Cicadas! Cicadas! Cicadas!

The video above depicts no important visuals.

The wavy camerawork and the audio is bent to give you all a sense of the powerful noise that is emitted by the Brazilian cicadas. They intend to leave the world soon and not without sound and fury.

Cicadas climb out of the dirt at the end of the dry season, and turn the trees in to giant, obnoxious maracas as they blow in the wind. It is a two-tone electrical chorus--our living and working and breathing is set to the soundtrack for a Hitchock film.

Oh, that their too, too solid flesh would thaw, melt and resolve itself into a dew, to litter the cragged sidewalks of Asa Sul with wings and bulging eyes and exoskeletons.

Chapadas Redux: Pirenópolis

About five months ago, we went to the Chapadas dos Veredeiros. I wrote about the nature and the braziliarities of the bohemian São Jorge. What I didn't write is that we camped with 60 other people in the grassy backyard of a bohemian Brazilian that that had the physique of the Grinch who stole Christmas, and a leathery mustachioed face.

When I awoke on the first (and last) morning in São Jorge, I circumnavigated a smattering of tents to go the bathroom. Draped across a concrete slab that led to the kitchen was a 30-something, overweight hippie, with a spilled bottle of beer which had been overturned toward its former quaffer. A small brook of beer had trickled back toward his shirt and created a yeasty rorshach test on his chest.


We had another opportunity to go to a different corner of the Brazilian highlands a couple of weeks ago; as you have surmised, we did not camp. In fact we spent a great deal of reais to stay away from the center of town, and fixed well in a pousada with AC and a swimming pool.

Pirenópolis, the colonial city in the western highlands, was at once Bohemian and classy; Apollonian and Bacchanalian; peaceful and full of nonsense.

Aside from relaxing on a hammock, or snoozing to the whirring of a 10-year-old AC, we found more waterfalls, more wildlife (Nessa saw a toucan and a number of wild parrots), we were able to more freely enjoy the world outside what's commonly called the Brasilia bubble (though I think the Brasilia-orb, or Brasilia-sphere more in keeping with its space-age dimensions). The streets were made of the sedimentary sandstone, turned up during the ground-breaking of Brasilia and moved to replace the dirt roads nearly 50 years ago.

The pictures in this post are from rustic, classy Pirenópolis and the Brazilian highland countryside.

boston

Yesterday I had a moment of serendipity, where I could feel two worlds collide over half a decade.

It was my schools talent show', and I was there to support my performers and the journalism students who were covering the show.

Toward the end one of my students got up on stage with a flame blue Takamine guitar. She was joined by another girl I didn't recognize on the piano. The song stopped me dead for a moment: "Boston," by Augustana. I hadn't really heard much about them since the days after they performed at my brother's house in Cal Poly, during his 21st birthday.

I knew they had gotten some kind of record deal and were almost famous. I looked around, eerily, as some students sang along along--especially as I remember I was in the vast red capital in the middle of Brazil.

old black water

The great gong of responsibility has gonged, and I have not been able to do anything except bonk workwardly. This is not to say Vanesssa and I have had a dull, month; rather, we've both done quite a bit:

Nessa has taught forcefully and lovingly.

I spent a week in the Amazon with 7th grade students I do not teach. I'm not exactly sure why I was chosen as a chaperone, but it was the most remarkable fieldtrip a student or teacher could imagine (slide show below). I was able to dust off and dish out youth ministry ballyhoo. One seventh grade gal shot a blow dart into my leg (the pneumatic gun was purchased in an Ticuna Indian village), and it stuck and stung.

Aside from this mishap, the trip was incredible. It was wonderful to see one of the most primal, ancient and mysterious regions of the world. We spent a night in the jungle, with ex-Brazilian army operatives, teaching us jungle survival skills. I learned to bathe in ant guts to avoid bug bites (ants smell like jungle, so bugs are not interested); we learned how to make a footholds out of a palm leaves, which can be used to climb narrow branches to gather acai berries; we learned how to start a fire with a piece of steel wool and two batteries; we saw (I don't think anyone learned) how to make automatic animal traps out of wood plant and ingenuity.



Our schemes were thwarted, pleasantly, by a father. This father it just so happens is the deputy governer of the Amazonas state. He took us on his yacht, aqcua, on a four our tour to the meeting of the Rio Negro and the Solamoes, where the Amazon officially begins. On the return trip we stopped at his twin brother's river-beach house and enjoyed a catered Brazilian churrasco.

He also led us on a tour of Manaus a city that was wealthier and more cosmopolitan than Boston and New York during the rubber boom at the advent of the 20th century.

Not a bad week at the office, I guess.