My obsession with Brazil has continued even more strongly since I have visited last March. I just finished a book that I have been reading since the 4th of July titled A Death in Brazil, written by Peter Robb. It is pretty much a crash course in the history of the country mixed with some personal stories of the authors travels and the intoxicating pleasures of Brazil's food, music, and literature. Brazil is now, even more so, incredibly fascinating. I understood that Brazil was incredibly corrupt and incredibly violent yet after reading this book I am amazed that they are actually a "country."
Here are some bits if info:
Sao Paulo has more private helicopters than any other city in the world, more armored limousines, more armored ordinary cars, more armed security personnel and more desperate people than any other urban center on the face of the earth.
The Portuguese discoverers were struck by the well shaped people with good faces and good noses, and most of all that they could go naked, without any covering, neither do they pay any more attention to concealing or exposing their shame than they do to showing their faces, and in this respect they are very innocent. They stretched out on their backs to sleep without taking any care to cover their their privy parts, which were not circumcized, and the hair on them was well shaved and arranged.
PC bought a big black used Ford Galaxie in 1970 and hired a driver. The driver wore a black chauffeur's uniform with a tie and cap and PC rode around Maceio in the back seat, holding up the financial papers of the papers, driver and passenger sweating like pigs in hte tropical heat. PC kept the windows rolled up to simulate the air-conditioning he couldn't yet afford.
During the Inquisition, one sin was reading the erotic novel Diana, which was on the index of forbidden books. Thereafter things got worse. The unmentionable vice was rife in the colony and the visitor found himself devoting a lot more attention to penetrations of the rear passage than to those of the natural front passage, though the activity of the male dihonest member was ubiquitous. There was a lot of sex between young boys and between young girls but also among married woman as well as the usual suspects. First up to despose was a white bearded priest notorious for his activity among the local boys and for his passivity and dishonest touchings.
A wet carnival wa rare. Tropical wetness made everything more anarchic and more lubricious. Wet bodies were slippery. Wet clothes clung like a second skin. People lost their last inhibitions. People like a wet Carnival!
Comments