fettered to reality. Life is the festooning of That Which Grounds Us.
Night before day, day before night.
Right now, I'm running to catch up.
Perhaps, with the Fourth of July right around the corner, things will start to make a little more sense. And I like to remind myself, too, that not everything in Life has to make sense.
Only a few things.
- Jake
