The last hour of summer and fire play

I got out of bed this morning and went out the get a juice fix. I got some açai for myself and some acerola for Tricia. Açai is this amazonian berry that has lots of calories and protein. It’s very popular in this fitness obsessed neighborhood. It’s so thick that you eat it with a spoon. Acerola is a berry that has 40 times the vitamin C of a lemon. The juice tastes like liquefied vitamin C pills. I also picked up the paper and was stoked to see that the exhibit that Peter has organized is featured on the front cover! I sent him a text message congratulating him on it. He called me back from a flea market and excitedly told me how stunned everyone is because I guess the usual procedure is to pay for a review, but this wasn’t paid for and there it is on the front of the Sunday edition of O Globo, the more respected and biggest paper in Rio.

Peter found the photographs in a flea market and did some serious sleuthing to find out their origin. Turns out that the images are from Ipanema in the few years before the military dictatorship. The photographer, Orizon Carneiro Muniz, had a chronic illness and could not participate in his friends activities in the same way they did, so he became the group photographer. The exhibition of the photographs is opening this Wednesday at Casa de Cultura Laura Alvim in Ipanema. I’m looking forward to it, should be good fun.

Last night we went to a Festa Junina in St. Teresa, the artsy neighborhood on the hill. I am still not really sure what a Festa Junina is about, but I gather it’s a harvest festival because a lot of the theatrical performance involved the earth and planting and wearing caricatured rural outfits. I don’t think that fire arts are usually part of festa juninas, but seeing as the crowd was a young, hippie, dramatic set, there was some fire play.

The space consisted or a garden walkway, a performance area, some food stands, and a lower level of garden beds and the fire. It reminded me of radical faerie events in the states. Delightful.

Now I am heading back to St.Teresa for a feijoada at Suzana’s bookstore. I will be fishing the pork out of my beans, but the food will be fabulous anywho.