Leãozinho

My cold per­sists but I have been going out any­way. Two days in bed was all I could sit still for. Being sick has slowed down my study­ing though. I am doing three ses­sions a week with Fer­nanda, but we chat­ter so much in Eng­lish that I am not prac­tic­ing as often as I should. I have been lis­ten­ing to a pod­cast called Tá Fal­ado, which teaches Por­tuguese pro­nun­ci­a­tion to peo­ple who already know Span­ish. It has been infi­nitely help­ful, and a few peo­ple have even flat­tered me on my accent. The hard­est thing to remem­ber for me is to pro­nounce the ti like chi, the de like jee, and when r is like the Eng­lish r and when it is more like an h. The car­i­oca accent is espe­cially funny to wrap my tongue around with extra ‘sh’ sounds in place of s. Words like casas, house, has a very straight for­ward pro­nun­ci­a­tion in Span­ish, but the Por­tuguese has it more like cazash. I got laughed at the other day for pro­nounc­ing the name of a night club as Democraticus, with­out the chi sounds in place of the ti. When I don’t know what to say, I try pro­nounc­ing my Span­ish like Por­tuguese and peo­ple usu­ally get what I am say­ing, or are occa­sion­ally shocked to hear me say some­thing with per­fect grammar(totally coin­ci­dence in these cases). I still fal­ter as I think in Span­ish and get wor­ried about what trans­lates into Por­tuguese and what doesn’t.

On Tues­day, Fer­nanda and I went onto the bal­cony of her office so I could get some shots of her and the view. The light faded fast though, so I will give it another try tomorrow.

Her ther­apy office, where we occa­sion­ally have our Por­tuguese ses­sions, is on the 13th floor of a build­ing on Ave N.S. de Copaca­bana, one of the three avenues that run the full length of the neigh­bor­hood. This view is look­ing into the hills, away from the beach. I still haven’t made it up to the big Christ statue you can see off in the dis­tance. The views from there are sup­posed to be spectacular.

I went to the Cae­tano Veloso con­cert with a dif­fer­ent group than I planned. Livia was tired and I quickly called Wayne to see if he was inter­ested in going. He, his friend Camila, and I went.

get­ting tickets

Went we were in line out­side to get into the show, there was an arrest. A police car drove up and they grabbed a man, maybe 35 years old, dark skinned. I don’t know what he did, but the police went right for him and roughed him up a lit­tle. It was shock­ing to watch. The man didn’t seem vio­lent. The cops pinned him against the back of the police car, then struck the hand­cuffs against his wrists a few times before cuff­ing him. The man started shout­ing into the crowd. Camila got the impres­sion that he was ‘a crazy.’ The police threw him into the back of the car and drove off. I kept think­ing about the scene at the end of the doc­u­men­tary Bus 174, where the hijacker was bun­dled into the back of the police car and killed on the way to the sta­tion. I feel like when police are bru­tal in the US, they at least make an effort to do it behind closed doors, in poor neigh­bor­hoods of color, or in tense sit­u­a­tions like protests. The aggres­sion was gra­tu­itous and shock­ing to see in front of the crowd.

The con­cert was at Fundição Pro­gresso, a big con­cert hall and cul­tural cen­ter in Lapa. I had a hard time get­ting into the show because there were so many peo­ple and I know so few of his songs. It is impres­sive what a vari­ety of styles he plays and how ener­getic he is on stage after so many years. He did a good job work­ing the crowd. The crowd was mostly young, 18 to 30. So many peo­ple were smok­ing inside, both cig­a­rettes and mar­i­juana. It’s always a shock for me as a New Yorker to see smok­ing inside. It got so smoky inside that it messed with the light­ing design.

Fer­nanda and I prac­ticed some of his songs as part of our ses­sion yes­ter­day. She was par­tic­u­larly sen­ti­men­tal about the song O Leãoz­inho. Her mom used to sing it to her.

…Gosto de ti ver ao sol, leãz­inho,
de te ver entrar no mar.
Tua pele, tua luz, tua juba.
Gosto de ficar no sol, leãoz­inho,
de mol­har minha juba
de estar perto de você e entrar numa.

I just have a few days until the rest of the class arrives. Peter, the pro­fes­sor, is here. I saw him briefly yes­ter­day. I won­der where these weeks went, so fast. This always hap­pens, I kick back think­ing I’ve got tons of time, and then it is gone. So it goes. I feel set­tled and ori­ented. That takes a lit­tle time. I was hop­ing to read Drugs & Democrasy in Rio de Janeiro: Traf­fick­ing, Social Net­work­ing, & Pub­lic Secu­rity by Enrique Desmond Arias before the class got started, but that’s seem­ing awfully ambi­tious now. Today I’ll have lunch with Livia and then run around with Peter to some gal­leries. Then in the evening I’ll do some Portuguese.