"disappeared" (travel, culture, addictions, finances)
i kind of disappeared for a while. i was busy with some back-to-work activities that i have been pursuing, because i know that i could work at least a little and i need to figure out how to generate some income while still taking care of my health. i also have been traveling. i had to move from my friend's house where i was staying, because he is in need of more income and wanted to rent the room. i have been to two other friends' places since you last heard from me, and now i am in brazil visiting my boyfriend for a few months. (yes, plane tickets are cheaper than rent, even if i visit him several times a year. it's just too bad he isn't rich!) and, finally, i was smoking lots of marijuana. i went into low gear, and had a hard time getting out. it's as if when i get past a crisis of sorts (the deadlines associated with my back-to-work efforts), especially if there isn't an immediate improvement in the situation, i crash a bit. sometimes that means smoking lots of marijuana.
i took a walk on the boardwalk the other day and saw a dead body. i had never seen a dead body before, except for a few relatives lying in their coffins in funeral homes. most of the corpse was covered with a black plastic garbage bag. a few yards in front of the body, which was in the leftmost lane of the street which runs right next to the boardwalk, a bus was stopped. there were four or five policeman milling around, doing nothing but directing traffic around the body and the bus. there was a young man in nothing but shorts and flip-flops seated on the curb, holding his head in his hands, staring down at the street. there were many, many other people standing around, looking, apparently just to look. the whole scene left me with a tremendous sadness.
by the clothes and shoes that i could see sticking out from under the plastic, the person had to have been fairly young. the young man on the curb seemed utterly alone, and seeing him i felt particularly helpless: not knowing what relationship he had to the deceased and if he might need comforting, and not knowing if i could do that through any potential language barrier, and not knowing whether or not he would be receptive to it if i approached him. the police officers were doing what the police in rio de janeiro (and most of the rest of brazil) usually do, when they are not robbing or killing people, or pretending to do something about the crime for the sake of the national and international media: they were making themselves look busy - just enough for show - while in reality doing little to nothing. and the crowd kept hanging around - for what i don't know. in truth there seems to be a morbid fascination with death and the things that cause it here, death which is all around all of the time and which seems to intrigue people at the same time as they complain about the things that bring it about (mostly police corruption, crime and reckless or drunken driving, in that order, from what i read and hear).
later i found out that the young man was an italian tourist, 29 years old, who had been out walking with his parents and brother when he was accosted by a thief who wanted the gold chain around his neck. it was the middle of the afternoon, and the family was visiting rio before venturing deeper into the countryside to attend the wedding of one of their sons and his brazilian fiancee. the young man tangled with the thief, trying to get the chain back, which had belonged to his father. they tumbled into the street and the fast-approaching bus was not able to stop in time. the thief had arrived by bicycle and it remained under the bus, with the suddenly-dead man in the street. the thief got away, while the whole scene was observed by countless people on the boardwalk, and probably by the nearby police who didn't react at all (according to witnesses) except to come over and cover the dead man's body. the scene was unchanged when i passed by on my way back to my boyfriend's apartment almost three hours later, except that there were a few people talking with the young man sitting on the curb. the next day the newspapers reported that the body was there over four hours before the brazilian bureaucracy could manage to move it.
and that's a slice of life in rio.
