Neti pot adventures.

I’ve had it. Three solid weeks of sniffling and mouth-breathing and tonight was the last straw. In yoga, during a pose where I bent all the way down to the floor, letting my hands rest next to my feet, my nose clogged up irreparably and I gave up. Since I went out with friends three weeks ago to a club, I have been stuffed up without respite, other than an addictive nightly nose spray and somewhat less addictive nose drops that have me on such a cycle of use I dare call myself a slave to their powers. They’ve got me in their grip, those chemicals, and they will ruin me if I don’t break free. (True story: when I was little I was seriously addicted to nose spray, so much so that I had to hide my “stash”, and yes I did have a “stash,” from my mother and she once searched my room for the goods. This is not a joke. I’d hidden them—-practically empty plastic bottles of Afrin and Nasonex—-around my room, taking squirts here and there, and eventually kept them in a tall red cookie tin next to my bed. For the record, I wholeheartedly disagree with this article because I am living proof that I was an addict. I even threw a temper tantrum to get my bottles back from my mom once she confiscated them. I was 10. I believe I’ve seen movies wherein heroin addicts act similarly.) In any case, now I am very wary of using any kind of sprays for nasal congestion.

However, when you can’t breathe, you can’t breath. And I can’t do yoga if I can’t breathe, so there I was, all bent over and stressing about not being able to breathe and then my mind floated to the neti pot. Have you heard of this? I read in the Times a few months ago about them, and my friend Catherine suggested I try it out as a healthy alternative to medicines. The yoga studio where I go had one for sale and so there, bent over and feeling the pressure the equivalent of a thousand bags of rice weighing my sinuses down, I vowed there and then to purchase it.

Which I did, and just now de-virginized (can you virginize something?) the pot and my nose, and it was the strangest feeling I’ve had in a long time. Continuing to breathe through my mouth, I tilted the pot into my left nostril, the one that was terribly congested all day. I could feel the warm salty water sit there in my nostril waiting for some pressure to release, which it did eventually, and after which evidence of the releasing came in the form of drops of water out my right nostril. I remember coughing, trying to get my breathing down, while remaining fascinated at the fact that water was going in one nostril and out the other, and then, feeling the sensation of hot water in between nostrils, I laughed through my nose and blew a bubble into the neti pot, at which point I laughed out loud and got nose water all in my throat and down my chin. There was a lot of spitting involved that first go-round.

I got the hang of it after a while and soon enough there were cascades of water coming out of the nostril that didn’t have the pot spout in it. I wanted it to just flow right out of my nose and into the sink, but it appeared that the path of least resistance for the water exiting my nasal cavity was straight down my lips, over my chin, and then into the sink. Kind of invoked my gag reflex at times, but I got over it because it was at least my own sinuses flushing down my face, and not someone else’s. I can’t even imagine that scenario, but I’m sure there’s a kinky website out there for it somewhere.

But I think there’s been some good change, afterall, because the water was able to flow out quickly after a while. That must be a good sign and while I’m not back to breathing normally (nor would I expect this effect after just one use) I do feel like some space has been cleared up, if only temporarily. So we’ll see. Have I found a cure for my chronic congestion? Or is it a strange new aged (actually, old aged because this thing has been around for centuries I think) remedy that yogis and my friend Catherine have devised? I’ll give it a shot and see what comes of it. Anything’s better than not being able to breathe. Even the occasional sinus flushing down the face. Not ideal, but at least it’s something. I’ll get the hang of it soon.

Another weekend come and gone.

It’s been another slow, but lovely, weekend at the Coggio household in Brazil. I’ve spent my time reading, practicing yoga, and going to school. Last night there was an amazing Youth Art show at the school and I went there expecting to see some decent art and left there blown away by the talent of our students. There was music, drama, and art installations of drawings and video and clothing design. Seriously, I left there wanting to purchase some of the art for myself and to ask one of the bands if they would play a private party. That music, especially the final set of the night, was just unreal. It was the kind of slow, relaxing instrumental stuff I would pay to hear in New York. I wish I had a clip of it so you could believe me, and so that I could believe that I actually heard it because it was some of the best music I’ve heard in a long time.

