Crystal Symphony Entry 17

Today has been a day of strange and fantastic guest comments.

Earlier in the afternoon, during our tea time set, the orchestra was playing Glenn Miller’s “Little Brown Jug.”  It’s a simple tune (more like a riff dressed up in orchestration than anything else), and as we outnumbered the audience I decided to have a little fun with the solo by pushing the melody back a beat each chorus.  For those of you who aren’t musicians, this is the equivalent of Ives sending two marching bands past each other playing different songs at the same time.  It cracked the band up (our reed player hand his sleeve stuffed in his mouth to keep from laughing), which is what we need every once in a while to stay sane on these sets.

As soon as we finished an elderly man approached us.  “You guys sound great! You sound way better than the so-called ‘Glenn Miller Band’ that was here on the crossing!  They were way too loud and brassy, but you have the real sound!  I grew up listening to the original 78s and so I would know!”

We thanked him politely and he walked away.  Yes, I imagine our band IS a little quieter than the Glenn Miller Orchestra.  That’s what happens when you cut thirteen horns down to three . . . but the comparison is ludicrous.  They sounded fantastic.

Later, after our “big band” set (such as it was, with six pieces), a lady came up to us.  “I was really upset that you didn’t play In the Mood!”

We apologized and mentioned that we’d include it next time.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it’s really a big band classic!”  And she stormed off.

Lady, you have no idea.  I'm reminded of the old bandstand joke, where musicians wish that Glenn Miller had lived and his music had died.

Anyway.  My little remaining faith in our onboard audience is quickly melting away.  Time to get off the ship . . .

Crystal Symphony Entry 16

Two nights ago we passed through the Strait of Gibraltar again, headed for the Atlantic.  I went out on the bow and watched for a while, as it was the perfect night for it and I missed the transit last time.

It's a sight that I will remember for a long time.  On the right were the lights of Spain and Europe, glittering in an orange line along the coast and away into the distance.  On the left they were matched by the lights of Africa.  In the center, just to starboard, the rock of Gibraltar stood silhouetted against this backdrop, an inky blotch of darkest black against the soft glow of orange halogens. 

Behind us (off the port quarter) the moon was beginning to rise, fading out the stars around it one by one.  Rows of freighters riding gently at anchor stretched off to the horizon on both sides; little towers of light in a glassy sea.  The night was calm and the ship was making little headway, but there was a gentle breeze coming from land that carried the dusty scent of North Africa with it.

Whenever I look at a map and see the strait, this is the image that I’ll remember.

Note: not my picture.

Crystal Symphony Entry 15

I’ve really fallen off of the blog bandwagon lately.  I have no excuse other than the half-finished entry about Istanbul (first of two parts!) sitting stubbornly on my desktop, refusing to complete itself.  While I wait for that pot to come to boil, I’m going to write about today and my visit to the monastery-mountain of Montserrat.

View of Santa Cova from the cable car.

I’ve been to Montserrat twice before; once while working on the Grandeur, and once while on the Camino.  You can find the first visit here:

http://sixmonthsthreeweeks.blogspot.com/2011/08/entry-131-august-2-nd-2011-1203am-gmt-2.html 

And my second visit here:

http://sixmonthsthreeweeks.blogspot.com/2012/02/camino-entry-4.html

http://sixmonthsthreeweeks.blogspot.com/2012/02/camino-entry-5.html

The Crystal Symphony is headed West again from Istanbul and with most of the day off today in Barcelona I decided to pay a third visit to the monastery.  It seemed only fitting – on my first visit, I had a powerful experience that led me to the Camino, and the second visit was the first major milestone on my road to Santiago.  A third, concluding visit was in order.

The train ride from Plaza Espanya takes about an hour.  It is amazing to me that I can cover that distance by train in only an hour when last time it took four days to walk.  Cataluña is either in the very end of spring or the very beginning of summer – either way, the thick, verdant green foliage is fresh and fragrant with the muscular power of summertime.  It’s going to be hot here, and soon.

The first view of the mountain was impressive, as always.  Tourists had their cameras out (that is, the tourists who didn’t have their bags lifted on the third stop . . . it was quick and surgical, I didn’t even notice the thieves until afterwards) and were snapping shots through the train windows, craning their necks at the peaks above and clicking their tongues in frustration when we went through tunnels.  Luckily, the cable car ride up the side of the mountain is a much better photo opportunity, and I was not disappointed with the flurry of shutters filling the tiny cabin as we sped through midair.

