asakiyume | Entries tagged with brazil

Some quotes from Ailton Krenak's Life is Not Useful, (trans. Jamille Pinheiro Dias). These are from the essay "You Can't Eat Money."

Here, on the other side of the river, there is a mountain that guards our village ... Looking at the mountain is an instant relief from all pain. Life moves through everything, through rock, the ozone layer, glaciers. Life goes from the oceans to solid ground; it crosses from north to south in all directions. Life is this crossing of the planet's living organism on an immaterial scale. Instead of thinking about the Earth's organism breathing, which is very difficult, let's think about life passing through mountains, caves, rivers, forests.

And earlier, regarding Elon Musk and his ilk:

[Recently there are] billionaires who have the crazy idea of creating a biosphere, a copy of the Earth. That copy will be as mediocre as they are. If a part of us thinks we can colonize another planet, it means we still haven't learned anything from our experience here on Earth. I wonder how many Earths these people need to consume before they understand they are on the wrong path.

I have so many saved up for this! And I'm actually writing on a Wednesday. Wohoo, win condition!

What I've just finished

A Family of Dreamers, by Samantha Nock.

radiantfracture put me onto this collection by quoting one of the poems. Samantha Nock is an indigenous poet, and her poems reflect that heritage, but also explore family relations, love, self doubt--you know: the stuff we write poetry about.

( Some quotes )

* * *

Ideias Para Adiar O Fim Do Mundo, by Ailton Krenak
This has also been translated into English (Ideas for Postponing the End of the World). Ailton Krenak is an indigenous activist from Brazil, of the Krenak people, and this very short book collects talks that he's given, including the title one. He's very, very good at reminding his listeners that there's more than one way of understanding things, more than one way of approaching problems, and that for some people, the end of the world has been happening for a long, long time. (My Goodreads review has quotes that give a feel for it)

* * *

Besty and Tacy Go over the Big Hill, by Maud Hart Lovelace
They do, and they discover a community of Syrian refugees. The more things change...

This story mulls over kings and queens in lots of different ways. Early on the girls write a letter to Alfonso XIII, who upon turning sixteen has become king of Spain. The girls tell him that they'd love to marry him but realize that, sadly, they can't, since they're not of royal blood (also they're only ten, but they don't mention that), but that nevertheless they wish him the best. And then at the end of the story they get a letter back from the royal secretary, telling them the king appreciates their thoughts! And I was thinking how much smaller the world was then--that girls could write a letter to the royal palace in Madrid, and that a palace secretary would actually answer! ... Well, assuming that that incident is based on something that actually happened in MHL's life--it might not be. But it's conceivably possible. Alfonso XIII came into his majority in 1902. Wikipedia tells me that in 1900, the human population was a much more intimate 1.6 billion. Not like our current 8 billion. Palace secretaries could write to little girls in Minnesota!

What I'm reading now

Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. My approach to this has been very roundabout. I'm not a big fan of long books of serious essays, even when I should like them. So I started by just dipping in. But it's won me over, so I'm going to read it straight through.

* * *

Why Didn't You Just Leave, edited by Julia Rios and Nadia Bulkin. A collection of horror stories that answer the question of why people don't just leave the haunted place they're in. Excellent so far.

* * *

Lady Eve's Last Con, by Rebecca Fraimow. A rom-con romcom in SPACE that I've only just started but is highly delightful already, with lines like this:

Ever since we got in on the luxury-liner gambit, money had been dropping into our hands like coolant from a leaky ceiling

and

It wasn't so hard to get someone like Esteban to think that you were their romantic ideal; all you had to do was present an attractive outline and leave plenty of space, and they'd fill in the rest all by themselves.

I think I can see what the end state is going to be, but I am here for the ride!

Coming Soon
Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, the next of the Betsy-Tacy books.