What else? Oh. I fed some cats. On my street everyday there are any number of cats who roam up and down and hide under cars, scared of everything. Often I’ve seen them eating trash, ripping through the garbage bags that people put on the street, and it makes me so sad to see them in the garbage, these skinny grey things hunched down over rotting meat and banana peels. So yesterday I bought a bag of dry cat food and on my walk down the hill, scooped out handfuls of it and gave it to the cats. At first they didn’t trust me, but then once they started sniffing around to see what it was I’d dropped, they scarfed up the food like they’d never seen food before. And I’d argue they never have, at least none of which is fit for a cat. I fed three cats, one of which was lying around on a warm stone all lazy-like and who I see all the time. This cat actually ate out of my hand, which was cool, and so I gave it some more food. People passed by me and looked at me strangely, but I didn’t care. The cats were happy and that was the purpose. Soon came more cats, though: five in total. And I figured that I didn’t want to have a cat war on my hands, so I dropped a couple more handfuls of the food and went on my way.

Part of me wonders, in a country where there are thousands of people going hungry, why I bothered feeding five cats. But they need food, too, the cats. They are here with us, too, and to my knowledge, I’ve never been robbed or hurt by cats. Someone’s got to make sure that they don’t just eat garbage. And I don’t see anyone else checking in on them or giving them anything healthy to eat.

Il Postino. (That’s Italian, I know.)

Everyday, we go through the same routine, me and the porteiros downstairs at my apartment building. They’ll let me in the gates and I’ll stand in their doorway and ask the same question every single day: “Do I have anything today?” And by “anything,” I mean “mail” and cross my fingers for “care packages.” Depending on who’s on duty, the answers go as following: one guy will say, “Nada, nada, nada,” and wish me a good evening; another will shake his head shyly and smile like he’s embarrassed, and the third, a round little man with a thick mustache goes through a dramatic routine that I’ve grown fond of because he’s so kind to do it everyday. “Well, Gina, let’s take a little look. Let’s see what’s here. Apartment 101, right?” And he’ll stand up and move slowly toward the folder containing all the mail for the building, separated by apartment number. He’ll spend his time looking through and sweep his hand through my apartment number’s empty section. “Ah, Gina, they’re joking with you! Nothing today,” he’ll say, gently smiling. It’s our little routine and he could easily nod his head and tell me “nada hoje,” (nothing today) but he knows how much it means to me to get mail and so he plays along with me each and every night he’s on duty.

Today, while he was going through the process of discovering that my apartment folder was empty of precious mail, as we both knew it would be, I noticed he was reading a book and when I asked him what it was, he told me it was his little Bible. “Do you know the Bible?” he asked, and rather than go into my spiel about religion and whatnot, I simply said “No.” He swept his hand through the empty folder and said, “Well, you know what, Gina? You don’t have any mail today, but Jesus has a message for you. He loves you and wants you to have a good rest tonight.”

I guess that was as good as anything because I walked away laughing, not because it was funny, but because it was kind.

Something amazing.

Last night I stayed at yoga until past 10pm for a special class they offer once a week. Afterwards, talking with another student there, I let slip that I take the bus home at night and therefore couldn’t stay for very long last night. He offered to drive me home and then spread the word, much to my embarrassment, that I don’t have a car. He didn’t do this in any kind of malicious way; it was more a “shame on you, Gina, for not asking for a ride” kind of thing. I hate asking for rides because I don’t want to be an inconvenience to anyone and it’s not much of an inconvenience for me to take the bus at all, it just takes a while, especially during rush hour when traffic is nuts.  And then, a pretty amazing thing happened. When this student told a professor at the school that I don’t have a car, one professor said to the others, “Gina is always without a car here. We can coordinate rides home for her, if anyone is heading in her direction.” I was awestruck, actually, at the gravity with which he said the words, as if my getting a ride with someone were a really important matter. It meant SO much to me, and I was so amazed at the kindness that seemed to come so naturally. In the US, this kind of thing is not so customary, at least in the places where I’ve lived in the Northeast. But here, it’s common sense and it humbled me. 