The chapel of Santa Cova was my goal.  This is apart from the main monastery and is built against the cliff at the spot where an image of the Virgin Mary was supposedly found over a thousand years ago.  It is a powerful place, one that inspires people to prayer, and even though I didn’t find what I was looking for last time I visited, it is still an important place in my personal history.

This time I had the chapel to myself.  Everything was just as it was the first time I visited – the grotto with its simple stone altar, the two rows of simple wicker furniture, the rack of candles burning softly in the back of the room.  It was quiet, quiet, quiet!  So quiet that I could hear the candles burning.  There have been very few times in my life where I’ve felt the need to pray, but something about the chapel of Santa Cova usually brings it out in me and this time was no exception.

The first time that I visited, I was just beginning to wake up and I prayed for the strength to act despite fear.  The second time, I was footsore and discourage, and I did my best to renew that wish.  This time, though, I sat there in that silent chapel, listening to the candles burn behind me, and had no idea what to ask for.

I got bored.  My mind wandered; it was stuck at a brick wall and so it went sideways.  I started thinking about all the places I’d seen since the first time I visited – the beautiful people I’d met, the weird things that had happened on the strange road to Santiago . . . I thought of the red brown dust of Cataluña, the relentless wind on the meseta, and the strange Basque language called Euskara.  I thought of the complex, captivating scent of Buenos Aires.  I thought of the sound of a carnival drum line starting up in Rio de Janeiro.  I heard the first call to worship in Istanbul echoing from the minarets around me.

And that’s when I realized it.  I had not come here to ask for anything, but rather to say thank you.  I said it, and then I said it again out loud.  I wanted to laugh, it was so simple.  That’s what prayer is; not asking, but giving.

There is a small room off the main chapel where people leave gifts, tokens to the goddess (er, the Virgin Mary . . . I’m reading too much Joseph Campbell lately and all the traditions are starting to blur together) in thanks for boons received.  I still had the last seashell from Finisterra . . . it had been tucked away in a tiny plastic bag along with my tuxedo studs, packed in my luggage when I left home again in February.  I didn’t know why I had brought it along until earlier that morning, getting dressed in the pitch blackness to the snores of my roommate.  The shell was an offering, a gift from the end of the world given to that which sent me there in the first place.  I left it with a string of other camino shells in the chapel – apparently I am not the first one to have had this experience.

Now I can finally come home.  This is an idea that will be developed more fully when I finally get around to posting those camino entries from Finisterra, but suffice it to say that I reached the end of the world only to find that the way back from a pilgrimage is just as important as the way there.  That’s why things felt so wrong when I arrived in Michigan in January – it wasn’t time to be home yet.  The way back had to be considered.

And with this visit to Santa Cova, I have found what I was looking for.  Now I can come home.  This journey, started March before last and almost three times as long as originally planned, is coming to an end.

Also, I finally got some pictures of a portion of the camino that I walked!  It was good to see the signs again.



A paving stone with the camino symbol, just outside the monastery.  This is one of the signs I followed on Day 6 of the camino.



A sign for the GR6, the trail I followed to Montserrat from Barcelona.  I passed this sign on Day 4 of the camino.



A sign I found in the cable car parking lot for an alternate path along the camino.  I did not take this path, but this is an excellent example of one of the ubiquitous yellow arrows.



Crystal Symphony Entry 14

Pictures!

Yup.  It's time for a gratutious picture post.  These are some pictures from our recent stops in Italy, Greece, and Turkey.  First up -- the Roman city of Ephesus.

At one point, Ephesus was one of the four largest cities in the Roman empire, housing more than 250,000 people.  The ruins you can see above date from one of the several rebuildings of the city on different sites -- the Hellenistic city was relocated due to malaria and the silting in of its port (a problem that has not stopped -- the Roman port of Ephesus is now three miles from the Aegean Sea!).  I took the first picture while lying flat on my back on the porch of the library of Celsus.  Here you can see a better veiw of the library's reconstructed facade.  On the right is a ceremonial gate leading to the central marketplace, the Agora.

These were one of the many baths in the city.  You can see the remains of the pillars that held up the floor so that hot air from the furnaces could circulate through the caldarium and tepidarium. 

