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WHAT IS THIS GRANDMA DOIN FER FUN?
readin you and how absolutely delightful you are!
Timely piece..........for my daughter just called me last night with the news that her 'anti-depressant' is working well. 'Celexa?' Or is that the male pill? Anyway, daughters doing great, smiling at my grand girls, not fighting with her husband and making three course meals. Least this is the news she spread last night...........today I can't get a hold of her, whad do you think she could be happily up to that she can't answer the phone today?
posted by
ALWAYSALOVER
on May 7, 2005 at 2:06 PM
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wells ARE deep subjects, attax, I agree. It was written in Spanish, not
in Portuguese, the song lyrics, that is. The Brasilians have wonderful songs about love, but they are sexier than the songs in Spanish. The songs in Spanish lift you to heaven with their love words. The songs in Portuguese put you in the room where the love is being expressed.
I went to Brasilia just after it was finished being built. We stayed at the American Embassy's compound of apartments, as the city was not populated enough to be 'open for business' and there was hardly a place to stay. The ghettos, favelas were full of the workers who migrated there to build the city and support the workers who built the city. It was pretty gruesome, as there was no social net to help this population out until the 'real' moneyed citizens arrived to spend their money and get the economy moving.
As we drove the eerily empty streets of a major city and saw only seven cars during one entire day, feelings of 'after the third world war' filled our minds and we talked about it.
The hugely tall office buildings of grey and cold cement, loomed over the streets, but the window's venetian blinds were already deteriorating in the sunlight and unreplaced, unrepaired in unoccupied buildings.
The sides of the streets had slashes of blood red iron oxidized soil, laid bare by bull dozers, next to them, emphasizing their newness, their still raw state. The wind blew this soil into the streets, the rain wetted it and it then ran in the gutters, like blood on rainy afternoons.
The Government Buildings were the most unusual, but typical of the architectural period in Brasil, modern concrete as art in public places, in almost all new construction of those decades. The upside down wide open bowl, the statue of the woman with her hair flowing out into the air, the one of the family, the fountains and ramps, and the chilly grey, grey, grey color of it all in the red and faraway green jungle backdrop. Fascinating.
We went to the only open restaurant for dinner. It was in a hotel and I can't remember the name of the hotel, a huge one downtown. We were the only family in there. There were diplomats and rich construction engineers and architects, but no families as yet. There were four waiters for each person there. It felt very Buckingham Palace, very Taj Mahal, if they had served dinners there. The food was heavenly, the service beyond attentive and we felt very different from the economically restricted upbringing of our past family life, which we had left behind in Tucson, Arizona, for the 'wilds' of jungle filled Brasil.
We were stationed at the American Embassy in Rio. The Brasilian government was trying to force its Legislature and foreign embassies to move to and to hold their business and bureaucratic meetings in Brasilia, but had failed to make it happen, up until that moment. Brasilians love and hug and cleave to their beaches, in spite of a President's visions to move them into the interior of the nation to develop it more fully.
I was in highschool, carefree and fancy filled and foolish. I sewed a new bikini for myself each week of summer, hung out in Leblon or Ipanema or Gavea beaches, sat and ate in country clubs and had my hair done and almost learned to find servants invisible as the 'born to it' people do. I jumped Carnaval each year for weeks and then days and finally could not walk each year at the end of Carnaval, from constant jumping in huge circling crowds, old style. Now they stand, drink in hand and just do the same three sexy moves, a very boring bachanalia.
Rio is different and I would tell you to go to Fortaleza or Salvador, Bahia now, instead. More like Rio was in the old days. Rio now is dangerous, more subdued and less colorful, less soulful, less musical, less whimsical.
Cariocas will now attack me en masse for saying that. Sigh.
posted by
benzinha
on April 4, 2005 at 10:24 AM
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FactorFiction, I resist less now, too. Maybe it's an older and fully func-
tioning brain, one which is finally on my side and working for my total good!?!?!?
When I was younger, I said that I didn't medicate away my problems, as though I were bragging about some wonderful trait in myself. Medications are not the brutal things that they were in the 60's and I decided to go with the medicated flow this time and am glad that I did.
posted by
benzinha
on April 4, 2005 at 9:51 AM
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well can be a deep subject
Thank you for inviting us to heaven. ?Es que Portugues? One day we'd like to consume the architecture of Brasilia and the humanity of Rio...
posted by
attax
on April 2, 2005 at 9:58 PM
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Bravo!
