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3/3/04: Just like ennui

Lost in Translation is finally showing here (by the name Encontros e Desencontros). It was out in the US right before I left but I was too busy getting ready to split so I hadn't had the chance to see it. It lacks the charm that I thought it would have, although a story about an endless, workless business trip as a sort of diaspora for really affluent Americans becomes a kind of flipsidesd description of a place. I'm now completely convinced that I need to visit Tokyo some time in my life - the closing scene of its megopolis highways rushing by to Jesus and Mary Chain's "Just like honey" did wonderful things for my urbanophilia. Regarding its really badly drawn Japanese characters, I wouldn't deride it as much as the film's detractors have - I think all the incomprehensible little side parts describe more the sad disinterest of the protagonists and has its place - but none of it was very funny either.

The movie ticket was 13 reais and I luckily had exactly that in my wallet. Leaving, I realized I only had a R$50 note at home and that's a problem. I had to be on the bus by 6am the next morning, but having 50 reais is the same as having nothing in this situation as the collector is never going to change it. Even trying with a five early in the morning can mean a long ride standing and hanging on for dear life in front of the turnstile until another passenger loosens up a couple more bills and I can then take a seat. An unsaid little Brazil survival strategy is know which bill to use where - and fifties are for buying a Newsweek at a newstand, half a week's groceries, or (shudder to think) something at McDonald's which has imported the taken-for-granted American custom of keeping change in the register drawer (they also always have security guards on hand (no, I don't go there very often, though I have in the past)). For my morning commute, it was going to be a very expensive cab ride to arrive an unnecessary 30 minutes ahead of my appointment.

I'm thinking about other sorts of annoyances that come with being foreign, little cultural quirks that get absorbed so illogically, wondering if I ever feel like Translation's characters sometimes. While there's the thrill of being in a place where you see everything, there are always a pile of discontents too.
The isolation is intense. So many people chatter so many things on the buses and its all just white noise. When I return to the US and all that chatter is in English again, and I re-understand every word, I imagine the effect will be maddening, wandering out of Plato's cave. After six months, I'm getting tired of the starchy Brazilian diet and tired of tiny dinners that give me insomnia. As I write, the guy on the fifth floor is forcing me to listen to the Dido CD for the third time in a row. I can either shut the window and live with the still 90-degree air or put my own music on and bear a sort of remix between the two. And I wonder "How is it that I'm now behind the same national border as Jorge Ben and in the same city as Tom Z? and I can't for dear life ever hear decent music?"

But then I imagine returning home to be like quicky flying toward a more chaotic place. George W Bush becomes a little less foul when seen behind a Portuguese voiceover (but only slightly less). The whole nonstory about Janet Jackson's nipple was thankfully reduced to a Yahoo News headline and a shrug for me. These editorial cartoons are my lense with which to remember the Passion, which otherwise couldn't interest me less. Home is somewhere else and keeps accelerating, turning over its sounds and cars and buildings a couple of times, an I'll miss it, to return from somewhere in the past. I'll have a whole head full of stories and a whole new language and no one will know. I can throw words like Brega [tacky] into my arsenal of English slang but only for my own pleasure. Certainly, when I return, people will get tired of me only having S?o Paulo to talk about and my response will be a lot of: "Oh that's kind of like [insert name of some other city somewhere in the world that the other person happens to have been to regardless if whether or not anything to do with the unfortunately boring story I'm telling]. I went there once and it was nice."

In a way, I'm seeing a little less of the world and finding a cool little comfort in that.

posted by jeremy @ 4:02 AM