Rio de Janeiro: Shut Up & Discover Yourself.
{Copacaban Beach / Rio de Janeiro}
I live in Rio de Janeiro – the coolest city on Earth, I’ve been told.
For five years I’ve called Copacabana home. Being a foreigner here is no walk in the park, and the culture, though seemingly warm and open, is in equal parts the opposite. After all these years, I can finally say that I’m happy about living here. So yeah, now it’s cool.
Probably six months in I lost my shiny-happy-people outlook on life. I expected it to be a cinch, to set up here and samba down with the natives; but nothing worked. Until one day, my familiar race of emotions, that take off when I’m forced to submit myself to apathetic incompetence, was won by a different horse:
Frustration bolts out of the gate and is off to a great start, though it’s quickly taken over by Anger. Apathy moves on the inside and passes Anger taking over the lead; then out of freaking nowhere, Freedom comes to annihilate the odds-on favourite, Inner Turmoil.
Freedom won because I stopped trying.
Who needs words to communicate?! I don’t actually need anything. Here’s where the proverbial clouds parted and the sun bathed Rio in a different light.
I’ve always enjoyed meditation and periods of silence. Now they are my Viagra. Or is it Prozac? (the one that makes you happy). Because when I shut up, Rio turns into this movie set that I walk through while a greater narrative is happening in my awareness.
In Rio, great happiness is found in the simplest activities.
One is my corner juice bar. I hit it twice a day. My morning juice: mango and acerola, or orange and papaya. My afternoon: Açai – an Amazon berry that is 100 times richer in anti-oxidants than blueberries.
Everything in Brazil comes with sugar or syrup, and aspartame is all the rage; so if you come here, you have to at least know how to say, Please leave sugar the fuck out of this situation! Açai does need sweetening, because it tastes like dirt. Mix it with banana. Done.
Another is my daily run along Copacabana beach. On Sundays they close three of the six lanes of traffic in front, and every man and his pimped out dog come down to promenade the avenue. It’s a fantastic vibe until about 10 a.m. when it becomes difficult to move through the crowd.
At the far end of the beach, there’s one last retro kiosk that still stands. All the others have been replaced by fancy glass and wood floor kiosks, which the locals hate. Who can relate to the beach through waiters and service tax?!
I pull up a plastic chair right to the edge of the beach. My coconut guy puts two coconuts overflowing with coconut water on a spare chair. Then, right on cue, I get that palpable feeling of ‘Life’s perfect.’
It happens every time. The view back over the feminine curve of the beach: stunning. The beautifully toned Brazilian men and women in front of me doing their beach thing: inspiring. I still have to get used to the bikini-bottom-in-a-choke-hold–look, and I stare more than I should.
Every morning it’s the same kiosk crowd. At one table there’s a tribe of bronzed old timers. They complain loudly about the new kiosks and everything football. On the table next to them, is a 4 foot-tall woman reclined in her wheelchair, hot red bikini, fire engine red lipstick and a coconut permanently in her grasp. Skeletally she is severely deformed. This could be what she lives for, these hours in the sun with her coconut.
Five minutes walk from here is Ipanema beach – a whole different vibe: calmer, greater sense of space, whiter sand, different ocean current, higher crime rate. There’s no safety green zone here.
On the street I rarely speak. When I do it’s because a lost tourist wandered into the ordinary part of Copacabana and asks for orientation. My lack of verbal practice cause phrases to come out all hyperbolic or incoherent; it’s just too exciting. I’ve never seen fear in tourist’s eyes until now, when I try to help.
Living in an iconic city is always different than visiting one.
Rio is neither shiny nor welcoming. Urban life is spare and severe, while services can be comedically dysfunctional and fraught with bureaucracy. Visa processing is a black hole; paperwork goes in and never comes out. Federal offices look as antiquated as scenes from communist Germany propaganda films. Locals don’t try to understand what you’re saying.
Homeless and disabled people are a fixture on the streets. Most of them live here because there’s no functioning public system for the mentally ill or disabled.
They have their territory: the armless guy, with perfectly manicured George Michael beard – in front of the plaza. Elephantitis guy – aggressive beggar – he’s got the bank. Woman with perma-flexed hips and knees, walks with flip-flops on her hands; she’s between the two. And unstoppable Marquinhõ, the mentally disabled man who is oddly well looked after. One day he’ll be sporting a stunning white suit, dress hat and pocket square; then three days later half of it will be missing and he’ll have lost one or both shoes.
These are characters from just half a block in Copacabana.
Antagonism was invented in Rio. Everything sits right next to its opposite. Corruption sits there all cozy next to morality. Desperate poverty, stuck in front of great demonstrations of wealth or pious church goers. And the people, so famously kind, traverse these streets that have witnessed so much violence.
It’s cliché, but Rio de Janeiro is matchless.
There’s an unspoken coercion that demands: you can be anything you like, as long as you are exactly who you are meant to be. Thanks to Rio I figured out that I’m an introvert monk. There, I said it.
My life has never been so spare, but all the social and cultural pleasures of yesteryear confused where the source of my happiness came from. It’s a state of mind thing.
Like Argentinean poet, Jorge Luis Borges once said,
“A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face.”
*****
{Rebelle in Rio}
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