Hey everyone,
This iteration is a bit different. Lots of pictures! Hope you enjoy it and thanks for being here and reading along.
Have a great weekend. I don’t know about you, but I will be HEAVILY invested in EuroCup matches ⚽.
Until next time - blessings and beijos do Rio,
Jodi
Maybe it’s because alternatives are less than ideal, but we do what we can to feel whole.
This tendency is one way we can think of home, writes Clarissa Pinkola Estés in Women Who Run With The Wolves. But whether we’re sleeping in the comfort of our own beds and waking up to familiar creaks in the floorboards, we can feel out of sorts where we’re supposed to be grounded. Lost the only reasonable place someone might expect to find us. Empty inside.
For me, the warning signs are small but not insignificant. I screen (more) calls and texts from friends than usual. Online shopping becomes of ravenous yet remarkably unfruitful pastime. I drink too much. I feel agitation in my bones and boredom at the ends of my fingertips.
With some 26 and counting mailing addresses, I get that home has little to do with where I am and a lot more to do with what I’m experiencing. Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes,
“Home is a sustained mood or sense that allows us to experience feelings not necessarily sustained in the mundane world: wonder, vision, peace, freedom from worry, freedom from demands, freedom from constant clacking.”
And so, last Saturday, that’s exactly what I went searching for.
After a super fresh swim and lazy breakfast, Marcos took the ferry across to Niterói and dedicated the afternoon to a black and white photography field trip.
Once we arrived, we headed for Ilha da Boa Viagem (that’s ‘good trip island’ in English) as the view looking back to Rio is stunning from there, so too, we discovered, was the lighting on its little footbridge. Just under our toes, families built sandcastles and kids splashed around. Moms held their babies close. Clouds passed by. I said good afternoon to a handful of people but mostly I spoke to no one.
As Marcos and I edged our way towards the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói (Contemporary Art Museum) designed by Rio-born architect, Oscar Niemeyer, we watched families retreat from the water, reaching for the last shrinking spots of daylight. It made me think of something Patti Smith shares in her memoir Just Kids about her almost supernatural relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe,
“I stood with him looking at an image of white tulips that Robert had shot against a black background. ‘What’s the blackest thing you’ve ever seen?’ asked Sam.
‘An eclipse?’ I said, as if in answer to a riddle.
‘No.’ He pointed at the photograph. ‘It’s this. A black you can get lost in.’
Later Robert was inscribing the photograph to Sam. ‘He’s the only one who really gets it,’ he said.
Marcos and I didn’t go inside the museum and wound ourselves around the gorgeous building that oozes intrigue instead. In his memoir, The Curves of Time, Niemeyer had this to say about shape and time:
“I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. I am attracted to free-flowing, sensual curves. The curves that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, and on the body of the beloved woman. Curves make up the entire Universe, the curved Universe of Einstein.”
And so, around we went.
Later, we caught the sunset from the top of Parque da Cidade (or “city park”) and a couple of Marcos’s photographer friends met up with us. As they exchanged tips and tricks, I watched the glow of the sun drop behind mountains in the faraway distance. I said good afternoon to a handful of people but – lost in the black – mostly I spoke to no one.
Feeling whole can mean a million things, and thank God for that. Long weekends at the cottage. Screening FaceTime calls to stare out the window and smile at kids scooting by. Warm cookies. Peace and quiet.
For me, last Saturday, it meant experimenting with light and dark, shadows and lines. Home, to borrow Clarissa’s language, meant taking up what I needed to feel whole.
“Art is important for it commemorates the seasons of the soul, or a special or tragic event in the soul’s journey. Art is not just for oneself, not just a marker of one’s own understanding. It is also a map for those who follow after us.”
– Clarissa Pinkola Estés
What I'm Reading Right Now (or the laziest attempt at pseudo-book club ever):
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Somebody’s Daughter: A memoir by Ashley C. Ford
Remote: Office not required by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (okay, literally like my fourth time trying to read this but I get bored every time… anyone else get this?!)
WOW! I love this as a new genre for you - I feel like non-fiction poetic-artistic travel writing with photos is such a great form of writing for you and can so easily involve couple collab!
I particularly love the photo you took of Marcos photographing and I LOVE his last shot of the sunset!