Tuesday A/V: Go West

It shows you how things have really changed. I had completely forgotten about this anthem from 1993 that I stumbled over the other day. How could I have forgotten it? When this video and song hit the clubs back then, it was something that made you tingle with joy and pride, and we all ran out onto the dancefloor. It was a defining song for a defining year of gay life in Washington, and in America.

Just watching it now made me choke up. The message of this video was so pure and marvelous, given the times. We were so giddy back then. I can't believe things have changed so radically that not only is the door slammed shut, but people are also forced to leave.

Home ....Sick

I made it back home to São Paulo on Saturday morning, and I was elated to be back. The journey was a bit of a nightmare, though, as I guess I should have expected it to be. I was still quite sick when I got to check-in at Benito Juarez, and the Avianca check-in counter was mobbed, and not moving. About 90 minutes of waiting led up to being informed that my flight to Bogota was delayed and I would miss my connection if I took it. So the airline was chaotically trying to rebook groups of passengers on a Mexicana flight to Bogota that left an hour earlier. I was the second-to-last person booked on that flight. The good news was I got upgraded (and Mexicana is a very nice airline to fly internationally). The bad news is that my luggage, of course, didn't make it onto the plane.

So, Bogota was where all the mierda hit the fan. The Dorado Airport is a total hole in the wall. I've seen municipal airports in Mexico and Brazil that were better. I'd say it was a notch above Michael Manley International Airport in Kingston, but only because it was enclosed and had decent air systems. On all other fronts, though, it could best be described as crumbling Andean retro.

I filed a claim with Mexicana in Bogota, and then had to go out of immigration and security, check in to my Avianca flight to São Paulo (placing me in a middle seat near the rear of the plane), and then run back through security and immigration to barely make it to the gate as it was boarding. All the while I was dehydrated and sick (and unable to buy anything because I had no local currency and no time). The airport was chaotic; the lines were awful and tense. People were trying to cut in front of each other, and were arguing in all different languages. And when we finally got onto the ancient Avianca 757, it was almost 2 hours delayed in taking off due to "air traffic congestion" according to the captain. But this was a bit Soviet of him to say, as I didn't see another plane anywhere on the taxiways or the runway.

I couldn't eat anything, and the beverage service was kind of rare. The movie was (no lie) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and while they handed out headsets the audio for the film was inexplicably broadcast on the cabin p/a system (oh joy).

We made it into Guarulhos just fine, albeit late. Yadda yadda yadda I was home in bed with Vini within an hour of making it out of customs (luggageless). My bags arrived 24 hours later, and we had to go collect them at Avianca's desk at the airport. Nothing had been taken from them.

I came home to the coldest weather in São Paulo since 1991 - on Saturday night it got down to 3C and I was really feeling cold inside the house for the first time since moving here. Quite an experience. But being greeted by Clancy at the door, and then Vini, was such a joy that I can't even describe. The three of us spent the whole day on Saturday just curled up in bed, happy to be all together again.

Now I have to go to the doctor for my continuing medical issues. This will be an experience, going to the doctor for the first time. I just want it to all be behind me as soon as possible.

On My Back

I'm laying in my hotel bed and I'm fairly certain I'm getting sick. But that's almost beside the point. I guess it's no wonder. I barely slept on Monday night for some reason - unable to fall asleep and then suddenly waking at 6am when I had no morning schedule outside the hotel.

But I did manage to have a somewhat vivid dream Monday night while I was out. It is unclear to me what it was about now, but I do remember feeling like something had been going on up there.

Yesterday I was socked with an avalanche of work that steadily flowed in from nearly every project around the world. I tried to keep to deadlines, and was doing well, when I started nodding off late in the day and wasn't finished. So I fought sleep, thinking it would come in abundance after. I was hoping to Skype with Vini at some point but he took a very long time to get home, and when he did the internet in our apartment wasn't working. So we had some frustrating starts and finishes, and then I just turned in - frustrated, disappointed, stressed. He was too; I could hear it in his voice. We hate when that happens.

I was not feeling good at all -- and then developed severe chills. I bundled up to be able to settle down enough to sleep, and felt my face getting hot.

Well, last night I once again slept barely at all. Maybe 2 hours. I woke up around 3am uncomfortably hot, but not sweating. My face and head were very hot but my body cooled off and now I'm getting chills again. I can't figure out why I'm writing all this detail. Maybe because I don't know what's wrong and I feel lonely on top of it all. There are few things I hate more than being sick. And I have a very, very busy day of appointments around the city today, starting in the Santa Fe commercial district far from the center (where I'm staying).

But above it all, I did have another vivid dream last night. It was somewhat lengthy but the part I remember most is the end: I died.

I'm sure this is a product of many things -- the fact that the movie on both the IAD-SAN and LAX-MEX flights was that silly Premonition with Sandra Bullock; the TAM crash; the experience of watching Tammy Faye Messner's very public goodbye and death on CNN. I'm sure there's more. Stress, no doubt. But this was the first time in my life I ever experienced my own death so clearly in a dream.

Basically, I died on a mountain. I apparently fell from some great height and landed on my back, and there was snow around. I don't remember why I fell, or what mountains they were, nor do I remember landing where I would die. The first clear image from the dream was the sudden realization that my body was completely shattered and that death was about a second away. My brain had a second left, while my body was completely numb because I couldn't feel the snow or anything. I could just see and think, and stir inside my head. In the second I had left, there was just enough time to thank God that I was not in pain - that was the only fully shaped thought in sentence form.

