Hungry Brazilians …

Yes it’s been a while… No I haven’t been hiding under a rock, but rather within a mountain range - for that is what my hometown of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil is.

But I am back in full force to share with you my quotidian thoughts; these are developed as I go up and down the hills that have so beautifully embraced me. 

In this place where I grew up,  these thoughts spring with the site and smells of a childhood long gone.

And such is life for many of us who dare call the world, home.

Brazil is a country going through unprecedented economic up surge. Its been over twenty years since we have been fully freed  from military control and only now are our politicians able to lift  millions from the seemingly poverty that has defined the social fabric of this country. I will later explain why seemingly, but first let me tell you a few things.

 Growing pains if I may:

In reality this is a process that has been put on pause by imported arms, tanks and know-how, bought with lent international money for that specific purpose. That was how the IMF has funded this country’s fear of the so called communist wave and in doing so, promoted a government with a disregard for the social changes that inevitably were taking place. They were too busy being though, thus fomenting a culture of violence and discontent.

Somethings not even money can buy : The seemingly poverty:

I say seemingly because, in reality what has provoked the dissemination of Brazil’s famous favelas was an excess of money, which attracted to the metropolis willing and able citizens, after all, they built this country in exchange for a salary supplemented bountiful benefits - legacy of the fascist Getúlio Vargas. At the same time, the demand for goods became rampant issuing therefore an absurd inflation rate that forbade the working class to keep up with the ever changing prices while they swam against the currency. A current that set the middle and lower classes on a race to protect themselves from the policies that buried their vision of a better life.

What we lacked wasn’t monetary wealth, but rather a sense of organization to accommodate this new reality. Consequently workers of all colours and creeds found on the hills and peripheries os the metropolis that fed their dreams, a place to call home. At least for now. Meanwhile, some have been leaving “temporarily” for over 4 decades, as wooden shacks gave way to more sturdy structures, but only from their doors in. At their doorsteps problems brewed under the garbage and open sewages.

All political attention were at that time concentrated on childish political squirms therefore the opportunity of the long awaited growth was delated until now, when the problems are at their highest. And I am not talking about petty crimes, things have become more sophisticated, Hollywood style. 

Some remember the military government with a certain saudosismo or a sense of nostalgia. For the rich too, became richer, the difference being that they were able to enjoy their wealth, and there is nothing wrong with that.  By 1980’s, around fourteen years after the coup, a neo-liberal model of each man for himself allowed for wealth to be accumulated here and it did elsewhere - in the first world - a link that has always defined our fortune. Meanwhile IMF’s structural reforms dishevelled the country’s existing infrastructure and social programs. Consequently, at time the “poor” was making more money then ever in our history but lacked the organization to enjoy their accomplishments. With the aforementioned inflation the money earned could no longer provide the working class with the peace of mind their fathers were endowed with. They left the farms and small towns where food was abundant and housing provided with the idea that something better than the fields awaited. The simplicity that defined such people was met with problems they could have never conceived. By the time they realized that their hopes and dreams were shot it was just too late to turn back.

The sought after education continued to lack while the cost of living they experienced could not buy the quality of life they had once experienced. And it was in makeshift homes that they proliferated believing that one day the heavens would open up and for that, they happily prayed or danced giving yield to this country’s biggest celebration, the carnival.

After all, we say down here that “God is Brazilian”, for we still believe that we were undoubtedly been given the promised land of more then milk and honey. We were given bounty; colourful tasting fruits and vegetables that grows all year long under a kind sun. But the hunger for dignity and opportunities beyond construction jobs, or the servitude that guaranteed a the next meal, brewed within sense of discontent and frustration that translated into acts violence of all kinds.

Will Brazil’s economic “miracle” redeem the country of such a past or will it once again foment the fear and resentment that has defined so many of these children of the heavens?

It will all depend on how well structured we all are, not only physically but also spiritually. Therefore, the answer my friend is, for now, blowing in the winds of change.

Brazil’s 1980’s gold rush:

new again

with the new moon the year officially starts for those who are resolution prone

for this is the moon that holds whatever you start on this day. the wonderful thing about it, is that each month you can implement a resolution rather then try to get it all done at once [and inevitably failed miserably at it all…]

my resolution this moon was to get out of bed early and meditate! done! it feels really great

next month i want to get out of bed even earlier meditate and do yoga [which i already kind of do] and hopefully add swimming to the routine. 

yes, thank you new moon 

the resolution moon that allows life to incrementally get solved.

happy 2012 

…

trying to re-create a space within

slowly building that which i forgot to be

LIKE ME

I LIKE THE IMPERFECT

ITS NOT TRYING TO BE SOMETHING IT CAN NEVER ACHIEVE

I LIKE MYSELF IN THE IMPERFECT

PURE 

RAW 

ALL OF ME 

NOT TRYING TO BE

TO P[ROVE

]TO PLEASE 

JUST THE OSCILLATIONS OF MY HEART 

INDICATING 

PULSATION BY PULSATION

ALL THAT I NEED TO SEE