The weather underdifferentnumericschemes

As I was walking down the street, my eyes getting baked open like two blue-yolked eggs, I noticed one of the evenly spaced street signs that alternate temperature and time. Somewhere in the Dali desert of my mind, clocks a-hanging off the branches, I thought, damn, it must be 34 degrees. The time flashed away and I was proved correct, point being, CelsiusI feel you now!

This picture, which I pulled from another blog, was taken because the ad is pretty nice, saying,

"The thermometer shows that the earth is heating up. The clock, that there's still time to save it."

Montevideo in 1 Metaphor and 2 Photos

All these vegetables may have since been eaten, but the news is new!

Its a beautiful city, with an old-port pearl inside the oyster of a typical South American urban landscape, though like everything in Uruguay, smaller. Besides the requisite 'first church' and 'exact replica of the French theater house' that every Southern Cone city seems to have, the port is packed with Belle Epoque style palaces interspersed with slightly later Art Deco that blends in perfectly.

This beautiful and agéd old port has lead us to one major metaphorical conclusion: Montevideo is the Montreal of South America.
Say it: MMMontreal,
MMMontevideo.

Just like tourists in Montreal, we have basically just been walking around and taking pictures of each other taking pictures of grey stone buildings of impressive age.
Like Montreal, we are on a huge river and the wind whips through the city incredibly. We wanted cold, but this is a little more Canadian than we bargined for! And when shutter fingers start to tremble, what do we drink? Hot Chocolate!

I went out for the famous steak dinner last night (poor Renata had to watch me devour it) and tonight we are going to a concert of a local rock band, then we are off at 315 tomorrow afternoon. The airport was so small we actually disembarked on the tarmac, which is so glamorous. I ran down the stairs so that I could turn and take a picture of Renata in her Jackie O sunglasses. Also glamorous was the official blue and gold United States of America airplane parked next to our plane- the secretary of something was visiting from Washington to talk about buying more steak and wine in exchange for old fighter jets. (kidding!)

On the whole we are excited to get back to Brazil- people here are, shall we say, more European than Brazilians, and we miss the smiles and the non-brown-wool items of clothing. Not to mention that perhaps the most European thing here is the hotel breakfast- ham, cheese, rolls, apples (not a papaya in sight, but ohhh the dulce de leche!)

In truth, too much of our impression may have been formed by an encounter today where a used-book vendor in a plaza accused us of stealing a book when I put my camera in Renata's purse. We opened it up for her inspection, but she didn't even apologize. Bitch!

We walked away miffed, an emotion that was instantly transformed when we bought a hand-knit sweater for Rafael to steady rock through the rest of winter.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

Montevideo in 4 pictures and 3 poems

I
Cuando llegamos ella quería hacer una ligación
(everything brown)
a gente quiere sair,
o barfo inaguentable,
(everything brown)
intolerante de las efusiones
del otro,
dos cavallos ligados por
couro o cor das
(everything brown)
folhas da plaza,
ela lo quebrou
quando colocou un
boligrapho na bunda
and bucked in the bed
like her own horse.

I showered
(Tudo marron)

II
pdababa bu bu bu bu

paduba du bu bu bu

pdabubadu bu bu bu

Queria fazer charme
no farol
Mas equanto la ciudad
fue por viejo a gastado

muito predio muito bonito
muita vontade de verlos mañana

Con maquina melhor, frutilla
Sabor remedio, la levares?
Sim.
I have to poop.

III
Stronger light means
wintry light in the plaza
the leaves less there
the city like rocks on
the blue hills of smog
a distant church, multi-pico-ed

A wailing man in the plaza,
barulho de que religion isso?

Last night, useless,
a documentary on the removal of settlers
grubbing land in the desert
but usually with less hub-bub
in Uruguay
coats of wool,
one brown or another.

Something like a phenomena

I started playing soccer on the East Zone of town, the tough side, with some nice guys. We play late at night and the field is alongside one of those big transit arteries where the two sides of the street are separeted by a hundred yards of boulevard. Both times that we've played, in the middle of the game I suddenly heard strange music coming from the blackened boulevard, a twisting, sinuous, seemingly horn-based music that sent my imagination to one place- gypsylandia. Did the gypsys, whom I have seen camping in the circular spots of grass formed by curling exit ramps, gather here in the darkness of the east zone and blast their music out of the trunk?

During the first game I was afraid to ask, mainly because of the old school nature of the tough guys around me. My friend, Silvio of the fishing expedition, was the only one I could imagine asking, but he was on the other team and far away. Most of the other players were his uncles, nice but supremely tough guys, and more than anything not the type of guys that you ask in imperfect portugues about the possibility of an illicit gypsy presence on the boulevard.

On the second game I got the courage up to ask one of Silvio's friends, a guy nicer than tough, who always plays in full São Paulo gear. He told me,

No, no, I know it sounds like it, but really it's just a regular bar, way on the other side of the street. It's that there are a lot of cars....

Oh.

From then on, when I tried, I could almost make out the brazilian accordian-based pagoda music that must have been leaving the speakers on the far side of the darkness, but I needed as much imagination to put it back together as I did to invent the gypsys. And still, it's pretty cool that typcial music, when cut to ribbons by perpendicular traffic, sounds just like those ribbon-clad masters of the road.