And then - the most mysterious part of all - I knew the door to life was almost closed and I had a mere millisecond for one last act inside my head. I somehow felt some ethereal sense of reaching out to grab something so as to take it with me where I was going, and I was keeping a promise by doing so. I don't know what the thing was, and it was a bit mystical, like something my soul was doing while my body was completely finished. But I know that the very last sensation I had before death was that this thing - whatever it was - was securely with me, and it was going with me wherever I was going as I had promised. To whom, I don't know.

I woke up with a start and, as I mentioned, I was very, very hot but not sweaty. Just overdressed and over-covered in bed. And I heard the sound of an empty water bottle hit my shoes next to the bed. I'd reached out and hit it off the nightstand when I woke up.

It's not easy to pull yourself up sick, with a handful of hours of sleep over two days, and work all afternoon, but I have to. So I wanted to just write it all down here and maybe come back to it later.

Tuesday A/V: Filip at Crack 2007

I have always sort of had a policy of protecting the full identities of the Club Whirled people since it launched in 2004, especially those who don't blog themselves or for one reason or another don't want to do the full monty.

Well, anyone who knows Filip can say that he usually shows plenty of monty, perhaps as close to full as most of us, without much shame or any sense of fluster. Indeed, of all the characters I have ever known and befriended in Washington over the many, many years, I don't think anyone has ever shown as much monty with as much class, pinache and sexy elegance as Filip.

His previous performance at Crack 2 involved juggling and riding a unicycle, albeit on that tiny stage. It was a nice draft run for classic Filip performance art, limited only by the facilities. But for so, so many wonderful reasons, the combination of Flashdance, a buttless leotard and Dance Dance Revolution was absolute magic. I miss Filip a lot.

Flying Over Mexico City

I still feel the distance from home as this long business trip resumes. With everything happening back in São Paulo - and with my life now entirely centered there, both actually and spiritually - it does feel strange being up here in the north. I had an amazing sensation flying into Mexico City yesterday. I looked out over the city and it didn't seem as ugly as I used to think it was. It was raining on a regular Monday, a long summer afternoon. The red roofs and the long boulevards had a beauty to them that stood in contrast to my usual thinking of dusty, dirty roads, dirty air and clogging traffic. I've lived in São Paulo long enough now, probably, that my center of gravity has shifted. I don't look at the world through the Logan Circle lens anymore. It has evolved out of me just enough.

I'm picking back up with work after a fantastic weekend in San Diego with Sean. It was perfect. The weather was warm and sunny, and it happened to be Pride weekend so there was added fun. I got to meet his friends Schuyler and Rich, who were great guys (our age). We saw Erasure play the Pride Festival at Balboa Park, and then Sean and I went to the annual party at the San Diego Zoo. Manny Lehman was DJing, and there were definitely some great new songs to add to the repertoire. I was particularly proud to hear a remix of "I Got Life" from Hair that was not the old Groovefinder mashup version - maybe I even heard it before Chris did. :-) We'll see.

It was particularly great to be able to spend time with Sean and realize that Lulu was right - nothing about your real friendships can change even with distance. Sean and I are like a book you put down and then pick up later on the same page, practically the same sentence. It's another lesson, I guess, that comes with living long enough: you realize that not everything is fleeting, not everything comes and goes and just leaves you, the lump you are alone in the world, as the only constant in your life. I got so caught up in feeling all alone in this world as a kid, and in my 20s, that I might have come to cherish it too much and make a home for it in my life when I shouldn't have. Sure, you can buck yourself up when you need it, and feel strong on your feet when facing a challenge. But taking it to the extreme that nothing will last outside yourself, and that everything intangible will decay like natural things and you shouldn't try to hold onto any of it....Well, "blah blah blah" says it all.

And as I transited L.A. for the D.F., the general aching I have for missing home got more intense. I want to be home with Vini and Clancy, with my (paltry) things and my neighborhood. Brazil is my home now, and it's where my heart is.

The Mood in São Paulo

There is an article in today's Jornal da Tarde that says more than I could ever say about the mood in São Paulo over the crash of TAM 3054, so I'm going to translate it and post it in its entirety here:



"An Entire City in Mourning"

All are feeling the loss and paying tribute to the victims of Flight 3054. The dense smoke from the fire still appears to hang over the city.

By Fernanda Aranda
fernanda.aranda@grupoestado.com.br

They didn't know the victims, didn't go to the door of the Instituto Médico Legal (IML), and some have never traveled by plane. That said, they are weeping over the tragedy and say they feel the pain of the families of the passengers of Flight JJ 3054.

The black smoke from the fire near Congonhas Airport last Tuesday took account of the city and carried the grief to the four corners of São Paulo. Today, there are 11 million people bearing the scars of the worst air accident in history.

Garbage men, businessmen in suits, gas station attendants, salespeople, doctors. In all the conversations with different groups, the main subject above all is about the bodies still unidentified, the lives cut short and the questions that remain. The anguish is spread over the country and the world, but the impact is felt most strongly by the "neighbors"of the accident.

