Last Hours In Barra

Spent my last few hours in Bahia basking in the sun,
Lying on the beach observing the scene on the sands of Porto do Barra…
Felt like I was stockpiling heat for what promises to be a long winter up north…

Unadulterated beauty and exposed physiques everywhere…
Vendors singing melodic strains as they hawk their goods,
Sunglasses, lotions, handicrafts, necklaces, blankets, barbequed quejo,
Camarao, acaraje, cigarettes, fresh coconut water…

These last few days in Barra have been a glorious vacation… Haven’t gotten much done, the heat slows down the flow of things to a trickle, and the sun beating you down into submission each day forces your metabolism to decelerate. Everything is heavier, harder to move, in need of stimulation and impulse to draw it forth from beneath the spell of the heat.

I’m coming to the end of this particular journey, and have less to show for it than I’d hoped. Haven’t gotten around to cleaning up my writings on the Candomble ceremony I watched, but I should have that finished up in the next day or two. But in a larger sense I feel defeated by the sheer scale and size of this place, what it does to your perceptions, how overwhelming each moment is. I suppose all places can be like that, but there’s something very welcoming about this Bay, that encourages assimilation… Many people call America the melting pot, but in truth, the metaphor sociologists have been using in recent years to describe it is “a tossed salad.” The elements inside it don’t dissolve, they retain their distinct flavors and identity, and intermingle in a rich combination of flavors. Brazil, this Bahia I’ve been trying to transcribe, this is much more akin to a melting pot… Everything melts and loses its original form, assimilates, acquires the characteristics of things unforeseen. Blood lines, cuisines, dialects, beats, they all trade chromosomes on their way to a transformation into a new hybrid, a strong cocktail of strange juices fermenting slowly in the humidity…

This blog was a vain, foolish attempt to capture this initial Brazil experience in words, to transcribe the impressions of this trip into something shared. Every interaction I’ve had, every subtle flavor, linguistic nuance, passing car with it’s stereo blaring, every vendor, thief, working girl and sun worshipper adds up to a scene that my language fails to describe. I don’t have the words for this state of mind, it’s laid back vibe eludes my convoluted sentences and excessive rhyme schemes. This place is beyond the stilted gray overcast moods so pervasive in English, the tongue loosens under these skies and waxes lyrical, drunk on spiced seafood stews and cod fish curries. I can’t capture this place, I can’t even take a proper snapshot of it. This state of being transcends my corporatized mind, slips through my safety nets, floats off into an understanding that only those who live in the tropics can fully grasp. I am no brasileiro, I’m a fraud, fronting, bearing an outer image but with a soul tied to the American-identity dillemna, race questions and appropriation issues and hips forever hemmed in by Puritanism and an absence of abandon in public life…

I would raise children in Brasil, because they would elude some of the most pressing questions that’ve consumed so much time in my life, the issues that need to be explored to be understood. In terms of racial identity, religious identity, the role of music in life, the folks in Brazil are ahead of the curve. The gene pool is ahead of the curve, melding into new combinations far ahead of the homogonous monocultures that populate the rest of the planet. I’ve never been anywhere with so many interracial couples hanging about, organically drawn to each other, without the constructs of race and prejudice framing their interactions as starkly as they do in America…. It’s OK to love people across lines here, to see people for people, and not the constructs we’ve created to house their characters. Or maybe the grass is always greener, and I’m seeing only what I want to see… But this place is magical, Bahia, this is a bay area filled with immigrants enthralled by what they found here… And I want IN…