Rants for a Tuesday evening.

Topics for tonight’s blogversation:

1) Plastic-wrapped postcards: completely stupid, yes?
2) Yoga moves that get the intestines moving: boy, do they.
3) Chocolate Easter eggs: They’re back, and not on sale.
4) Hot water in the morning: who needs it?

Item #1: Plastic-wrapped postcards: completely stupid, yes?
Today I received in the mail a postcard from a store that is a football field’s length away from my house. It is not the first I have received from this store, called Wish, since I shopped there one time in this month of last year. This postcard, imprinted with exactly 29 words on it (including the ones on the front, the back, all the numbers, and the store’s website) arrived in a thin plastic sleeve. Every single mailing I have ever received from this store has arrived in a thin plastic sleeve and every single mailing has never once contained more words than this one. I cannot think of a more wasteful kind of mailing than this unless, of course, it came in a lead-injected cardboard box with styrofoam packing materials and printed with ink made from the blood of baby seals. It’s a shame, really, how much effort stores put into their mailings that will just end up in the trash, never to be recycled, never to be glanced at again; just another piece of trash that’s contributing to global warming.

Item #2: Yoga moves that get the intestines moving: boy, do they.
…actually, that’s pretty self-explanatory. I’ll leave it at that.

Item #3: Chocolate Easter eggs: They’re back and not on sale.
It’s true. I thought, you know, since Easter is over, maybe the dregs of the Easter eggs might be on sale. So passing by the Blockbuster/Lojas Americanas this afternoon and glancing in, I saw an entirely new display of Barbie Chocolate Easter Eggs, Hopi Hari Chocolate Easter Eggs, Transformers Chocolate Easter Eggs, Ferrero Rocher Chocolate Easter Eggs. Entirely new. Clearly they are for Easter because I don’t know a single other holiday that’s celebrated with eggs like Easter is, unless there is by some chance a holiday I don’t know about specifically dedicated to eggs and their production (which wouldn’t surprise me here in Brazil considering they celebrate everything all the time. Even bald people). Upon closer inspection I took a look at the prices for said eggs: not on sale. No sale prices for chocolate eggs for Easter? Americans would go crazy if that ever happened at home. There would be boycotting and riots and television coverage in the aisles of Stop & Shop, can’t you picture it? The day after Easter, huddled over bins of full-priced Peeps and Cadbury Eggs and Pink, Green, and Silver wrapped Hershey Kisses, American mothers and children would go apeshit, all while apathetic employees are setting up displays and stocking shelves for 4th of July. I guess at least here they let the holiday spirit exist for a while, even if they’re still charging full price.

Item #4: Hot water in the morning: who needs it?
This morning was the second time in two weeks (average: once per week) that I have woken up and my building has not had hot water. We already know how I feel about waking up and looking the way I do, which is generally twenty-five years older than I am, so you can imagine how much longer it takes for my 53-year old face to unpuff itself back down to my own age without the aid of a morning shower. Not to mention the beautiful—-and, might I add, radiant—-sheen of night oil that the pores on my face produce and lay on thick while I lay sleeping, blissfully unaware that if I ever get stuck in my sheets, all I need to do is rub my face in them to unstick myself, kind of like rubbing soap on a sticky door jamb. (Did you not do that? I distinctly remember my mother rubbing soap on a door jamb to make it not stick, but that may be a Vermont thing, or a My Mother thing.)

