I’ve Run Myself into the Ground

If you slide open the large wood-framed windows of my room and extend your head out into the air outside and turn your head around and look up at night, you’ll see this.

It’s true, I’ve half-literally run myself into the ground. I awoke around 8:30 Saturday morning after accidentally sleeping for 12 hours. I had meant to go out on Friday night and planned to take a powernap! before hitting the town, but woke up at 3am instead, laughed, and went back to sleep until the day called on me to leave the apartment.

I shopped: got new sheets, got socks, got a cell phone (call me: +55 21 8626 9976), got a lamp. I settled into my new home, a place that I love (satellite view here, I’m right in the middle). I’ve been battling strep throat all week, but I was feeling good after so many hours of sleep and decided to jog. Oh how I jogged! I dripped my sweat onto the pavement alongside the beaches of Copacabana where people stood wondering how the waves could look so mean and so tall and white as they crashed into themselves and sprayed the sky. No one swam there.

I ran past Copacabana, and then at the elbow where Copacabana meets Ipanema my course met the course of Kristina and Hannah, two American girls who I know here. They were walking to meet another guy named Jed (I’m serious, there are two Jeds in Rio this summer) for some beaching. And so we went.

We took turns swimming while the others watched our belongings. The current was strong and Hannah and I foolishly tried to defy it. We let the big waves play with us and then we tried to go back in. A wave would come and I’d yell an instruction to Hannah to either go up with it or to dive under it. Wave after wave I’d get a little closer to her and we’d approach the shore until suddenly she was very far away. I tried to get closer to her but also realized I needed to get to shore. Another wave over me, I looked for her and saw her say “I NEED HELP.” I looked to the shore and saw two life guards sprinting in. I got onto the beach and joined the other Jed to jog down the shore where she was being escorted out.

She was embarrassed, but shouldn’t have been. Ipanema means “bad waters” in Guarani, and well, the waters were bad on Saturday. We lounged and then I jogged home. I think this is when I half-literally ran myself into the ground. I didn’t go into the ground, per se, but I did run and I did start feeling bad again. I think the strep caught hold of my throat again and I started feeling down. Another night of awesome Anima Mundi with Carolina and I was down for the count. I woke up with a bad cold that I couldn’t ignore.

So I’m sick, and I’m readjusting to a new neighborhood and what feels like an entirely new arrival to Brazil. There are a few people that live on the hill behind my apartment. If there is a hill on which people can build a home in this city, people will build a home on it. I think the hill behind me is a bit too steep and out of the way for a full blown favela, but it has a few people on it. I would like to visit them and introduce myself as a new neighbor. I’d like to know how they get home, what they do there, how they eat, what their names are.

I saw a woman and her baby on a large piece of cardboard on the sidewalk. She rolled her little dark-skinned baby over so she could kiss his forehead. And I thought about what makes her proud and how much she loves that baby in his yellow babysuit. Then I thought about what I’d be proud of at this point and one of the first things I thought of was how I’m proud that some people like to read these words I write on the internet. Words v. baby. I don’t know what else to write, but I’m thinking about it.