Actually, it was Santos, a coastal city in Brazil. Early this morning, I dreamt I went to Santos again.
As most of you know, I spent about eight and a half months there—so long that even though I haven’t seen it for well over a year, it is as fresh in my mind now as it was then. I have a map all but etched into my brain of most of the streets of four “bairros,” or neighborhoods, in Santos. I would still know the most efficient ways to get everywhere. And because I went about on foot, I know the aspect of the streets, the homefronts, bakeries, bars, and salons. So many salons! The skate park in the middle of my area, where the eternally busy Afonso Pena intersects Canal Four. The quiet, tree-lined streets where trim little buildings on stilts stand shoulder to shoulder like sentinels.
I can go on, but the details in my head mean nothing to anybody but me.
There is something to be said for going everywhere on foot.
Some people’s dreams are characterized by scary, intense sequences, or consist of various montages of nonsense. My dreams—when I remember them, which is not often—almost always provoke thought. Last night, as I said, I dreamt I went back to Santos. I don’t know how I got there. I was supposed to be somewhere else. In fact, I had momentarily been somewhere else—at a party with family and friends or something. But suddenly, I was in shorts and a dark green shirt I don’t actually own in real life, and it was noon, and I was in Santos. The sky was a beautiful partly cloudy. It looked light a hot day, but felt pleasant. I found myself on a busy road that vaguely resembled Afonso Pena—the dividing line between the nicer bairros and one called Macuco. I wandered around, almost in a trance or daze. I wondered how I’d gotten there—I assumed by plane—but it didn’t really seem to matter. There were lots of pedestrians, everywhere. All around me were the old, old houses, with tall, narrow wooden doors—houses that in real life, I always imagined sailors having once come home to, but now are filled with immigrants from the Northeast. I went places I could never go again as a tourist. I thought, “I’m going to walk all over Santos, even the Center.” The Center is not a safe place in real life. It made me feel invincible, the idea of going there. I passed by buildings that even now I can see in such detail that I wonder if I really did see them once.
I caught my reflection in a window. My hair was short and slightly flipped out. I looked really hip! I swear—I swear—I passed some people I actually saw or knew or something in Brazil. I caught some of them looking at me, maybe wondering where they had seen me before. I felt triumphant, returning as a competent tourist, well-dressed, confident. It’s as if I were glad to prove that missionaries were human, too—not always dowdy their whole lives. I didn’t feel out of place as a blond. Lot’s of people were blond, though fake. And I knew the language.
In my wandering, I ducked into a kind of alley, walked into a little paved courtyard, and suddenly found a view of the city. There was a carnival in the distance, with swings and one of those crazy spinny things that people always get sick on, and a Ferris wheel. In real life, there is no carnival in Santos, and a view of the city is only possible from one of the hills in the center of the island. But in my dream world, anything was possible I guess. Even for a solitary American girl with no real money and no passport to feel safe. It occurred to me to feel nervous that I had nothing but the clothes I was wearing and a U.S. $20 bill in my pocket, no cellphone, nothing… But this fleeting moment of panic was replaced by awe as I walked the old streets of Santos feeling exactly like I’d come home.
My memories of Brazil haunt me, because they seem so much like dreams. So totally different was my life there than it is here, it is hard for me, in some ways, to believe I was actually there. It’s my driving force to go back. I guess…I guess I just want to go see if it’s really there the way I remember it.