"I've never seen such strong indignation," said hot-dog stand operator Ricardo Porto, 34, who works at Avenida Marquês de São Vicente, on the west side of the city. “The day after the accident, my customers cried at lunchtime, and were sad about what happened. I'm also in shock," Porto said as he checked the list of passengers for someone he knew, while knowing it to be impossible.

On the other side of the city, in an east side beauty salon, manicurist Eunice Rodrigues Martins, 53, says that he needed to console many women that sat at her table to have their nails done. "They are mothers like me. The sense of desperation is so clear right now; folks remember all the dear people they've lost. It makes you want to go over there and try to help someone," says she, who has never been anywhere near an airport herself, nor has an idea what the inside of a plane is like.

The unease is the same in all cases, even those who weren't friends or relatives of the victims. But this has a psychiatric explanation. "It's what we call the membership phenomenon,"says psychiatrist Eduardo Ferreira-Santos, who runs the Assistance Group for Victims of Urban Violence at Hospital das Clínicas (HC) in São Paulo. “You know when you throw a rock in the water and it forms a series of circles around it? The impact radiates out, and closer to the center, the stronger the pain. But the other layers that form are a reflection of the trauma, the secondary victims, in the case of these people."

The statement by the Brazilian team member at the Pan American Games, Lulinha (Luis Marcelo dos Reis, 17), illustrates this syndrome in action. When he heard about the accident, the player said: "I, as someone from São Paulo, am feeling more than anyone else." The HC psychiatrist explains that the sensation of those who live in São Paulo is as if the pain is deeper here. "This isn't an absolute truth. All of Brazil weeps for the victims."

And speaking of the Pan American Games, even the medals won by Brazil's athletes are taking a back seat. In a bar in Vila Madalena, on the west side, four men drank beers last Friday. During their conversation, the subjects of women and soccer never came up. They were apathetic, without smiles, jokes were not allowed. They became emotional over remembered scenes of war. "There's no way to celebrate the games that have been won. The medals don't end the suffering," said business owner Rivaldo José Souza, 50.

Marcelo Feijó de Mello, a psychiatrist at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) who specializes in stress and violence, said that when an accident of this scale happens people are accustomed to place all of their traumas, anguishes and problems into the event, and this is why the sadness has generalized. "Collective and personal traumas are reactivated. All the wounds that have healed open again. Sensitivity is heightened."

José da Silva Gomes, who drives a horse cart and earns little more than US$75 a month, and in his 62 years traveled only once, by truck when he left Goiás to seek job opportunities in the city, put aside the difficulty he has in feeding his family. "Now, I just pray for all those people. Sure, I am suffering. But my four children are with me still. This doesn't have a dollar value," said the man who digs through the trash cans of the Limão neighborhood on the north side.

The "city that never stops" paused to pay tribute to superhero fathers who passed away, the little princess daughters that won't be coming home, the teenaged boys still not identified, the moms with three jobs who have disappeared, the young college students that won't pick up their diplomas, the promising careers that won't happen.


ALSO: Michael Astor of the AP has filed an excellent piece on the deepening of the aviation crisis over the weekend since Lula's speech, particularly impacting international travelers stranded all over the place because of the latest systemic breakdown.

Lula's Katrina?

Lula has spoken, and has said little.

In his national address last night -- his first public appearance since the crash days ago - he addressed his "amigos e amigas", leaving many of us wondering if we were included or not. Lula spoke emotively, and I'm sure sincerely, about his sadness for the families and said that Brazil "cannot accept this tragedy." He literally said he had a "bleeding heart."

He did make the anticipated announcements about the downgrading of Congonhas Airport, and putting a 60 day deadline on announcing the location of a new airport serving São Paulo. The one line in which Lula communicated (finally) a semblence of understanding for the challenge was this:

Although Congonhas conforms to all international norms of safety, this isn't enough. With the airport surrounded on all sides by the city of São Paulo, it must follow even more severe safety measures.

Instead of defensively claiming to follow the rules (like the runway being exactly regulation, with no room for error by pilots), he begrudgingly admitted more must be done. But alas, nowhere in Lula's speech was there any sense of responsibility -- personal or political -- for the shameful collapse of the aviation system. No apology, no buck stopping anywhere near him. Nothing to reassure the nation about travel, about the future or about his governance.

And then the mind-boggling new examples of utter collapse continued to cascade into view.

First, I watched yesterday on CNN en Español as the leaders of the civil aviation authority of Brazil (ANAC) -- the idiots-in-chief who have cravenly failed at their jobs across the boards -- getting decorated with medals of honor. Actual decorations of valor. See the picture at the left? This is not a joke.

Then, O Globo reported that the Brazilian government did not, as it turns out, ship the cockpit voice recorder to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board for analysis as had been reported. They erroneously shipped a piece of the plane they thought was the CVR. It was not, as the investigators found out when it was opened. Just a charred piece of the plane. The actual CVR was in a warehouse along with the other recovered pieces of the plane, and was discovered there this morning.

And part three of the shameful hat-trick of idiocy to report today: a short circuit in the Brazilian air traffic radar system near Manaus in the Amazon region yesterday led to the cancellation of nearly half of all today's flights across the country beginning last night at midnight. At least eight international flights turned back in the wee hours before reaching the northern edge of the country's airspace, four alone from American Airlines.