Here's a detail of a street mosaic in front of a block of housing for the Roman elite.  The richness and detail visible in these two thousand year old mosaics is stunning.

Ephesus's patron goddess was Artemis, or Diana under Roman rule.  The original, Hellenestic city was the site of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Temple to Artemis.  Unfortunately, time has not been kind to the ancient wonders (with the notable exception of the pyramids) and this lone pillar is all that's left.  The other one hundred and seventy nine of them have disappeared into the churches and mosques of the region, and it is rumored that some of them even made it into the framework of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

The Greek island of Santorini rests on the rim of a volcanic caldera.  This picture shows the sharp black volcanic rock that still defines the old cone of the volcano -- the city of Fira is visible clinging to the top of the crater rim in the picture below.  The M/S Sea Diamond sank here in 2007.

The city of Fira.

Mykonos is a poplar tourist destination in the Greek islands.  Typical of Greece, everything is painted brilliant white with blue trim, just like the colors of the Greek flag.  This particular square is in a part of the city known as Little Venice -- some of the streets here were so narrow that you had to step into shops to let a scooter go by.

Here's another shot of Mykonos, with olive trees in the foreground and the Symphony anchored in the background.  Greece is quite warm already this time of year, and Myknonos is dry and rugged -- there are lots of pastel earth tones here to contrast with the bright blue and white of the city.

This is the old city of Rhodes.  The old city lies within the city wall, nearly all of which is still intact.  The Byzantine Empire and the Knights Hospitaller were responsible for the construction of these fortifactions, which resisted a series of Ottoman attacks until 1522, when the Knights were driven out by Suleiman the Magnificent and the island fell under Muslim rule once again.  The Knights retreated to Sicily and finally Malta.

Rhodes was also the location of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world -- the Colossus, a giant bronze statue that stood astride the entrace to the harbor.  Destroyed by earthquake and salvaged for the metal, no trace remains.  These two small pillars mark the supposed location of the Colossus, although no one is really sure.  Oh, and our base player snuck into this picture; hi Scotty!

Italy, in contrast to Greece, is not at all dry and dusty, but rather exploding with lush greenery.  This is the view from Taormina, in Sicily, at a small restaurant where we ate lunch.  Pizza om nom nom . . .

And this is a view of Mt. Etna, an active volcano on the island of Sicily.  It is the second largest volcano in the European/North African region and is extremely active.  Sylvain, our subsitute bass player (Scotty was on vacation) laughed when we asked him how the best way to go see the mountain was -- it's pretty impossible to miss!

And somehow band members keep slipping into these pictures -- that's David, the drummer and bandleader.

Istanbul tomorrow!

Crystal Symphony Entry 13

Nearly everyone has heard of Pompeii, the Roman city that was buried during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD and subsequently preserved. It is an astounding archaeological windfall; a city of 20,000 people, uniformly preserved on the same day, and left undisturbed until the modern era. When I discovered that we were anchoring off of Sorrento, a thirty five minute train ride from Pompeii (and within sight of mighty Vesuvius) I had to go see the city.

Sorrento is located near the end of a peninsula to the south of Napoli and Vesuvius. Like most cities in this part of the world, it was originally settled by the Phoenicians. The city sits on a sheer cliff above the water that is broken only by a narrow ravine coming down from the mountains. A road winds up through several switchbacks to the main plaza of the city, which stretches from one side of the ravine to the other. Underneath it has been filled with buildings, a mishmash of masonry from different centuries that results in a number of clubs below street level that are accessible on by narrow iron staircases clinging to the side of the cliff.

The city itself is an upscale collection of plastered buildings in various pastel shades. Sorrento has the appearance of a refuge for those who enjoy a bit of peace and quiet (and have to money to go find it). We had some of the best food of my life later that evening . . . but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The easiest way to get around in this region is a narrow gauge railway called the Circumvesuviana. A variety of lines operate out of Napoli, and Sorrento is one of the three final stops. It was pouring rain when I left the ship, and by the time I found the station I was soaked through to the skin – never before have I missed my camino gear quite so much (it isn’t that my street shoes leak so much as they suck the water in and distribute it amongst my toes as equally as possible). But I didn’t know when I’d have another chance to see Pompeii, and figuring that I couldn’t really get much wetter anyway I decided to push on.

