Saudade redux

It was easier for me to leave Brazil than I had expected. Emotionally that is, discounting all this nonsense.

At times I try to remember the last time I walked the dog along the Aterro de Flamengo, watched the sun set over Pao de Acucar, or took a dip at Posto 10 in Ipanema. Truth is our last week in Rio was so horridly overcast and rainy that Isa and I were spared those last moments of sighing as we sipped a coconut juice by the water, pining to ourselves – the famous “saudade” that permeates Brazilian music – and wondering “how could we ever leave this place.”

It’s funny how saudade can catch up with you at unexpected moments. Listening to my Pilates teacher’s samba mix was one of those.

 

It was a welcome change from the previous few sessions I’d gone to, where the music had really ventured into full-on Kenny G territory.

This song by Jorge Aragao was one I couldn’t quite place but felt like I’d heard before. I salvaged enough of the lyrics in my head to be able to Google it later and find it on Youtube. I sat on one of those Pilates machines, the ones that look like medieval torture devices, doing my exercises, staring at a white sheet draping the ceiling, remembering this place that I had left.

I’m still thankful I got the opportunity to live in Brazil. Yes, in part because of the global fascination with the country that’s all of a sudden on the tip of everyone’s tongue. And because I genuinely enjoyed living for nearly three years in Rio, which really is one of the coolest places on the planet.

I think the music brings back some of the mystery the place still holds for me. Of course I got to know Brazil, but I didn’t “get it” in the way I could say that I “get” Venezuela. I walked into the experience thinking it would be another immersion of that sort. Naïve, I know (by the way, Word just put that pretentious New-Yorker style umlaut on there, I had nothing to do with it). I spent close to a decade in Caracas, got married, found a profession, and lived most of my adult life. There’s no repeating that, certainly not a decade later.

Music was one part of Brazil I never quite got to know as much as I’d hoped. Fortunately my friends Edu and Dea made two DVDs filled with thousands of Brazil’s most famous samba and pop tunes, that I’m still trying to learn little by little. It’s the sort of thing that reminds me that I need to call them and congratulate them on the birth of their second daughter. They’re the moments that make me want to hang on to friendships and the memories of the place, both of which will fade into the distance if I don’t put up a fight.

I’m still the butt of jokes for moving from Rio to Caracas. Truth is I haven’t looked back once since I did. Maybe it wasn’t the right moment, or the circumstances weren’t what I expected, or I didn’t know how to take advantage of them. It’s a bit of Mark Twain’s “youth is such a wonderful thing, what a pity to have to waste on the young,” routine, though maybe mid-30s is stretching the “youth” that Twain was referencing.

Maybe it’s a bit of expected saudade at an unexpected moment.