The meeting of the waters is where the Rio Negro joins the Amazon--or, as Brazilians name the upper portion of it, the Rio Solimões--at Manaus, Brazil. This happens over a thousand miles east of where I was in Leticia, Colombia. In other words, the broad, broad waters I experienced were the Rio Solimões/upper Amazon before the Rio Negro adds its waters in.

This vasty vastness is what you get where they join. For perspective, look at the size of that boat in the first few seconds (the whole video is less than a minute long). Because of the difference in what the waters are carrying, they flow side by side without mingling for a good while.

Watch on YouTube

Look at this bird that came up on Aves do Brasil:

Doesn't he look like a volcano at night, with lava just waiting to overbrim?

I feel it's such a good representation of how we all are. All our hot feelings at the top of our heads.

In English he's called a ruby-crowned tanager. His Brazilian name, tiê preto, translates as "black tiê" (and the word "tiê" comes from a Tupi word, "ti'ye," but my very cursory investigations haven't turned up what that means). It's funny that the English name looks at that one bright patch and the Brazilian name looks at the rest of him.

In other news, sometimes negative reviews can make you want to read something. Someone I follow on Goodreads wasn't a fan of The Navigating Fox, but their description of it intrigued me--a world with talking animals who interact more or less as peers with humans (though, as in Narnia, there are also animals who don't talk). The main character is the titular Navigating Fox, Quintus Shu'al, who starts out the story in disgrace. Fingers crossed that the story ends up being good.

The cover is really pretty, too. Not that that's a reason to choose a book, I realize, but it makes it fun to look at.

rachelmanija's great review of Goddess of Yesterday (by Caroline Cooney) made me want to read it too--I did, and I enjoyed it very much. It really truly felt like the story was being told to me by a young girl from Trojan War times. I liked Anaxanadra very much, liked how observant she was, how she learned quickly and worked for her own survival, and that she took a liking to--and then felt loyalty and concern for--the various people she met.

What had absolutely pushed me from "Hmmm, cool book; maybe one day I'll read it" to "I want to read this NOW" was the example Rachel gave of Anaxanadra's wonderment on first encountering a glass container, and I was rewarded with more encounters like that (first time encountering enough of something that you need to use the word "one thousand," first time encountering horses, etc). Even just her ordinary observations had a feel of ancient Greece to them that I loved, as when she describes the sound of water slapping the side of a boat like dogs drinking, or this, describing dolphins:

Dolphins swam alongside. Now and then they would leap out of the water and spin themselves like yarn.

And then

radiantfracture posted a poem the other day, "Pahkwêsikan," by the poet Samantha Nock, that made me want to read the rest of the collection, the author's debut collection. It has a gorgeous cover:

( but the image is a little large, so under the cut it goes )

And now I have a copy!

Speaking of images, check out these great dusky swifts (Cypseloides senex), posted by Aves do Brasil, a bot that posts photos of birds of Brazil. Facebook says that the original photo was taken by Frodoaldo Budke.

( great dusky swifts )

With those intense, deep-set eyes, and clinging to the rock face like that, they seem like a pair of heroes: loyal siblings or friends, or intense lovers, out to redress a wrong. I want to write a story with them as the heroes ... maybe in human form--but that intensity!

Current Music: El Búho: Ley de origen (feat. Minük)

On December 14

wakanomori shared a Guardian article with me about Joaquim Melo, the 64-year-old owner of a remarkable bookstore in Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon. The bookstore, Banca do Largo,

serves as a refuge for Amazonian writers and activists alike, pushing to protect the region from exploitation. By promoting local literature, particularly works by Indigenous writers, Melo believes he can help spread new ideas about societal organisation and the environment that are different from the capitalistic frameworks prevalent in the west.

Photo of the bookshop, from its website:

I was delighted--I went looking for more and found this video (in Portuguese) about the place. You might click on it just to hear the ambient noise--birds, animals, people, and traffic. And you'll also get to hear Mr. Melo talking <3

I started following the bookstore's Instagram, which updated rather overwhelmingly frequently, always with pictures of Mr. Melo with his customers--locals and tourists alike.

