Dança comigo?

Four weeks from now, dearest denizens, carnaval will be in full swing, so start stretching those hips! And hamstrings. Glutes, calves, your back and neck... We've talked about this; you'll get a full-body workout, all in the name of good fun and great music.

Four weeks from now, sweetie darlings, I'll have switched winter for summer. No carnaval in Salvador without Ivete these days, so let's pay her a visit at Farol da Barra, the Barra Lighthouse, not far from where we used to live, and join the warm-up party. Let's go! 🥁

 

Festaaa (só falta você) 🎉

Rhythm divine

Carnaval is on, sweetie darlings! The pre-carnival street parties, blocos, have been going on for weeks, but this last week before Lent pulls out all the stops for the biggest and loudest street party on Earth.

Oh, to be in Salvador right now. Yesterday, Ivete Sangalo (a fantastic, formidable baiana) opened the folia with this song, three minutes of riotous joy. 

Get your heart pumping, your feet thumping, and have an ardent, bouncy weekend, my dearest, dearest denizens. 🎊

O Natal tá chegando! 🎄

Temperature: 2/35.5 degrees with more snow on the way.

Eating: Greek chicken gyros. Yes, we do still eat meat on occasion at Casa Dita. I ruined the boys by taking them to a churrascaria. On every trip to Brazil. My infinite bad. Which I’ve been trying to rectify. But what did they ask for just the other night? Poulet au vinaigre aka Lyonnaise garlic vinegar chicken. It’s a process.

Drinking: a wrappucino. What’s a wrappucino? I have no idea, but I bet if I had one, I’d have extraterrestrial wrap-it-all-up energy oozing out of every orifice. Which sounds like sci-fi gone horribly wrong. Maybe just a cafezinho then. (Yes. Afternoon coffee. Again. It's a process.)

Listening: Kissing and a-hugging, dancing and a-loving, wearing next to nothing, burning hot as an oven… That would be the B-52s, folks, proud purveyors of love and unity through music and pop culture since 1977. What Christmas with my sister’s family will look like. On a scale of one to are-we-there-yet, how excited am I? Stoked, sweetie darlings.

Watching: I have never been less excited about the World Cup. As if the tournament in Russia wasn’t bad enough. Much ado about nothing or genuine reasons to boycott? No one does pissed-off-and-for-all-the-right-reasons-ones-I-will-explain-in-an-educated-yet-entertaining-fashion-if-you-can-focus-for-more-than-a-TikTok late night better than John Oliver.

Reading: Everything the Light Touches by Janice Pariat, and Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us by Brian Klaas. Highly recommended by yours truly, madly, deeply.

Writing: up a storm so that everything gets wrapped up before the holidays. Hmm, so that’s why I concocted that stimulant of a wrappucino...

Thinking: ...not that I’m in need of a stimulant, the smiles, giggles and shenanigans of my nieces...ai meu Deus, that's motivation enough.

Feeling: There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart. (From the poem A Grateful Heart by Celia Thaxter.)

P.S. I will stop by before Christmas. 🤝

Bate forte o tambor 🥲

 

 

That, sweetie darlings, is Pelourinho, Cidade Alta, Salvador, Brazil. How long does it take to get down to Cidade Baixa? Thirty seconds by elevator. Oh yes. Look it up! This world is full of wonders, isn't it? 🥰

Obrigado à vida que me tem dado tanto

 

Oh, sweetie darlings, I got the most wonderful gift for my birthday courtesy of my Dad. He had finally, after years of careful consideration (you know how these things go), digitized all the ciné films and slides he’d filmed and taken in Brazil and during our pit stops between South America and Europe (we did some exploring on the way). Filming and photographing are hobbies of his, so what I now have, oh dearest denizens, it's a treasure trove, a time machine, a magic carpet ride. I’ve been going through them all week, forcing my family to take part (“Mom, I don’t know these people!” “But you must remember that street, it’s hardly changed!”), and it has been so moving and rousing I’m sure I’ve been a bit…tiresome. Am I getting old, is it these times we live in, the forced separation? Don’t know, don’t care, I’m just so happy and grateful that these moments have been stored and that so many memories have been restored, and I know I can’t go back but I can look back, step back in time, just for a visit, and feel my parents smiling in my soul.

