Desire Be Desire Go
Have you ever seen Inception?
When the main characters infiltrate the dreams, they continue in the dreamworld unnoticed by the dreamers 'projections', until they perform an action which is abnormal and all of a sudden, the 'projections' all turn to face the foreigner inside the dream.
That is the scenario I find myself in fairly regularly here. I appear Brazilian and native to many, being brown and having only worn flip flops since arrival, finishing off my outfit with shorts, a vest showing my necklace and possibly an open shirt with a funky pattern if the weather requires. Muito Carioca
I genuinely fly under the radar, until I either do something that personifies me as a "gringo" or I open my mouth.
One instance of this was upon the metro. Rush hour, a busy station, I was very tired from walking all day, I began to board the equally busy train as an old lady stopped dead in front of me. I squeezed past to head into the carriage barely scraping her bag. She began to say a few things to me in Portuguese in a disapproving fashion. I was thinking, fuck off love, you just stopped and I barely touched your bag, but of course responded with my most used phrase "desculpe, eu nao falo portuguese". It was at this point, I came to notice a group of 3 girls turn to face me. I turned around and 6 or 7 more women were staring at me. An awful lot of people looking now and a surprising majority of women it seemed. It was at this point I realised I'd boarded the women only carriage and that this is what the old lady was of course telling me. I squeezed off in time but not in enough time to get back on elsewhere.
Moments like these and moments where I cannot understand a word they say make me feel like a gringo and it frustrates me so. I have begun private Portuguese lessons, 3 hours a day, 3 days a week and its already helping. Yesterday I understood so much of what the guy was saying and was surprising myself at what I could say. It takes a helluva lot of focus to listen to every word they say. A few seconds of distraction and you've lost the scent, you once more have to regain focus before you can understand what they're saying. I understand more than I can say and they talk more than I, but it's a nice change for me to do the listening for a change.
Within those 3 hours I find myself pretty absorbed in the lesson and have less and less thoughts distracting me, I feel locked in, I love it. A feeling I only felt during competitive sports or teaching, which is now starting to emanate into more aspects of my life.
My teaching job has begun and although locked in for the 25 minute lessons, It's not quite the dream job I had once portrayed. I can only work for 15 hours Mon- Fri atm and there's a chance the 25 minute slots don't get booked or they just don't show up. On both of these occurrences I receive no money, so I need to start working weekends, get a side hustle or just live super frugal. I will though and this is exactly what I wanted, to make it work, overcome such obstacles. It was almost too easy it seemed, and it was, but I'm not worried and am loving the problem solving mindset that it's brought on.
In the meantime I'm adopting the Carioca lifestyle, and keeping it slow; yesterday working in the morning before slowly getting ready, eating, and making my way to a cafe for a coffee and to read my book. I then hit the beach , upgraded to a beer and finished reading.
The book is called "The Island of Dr. Moreau". Cracking little read, would recommend. Although, the Simpsons annoyingly did their own interpretation in Treehouse of Horror and also I couldn't help but envision one of the characters as Mad Eye Moody. But apart from these media planted blips in my imagination, it was great and gets the mind thinking of the beast within. The animal mindset in us.
The last 3 books have weirdly all had this notion behind them. Its got me thinking a lot about the drives and noticing my own actions. Those driven by the animal and those by the human. The id and the ego. The feeling and the thought. Or as homo deus calls it, the experiencing self and the narrating self.
I find my narrating self or my thought, when its in control, doing great things or making movements such as deciding to go to Brazil, making plans in advance, getting lessons, doing good things and generally throwing myself in the deep end making my experiencing self deal with it.
Which is probably a good thing because my experiencing self would like to curl up and read buzzfeed and watch netflix all day with occasionally comforting social interaction. I do find myself at times being nervous, when it comes to actually doing things but I make myself do them anyway and I'm always glad I did because I always enjoy it once I've done it, like jumping into a cold river. Kinda like having a devil and an angel on my shoulder arguing about decisions in the present moment.
I read something inspiring about this recently, how we should remember that its not the devil or the angel in control but actually the person in the middle and we have the power to choose who to listen to.
And sometimes its also better to listen to the devil.
Shoutout to Shaun Livingston on the cameo.
My next book to read is "thinking fast and slow" of which appears to go in more depth about these states of mind. I'm really getting into my psych stuff and my own psyche but as I maintain with many of my previous classmates, people studied psychology at uni to understand themselves just as much as the people around them. So prepare for more on this.
My narrating self has given my experiencing self 3 situations over this weekend alone to do shit he probably doesn't wanna do as it draws near, but he will, have fun dude.