I still resist any suggestion that I take a new medicine myself...it chafes but I am more willing to try it now that I have admitted that it really does help sometimes. But I try not to be as stubborn 
posted by
FactorFiction
on April 2, 2005 at 9:52 AM
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attax, exhaled by angels, huh?!?!? No, just well medicated. I remember
when I did fun things on my own, but lost the ability this past year. Now, I can again and Life is much more fun and full of bigger and more foolishly fun possibilities for daily mischief.
I have been playing my cd of Los Tri-O from Colombia. They sing for oldsters like me, even tho' they are very young. They are reviving all the ancient songs for younger generations. Good boys.
"Amorcito Corazon..... Companeros en el bien y el mal".....companions, in good times and bad, or in good and bad behavior..!!!
Then there's, "Esperame en el Cielo, Corazon, si es que te vas primero (wait for me in Heaven, if perchance you go there first.).......nuestro amor es tan grande y tan grande, que nunca termina (our love is so large and so large that it never ends). Te pido que me esperas en el cielo (I ask you to wait for me in Heaven). Esta vida es tan corta que no basta para nuestro idilio...." anyway, I love it, so sad and so happy in its expectation of reunion. I sing it off and on all day to Makeda while massaging her old bones.
We played the bagpipes for my daddy on his death bed as he wandered away from us. I am playing El Trio Los Panchos and Los TRI-O to send off my favorite dog since my childhood's huge lion of a Collie. The house drips nostalgia off its walls this week, as it saturates the house and our lives around here.
posted by
benzinha
on April 1, 2005 at 4:19 AM
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tely, you stay off that leg and sing to your cats, okay?
What if antibiotics are useless for its problems?? They don't help blood clots, etc. So, careful, amor. You are doing insane things on that injured leg.
STOP IT NOW!!!!! Wandering the streets of New York, I think that you injured your head more than previously believed !!! Sit down, baby girl. Sit!!!
posted by
benzinha
on April 1, 2005 at 3:52 AM
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WELLA WELLA!
If you hadn't been born the angels would have exhaled you. Your writing, as usual, is ever so lovely! Thanks for this piece.
posted by
attax
on March 31, 2005 at 9:39 PM
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Oh dear Grandma, I could feel your happiness in this post! And it made me smile. As for the leg, they don't know yet -- the LPA is having a doctor look at the scans and xray to see what they can figure out, and she gave me massive antibiotics to take. So we will see. At least the damn paper is done, and within the specs the instructor asked for, so I am greatly releaved. Right now I wish I could just bake this leg in the sun and see if that will help. But alas, spring is not quite yet here...
posted by
telynor
on March 31, 2005 at 9:24 PM
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ca88andra, good to hear and good to feel; it's all good, no?
posted by
benzinha
on March 31, 2005 at 7:38 PM
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Its good to hear you are joyful again!
posted by
Ca88andra
on March 31, 2005 at 2:52 PM
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talion, six hot fudge sundaes, wonderful. Never stop, well, for a week or
so, then stop. I do believe in silly activities and I believe in repeating them over and over again for awhile, just for the joy of it all. Now, I want a hot fudge sundae, with really hot fudge on it, and peanuts. Yum.
Loved your sinful confession of joyous self indulgence. Sometimes, hard work must be repaid in our lives with hot fudge or triple decker burgers, but not often if we don't want to get Really Big Really Quickly. Thanks for reading and commenting.
posted by
benzinha
on March 30, 2005 at 10:36 PM
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HolyAnxiousGrail, sorry that it didn't work for you. It does for me and
it doesn't cause side effects other than dry mouth for me. I have stopped smoking without any withdrawal with its help.
posted by
benzinha
on March 30, 2005 at 10:31 PM
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maj, the rain has stopped. We have never had so much rain. It still
threatens to return. The plants are loving it. So, no more singing in the rain, now I'm just singing in the sunshine!!
posted by
benzinha
on March 30, 2005 at 10:29 PM
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benzinha
I have suddenly realized the joys of hot fudge sundaes. I've had six in the past five days (two on Sunday) and look forward to the streak continuing, even though it may not be a great idea. High blood pressure and diabetes runs in my family, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
posted by
Talion
on March 30, 2005 at 7:13 PM
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benzinha
Wow, I'm worn out from just reading that! I really wish Wellbutrin hadn't given me such awful anxiety attacks. I had such high hopes for it, too...
posted by
Holy_Grail
on March 30, 2005 at 7:01 PM
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I take it the rain has stopped?
posted by
majroj
on March 30, 2005 at 5:47 PM
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