Saturday, July 31, 2010

Of what is past, or passing, or to come

That is no country for old men.  The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
 
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
 
-------------------------------------------
"Sailing to Byzantium" - William Butler Yeats 

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Internet Café Update

My time here in Salvador is passing very quickly, and I have realized that it is much harder to update than I had previously thought.

The wi-fi in my hotel is $8.00 for every 24 hours, so after my initial white-knuckled night in a strange, new place, I have looked for other internet options.

So, I won´t be updating this blog as regularly as I planned.

There is simply too much living to do!

-Joe

Saturday, June 5, 2010

In Salvador, Brasil!

I am finally here.

My internet is spotty (and expensive) at my hotel in Salvador da Bahia, Brasil, but I will find an internet café somewhere close to update regularly.

But, I am here.

It turns out that Portuguese language is ESSENTIAL to doing ANYTHING here.  Luckily I have a knack for making up words in Portuguese that sound like French words with a slur here and there.

So much more to come.

Off to start my day.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Waiting in Chicago, ORD

The adventure begins.

I am almost too tired to function, but I'm trying to keep myself in this drowsy state, just like a smoldering flame lingering before it goes out, so that I will sleep well on my flight from Houston to Rio de Janeiro.

 I wonder how many people are in the airport at a given time. 3,000? 5,000?  Enough to form a small city living off of overpriced bananas and frappucinos.

Here's what ORD looks like (Chicago O'Hare).  Rather, here's what ORD looks like when you are walking and trying to take pictures with your phone inconspicuously.  I like the fourth one down.






Houston (IAH) is my next destination!

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Flight to Brazil Tomorrow



Esse brasil lindo e trigueiro,
É o meu brasil brasileiro,
Terra de samba e pandeiro.

Such a rush of emotions, but no time to dwell on anything.

Packing, fixing minor problems, packing, and eating occasionally are all I have to do today.

Then, I'm going to travel for 23 hours to go a mere one time zone ahead of Michigan. Thanks, cheap ticket!

Salvador da Bahia, I am coming!

Monday, May 31, 2010

Home for Memorial Day

I'm home in Leslie, MI until this evening.


View Larger Map

It's such a comforting, sincere emotion to feel that I am really home.

I am discovering all the books and CD's that I have let slip from my mind while in Lansing.  How could Nick Drake's Pink Moon not be on my iPod?  Blasphemy.  Especially when the title track devastated me before my first driver's education lesson, the song pushing me forward to some adult ritual I hardly wanted to initiate.  Such a reaction fits well in my general tendency to abhor growing up, growing older, growing gray.

I have been feeling, in general, both very happy and very nervous about going to Brazil.  Health and safety precautions freak me out more than console me.

Humid air in Leslie is somehow more comfortable than humid air anywhere else in the world.

I find solace in a couple books on the I Ching I bought years ago.  I used to see them as mere instruments for fortune-telling, and not reliable ones at that.  After so many years away from these books, I now see them as very inconspicuous yet deep wells of a philosophy that, after so many quiet years on a forgotten bookshelf, has only grown more ripe and respectable.

I wish I could spend a lot more time here.  Every time I come back to Leslie, it's always in passing.  A night, a long day, an afternoon, then I'm back in what feels like my replacement home, an imitation of a true attachment to pieces of furniture, to painted walls or to sunlight falling on a staircase.

Here's to growing up:

A Poem from High School

As I was looking through some old books and papers at home, I found this sometimes awkward, sometimes interesting poem (a bit like anyone's teenage years):


I loved before the mountains loved.
My heart was pierced by Indian's arrows
Scores before your grace shot down from the sky.
Darkness lives wherefrom I have come;
Into darkness will I soon return.

What light, this life, and all its worth!
What beauty in the leaving and in death.
What whispers between all things living;
What cascading fountains of regret.

I do not know if I will make it
Past this day or through the night.
The sun in the trees,
hiding thick in the trees,
peeking out of the trees,
Fools my twisted heart,
and my bark brittles and breaks.

And for those who knew me in those distant halls of past lives,
Might you harbor love that, ago, didn't seem?
Send it to heaven in freedom and light,
Throw your hands to a purple light in the sky.

