(part four of Thirty Days in Brazil: Fiber in a Faraway Place)

[mentor] Cassandra: Completely gone on native booze and the beautiful Brazilian spring.

[mentor] Cassandra: I watched the waves roll up onto the midnight beach, and they hissed and were ivory over the indigo and silver sand which was slick as glass.

[mentor] Cassandra: And picked shells from it. And I want to do this forever.

Hissing, the waves are hissing up onto the beach beyond the villa, where the houses stop and the ocean picks up nigh-endless into the blue night and the foaming water. We're sprawled out on the glass-slick sand, watching the tide come in. It's reaching white-crested up onto the sands, and we're daring it, we're daring it with beer, hand-rolled cigarettes and smiles, laughing to dubstep, laughing stories together.

I've come into my own, and we're full of camaraderie, of mutual respect. Their honest pleasure with my speed of work, with my honesty with them, with my time with the company mates with my respect for their fast, quality work. They've been here a year, me four. And they're fast and smart and great drinking buddies. We work in sync, like we were made to work with each other. Maybe we were.

I almost moved to San Francisco to be with them, two years ago. Now I've come back around to working with them hundreds of miles from San Francisco and where I thought I'd be.

It's all about the paths not taken and where they reconverge. Everything happens for a reason, no matter how bitter and sweet.

Wherever I go this year, I meet amazing people. I find it hard to believe that six years ago, I was ready to toss in the towel, curl up in tired despair and give up.

Hermetic saved my life when he took his own. If he hadn't died, panamaus would not have written Don't give up, and I would not be who I am. It's funny how these things work. Or my life might have been saved by knowing an amazing man I've never met. Or I might have never met karma_debt. I think about these things. Maybes. What could have been. What has been.

05:16 Auspice Stoned and drunk on the Brazilian beachside and the tide is hissing up all silver over power-blue sands.
05:16 Auspice Powder. Suppose it works the same ways. I'm drinking beer and wishing you were here, man.
05:16 Auspice Wishing you were all here, this rocks.

I was in love for six years with a man who's like a stone, who doesn't know what he wants, who's curled into himself. But when he forgets, he melts into the most beautiful man I've ever known. He's one of the most brilliant men I've ever met, one of the best. In August, I gave up loving him, loving him in a hopeless, pathetic, impassioned way. We've never really been an item.

Sometimes, people aren't the images we project on them, and whatever he projected onto me melted away years ago. But if not for following this path of desire, I would not be who I am today.

On the balance, watching the sea come in, wandering the night market, driving through the rainforest, singing to electronica in the night, playing Underworld for the San Francisco people, I've come home.

...everything everything everything everything... an e-razor of love... an e-razor of love...

It's where the heart is, after all, and I've found my own again.

Free me to fly away...

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