The anger is only boiling up further in Brazil. The families are beginning to shake the trauma of the crash and are beginning to express themselves more directly to the government, and to Lula personally. The widow of Andrei Melo François Mello, a 42-year old consultant from São Paulo who was killed on the flight, has put up two enormous signs in public view, each with the same message to President Lula. The one at Avenida Paulista and Rua Peixoto Gomide is close to my home, while the other is at a busy intersection of Avenida Faria Lima:

PRESIDENT LULA: The day and the hour have arrived. Lay your presidential sash over the tomb of my husband, ANDREI.

My love, my family, my foundation, my life. I'm waiting for you at home. Your Joan of Arc, LILI.

Protests of varying kinds, such as spray-painted messages that say "LUTO" -- or 'in mourning' -- are springing up around São Paulo. A banner stretched across an area near the crash site during a small protest there, playing upon Marta Suplicy's unfortunately flip attitude in June about the crisis, said: "MARTA! We won't "relaxa e goza." We are crying and praying."

Nobody -- and I mean nobody -- seems to be assuaged or moved or otherwise convinced by Lula's television address last night. The government doesn't seem to realize it. It's deja vu for this American.

Like many, many Americans, the bottom fell out for me over President George W. Bush when I watched the U.S. federal emergency response capability collapse on live television after Hurricane Katrina in September 2005. Memories of 9/11 mixed with the horrific disaster unfolding in Iraq, and I saw an American city being destroyed on TV while my president handed out accolades to the bumbling idiots who were failing to save it. That's when the American nation turned on its president and he never recovered their trust. To this day, Bush still doesn't seem to grasp how badly his government bungled the hurricane response. They still can't accept that they have bungled the Iraq War. Thousands of Americans have died in both. Hence, his party was thrown out in the 2006 elections, and the GOP seems more politically doomed in 2008 than at any time since Watergate.

I think that the crash of TAM 3054 may well be Lula's Katrina. And it could be a turning point for Brazilian democracy. This could be the moment where a battered nation's core, finally fed up, says no more to this miserable Third World existence being served up by an incompetent government when all the resources, all the know-how and all the public will is there to begin to really change things.

But to be honest, I'm not sure. I can't say my finger is really on the pulse of the Brazilian public so well as to predict it. History has shown Latin American societies put up with far worse, in some cases from overtly brutal regimes. Only in this case, the people of Brazil have been sold a bill of goods on democracy and economic improvement and they've bought it completely. Now they are demanding the goods, and they're not going to take any more crap or lies from some idiot in customer service. With 200 dead bodies involved, and continuing disaster in the system, I don't know a single Brazilian at this stage who wouldn't slam the phone down and say chega!

Govt to People: We Fucked You Again

Talk about revolting. I didn't think the TAM tragedy could get any worse.

This YouTube video splices a breaking news report from Globo television with footage captured by intrepid news cameramen showing top advisors to President Lula celebrated the news that the TAM Airbus 320 had one of its thrust-reversers disabled by maintenance crews as it operated the day it crashed. They did not wait to hear that this would not have, by itself, caused the plane to crash. As you can see (and if you know Brazilian culture), these obscene gestures are of the kind you make when your team scores against a deeply hated enemy in sports.

The stark image to the people of Brazil is simple. As the charred bodies continue to come out of the crash site, and smoldering cinders greet every passenger coming and going from this doomed airport, the government celebrated hearing that maybe they could deflect the avalanche of criticism coming from all over the world against their immoral and wilful neglect of the aviation crisis in their country.

Indeed, Marco Aurélio Garcia (the guy in the beard) is Lula's chief foreign affairs adviser in the Palacio do Planalto. He's probably getting regular reports on how the global press is hammering them, and this video is an ugly reminder that Brazil is still mired in the swamp of Latin America's worst stereotypes for failing public institutions. Things don't work in my home country - not because we don't have the resources, the public appetite or the intelligence to make them work. It's because the people in power are incompetent, self-absorbed and incapable of the vision necessary for making things work. There is a hypocritical lack of civic duty in the political sphere of a country that prides itself on social inclusion. They love the accolades; they don't want to earn them.

Marco Aurélio's loathsome explanation for his gestures caught on tape is a disgrace, and he should be fired. He essentially blames the media for invading his privacy, and then has the gall to say he was showing his "indignation" for how so many were wrongly blaming the government for this tragedy. The revulsion of Senator Pedro Simon, a member of the opposition PMDB who represents Rio Grande do Sul (the state where the flight originated), expressed towards the end of this report is sincere, dignified, and very in line with what I think everyone will feel, save the most partisan, fanatical Lula supporters.

President Lula will speak to the nation tonight. It will be the first public appearance by this president since the crash happened, as he's been hiding inside the Planalto. Let's not forget his last public appearance was over the weekend, when he was set to open the Pan American Games in Rio and was so loudly booed by the audience. I wonder what he's going to say tonight, or if he'll even acknowledge that there is an aviation crisis in Brazil. I wonder what the public reaction will be. I wonder if this truly is a turning point for my new home country.