( smiling faces )

Then--nothing! I attributed that to algorithm bullshit. But then I went looking and discovered that the account had posted a death notice--Mr. Melo passed away on New Year's Day.

On the death notice was a quote from Chico Buarque (whom Wikipedia tells me is a Brazilian singer-songwriter):

Não há dor que dura para sempre!
Tudo é vário. Temporário. Efêmero.
Nunca somos, sempre estamos.

(There's no pain that lasts forever!
Everything is various. Temporary. Ephemeral.
We never are, we always are ...

I love what Spanish and Portuguese make possible linguistically by having a permanent-state verb "to be" and a temporary-state verb "to be." Because it's so true: we're never an immutable thing, we're always changing. We are dot dot dot

Sometimes you learn of a person just 18 days before they leave the world. Judging from the comments on the post of his death notice, he was well beloved. I hope his bookshop is able to continue.

Current Music: Mon Laferte: Pa' dónde se fue

I found this song, Samba da Utopia, while wandering through YouTube. The composer's video is here, but there are many, many other videos by cover singers--like this one, which I almost like better. The words and tune are simple and the message is a good one (aside from the minor detail that I don't believe in utopias)--I really like it!

PS, I don't actually know what makes a samba a samba--I should find out.

Current Music: Jonathan Silva: Samba da Utopia

I really enjoyed the Netflix documentary A Última Floresta (The Last Forest), directed by Luiz Bolognesi and cowritten by him and Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, about the present-day situation of the Yanomami people in Amazonian Brazil and Venezuela. Davi Kopenawa Yanomami is a Yanomami activist who helped get a law passed to protect Yanomami land after gold mining predations in the 1980s led to a fifth of the population dying from mercury poisoning and other sicknesses. The presidency of Jair Bolsonaro has made their situation precarious again.

--But the documentary isn't heavy. It was made in consultation with Davi Kopenawa Yanomami's village; they got to decide what things they wanted to show, and one thing they chose was a reenactment of the coming together of the original ancestors of the Yanomami people. It was SO SWEET.

Originally there was just Omama and his brother, Yoasi--no women. Yoasi managed to copulate with his own leg and produce a baby, but with no mother to nurse it, the baby cried and cried. Omama went off to look for a woman. He tossed a fishing line in the water...

And out came Thuëyoma!

How surprised Omama was!

Thuëyoma gives him her best smile ^_^

They sit together in a hammock, chatting. "Do you have a boyfriend or husband in the water world?" Omama asks diffidently.

"I don't have a boyfriend or any suitors," she replies.

"How do you feel about that?" he asks.

"When I lived in the underwater forest, I felt alone until you found me," she says. "I was very happy when you fished me out."

--She looked happy, didn't she! And now he looks very happy too:

MOST SWEET ANCESTORS EVER.

"Pra não dizer que não falei das flores" is the name of a Brazilian song. It means "So it can't be said that I didn't speak of flowers." It's also known as "Caminhando" (Walking). I came across it originally as part of a medley of songs sung by Chico César, a Brazilian reggae singer. (The whole medley is just wonderful and I listen to it all the time.)

When he segued over to "Pra não dizer que não falei das flores," my heart was grabbed by the lyrics:

Caminhando e cantando e seguindo a canção
Somos todos iguais, braços dados ou não
Nas escolas, nas ruas, campos, construções
Aprendendo e ensinando uma nova lição

(Walking and singing and continuing the song
We are all equal, arms linked or not
In the schools, the streets, fields, buildings
Learning and teaching a new lesson)

Especially that last part: learning and teaching a new lesson.

Then it got to the chorus, and he just pointed to the audience, and they sang the whole things without him. They'd done that earlier with his song "Mama Africa," but only after he'd sung it through once. Here he just turned it over to the audience, and they belted it out. (If you start here, you can hear that.)

