I'm having a hard time being in such a romantic culture while trying to release my habitual relationship pattern. Here, EVERYONE is paired everywhere and showing it. I want to reach out to my last one and say I love you because I think it comforts me. It doesn't. It's not enough. I don't know if it's a real thing. My task here is to focus on myself, on the ways I love myself and what I am married to within myself, and to put my sexuality into creative ventures. But then I write these things in the middle of the night:
"I'm remembering how you touched me as I laugh at myself for not being able to sleep. The night is too hot and mosquitos kept buzzing in my ears waking me up. I did not want to be here in this room. I went out searching for a cooler place, I took my phone with me and so began the hours-long teeter from one application to the next. Now the sun is rising and I still haven't slept but somehow conditions are much sweeter to me in this room. A little light helps. But I roll over and think of you, picturing with my body the way you could be behind me. How you could graze my skin in want. And I want that. I want you."
For the first time here, I feel sad because I want for something I think I don't have. I can feel my heart moving, wrenching, trying to open or protect itself or bloom. Something is happening I don't know. Think I'm going through withdrawal.
--- 1. Today I had lunch with more of my family members: three cousins, an uncle, his wife, and her mother who cooked all this delicious food. They live in the country on a kind of farm. They raised cows last year but have decided to raise chickens this year. Right now it's too hot and dry to raise anything at all except cactus, which grows everywhere. They cut the needles off and fed it to the cows last year. My oldest cousin and uncle took me into the back of their house and showed me everything they have growing there and how things work. They have peppers, chives, 2 types of mint, some fruit I don't know, banana trees which die in the summer, lemons, and multiple types of trees. There are also multiple types of stinging insects with hives in the trees. Some type of frog they spoke of, fat and flat, lives in their big water catchment hole (pictured below). I learned that the rain water is caught in a large rock drum or hole in the ground and them pumped into the blue containers on rooftops, then used for showering etc. I like this system!
My oldest cousin was excited, telling me everything she could. We're friends on Instagram now. ;-) My uncle seemed to warm up to me with all of the exploration and my interest in the back yard. He was super sweet to me when I left. I forgot to ask them if they had built their house. Most of the houses here are hand-built. Amazing!
2. Brazilian TV is just as much trash as American TV. Duh. Now we know, just in case there was any question, TV anywhere is trash everywhere. :-/ I did peep a quick news story about a little herb shop in São Paolo and a gay-looking herbalist explaining how taking herbs is good preventative medicine. Yo. I got so hot. My whole body paused to listen to every word they said. It wasn't too deep, just a news blurb, but again I had that moment of being really happy to see us. In this case it was for an herbalist and then a BLACK herbalist and finally a Gay, Black herbalist. In my head I was scheming to make a trip down to São PauloHaha! Heey FAM-LAY!
