just a step away

wow... I am in Rio again... and it was so easy, I just stepped onto a plane in New York and
POP
one fuzzily sleepless night later, here am in Rio.

It seems like it was just a step away. It seems like I was here just a minute ago. I have dreamed so often of walking up to Chris' apartment, and then suddenly, it was really happening, just like I had pictured: there was Chris waiting with a huge smile and a huge hug, and we hauled my stuff up the beautiful leafy walkway and up to her beautiful apartment.

I have a room of my own. I unpacked all of my stuff. This is the first time since February that I have finally fully unpacked. I took my shirts OUT of their little Eagle Creek shirt bag. I hung up my little Rio skirts. I unpacked EVERYTHING. I have been travelling for eight months solid and have rarely spent more than a week in the same bed. So I cannot express my relief and the vast sense of comfort from putting all my stuff in a room that is going to be MINE for FIVE WHOLE MONTHS. It is one clean, bright, square room with wood floors, containing one (1) bed, a closet with built-in drawers, and nothing else. I unpacked all my stuff. I UNPACKED! The sandals and bikinis, the drum pads, mallet, alfaia baquetas, my drumsticks, metronome, recorders.... the chocolate chip cookies, the baking powder. My tamborim. My pandeiro. Chris loaned me a white sheet, striped blanket, a yellow pillow, and a blue pillow. I have everything I need.

Great kiskadees were calling in the trees outside, and the most beautiful violin music was floating through the air (seems that one of the neighbors is a professional violinist), along with the ineffable mix of Rio sounds of distant trucks, children yelling in some game, and somebody banging on a pipe - there's always somebody banging on a pipe or knocking two bricks together. From the other end of the apartment, Chris chattering on the phone in Portuguese to her clients, and her cat meowing. It was so extremely relaxing. It's warm; 80's and humid, and rainy, rain pounding down outside. The air is dense of that richly familiar Rio smell, of flowers and dust and rain - I took a dozen big lungfuls of it. I couldn't get over the wonderful way it smelled. I lay down on the bed and fell instantly asleep.