As if by twisting hurricanes,
As if by grinning reapers standing still in Kansas twilight,
As if by lonesome herders peering out across their land,
I turn my self-torn body around, and slowly make for home.

We were the land's before the land knew we were living,
And our monuments to no one created our gods,
In a moment they were flung from a shrug of god's shoulders,
and they danced on their light down to earth.

What more today can be done?
How can I save this all?
Is it worthless, to try, to care, or,
to give all that I'll soon have lost?

By looking up and making sure that witches don't appear,
You'll be all right, and your dogs are fine in their kennel on the moon.
But if you see a broom flash above your head, and you don't have a house to run to,
Run right up to me, and you're now company, and you will save my life,
And we'll both be all right, and we'll shoot off for the sun in a day's time.
And we'll pass through the universe in an hour.  To home.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Brazil Is Enormous


From Thomas Skidmore's Brazil: Five Centuries of Change.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Je m'y habitue

I am learning to write.  Learning to write in this blog.  Learning to write in this blog so that I will be able to relate my experience in Salvador, Brazil, with passages that shake and samba like the gently swaying hips of the Brazilian nation.  Learning to write in order to learn who this Joseph is.

Feeling much better after a week of adjusting to one of the three vaccinations I received last Tuesday.  I finally felt well enough to walk to Biggby this morning, despite all the trudging through invisible swamps of stagnant heat on the sidewalk.  After walking around in eighty degree heat for five minutes, I realized that I could never be a lava monster, even if I wanted to, or even if I had to in some strange reality show involving mythical fire creatures.

Yet, when I got my drink and took the first sip, all I could taste was sugar.  I realized that my Biggby tolerance had reverted to null after a sole week of caffeine abstinence.  The culprit looks unassuming enough:


Yet, behind that frosted smirk lies a pound of sugar at least.  Enough sugar to kill some form of cute animal in its infant state, let's just say a baby squirrel.  TRUTH.

I have been volunteering at the MSU Museum's Department of Historical Collections for about a week now.  And sure, the handling of artifacts from MSU's long storied heritage is fascinating, but this video captures, in zero words, the true joy of my volunteering experience thus far:  riding in the bed of a truck.



Ummmmmm... Yeah, I'm done with this post now.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Open Books and Impatience

Japanese oral exam went very well today.  Maybe it was the quadruple-shot latte.  Maybe it was my studying.  Maybe I can not worry so much about grades.

I will wake up late tomorrow, on purpose!

I rest while stressed.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Studying, Studying, Studying

I love the way the air smells right now, perfumed with the coming summer.  A heaviness, not overwhelming, yet laden with memories of lazy summers spent sipping glasses of water as I sat on couches and dreamed of the future, of when I would be in college and know exactly who I am.

I hope to write more in this blog, and I hope that it eventually feels natural, that I can at least know who I am during the moments when I write here, that I will at least feel rooted while sending off stray thoughts to a server in a distant state as I sit in Lansing and think about all my 14-year old dreams that are still being dreamt.  If I only could have learned sooner that the majority of teenage aspirations are only ever diverted, never given straightaway. 

I will blink my eyes, and I will be another year older.  Two blinks, another 10 years.  Three blinks, asleep in an overstuffed armchair in, probably, without fail, unfortunately, some well-shaded suburban American town...

My summer reading list is in front of me at my desk as I study:

"Un jour, j'étais âgée déjà, dans le hall d'un lieu public, un homme est venu vers moi".  Exquisite.

Japanese oral exam tomorrow.  I made flashcards with grammar points.  Tomorrow, armed with the biggest coffee I can legally buy, I will talk to myself in Japanese all morning, in probably a public place, and pray that the patterns I'm repeating begin to sound like that true chord ringing deep in my chest, the one that rings loudest when I'm sitting in Lansing  at 10:30 at night and inhaling slowly, savoring slowly each note of wet earth and humid air, feeling undeniably home.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Viva Laldjérie

Full marks for Viva Laldjérie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBMCse6jigs.

Hello, This is a Beginning

Internet!  I have been expecting you.

I am Joe, not overly immature nor old.

On this day, the first of the ninth month of my twentieth year, I begin writing a blog.

What is there to write?  I am not so sure.  Let's find out together.