*****

UPDATE [2:11pm PST]: I just read that Lula's Chief of Staff Wilma Doussef has announced that a new airport will be built serving the Greater São Paulo metropolitan area, and that operations will be reduced at Congonhas, including substantial reduction or elimination of connecting flights through the airport, and an end to all charter and cargo operations there, making it a less lopsidedly important hub for domestic Brazilial air traffic. That's good -- about five or more years late, but good. Let's remember, though, an announcement is free but follow-through in Brazil for major projects like this are historically a ridiculous affair. But they get points for at least conceding this is urgently needed.

But the cascading consequences of government bumbling and failure to grapple with many, many urgent infrastructure issues will only worsen without other reforms and projects linked to this drastic, necessary action. The cancellation of cargo services at CGH, for example, will have to be matched by completing the still-unfinished beltway road around São Paulo, or the insane traffic congestion will only mean further delays of freight moving in and out of the city from the more distant Guarulhos International Airport, and further-out Viracopos Airport in Campinas. The current, decrepit freeways are connected to the major highways linking the north and south, running interstate freight trucks not even stopping in São Paulo alongside municipal traffic right through downtown. They also run alongside riverbeds, and cut through favelas and poor neighborhoods. When there are heavy rains, they flood, which cuts off traffic and kills poor people, sometimes in their beds. They are also the ONLY roads from the city center to the Guarulhos Airport! This has plagued the city for a long, long time now. Has it moved the Lula government to action? No. Will he show any sense of how to run a federal government, and mention these interconnected problems tonight? We'll see.

I'm also brimming with more pride, reading that a group of angry Brazilians staged a peaceful protest at Porto Alegre's Salgado Filho Airport (the departure point of TAM Flight 3054) against the government's handling of the prolonged aviation crisis. A group of about 100 protestors laid down silently in the check-in concourse of the airport, each with a sign bearning the name of a passenger killed on Flight 3054, and a larger sign at the periphery of the protest which simply read "Air Crisis". A larger group of passengers in the terminal crowded around the protest, and when it ended they broke into applause, according to the Brazilian media. Among the protestors were relatives of two of the victims. This was a classy, dignified act by people who are the heart, soul and muscle of the Brazilian economy and its future as a nation. I was with them in spirit as I sat here at San Diego Airport reading about them. I hope this level of public vigilance only continues in all the major cities of the southern half of the country.

And finally, Estadão reports that there has been a marked shift in tone from the Palacio do Planalto in speaking of what is coming in tonight's national address by President Lula, after the broadcast of advisor Marco Aurélio Garcia's revolting behavior. The speech will be "more emotional and less technical" - but no hint that Marco will be shitcanned like he deserves, or that the president will apologize, take responsibility or otherwise come clean to the millions of Brazilians who have so utterly lost any confidence in anything he or his government has to say anymore. Stay tuned.

Sadness and Fury, and the Hope of Transformation

The local and world press is seized with predicting the consequences of the crash of TAM Flight 3054 on Tuesday night in São Paulo. Despite the horrendous human toll, and the emotional scar it will leave on the city, there is one bright spot. For the first time since I moved to Brazil and, in effect, became Brazilian, I feel completely part of the country. My immediate sentiments upon hearing the news were shared by just about everyone I have spoken to. And the more analysis I read all over the web, the more I can see that much of my intense feeling about life in Brazil is shared by many, many, many people. Not only do we share an anguished desire for change, for a better life that indeed can be achieved in a democracy, but we also close ranks around each other and nurse our pain as well as our anger.

There have been a number of surprisingly incisive articles in the international press about the underlying problems and the possible fallout of this event. The intensity of the coverage -- wall-to-wall on CNN USA and International, front page across the world -- and the persistent, interrogating analysis of the "gringo press" on top of it, has clearly startled the Brazilian government. And it has given much comfort and a bitter satisfaction to the people of Brazil, mostly the middle class and the residents of the southern half of the country, who have been slowly boiling with anger at what we feel is a complete lack of interest by the Lula government in addressing any of the glaring -- and crescendoing -- problems we face every day in our lives. Seeing the fist come down from the BBC, from CNN and Sky, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the New York tabloids and Fleet Street has made us feel like we have the world on our side for once. The crisis in the aviation system has been an unbelievable nightmare for those of us in Brazil who have to travel for our livelihood, and now it has produced the worst aviation disaster in Latin American history. And since the GOL crash in September of last year, which set off a round of stupefying governmental fiddling while the system burned and collapsed, there has been an oft-spoken sense that the Lula government was ignoring the aviation crisis simply, as many put it, "because Lula's voters don't fly - they ride the bus."

As BBC Brasil has observed, this crash exposes a gaping split along social, geographic and class lines in Brazil. But the article doesn't capture the rage in its entirety. The middle classes, who hold the key to the nation's hope for greater economic development, feel absolutely ignored, disrespected, kicked in the teeth and essentially told to go to hell if they don't like it. And middle class rage is not the kind that turns violent. It mobilizes, normally, through capital, through the voting box and, if all else fails, with its feet via emigration. Right now, Brazilians are not looking to leave their country, and their democracy is 25 years and going. Purchasing power is on the rise like never before in memory. So...what will happen this time? It's an interesting and urgent question.

And through tragedy, through struggle, I feel my Brazilian skin tightening around me. I feel part of this wonderful place, flawed and in crisis as it is. I can only hope none of this is in vain. A tragedy like this cannot be allowed to be forgotten. We cannot, like so many times before, simply "relaxa e goza" this time.

