It's Gritty. It's Enormous

Sitting now on a little perch above a street in Sao Paulo.  It’s 6:30PM, quitin' time and what seems to be a largely young, business crowd in heading home.  Across the street is a twenty story office tower.  Down the road there appears to be another one that is twice that height.  Immediately before me are a row of two story buildings and behind that an odd cacophony of rudimentary high rises.  And all the while people are going east and all the while it feels like this could be any big city at quitin' time.

I’m sitting here rather obviously typing away in a laptop.  I am slowly starting to loose my maximum defensive posture here.  I have heard stories.  Apparently some cab drivers say:  Do not use a lap top in the back of a cab because people come along and put a gun in the window and tell you to hand over the Mac.  It would be pretty easy for someone to spot me from a distance and come up on me and demand my lap top right now.  Looking out, I don’t think that will happen.  Looking out it “feels” rather prosperous and free from desperation.

Up in Rio I decided to be maximum defensive.  Let cards and passport and whatever else at home.  Walked around assuming a mugging was imminent, until I slowly adjusted and normalized my behavior.  Rio feels a lot more immediately dangerous in general. It’s almost as if the overly gorgeous setting came with a cost.  Anything so beautiful cannot exist without a complementary counter weight.   

Sao Paulo is our New York: the young kid said to me tonight.  I’ll buy that.  It’s gritty.  It’s enormous.  It’s full of everything under the son in a notably different proportionalization than my home town affords.   My waitress tonight is of Japanese descent.  I thought I had ordered a drink with the lady at the bar, but it takes a second confirmation with this English speaking waitress to throw the process in-gear.   

I’ll have to go soon and meet y colleagues and my friends and talk about what do to this evening.  But for now I’d enjoying just watching Sao Paulo go by.  Thrilled to be coming back to it now, for a second time. 

Monday, 3/25/19