It was clear they knew it *so well.*

So I got curious about the song. And it turns out it has an amazing story behind it. Wikipedia tells me that it was composed by Geraldo Vandré, who sang it at the Festival Internacional da Canção in 1968, where it was "the most applauded song of the night"--but only came in second place, because the army felt it was too critical of the government (at that time Brazil was under a military dictatorship). The next day, playing the song was banned, and all recordings of Vandré's performance at the festival were destroyed. Vandré himself had to go into exile.

Geraldo Vandré, as drawn by Jeferson Nepomuceno

Wikipedia says (though it's marked as "citation needed"), "'Walking' is regarded by many as the true Brazilian national hymn" and that it is "sung emotionally and in a spontaneous way by a large number of people."

That chorus, by the way:

Vem, vamos embora, que esperar não é saber
Quem sabe faz a hora, não espera acontecer

(Come, let’s go, for waiting is not knowing
The one who knows makes the time and doesn’t wait for it to happen)

(Here's a 1968 recording of the audience joining in with Vandré singing--I've set it to where the audience joins in.)

It really does seem to have anthemic stature. Here's a link to the whole song, sung by Vandré (not live).

Here's an image that's used on Youtube for a remix of a version of the song as sung by Simone, a well-known Brazilian singer who was--so Wikipedia tells me--the first to record it after censorship was lifted.

Youtube cover image for a remix of Simone singing "Caminhando"

I think it's a cool image... and/but also, as someone who writes about a country that honors Abstractions, it's interesting to me that Order and Progress are what made it to the national flag ... they seem ominously predictive of the struggles Brazil has had. ... Not that "Liberty and Justice for all" as a slogan guarantees that anything like that will be what the population actually gets, but...

... okay, gonna just drift off now.

Current Music: Geraldo Vandré: Pra Não Dizer Que Não Falei das Flores

I've been reading folktales from Amazonia. This beautiful picture book, The Great Snake: Stories from the Amazon, has block-print-style illustrations by Fernando Vilela, whom I now have the impression is Brazil's foremost illustrator, as he also illustrated a different Brazil-related picture book that Amazon (the company this time, not the region/river) recommended to me some time ago.

I love this image of manioc/cassava plants, how it's achieved by repeating the print.

But what I really love about this book is the care with which the storyteller, Sean Taylor, situates the stories. He explains his own journey up the river, who he's staying with, and who shared each story he's sharing. At the end of the book he says, "These are not the stories from the Amazon. They are just a handful of stories I have come across while traveling through a small part of the huge forest. I found some of them in books and heard others told by storytellers. I have rewritten them in my language and in my own way." (And in his notes he documents the provenance of each story more carefully--pretty good for a picture book.)

Along the way he also offers the sort of facts about the Amazon--the superlatives--that fill you with awe: "[The Amazon] contains one-fifth of all the fresh water on our planet. So much water floods out of the mouth of the River Amazon that it stains the Atlantic Ocean brown over a hundred miles out to sea." And this about the rain forest that surrounds it: "Scientists know more about the moon than they do about parts of the Amazon."

One day I hope to go there.

--Oh and the stories? Charming! There's a humorous one about a sloth. He takes so long climbing up a tree to collect the three not-yet-ripe fruits he's after that they ripen and fall to the ground:

"Oh for goodness sake!" puffed Three-Toed Sloth, looking at the three taperebá fruits lying on the ground. "If I hadn't come racing up here in such a mad rush, everything would have been all right."

(That story was told to the writer in Belém. He was visiting the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development, and one of the secretaries, Dona Maria, shared it).

The other stories are great too, featuring monsters, origin stories, dolphin shapeshifters, and more.

And I learned a great Portuguese phrase: Está chovendo canivetes--It's raining penknives.

I had other reading to report--some more trenchant quotes from The Souls of Black Fok, etc., but I'll save it for another week.

Current Music: Rio Mira: Adios Morena

I set off at 3:30 to deliver cookies to those of my children who live within driving distance (the other two live a continent and an ocean away--a different continent and ocean depending on which direction you tackle the journey from). By 3:30 the light is already long, and by the time I was leaving from my first stop (4:10), the tips of the bare trees were already red from the setting sun.