"Relaxa e Goza" - A Line That Will Haunt the Lula Government Now

This video, from June, will now come to haunt the government of President Lula after the TAM crash in São Paulo yesterday. Indeed, nothing better summarizes the broken political culture in Brazil that must be forced to change, or else, as Folha columnist Eliane Cantanhêde writes today, the only question after this horrendous tragedy will be "when will the next one be?"

The video is of Tourism Minister (and former mayor of São Paulo) Marta Suplicy (PT), speaking to reporters who were asking about what has been known since the last major air crash as the "air travel crisis".

Here is the translation in English of what is said. Read it, and watch the video. It will chill you to the bone about the basic attitude of the Brazilian government throughout the months of building crisis in the air traffic system, leading to a crash that everyone knew was coming:

Reporter: Do you have any advice to Brazilian travelers who, when thinking about traveling, are very excited to do so but also think that it will involve great upheavals at the airports...?

Suplicy: Relax and enjoy, because afterwards you'll forget about all the upheavals!

Meanwhile, Stan Lehman of the Associated Press in São Paulo has, by far, best summarized the social and political significance of this event.

Horror

I am sitting in my hotel room in Tijuana watching in horror at what has just happened this afternoon back home in São Paulo. A domestic TAM flight, an Airbus 320 from Porto Alegre, came into Congonhas Airport in heavy rain, skidded on the runway, broke through the end barrier, tore across Avenida Washington Luís - a major thoroughfare in the city - and crashed into a depot building across from the airport, sending a giant fireball into the sky.

I got Vini on the phone, and was relieved to hear his voice. He was going to pick up Clancy's medicine after work today at a pharmacy in a shopping mall, and the timing was scary. His parents are visiting town, and his aunt and uncle live in a part of town accessed from Jardins via Av. Washington Luís, and I was frightened. He told me that his parents called him right after the crash, having witnessed it from the road as they were driving. My stomach dropped. But I was relieved.

Still, the pictures are awful. At least the 174 people on the plane are very likely all dead, and it is unclear how many people in cars and in the building that was struck might also have perished. I feel even more part of that city than I did before, as I have an intense desire to be there with my loved ones and try to understand how this happened, and what it means for our lives going forward.

Tuesday A/V: Suspended in Time

In honor of the opening of "Xanadu" on Broadway last week -- a show I probably won't ever get to see, sadly enough -- I dug up this musical moment from the infamously awful 1980 original film. I was indeed one of those budding little fags who went to see Xanadu in the movie theater that warm night in August 1980. The night I saw it, the theater was about 25% full and several people left midway through the film, while others nodded off.

Even though I was only 12, and had lived my entire conscious life so far in the 1970s -- aka the decade of formica culture and low standards -- I still managed to tilt my head in bewilderment at why this film wasn't better, why it was so disjointed and meandering, and yet the soundtrack was so great.

I think it was during this song as I sat way down in my seat that I noticed the combination of a slow zoom and an entirely artificial background being the only somewhat cinematic moment of the whole movie, and I lamented to myself that Xanadu wasn't a better movie. In retrospect, I could have made a better film at 12 (that's more a statement on how bad the movie was than any talent I think I had). Olivia Newton-John was so magical a singer, so natural and yearning and yet so wholesome, when everything at the time seemed so filthy and plastic and fake in the world. She just sings into the zoom - nothing else. "Suspended in Time" is when the film was suspended from its awfulness for just a moment. It reminded me why we all loved Grease so much two years before.

*sigh* I wish I could join in the fun at the Helen Hayes Theater.

But we'll always have YouTube, although the audio from the film is all you'll really want to indulge in unless you're entranced by stupifyingly bad choreography and Bob Mackie knock-off costumes (the last one on ONJ in the final number is very Kublai Kahn/dominatrixy fabulous tho!). And there will always be that eponymous gay-anthem at the end, for whom its own neon light will always shine (whatever the hell that means...)

Hitting the Skies

I'm scrambling to get stuff done, then pack, then get to the airport for the first leg of my latest biz excursion. But alas, there is always time for reflection.

I used to find myself feeling very wistful and lonely when I was on the road, especially when heading home from one of these business trips. My basic M.O. was to leap over all the hurdles in getting to the airport for my flight back to D.C., and then once I plopped into my seat with Group 1 and sat there for a moment without anything to busy my mind in the immediate sense, I often started to cry. It was mostly because I realized there was no one waiting for me at the other end of the journey, at least not at the airport. There wasn't anyone pulling their hair out missing me on the other side of customs, even though I was missing him.

I know, I know... To quote Harvey Fierstein: "How Alice Faye can I get?"

The only reason I am bringing up this old chestnut is that I no longer have this aspect of biz travel hanging over me. In fact, I have nothing at all hanging over me. I am successful. I'm happily partnered. I live abroad. What the hell do I have to stress about, really?

I think the problem is learning to unlearn one's old patterns of thinking, particularly in parts of your life where you've been accustomed to running on auto-pilot. I mean, the only thing I know for sure will be a downer on this trip will be how I'll be missing home and missing Vini. There are worse things to be down about. The rest is smooth sailing, especially with the work on this trip. It's gratifying, challenging stuff that I really enjoy, and it's good for the world as well. I mean, when I list all the things I have going for me in this life, I really need to stop and ask myself what the rest of the world is grappling with right now, and why I can't just get the fuck over myself.