The shape of my heart

Back to the future

The bad news: I'm back. The good news: I still fit in my jeans, which is nice since going out in a bikini is no longer an option, and nothing short of a miracle after a carefully premeditated and conscientiously executed attempt to consume some two hundred acarajés, a bovine, all the seafood and desserts you could name and some you have never heard of, all washed down with guaraná, sweet coffee and some very fine cachaças. You do not want to see the contents of my suitcases. I could open a supermarket, except I wouldn't sell any of the goodies I brought back for anything, I just couldn't.

Bahia did me good. Brazil, she heals me. I'm descansada and bem passada, rested and roasted. Funny how you sometimes don't realize how badly you need a break until you give yourself permission to unplug. I did, and fully embraced living without clock or calendar, amazed at how they search you for sharp objects at the airport but what do they hand you when your unidentified fried object of an airline meal arrives: cutlery to carve up whatever and whoever looks tastier; how on some hauls you can only resentfully dream of the liquids and lotions on sale beyond the Strip Here And Then Bend Over There checkpoint because they will all be taken away from you in the next said checkpoint unless you had the foresight to bring along those silly silly little containers and good luck trying to transfer anything into them when turbulence it is from start to finish (I say drop off the gentleman who lost some very expensive beverages and the lady who was forced to hand over a small spaful of stuff at Helmand because they looked and sounded pissed enough to win the war on terror in five minutes flat); how many shades of red, green and gold there are; how there's fruit and then there's fruit; how Salvador had grown but how some things never change; and how, sitting on the beach, enjoying the sand, the wind and the water, I felt like what the horizon looked like, as I hadn't felt in a long time: calm, clear, whole.

Fast forward to the present, here where the sky hangs low, the rhythm stomps instead of swaying and people sound as if they were talking backwards. Our house had taken a beating courtesy of the seasawing temperatures. A landslide of snow falling off the roof had torn off both the gutter and the downpour from the southern side of the house and a rather freakish phenomenon had killed our internet connection on the northern side. No fun at all when you have some catching up to do, news, gossip, and yeah, work, but it is what it is, it will all be sorted out eventually, everything is going to be all right.

Until then, plan B, a.k.a. Hubby's phone, which I've confiscated and hate using, damn annoying nonexistent buttons, illogical apps and programming, but as I said, it is what it is, on with the show now playing at Whipped Cream where I'm picking up where I left off and guest blogging about revisions. Hope I didn't sound too harsh. It's my personal take, based on my limited experience, of course. If it annoys you, I'm sorry. If it helps, I'm glad.

I hope the rest of the year is as good for you as the last two weeks were for me. So I don't know you. It doesn't mean I don't care. Happy Groundhog Day and Chinese New Year, Feliz Festa de Yemanjá. Happy Wednesday and forever after, my dearest, dearest denizens.

Sentimental journey

Sorry, I'm not in. I'm island hopping, mango chopping, moqueqa popping, flip-flopping, shoe shopping, gostoso spotting and all around daily grind dropping in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

I'll have cried like a baby as we landed and I'll cry like an even bigger baby when it's time to leave, I'm sure. If they do manage to get me back on that plane, I'll be back in February. See you then, dearest, dearest, denizens!

No, that's not a picture of me. That baby turtle was born in Porto de Galinhas, Pernambuco, in January 2008. The tiny hatchlings made their way into the Atlantic with a gathering of uncharacteristically quiet homines sapientes looking on. Only one in a thousand make it back to the beach of their birth, but those that do, land in that very same sand. So maybe it is a pic of yours truly madly deeply. I may not have been born in Brazil, but right now, I'm feeling like one happy turtle, back where my life began. Ü

Sob o sol da liberdade

Liberdade em que se dança

Sob o sol da liberdade

Ainda sou criança...

Fever pitch

In two days, the greatest show on earth kicks off. I'm talking about the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, a month's worth of football. 

I spent my childhood in Brazil where football is not just a sport, it's a religion. You haven't been to a match until you've attended one in Brazil. All those threatening me with a Liverpool kiss: I'm sorry but you really haven't. And I can't use the word soccer. When it's always been futebol, soccer sounds like a foreign word to me. (Besides, it's played with your feet, as opposed to some other forms of "football" around.) So I'm deamericanizing this blog, Brazilianizing it and calling the game what it is, football. Okay? Okay.

I rarely watch sports on TV, but when Brazil plays, don't bother trying to reach me, okay? Okay. You don't watch any, either? Can't get excited about football, don't understand what's all the commotion, or the game? 

Crash course à la Dita: the anatomy of a football dream(boat) team, courtesy of talented players from all over the world (give me an A for effort, there's only one Brazilian in there...), men you can catch on your sports channel starting this Friday.