It was a 30-minute journey south to the next stop, during which time the sky did such tantalizing things with pinks, purples, and golds that I was quite beside myself. "She was the kind of person for whom sunsets pose a driving hazard," said my internal narrator. Eyes on the road, Asakiyume!

Here's another song by Dona Onete, Lua Jaci--the beginning, when she's singing a cappella, is just beautiful, and the simple melancholy of the overall song really speaks to me right now.

The woman herself is quite wonderful. Here's the blurb about her and her 2017 album, Banzeiro, from Bandcamp:

Whether she’s championing gay rights, singing about the delights of indecent proposals or praising a former lover for his ‘crazy ways of making love’, Banzeiro is defined by Onete’s honest reflections on life, love and sex, as well as her delight in the everyday pleasures of life in the Amazon, whether that’s spicy seasoning, salty kisses or fishy-smelling water.

Formerly a history teacher, folklore researcher, union representative, culture secretary and children’s author - “I never thought I would be a singer” she claims - Onete recorded her debut album Feitiço Caboclo at 73. A cult figure in Brazil and an ambassador for Amazonian culture, the music she sings is a unique mix of rhythms from native Brazilians, African slaves and the Caribbean - epitomised in the joyous carimbós that are her trademark. (Source)

And here's a great quote from a 2019 piece in a Brazilian magazine:

Eu canto carimbó, bolero, rock. Faço o que eu quiser. Não sei o que desce na minha cabeça para fazer uma coisa assim... uma mulher da minha idade.
[I sing carimbó, bolero, rock. I do what I want. I don't know what gets into my head to make me do a thing like that ... a woman my age.] (Source)

Current Music: Dona Onete: Lua Jaci

I have a pen pal in Brazil (we have a great story of how we became pen pals, but I'll save it for another day) who told me about this dessert, paçoca, which is served during Festa Junina, in June. It's *very simple*: ground peanuts and sugar and a touch of salt, ground to the consistency of wet sand (as one recipe I read described it), and then pressed together in a form.

Eating the foods of faraway places that I'd like to visit but can't is one of my favorite things to do, so just now I made some.

At first I tried to pack it into a star-shaped cookie cutter, but it didn't work too well--the mixture was maybe not ground-up enough (I re-blender-ified it--but you don't want to blender-ify it too much, or you end up with peanut butter), but also all those points are tricky.

Wakanomori suggested I try this little press-thingie that we got at a tag sale forever ago and which I've never used.

So I did, and it worked very well indeed!

Wakanomori tried one, then came back for another. "Very more-ish" was his verdict. Here is the exceptionally easy recipe I used.

And here's something else that's nice--a pre-release review of Lagoonfire in Publishers Weekly. It starts out "Regret, perseverance, and love drive Forrest's sparkling second Tales of the Polity Fantasy" and ends with "this evocative and ultimately uplifting story is sure to please" which--well, I hope so!

It reveals a little bit more of the plot than is maybe ideal? So if you don't click through and read it, I won't mind ;-).

Oh what the heck, I need also to link to this great song I'm listening to because the video is a delight to look at and the song is, as they say in brazil, otima!

Current Music: Dona Onete: No Meio do Pitiú

As the translator of this Japanese short story says in the tweet that brought it to my attention, "I won't blame you for not knowing you needed an Olympics ghost story in your life, but at least now you do." (source)

It begins promisingly...

I was ever so keen to visit the Aran Islands, but unfortunately, I died before ever making it out of Japan.

And continues that way!

