And I ask myself: who am I kidding here? What, exactly, do I think I'm doing to myself? I have just over two months longer to live in this fearlessly honest and disgustingly tricky town. Two months to immerse myself as if I didn't know that two short months later I will be wrenched out of the nooks and crannies in which I had managed to store my soul and squeeze my butt into to admire, adore, and act as a part of this already-full city, this city that has more life than it needs and more soul than any other I've seen. So much so that, despite my success in finding a spot for my soul and a seat for my butt in this vivacious city, I don't feel the city will feel my absence when I'm gone. I don't think this city feels anyone's absence. It always produces, people always have people, laughs always have laughs, even the most poignant absence, the death of a loved one, is cause for a party, for a convergence of lives and stories and jokes and more laughs. More music, more dancing. In Salvador, pain is only cause for more conversation, more thoughts turned art, more teary stares turned smiles, and smiles turned love. Two months from now, all of that will be yanked out from under my feet, and back into another culture shock I go.
And there is plenty of pain. Everyone wants love, she is too coy to admit it to his face, but the culture is too full of love for him not to know, and they are both too curious, too "realistic" for it to last. That's painful, and it happens all the time. Everyone has to work, but almost everyone is too lazy to enjoy it. She has a great job and comes home tired and upset, self-pitying and ready for bed every day. He has a terrible job and comes home with the same tired feet, the same sorry eyes that first seek food and then seek a novella and then bed.
And the third isn't even employed, he walks the streets picking up used bottles and other redeem-ables. He trudges around in calloused bare-feet, vaguely smelling of the natural scent of human sweat and urine, hair wild and untamed, muscles and fascia hardened from overuse, hardened from the lack of softness in his life. But his pain comes not from working, but from the lack thereof. His pain comes from the fact that he was the first to get fired from the restaurant he was working at when they had to cut down staff, from the fact that he never even heard back from the places he applied to work after that, while his ex-co-workers from the restaurant continued to get hired in the same locations he had applied to. His pain comes from the names he gets called in the street and the fact that he never did anything wrong at the restaurant, nor did he lack qualifications to serve coffee at the next, but his application was ignored because of the color of his skin, because society imagines this most obvious, most visible physical trait to be some kind of sign about his likes, dislikes, his abilities and inabilities, his moral character.
But in spite of all of this, he doesn't complain-- he can't. He bathes in the green water from the pond in Campo Grande park, washing his clothes in the same water and hanging them out to dry in the sun on the bushes nearby. He carefully washes his legs, feet, belly, sinewy arms and tired hands, pads down his hair and flushes his face with the luke-warm, algae-filled fluid, feeling the sun, strong and reliable, beating down on his back and then on his face as he looks up to greet it with a solemn acceptance of its beaming existence. He walks the streets, picking up the empty beer can the woman dropped in the street while trying to forget the dissatisfied self she was all day while working her wonderful job, and picking up the water bottle the man threw in the street from the window of the bus he took home from the job he hates, with good reason. And sometimes he sleeps in the streets, when he doesn't feel like making the 2 hour trek to the outskirts of the city where his aunt has a small, slightly delapidated home full of his cousins, where he can sleep on the floor when he needs a night under a roof with some home-cooked food. So life is hard. There is pain that is inflicted on you, and pain you inflict on yourself, and it all hurts.
But the pain makes us dance harder, play a little more spirit into our tunes, sing a little more soul into our songs, cry a little more until we smile, and smile, once again, until the friends we have made and the tunes we have played and the rhythms we have danced make up for all the pain there ever was, and THAT is the magic of Salvador. And I will be forgotten when I leave, and the jokes and the music and the dancing will continue without me, but I will never forget Salvador. Now this isn't me saying goodbye two months early. This is me realizing that I have two months to immerse and respond, two months imagine and initiate and realize something beautiful to show for my time here, to show for what I have been given here, to show for what I have striven for here, so that the beauty of this city, that is balancing perfectly in my mind, is not lost on me.
The music of this post, here sung by the great Marku Ribas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL2GizdGnVA), is appropriate:
Zamba Bem
Zamba Ben é Zamba de Angola
E aqui já tem também
Zambei demais
Que de manhã eu lá na praia acordei
Zambei demais
Que de manhã eu me encontrei
Oh, oh, oh, oh
Deitado à sombra de um coqueiro
como quem espera a vida passar
Minha nega do meu lado
dizia: "Amor o mar tá gelado
E o sol tá bom pra queimar"
Zamba Ben, Ben, Ben
Eu quero, quero
Zambar eu quero
Zamba Ben
Zamba Ben is the Zamba of Angola
And we have it here, too
I zamba-ed too much
till I woke up on the beach
I zamba-ed too much
till I found myself in the morning
lying in the shade of a coconut tree
like he who waits for the life to pass him by
My lady-friend-of-African-descent (... how do I translate nega/negra??) by my side
said "My love, the ocean is freezing
and the sun is ready to burn ya"
Zamba Ben, Ben, Ben
I wanna, wanna
I want to zamba
