The island holds the truth

The distortion that time leaves on a place can be haunting.  Perhaps it’s the weight of time itself that grinds a place away, leaving the place battered and beaten, a remnant of what it was, like a pro athlete long after their prime.  A small part of me wonders if it’s me that’s changed and all the rest has stayed the same.  But that’s just as preposterous as a world where one has to take an official nasal swab before boarding a plane back to one’s home country.  Madness.  Surely it’s the erosion that comes from the grinding wheel of time.  

Maresias holds a treasured place in my memory bank.  My memories are like an ancient library from a fantasy story, mysterious volumes with embroidered covers squeezed into shelves, magic seeping from the dusty seems.  My awareness is the wide eyed child wandering the rows of books, looking for an enchanting tale to take me to a far away place.  It’s on one of these lost shelves that I hold Maresias in the summer of 2009.  

Back then, the small beach side city in the state of São Paulo was less discovered, almost utopian in its balance point with humanity.  The mix of people was right.  Beautiful people from all over South East Brazil, sharing similar reasons would arrive in search of sublime experiences and idyllic beaches.  Everyone seemed to be moving in an unspoken synchrony.  A mixture of surf and electronic music culture. Bikini’s holding forms as lustrous as the Mata Atlântica forest that shapes the hills rolling into the tropical ocean waters.  Juçara palm varieties stretch up and silhouette the rolling line of verdant forest, dense with Mimosa trees and their soft delicate leaves, orchids and bromeliads sprouting from trunks and branches. Out beyond the beach an island lies lazily on the horizon in the shape of a slightly melted Hershey’s kiss.  It was an era of synchronicity between humans and nature.

The most infamous nightclub on the coast of Sao Paulo hid expectantly within the rainforest, a short walk from the beach.  Sirena, like the mermaid, waited languidly for night to come when the doors would open, and club goers from all over the state of Sao Paulo and beyond Brazil would wander in its doors.  An outpost for electronic energy to be played through the massive stacks of speakers.  1am was the warm up and by 3am the people had coalesced.  The feminine energy was dominant.  A river of warmth in their radiant golden skin, long black hair whipping around the dance floor – everyone moving to the rhythm and the bass.  Friday of Carnaval 2009 and it was the late Erick Morillo on the decks.  I remember looking out into the jungle at 8am and noticing how the green reflected the morning the light, while my auditory system took in the churning bass lines, back to my visual system taking in the gyrating bodies. Touch sensations when skin would meet skin and the warm tingling sensations trickling down my spine. The dance floor was full but everyone had their space, just the right amount of people.  Morillo looked out into the crowd with a sly smile that pulled his eyes into a squint, while he kept bringing back that same tribal bass. The people would erupt in the morning light with each deliverance.   Hours slid away as we all fell through the portal.   

Tuesday of Carnival it was Sven Väth.  His techno was black and sleak as chrome, patient as the spider building the web. The crowd was eager, with an eerie energy dripped in sultry seduction.  9am seemed to arrive oddly fast and soon my Argentinian friend handed me a wrist band and said in his thick accent, ‘after’, the r rolling off his tongue. We came to an inconspicuous house along the main street where a bouncer let us in.  Sven walked in with us with his bag of records swinging on his shoulder, his eyes not quite focusing but holding a determination on what lied beyond the tall doors. He was a man on a mission to deliver the goods.  The house overlooked the ocean and we danced until the sun was high above.   I met people I would never see again, and angels would drift away.

On the main beach of Maresias there was a lounge where people rested after the night, melodic chill out music soothing the day time reality into a seamless stream of ecstasy, until the sun would set again.  At the lounge, night would turn to day and day would turn into night, time dilated and distorted. I remember surfing in front of the beach lounge and slowly dancing along to the beat while I was waiting for waves.  After surfing I went straight to the club, leaning my board on a lounge booth before getting lost in the flow of people.

I could see the molten crimson horizon in the people’s eyes.  The distant sunset a reflection of their own inner beauty.  Open to the sequence of life and the flow of nature.

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Today the beach lounge is far gone, and in its place is a generic structure of scaffolding, empty on the interior, as if waiting for some prize fight to start in the middle.  Speakers blare random music to everyone, or know one, as people pass through the empty space of sand. The beach is littered with people and their cigarette butts and plastic wrappers of factory made chips and cookies, overweight and overwrought families eat fried food on the sand and their offspring float floundering in the shore break, dads in speedos leading them towards a life of commodified necessity.  Humanity in disarray.  A man walked down the beach with the biggest metal detector I had ever seen, a truly massive device, presumably hoping to the lost golden tooth of one dead corrupt politician.    

Sirena still sits back in the forest, but under new ownership plays an obnoxious medley of funk, sertaneja, pop, rap, and whatever else makes the short profit of the month.  The music itself seems as if it downed a half pint of cachaça, belligerent in its lack of continuity.  The aggressive crowd staggers towards the club, drunk and raucous. To some people, transformation can be a success, an exemplar of progression.   The trouble is that profits can be confused with progress.

On the hill to the north, along the top of the ridge the forest has been destroyed and cleared, leaving the hillside bare like a man suffering a traumatic head injury, hair shaven and wrapped in bandages. Fifty feet below below, the forest line begins again, home to tens of thousands of plant species and hundreds of species of animals. The lush hillside running down to the southern side of the bay has been preserved, for now.

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The Mata Atlântica wraps down the hills holding its power over the land, like the soft but powerful grip of an old man.  The forest looks knowingly at the transformation as a grandparent looks down at their spoiled grandchild, knowing he’s a lost cause.  Out on the horizon, the island sits in the distance, holding the treasured wisdom of the land. 

Today I dove into the ocean and swam out to deep blue water.  I swam down and held my breath, floating in the secretive depths of the Atlantic, a sanctuary of serenity.  There in the profundities I found my reprieve, the essence of that same tranquil place from back in 2009.  It was there, slowly drifting with the currents, hidden in the cosmic sound of the water – the timeless place of stillness.

The coast of Brazil stretches over 7,400 kilometers.  The luxuriant littoral wraps and curves north to south, and romantic bays carpeted with lush Atlantic Forest dive dramatically into the Atlantic.  Rhapsodic beaches with coconut trees contorted at strange angles hide mysteries yet to be discovered.  Right now, somewhere along the vast coastline a majestic place holds a soft rhythm and lithe bodies sway to the sounds. So it is that I search – searching for somewhere in the world that progress has left alone.