Carrying on all the time is not me. It's just not me. The Kevin of old Club Whirled is me. He's more me than I think any other me I've ever been before or since in my life. He isn't someone who was ever held hostage by circumstance. He made things happen simply with his attitude. He is so good at life, and rolling with all the punches -- so well, in fact, that he could turn almost any occasion into a party and send people home smiling and content. He didn't need the pad in Logan Circle to do it, either. He did it everywhere.

So how did a fabulous life turn so challenging? No, it wasn't marriage, the move to São Paulo or any of the choices I made before March 29. It was my choice of attitude once I got here. And that is something a hell of a lot easier to fix than a broken showerhead or a blocked phone line down here. It doesn't take ten phone calls and endless bureaucracy -- it just takes a good, fearless look in the mirror.

Packing Up the Trunk Again

Time to get back on the road for work, this time a two-week stint in Mexico. I'll be in Tijuana week one, and Mexico City week two, with a layover in San Diego in between. The work will be somewhat intense, but it's all with projects I believe in, and colleagues whose company I enjoy.

The best part, of course, is that Sean will be flying out to San Diego for that in-between weekend (and SD's Pride weekend, at that!), and we're going to get in some R&R together. The only thing missing, as always, will be Vini. He's not been to California yet.

I used to adore traveling. I would jet from DCA to IAD if I could, back in the day. Just being in an airport years ago would get me all excited. Times change, of course, as do airports, aircraft interiors, on-board service, and (quite frankly) the quality of one's fellow travelers. What used to be fun is now too often a soul-crushing experience, especially when transiting United States Customs & Immigration is involved. Ask anyone who travels for business these days, save the CEOs who fly First Class transpacific on certain airlines or those in private jets, and you'll hear the same thing.

On this trip, at least I'll see something new. I'm coming home from the D.F. via Bogota on Avianca. I'm trying to see that as a good thing. A little story a Brazilian guy told me on my flight home from Buenos Aires on Tuesday night didn't exactly thrill me, though. He said on a flight from Panama City to Bogota on Avianca earlier this year, a group of Arab-looking passengers sitting in their forward-cabin row abruptly took out their cell phones after take-off and began whispering into them myseriously for several minutes. He said it was so frightening to witness that his female colleague, also Brazilian, began weeping. But true to form for Brazilians, after their fear of imminent hijack proved unfounded and the flight landed safely, they said nothing to the flight crew. (As he told me this, I was like, okay....Huh?? It's bad enough their safety record is second only to Cubana from the bottom. Now I have to worry about Islamic terrorism?)

But never mind. This weekend will be all about relaxing and enjoying being home. We're bringing Clancy in to meet his new veterinarian, and hosting a waffle breakfast gathering Saturday morning for Vini's friends (NOTE: waffle irons are some kind of bizarre status symbol here in Brazil, as is a family-size bottle of maple syrup). On Sunday afternoon, I hope the weather is nice enough to go for a walk in Ibirapuera Park; that evening we're going to see the Teatro Abril production of "Miss Saigon", which has just opened. (An appropriate show for the City of Helicopters.)

Right now, the sun is streaming through the living room windows, and Clancy is asleep on the carpet in front of me. The jackhammering has stopped next door (they're on lunch break), and someone in the building is listening to Gal Costa. It's nice to be home.

Tuesday A/V: In Between Days

For some reason, in 1987 I wrote all the lyrics to The Cure's "In Between Days" in pen on the corkboard in my dorm room, in Hughes Hall, at American University. I think I drew a picture of an empty noose next to it. You tell me why; I have no clue. I did a lot of shit when I was a 19 that made no sense.

But the opening lyrics of the song do have a sort of resonance this morning when I linger for a minute or two in front of the bathroom mirror.

¡Nieve!

For the first time in 89 years, snow has blanketed Buenos Aires. I arrived into the city last night, in fairly dramatic fashion, as the snow was intensifying (or so they said here), and was treated to a light blanket of white over the nighttime landscape at Ezeiza as we landed.

My driver wasn't too happy, of course. But people generally here in the capital are delighted. In points south of here, families were building snowmen in their front yards for the first time in their lives, while some in the capital built little ones on their car roofs (there was, as it turns out, merely a dusting and no real accumulation here). Of course, the Argentines are falling all over themselves with this development, and Clarin is remembering the last snowfall, in 1918, when newspapers at the time compared the city to Paris and London, simply because of the weather. The Argentines have a habit of making such comparisons out of thin air, as it were. But it's endearing to me nonetheless.

I'm heading back to São Paulo later this evening -- if everything goes smoothly, of course. I'm not sure they have de-icing equipment here, and I've seen some threatening news items about the domestic airport shutting down for "snow on the planes". But the temps are supposed to go up during the morning to the upper 30's/low 40's so I expect things should be close to normal by nighttime. A new bout of snow is not expected tonight so far as I know.

As I was telling the driver last night, though, I never imagined I would walk through the snow here after moving from Washington. It was very nice. I only wish Vini was with me.

