1/28/04:
Last Friday afternoon the rain came down so hard it became traffic.
C- called me right before our appointment to tell me that I didn't have to come over to her office that afternoon if I didn't want to. She had to translate one of her papers into English for an orthodontists' conference and needed my help. I said it's no problem, I have an umbrella, and her office is only three blocks down the hill slope that defines my neighborhood. It actually took me about 25-minutes to make it down there.
And this rain can be incredible, one of those sky-opening-at-once summer storms where cars pull over and everyone blindly hides under the store fronts. S?o Paulo doesn't really have sewers, not that I've really made it a point to notice if that's totally true. Here at least, the gutters are sculpted deeper and take advantage of the many tight hills to take the massive storm to elsewhere. It starts as a fast stream that causes me to leap from the curb about a meter, careful not to rudely splash fellow pedestrians. I'm pretty tall but this gets more and more difficult. Then the water spills over onto the sidwalks creating a sort of obstacle course of quick, long sprints onto the little raises in the broken tiles that line the curb.
Once the peaks in the walk are covered, I have to hide under awning of a cafe. At this point some strategy is necessary. I'm watching several streams make complicated patterns through the now undifferentiated road and sidewalk, carefully drawing a route wherein I'm only jumping into ankle-deep pits of water rather than getting soaked up to the knees even though multiple gallons of rain are blowing in under my umbrella anyway. Now I'm on the steepest slope of my route and the gutters are rivers and they crash against the backs of parked cars and spill to the side waist-high, slamming the back of a dumpster in front of a construction site turning the area into a fast mudslide and I then realize I've no dry inch left to save.
I had spent many years as a bike commuter through all of Chicago's inclemental offerings so I think I'd worn away most of the vanity that pits clothes against weather and keeps people from having any idea that blasting through the snow on a track bike is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. I sensed this same thrill when I gave up, walked the remaining block and a half like a normal day with the water the soft cool hug that it is and sheepishly arrive with no need for any excuse for being a half hour late for an appointment 3 block away.
posted by jeremy @ 9:43 PM
1/23/04:
Is it antenae or antenaes?
posted by jeremy @ 3:35 PM
1/20/04:
Happy trails
Paul
Dennis
Matt and
Sam have announced that the well-loved Haypenny.com is shutting down before jumping the proverbial shark. If you haven't yet had the chance to see this impressively consistent journal from four lads from Detroit and their massive Internet cult of collaborators, definitely look.
And I'm not so much disappointed in this news as I'm bummed that for whatever reason Haypenny.com doesn't accept requests from Brazilian IP addresses. Seriously, over the past four months I've tried to load Haypenny from computers of all shapes, sizes, cafes, browsers, OSs, connections, on and on and they all claim that the server doesn't exist. Even the Haypenny-hosted images on Paul, Sam, Dennis, and Matt's respective weblogs don't show up in Brazil (and Jesse's site doesn't exist here either) . Maybe that's why no one's heard of Haypenny down here.
Anyways, congrats guys on three remarkably consistent years and piles and reams of hilariousness. It'll all be missed.
posted by jeremy @ 4:03 PM
1/16/04:
Nitrogen
From The Periodic Table by Primo Levi -
Having been let in, I passed the tests, and right away I hastened
to refresh my memory as to the composition and structure of alloxan.
Here is its portrait:
in which O is oxygen, C is carbon, H is hydrogen, and N nitrogen.
It is a pretty structure, isn't it? It makes you think of something solid, stable, well linked. In fact it happes also in chemistry as in architecture that "beautiful" edifices, that is, symmetrical and simple,
are also the most sturdy: in short, the same thing happens with molecules
as with the cupolas of cathedrals or the arches of bridges. And it is also possible that the explanation is neither remote nor metaphysical: to say "beautiful" is to say "desirable," and ever since man has built he has
wanted to build at the smallest expense and in the most durable fashion, and the aesthetic enjoyment he experiences when contemplating his work comes afterward. Certainly, it has always been this way: there have been centuries in which "beauty" was identified with adornment, the superimposed, the frills; but is probable that they were deviant epochs and that the tue beauty, in which every century recognizes itself, is found in upright stones, ships' hulls, the blade of an ax, the wing of a plane.
posted by jeremy @ 11:31 AM
1/11/04:
Sketches
This place is so completely fascinating, but so difficult to depict. The enormity of this landscape, its instananeous architecture, its constant self-reproduction - this comes to the senses as a sort of overwhelming depth. Stand on any bridge and you can see into a kaleidoscpe of skyscrapers that stretch across the field of vision for miles, no centers, no neat frames like the cold and logical grids that I'm accustomed to coming from Chicago. There's no single Sears Tower-like structure to provide a little arial face - just a series of antenaes and the gawdy logos of banks adorning the tops of the towers, congradulating the city for existing for 450 years. I constantly fall asleep while mentally peeling away the layers of sounds that drift in through my window - voices, cars, televisions, speakers, buses, firecrackers, radios, helicopters, airplanes - a constant violence, but oddly comforting, like listening to the world turning.
Anyways after four months of living in S?o Paulo I finally some photos to show for it. Below are some of the images that I've been experimenting with lately when given the time. A more coherent project will be in the works soon, hopefully. Click the thumbnail for a (sometimes excessively) larger image.
PS. If anyone noticed, I've taken my photo portfolio off of this site. I'll make a new home on the web for it some time in the kinda distant future. For now, La beta corpo will just be a pretensiously named weblog. Cheers.
posted by jeremy @ 12:47 PM
:
Another New Year's in Rio dispatch
Prentiss Riddle also went to the big party -
This year the papers said there were 2.5 million people on Copacabana beach. They claimed that while the lifeguards saved 168 people from drowning, the many police on hand had very little to do. No assaults were reported and the worst offender was one bicycle thief who was promptly arrested. Even if the official story is an exaggeration, the scene was calm with lots of kids and old folks alongside the partiers. A peaceful gathering like this must be particularly significant in a city where so many people say they live with fear of violence.
An interesting report here. Photos here
posted by jeremy @ 12:38 PM
1/3/04:
Happy New Year
Rio de Janeiro was millions of giddy people packed along Copacabana, one of the biggest New Year's Eve parties on Earth I'm told, an absolutely apocalyptic fireworks show culminating with the military base that sits between Copacabana and Ipanema exploding into the water, corks and firecrackers and flowers flying everywhere, screaming into the hot salty air, heroic amounts of beer drinking, conked out groups sleeping in the sand, met up with some old friends, made lots of new friends, enjoyed the city's slight familiarity for me and finally seeing such an amazingly iconic skyline again, and despite its obvious point of entry, I'm completely convinced that this is my favorite place in the world.
posted by jeremy @ 12:29 PM
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