How the hell did I get here??

When I first moved to Vancouver a few years ago, I would have these moments where I’d be doing something banal like sitting at a bus stop and looking around at my beautiful little neighbourhood and be in utter disbelief as to how I had come to be there; a single woman who, in the not so distant past, might have only had the choice to stay at home and look after aging parents or join a nunnery. Now, I’m able to obtain a PhD, live alone in a nice one-bedroom apartment, and create a nice little quality of life for myself in a really groovy city. Also, I’d never been "the best" at anything and that lack of clear direction always filled me with anxiety. But there I was, admitted to the starting line of the race to the  “upper echelons” of academia on a beautiful campus and having them pay me to do it. While I acknowledge the elitism of academia, its decreasing value to society (self-inflicted), along with its vast flaws, it is a place that has seemed to work in my favour so I'll take it.

These moments of reflection in my early days in Vancouver would bring a blissfulness and calm that made me believe that it was all actually going to be okay for me and that I likely wouldn’t end up an old spinster eating cat food in devastating, heart-wrenching elderly poverty.

I felt this way again today. I awoke with the sun this morning, the same sun that had so aggressively turned on me yesterday. I decided to be a little more sun-smart today and go for a long morning walk before it really got cooking, although the 6:30 am sun was already searing.

The only word that came to mind to describe the beauty I witnessed as I began to venture northeast up the beach of the sun rising over this paradise which I had entirely to myself is “obscene”: 

I was filled with immense joy and everything in me wanted to sing but even with all the songs I have collected in my head over the years, I couldn’t bring forth any that were appropriate enough to reflect the magnificence of the moment. Instead I let my heart explode in a silent song of bliss, through tears and laughter at the absurdity of this beautiful, solo experience.

How the hell did I get here? Well of course white privilege has played a significant role but there’s a whole shwack of other dimensions to my history that have also led me here which I will not get into for obvious reasons.

After three kilometers of sheer exuberance and enchantment, I came across a quaint little church on the beach:

Igreja Sao Benedito, Praia dos Carneiros

And then a non-domestic dog began to follow me and these dudes freak me out a tiny bit so I quickly turned around and walked back and, on the way, explored some of the natural pools created in the rock formations at low tide all along the beach:

Crystal clear microcosms full of fish, urchins, types of coral, and more crabs!!

Crab type 3- big purple crab (sorry for crappy crab pics...my fablet doesn't seem to capture this sort of thing well)

Upon my arrival home I took a quick sea bath and headed up to my apartment. I ran into Eliza, the other building manager who is on site when my buddy Leo is off of work, and she invited me to have coffee and breakfast with her. Eliza speaks fluent Italian after living in Italy for 10 years, she also speaks Spanish and a little German and French. She really wanted to practice some English with me. Using "Santo" Google translator, we had quite the conversation while she practiced some English and I practiced some Portuguese. She asked me if I would like to dine with her in the evening and would I like it if she cooked Brazilian food for me. YES PLEASE!

My experience here in Tamandare regarding food accessibility has been the complete opposite of the rest of my Brazilian experience thus far. Everyone I have met here, and I mean everyone, keeps wanting to feed me things. This makes me feel good. And a little bloated.

I had decided I would stay out of the sun during the day time today and after breakfast I finally sat down and got some work done that desperately needed to happen… and I gave my notice at my apartment in Vancouver for the end of July. So that’s happening. My time there is basically done for now, indefinitely. YIKES.

After lunch, to be outside but not be within the sun’s gaze, I headed back to my sheltered and shady  neighbourhood beach pub for a few caipafrutas and some reading.

AND OF COURSE my ‘regular’ server, Ed (short for a name I can’t pronounce) also brought me out a steaming cup of shrimp caldhino, a very Brazilian soup…for free. FEED ME! As I sat there overlooking the water between Henry Miller excerpts and sips of my very tropical beverage, I noticed that about every 12 minutes the sky seems to change and with it the ambience of the entire beach morphs into a new and different kind of beauty:

For example, it can go from this:

To this:

To this:

In mere moments. Obscene.

As I finished up my last drink, the bar and the beach completely deserted, I felt as if I was the only person left in the whole world. What a privilege to experience this and catch a glimpse of the end of human civilisation, really. It evokes a sense of non-importance about everything in one’s life and that none of it really matters, solidifying my existing belief about the purpose of life for myself (and everyone else’s but I’m sure many of you would disagree). My friends will tell you this that this is how I tend to end arguments, proclaiming: Well we’re all gonna die anyway! (Not entirely academic, I admit, but it gets me out of continuing a debate in which I am simply spouting off non-well-informed opinions).

After some writing and a nap and before the late dinner Eliza was preparing for us, I made an attempt for some self-romance by sitting on my balcony with some music and red wine as the night set in and the palm trees on the property became dramatically lit up by landscaping lights. However, that lasted approximately 10 minutes. The sounds of the creatures of the night, the bats, became clearer and louder and I could see their silhouettes flying above across the starry sky. Very cool. But they quickly started coming a little too close for comfort and Google was providing me no information about what kind of creep-o bats these were and if they would begin to dive bomb me and suck my blood. So I packed up and went back inside.

At around eight I headed downstairs to meet Eliza for dinner. It was only us two occupying the entire hotel/apartment complex and so she opened up a whole other apartment on the ground floor facing the water, letting the evening breeze wind its way through the patio doors to the dining room table. We dined on abacaxi e camarãos (pineapple and shrimp); a melange of shrimp, rice, pineapple, onions and peppers, topped with grilled coalho (cheese) served in a pineapple bowl. Eliza had just returned from a holiday in Italy and shared a lovely bottle of 2000 Verdicchio (not that I really know what that means but older is better right?) with me that she had brought back.

Elizangela, my new Brazilian friend!

Over our dessert of chocolate coconut cake, through her broken English and my broken Portuguese and the linguistic support of Google translator, it became clear that we were just two single gals hanging out on a tropical beach making our lives work...and evidently work well!