And yet. In the months just prior to my death the idea had been mooted among the members of the neighbourhood association to go away on holiday. Over cups of tea after our weekly meeting, the vice-chair Mr Nakarai had let slip that he’d never been overseas, and then, one after another, all the other members of the group had begun to chime in, saying: ‘Me neither!’ ‘Oh, me neither!’ ‘No, I’ve never been abroad either.’ My voice had been among them. In that case, it was suggested, those of us who’d never once left the country should go along to a travel agency, organize a tour guide to accompany us, and take a yokels-abroad sort of vacation. We would go to some place that was the furthest imaginable from Japan. Doubtless the trip would completely wear us out, but we were all of the same generation, and if being abroad for the first time would wear us out to a similar degree, then at least we could be worn out freely and openly, just as our hearts desired. We could embarrass ourselves thoroughly and find it all too much, knowing that we were in good company ...

In the end, we settled on the Aran Islands in Ireland, on the basis they seemed peaceful, and thus probably well-suited to a bunch of pensioners like us.

Apparently my desire to go to the Aran Islands was even greater than I thought, because I was unable to proceed smoothly to the next life, and ended up instead stopping in this world as a ghost.

What follows are the adventures of Mr. Mita figuring out how to accomplish his purpose--visiting the Aran Islands, so he can depart this life--despite being a ghost. The story's called "A Ghost in Brazil," so you know it's going to take interesting turns.

And the guy's **voice** is just very amusing, very dry in a way that reminds me of Martha Wells's Murderbot.

It's free to read at the Granta website here. If you enjoy it, come and tell me which parts you like best.

I talked about this Brazilian SF show once before, in 2017, when just one season was out and I started watching it. It's now complete at four seasons. The premise is that 97% of the world (or at least the portion we're focused on) live in poverty in a desertified "Inland" (Continente), but 3% live in a tropical paradise, the Offshore (Maralto; probably based on the actual island of Fernando do Noronha based on its location on the map that plays in the opening credits). When people turn twenty, they get a chance to participate in "the process," a series of tests that separate the worthy 3% from the unworthy 97%.

Over the course of the four seasons, the characters find out the hidden history of how this process started and put into action various plans to counter the injustices of this system. All the characters end up doing things they deeply regret, in a way that sometimes feels like the creators jerking them around, but on the other hand gives them all a chastened human fallibility that's identifiable even when the decisions it resulted from are hard to credit.

There are problems with the setup that I could never quite get past (how both these places are provisioned, mainly), and one direction for a solution that's actually explored in the middle seasons (creation of an alternative to the Offshore) seems like it could have been explored more, in more different ways--basically I thought there were always more directions for change than the characters imagined--but within the limitations that the show marked out, I really wanted to see how the characters were going to sort things out--both societally and personally.

Brief aside: Everyone in the inland dresses in improbably fabulous rags--take a look at these sneakers!

I was super moved by the final episode (in spite of a plot mechanic that frustrated me) because it spoke to how I feel about the social situation in the United States right now (even though the show is Brazilian). It gave me the ending I want for us. Spoiler cut ahead! But if you're not going to see the show or don't mind about spoilers, read on ahead, or better yet, just watch the first few moments of the video of the final scene, because it's beautiful and uplifting.

( spoilers )

Current Music: Chico César: Velha Roupa Clorida

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"Looking at the mountain is an instant relief from all pain"
Wednesday Reading
Encontro das Águas
when you are a midnight volcano
some reading notes, some dashing birds
Pa' dónde se fue?
Samba da Utopia, by Jonathan Silva and Ceumar
Divine ancestor meet-cute
Pra não dizer que não falei das flores
Wednesday reading
the dangers of a spectacular sunset
paçoca and PW
"A Ghost in Brazil"
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Asakiyume mita

Entries tagged with brazil

"Looking at the mountain is an instant relief from all pain"

Wednesday Reading

Encontro das Águas

when you are a midnight volcano

some reading notes, some dashing birds

Pa' dónde se fue?

Samba da Utopia, by Jonathan Silva and Ceumar

Divine ancestor meet-cute

Pra não dizer que não falei das flores

Wednesday reading

the dangers of a spectacular sunset

paçoca and PW

"A Ghost in Brazil"

3%