What you need to get your game on:

A coach. This sharp dressed gentleman is Germany's Joachim Löw.

A goalkeeper. Meet England's David James.

You need defenders. I'm going with 

Rafael Marquez from Mexico.

An American, Carlos Bocanegra.

and Italy's Fabio Cannavaro.

You also need midfielders. Would these do, do you think?

That's Cristiano Ronaldo, Portugal.

Freddie's Swedish.

Brazil's own Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, better known as Kaká.

The Wizard of Oz, Australian Harry Kewell.


You will also need strikers/forwards. I'm thinking


Didier Drogba (Ivory Coast), the king of African football.

Spain's David Villa.

And a classic, French Thierry Henry.

And now you have yourself a team. Game on!

Yes, I know he won't be playing. Yes, that is only there to add to the shameless display of gratuitous nudity and to make a point you may have already caught on. Football is obviously not gainful employment. Many a fine player has found himself in the glossy pages of some magazine or other modeling this or that and sometimes not much at all. Q.E.D.

Vai Brasil!!!

See you all there in 2014?

All for fun and fun for all

Wonderful weekend ahead, folks! Plenty of reasons to have fun and celebrate another day of living and another day of life, another


Well-earned weekend (unless you're working, but since it isn't a given these days, good for you!)

Saint Valentine's (see A league of extraordinary gentlemen for pointers on alternative modes of celebration)

Chinese New Year (Metal Tiger, which means... I have no idea what it means)

The 21st Winter Olympics (we might run out of those sooner than we'd like, so get it while it's...not too hot)

Insert your favorite pastime/waste of time/road to ruin here

Little sis giving birth any day now (neither here nor there for y'all, but awww, it's a baby, one I won't have to squeeze out, only enjoy, a cause for celebration, surely), just in time for 

Carnaval!!! To be in Rio right now, but if I could be in Salvador or Olinda...damn! 


If you hate crowds, and people in general, don't approach Brazil during carnaval. But if a hotspot of fun is your cuppa, you won't need batteries to keep you going, the baterias will keep you up all night, day in, day out. If you still need a pick-me-up, ask for Indian Viagra (not to be confused with counterfeit drugs from the South Asian subcontinent). 

I think they banned those beverages, though, at least in Olinda, because it extended your happy hour to a week without sleep. It doesn't necessarily mean it's not available. But you don't need a drink to enjoy yourself or to stay awake, I promise. Leave your valuables, your hang-ups and any lingering cynicism home and dance to the rhythm of the saints. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go see a wholesaler about some party foods. I told you, plenty of reasons to have fun this weekend, several reasons to be glad you're alive, to enjoy the company of friends and family, or silence, if that's your pleasure. It can't be wasted time if you enjoyed wasting it, right?

Mythbusting

Do you live in the moment? Get things done ASAP because you may never have another chance? Or is it the perfect reason to take the scenic route? Make a phone call, smell your flower of choice, or stop to think and forget to start again, to quote the infinite wisdom of Pooh, since you may never have another chance?

But isn't the insistence to live in the here and now sometimes only a desperate attempt to hold on to the status quo, even when you sense resistance is futile? I don't know what else explains this sudden melancholy. Jorge Amado said the only sin and the greatest insult against life is sadness. Well, forgive me Jorge for I have sinned. After some northern exposure one-on-one you would have too. But you would not have been much of a writer had you stuck your head in the sand, the seemingly endless sandy coast of Bahia, somewhere out there, way out there. Way too far out there.

I'm not exactly sad summer is over. Saudade is the Brazilian Portuguese word for how I'm feeling; a bittersweet longing. It grips me every fall. A fragile state, a vulnerable existence where I have no right to claim I enjoy every passing second to the fullest, not if I'm startled by the sight of raindrops and rusty leaves or threatened by the darkest of nights and dusky, foggy mornings. Why do I fear them so much? They're beautiful. This is Scandinavia with its changing seasons and temperatures. It is what it is. What it's supposed to be.

I like to think I live in the moment. I cannot honestly say I do if I'm this hung up on summer and bracing myself for another winter of discontent. I'm bound to shut out much and that's no way to experience the world or write. That's no way to live at all. I'll force myself to pay attention instead and remind myself to doubt everything I'm sure of, especially concerning myself.

We're not everything we believe ourselves to be. And we're more than we think. We may sometimes see two very different faces in the mirror but as long as we can live with both and not shun either I guess we'll be all right.

So what's your kryptonite?