And in keeping with the rantiness of this rantful post, there is actually a protest that’s happening outside of my own window. This is just part of the soundtrack of the days here, so it’s not surprising that this is going on. I don’t know what they’re talking about, probably the buses again, but for all I know maybe it really is the Easter Egg thing. Looks like they’ve been out there in front of the prefeitura (city hall) for a while, with no sign of getting tired. One quick way to get them to disperse: just show ‘em a couple of those intestinal yoga moves, and they’ll be running home lickety-split.

Checking in, post-Easter.

The weekend was, as my weekends typically are, quiet. I had big plans to sleep late, to lounge around the house, and to do yoga, and while I managed to do the second and third thing rather well that first one never really set in. I couldn’t sleep past 8:30 to save my life and when I rolled out of bed each morning, the first thing I did was surprise myself by doing work. Laundry, washing dishes, making vitaminas, rolling out the yoga mat to do some sun salutations. Goodness. I don’t know who I was this weekend but by the end of it I was wide awake. Late last night my body was so used to moving around and being busy that it decided at 11pm that it didn’t want to go to sleep and so it stayed up until well past midnight while I tried with all my might to tell it to go to bed. Reluctantly it drifted off to sleep, but like an infant who hasn’t settled into sleeping through the night, woke up again just four hours later. And it was a weird waking up: sudden, in mid-thought. In mid-coherent-conscious thought. Very strange. I woke up all nervous about leaving Brazil, going through a list of things I need to take care of but have absolutely no control over—-the thought of which I guess is enough to make me stress out. So I did some deep breathing as if it would lull me back to sleep, and when that didn’t work I tried counting my breaths which only frustrated me because I frequently forgot which number I was on and then would have to start all over, at which point I lost all motivation to start over because the more I needed to start over the less I was feeling sleepy.

In the end, I must have drifted back to sleep because I remember hitting the snooze button exactly five times (read: I got to sleep in 50 minutes) and then ran around the house trying to get myself ready and be presentable at work. (Why is it the best sleep comes in between hits of the snooze button? It’s like all the other hours of lying in bed with my eyes closed and all R.E.M’ed out was just a warm up for the thirty to fifty spazzy minutes just before I have to get out of bed and be active for thirteen hours. No, you know what it’s like, it’s like my body is just taking advantage of sleep all through the night, like it’ll be there forever. But when that god awful Brazilian polka accordion shit comes on, it is back to reality and then I am so, so sad and living those next fifty minutes in regret. Like my body is all full of sweet talk, “Okay, okay, Sleep, I’m SORRY. I’ll never do that again. I love you, I love you, I promise you You’re the only one for me, just let me come back just TEN more minutes.”)

And the price to pay for all that sweet talk? The bags beneath my eyes. Sweet LordHaveMercyOnMyFace. Every morning I wake up and I am fifty three. By 9:30 I’m down a decade and usually for about forty-five minutes after lunch I’m my own age. But come mid afternoon and the years start showing up again, until Yoga in the afternoon when it’s okay to look disheveled as long as I’ve been paying attention to my breathing and have inverted myself once or twice.

All this concern about aging is for a reason, of course. My birthday is fast approaching. In less than a month, I’ll be ending what my friend Cat Head has deemed “the hottest year of my life.” I’ll turn 29 and according to Cat Head, it’s all down hill and desperation from there. Little does he know, I am SO excited for 30 I just want to skip over 29 and get on with the party. In Vermont, I got my driver’s permit when I was 15 and there was excitement about turning 15 but only because it meant I was that much closer to turning 16 when I could drive without my parents in the car. 29 is like 15: exciting by association but on its own nothing fancy. Also, in Vermont, and also when I was in high school, I wanted FOREVER to be a Junior. There was something young-but-old about being a Junior and something full of status and independence and hot boyfriends. I feel that way about turning 30. Like it’s the Junior year of my adult life. But 29? I’m still a sophomore. And that sucks so much, especially when “sophomore” comes from the Greek words “wise” and “fool.” I like the “wise” part, but certainly hope “fool” has nothing to do with how my 29th year will turn out.