Full to New

One of the amusing parts of getting older is that you begin realizing how much of life is routine. Even the stuff you used to think was so show stoppingly unique that it would be belting out the final note of itself as the Act I curtain would thunderously ring down and you'd be stunned and goose-pimply in your loge seat, observing your own life with wonder.

After a while, as you have been a longtime usher in the theater house where your life has been on an extended run, you don't get stunned easily anymore. The curtain comes up, goes down. There isn't much symmetry to the various acts of the play, nor the curtain calls or the standing ovations. Or the yawns or sounds of crickets in the audience on some nights.

I was just chatting with Steve about this - me at home in São Paulo, he in London but not quite at home. We're both going through a lot right now, related to a change of phase in life. In my case, it's a 'what's-done-is-done' moment in the phase change. I am here, and I know now after my visit back to D.C. that I can never go back there again to live. For me, it's dealing with the irrevocability of the wax or wane of my life at the moment, and not cursing the dark or the light that has overtaken things. With Steve, it's more rueing the necessary change that either won't conceive itself, or attach itself and gestate, or reveal itself enough for him to allow it to unfold. He's not sure. He certainly wants to control it with all his might, and he can't. [Hello, me??] In both cases, we're overwhelmed by it all and feeling like we're just ill-equipped to handle change on "such a scale."

But alas. What we don't tend to realize is that this has happened before, and it will happen again. We were young and stupid once, and when change gobsmacked us in our early twenties, we stressed out and maybe cried a little but rolled with it. We came out all right. In retrospect, it all looked so easy. But it wasn't. It was lonely and frightening, and sometimes more overwhelming than this stuff is now.

I think that this phase-change of life when we have actually made something of our lives, and we have shit that we paid for ourselves, and we finally have total control over our destiny....well, it's much harder emotionally because we are coming up against the big things in life that we will never be able to control. I'm reminded of Dena's 3 year-old daugher Isabel, who like every child her age has her days filled with constantly ramming up against the limitations of the world she is just beginning to master, as her imagination and the reality hanging over her are in constant conflict. She gets angry and petulant, and sometimes very, very determined to have her way even when what she wants makes no sense at all, nor does she actually really want it. She just wants to have her way in a world that is no longer just a womb. Alas - the more you can see, touch and feel, the more in touch with limits you must become.

This is, of course, a VERY unhappy lesson for gay men. Worse so, gay American men with the education, the savvy and the wearwithall to imagine having it all, and maybe even manage for a couple of years to indeed have it all. When you have it all, you almost never keep it all. Your tastes change. Your body changes. The world changes.

I have to remember all this advice I gave Steve, and really apply it to myself as often as I grow gloomy and desperate in these first few months of this new life. Vini and I are planning our first major vacation together, and he's very excited about seeing Europe for the first time. I made my first journey there in 1989, when I literally had nothing except a backpack, a notebook and adrenaline. That was indeed me. I did sleep on trains and walk everywhere, eat from supermarkets and travel alone most of the way. That was me. It's still me inside somewhere. We don't become other people when we go through these phases. We become more than we were.

Ma, I's a Gradjeeate!

Who would have thought the adorable mop-top to the left would also grow up to be a Master? Indeed, our dear Sean has been accepted to the Elliot School of International Affairs' graduate studies program at the George Washington University!!

And I was honored to be connected with him via MSN this afternoon -- me on the couch in my apartment in São Paulo, he sitting before his laptop after showering and lotioning up after "a whole afternoon in the blazing sun and salt water" -- when the news arrived via email. He began with a simple "O M F G!!" and then sent me a copy of the email notifying him he'd be receiving an offer letter to begin classes in January 2008:

Kevin says:
Wow excellent!!

Sean says:
OMG!!!

Kevin says:
So you'll be a semester ahead of the other kids

Sean says:
i just got into grad school!!!!

Kevin says:

:-D

Sean says:
holy shit

Sean says:
holy fucking shit

Kevin says:
time to celebrate with serious drinking and debauchery, Rehomo Style!

Kevin says:

=8-D

Kevin says:
major congratS!!

Sean says:
OMG

Sean says:
thank you!!

Sean says:
hang on... having a moment

Kevin says:
hehehehehheh

Sean says:
mind trying to wrap around this

Tuesday A/V: Big in Japan

Since Tuesdays tend to suck, I decided it's the day I want to focus on some little fabulous tidbit from the audio-visual realm each week. As my life always seems to be a daily exercise in folding the past in with the present, today I was thinking about the passeata down old Rua Augusta last week, and how it was also a sort of trip down memory lane from when I lived in São Paulo (and came of age) in the 80s.

I remembered this debate that raged among my circle of friends here in 1985 about the mysterious Alphaville song, "Big in Japan" -- more specifically, what the hell the song meant. The prevailing rumor was that it was about masturbation ("Big in My Hand" had been changed, the legend went, under orders by the label - like Blondie's "Heart of Glass" was originally "Pain in the Ass"). But we never knew for sure. Back then, before the internet, you could decide these things in your clique of friends and it became iron truth.

In any case, I adored finding this and remembering how great and weird lead singer Marian Gold is in this video, like he sometimes almost defiantly refuses to lip-synch the words articulatedly enough, like he was too blasé and lazy and cool to do it. Also, how blatantly gay he was at a time when Boy George was being marketed as "bisexual."