Recapping this post, just in case you’re thinking, “What the hell are you talking about?”
1) The weekend was quiet.
2) I did work.
3) I yoga’d.
4) I did not sleep well.
5) Bags under my eyes.
6) Aging: voluntarily and involuntarily
7) My birthday is April 22.
8 ) I have nothing to offer as far as Brazil goes, but will say that these people go absolutely NUTS over these huge chocolate eggs that hang all over every single store anywhere in this country. They’re expensive, too! I don’t know what happens to all these chocolate eggs—surely it is IMPOSSIBLE to think that they actually get eaten. Last year I received two or three of them and thank God Dennis was here to eat them because I’m sure they’d still be in my fridge right now. I write this today because this afternoon I went into a store and I could suddenly SEE, the eggs (hung from the ceiling of EVERY STORE IN CREATION) had disappeared and I’m sure are now in every single apartment in Campinas. Except for mine.
9) I lied about the chocolate egg thing. I would have totally eaten them by myself, without Dennis’ help, and it would have taken me a week.

The air tonight.

I’ve been on the phone for the past hour or so with my aunt, reader extraordinaire. We talked non-stop about the books I’ve read recently, nearly all of which she gave me for Christmas. We also talked about my coming home, how ready I feel, how thankful I am to be calling New York my home. At the end, we were interrupted by an in-coming call, a friend of mine inviting me to go out for a drink. A nice invitation but one I turned down almost without hesitation. Regardless of the fact that I am unshowered, I was overwhelmed with a need to stay inside. A positive need, a comfortable need.

Walking out of my bedroom into the living room, I smelled the air. In it was a sense of moisture, like the air before an evening spring storm. It was heavy and cool and reminded me of a damp washcloth my mother would place on my forehead or on the small of my back on hot summer nights. Playing just loud enough to drown out the voices below me was Iron & Wine and I opened the balcony doors to let in the breeze.

I can smell the tropics in this breeze tonight and it makes me think of being at the beach: salty, damp, cool. The kind of breeze your skin welcomes especially when you’ve brought a long-sleeved shirt to block any cold bite that might accompany a gust, even though you know you won’t wear it. It’s a just-in-case kind of warmth in this kind of cool. On the one hand it would be nice to walk around outside tonight, and if I were really on a beach, I would. A year ago, this weekend, I walked alone on my street and was robbed by two men. My desire for night-walking, even a year later, is quickly quenched when I remember the experience. And so on nights like this, when walking up the hill to be with my friends seems appealing, I turn inward and find happiness in my apartment, in conversations with family, in books. In the feel of the night air. In imagining walking on a beach at night in air just like this. My coping mechanism, I suppose, for the fear I felt that night on my street. I know I’m safe here in these big rooms. I am happy staying inside tonight. Happy just to be here, at the very least.

Unnecessary purchases.

There are two things I am willing to spend money on from now until I leave. One is yoga, which I’ve already paid for so that’s over, and the second is the trip I’m taking to Bahia in April. (An impossible 3 weeks away! How’d that happen?) I’m pinching my pennies centavos in every possible way for the next three months. Case closed.

Or so I thought. Because I just now went to the store that’s on the walk home from the bus stop with one—-ONE—-item in mind to buy: cereal. “Cereal, cereal, cereal, cereal. I’ve got to remember cereal.” That was the one thought I had all afternoon. Stopping off at the Horti Fruti (which is what I call the fruit center, which is actually called The Fruit Center, I don’t know why I’ve named it something it isn’t at all) I made my purchases and a scant ten minutes later found myself in my apartment with the following items: two boxes of milk, two things of spaghetti sauce, three apples, a papaya, a bag of mini breads, and a carton of strawberries. No cereal.

What the hell, Gina? What’s going on? You’ve just come from yoga, all relaxed, all centered and balanced, with one activity for the afternoon: buy cereal. Next time, instead of chanting “Om” like you did today at the start of class, try chanting “Cereal.” Maybe you were too focused on the roundness of “Om” and had it in your mind to buy things that were round. Or that came from round things.