The Circumvesuviana is an Italian railroad in the three most important senses of the term – it’s cheap, it’s fast, and it’s covered in graffiti. A luxury travel experience it was not, but two euros and ten cents bought me a plastic bucket seat to Pompeii that got there a lot faster than any bus would have. The tunnels and bridges seemed to be competing with one another to see who could occupy the greatest amount of trackage. The terrain was so rough that one station was located literally in midair, on an arched bridge high over a valley floor, while another was located midway through a tunnel like a subway. We sped through it all – groves of orange trees with their black tarpaulins dripping in the rain, old castles built of red brick, and churches of pale stucco with laundry hanging to dry under corrugated awnings.

The station for the Pompeii ruins (Pompeii Scavi, the modern city is spelled with only one “i”) left me practically on the doorstep of the archaeological site. The modern city surrounds the ruins, but as nearly the entire Roman city is still intact the ruins are so large as to make one forget that there are real buildings with real people living in them only a short distance away. After renting an audioguide (free admission due to national culture week!) I made my way past the suburban bathing complex (incomplete at the time of the eruption) and through the city walls into Pompeii.

Pompeii requires one to readjust their concept of visiting an archaeological site. In most cases, such a site may be a building or two, or a city block, where three or four layers of masonry are all that’s left of the various buildings (which have then been built over time and time again in the two thousand years since). Usually I’m left squinting at the displays, looking back and forth between the ruins and the sketches trying to figure out just exactly which part of the fishery I’m standing in. Barcelona has a site much like this near the old cathedral – underground, a block of the old roman city has been unearthed, but as the different centuries are all muddled together the foundation of a church may also be the corner of a bakery, built from the reused materials of the first city wall. It can be a bit like seeing in four dimensions at once.

Pompeii is not at all like that. When I stepped through the gate, I found myself on a street, lined on either side with buildings, stretching out towards the forum. There was a sidewalk on both sides, and places where pedestrians could cross without going all the way down into the street by way of huge stepping stones (the gaps between them allowed chariots to pass through). The tops of most of the buildings were missing, of course, as the pyroclastic flow had swept them away, but in some of the lower parts of the city the buildings had intact second stories as well.

And there is no prescribed path that visitors must follow – the whole city is there, just waiting to be explored. I found myself free to wander as I wanted, and that’s what I did – down side streets, through the back entrances of homes, and around interior gardens (the city was so well preserved that plaster casts were taken of the petrified plant roots to determine what types of trees and shrubs had been used, and in many cases Pompeii has been replanted with the modern equivalents). Most buildings were brick or stone, covered in plaster that was then decorated. Bits and pieces of paintings have survived – a line of red trim, a plaster cornice. One villa, the home of a wine merchant, was filled with huge clay jars used to store his product (the vineyard behind it has been replanted and produces a wine known today as Villa del Misterioso).

The baths were particularly notable. Arranged around a central park, there were separate facilities for men and women on either side of a set of furnaces. The changing rooms had high barrel vaults, covered in plaster and decorated with the images of weapons, gods, and nature, all in relief set into octagonal panels (and still legible after two thousand years!). The Roman baths consisted of three different rooms – a frigidarium, with cold water; a tepidarium, with lukewarm water and a caledarium, with the hottest water. The latter two received heat from the furnaces via a series of under floor channels, made visible now in the ruins. Hot gasses from the fires passed through these channels under the floor, warming the water and the air above it. It’s a clever arrangement, really, much like the in-floor heating that is becoming popular in modern architecture.

The baths also had mostly intact roofing, meaning that the more delicate internal features had remained intact (particularly on the women’s side). The floors of the baths were covered in diamond patterned mosaics, laid in grout over the larger flat stones that made up the false floor. One marble basin in particular looked like it was brand new – the partially intact plaster ceiling still had a pattern of the stars painted on it.

The Roman equivalents of fast food restaurants were visible along the street, too. These were storefronts, usually on the corner, with a counter of garish stones and a series of small hollows where food was cooked. Fountains were usually nearby, as well, some of them repaired (with modern, non-leaded pipes) for tourists to drink from.

The amphitheater and sports grounds were interesting as well for the usual collection of two thousand year old graffiti (that I was first introduced to at the Colosseum in Rome). Pictures of ships, puzzle games scratched into the rock, curses directed to the politicians of the day . . . some things really do not change very much from one generation to the next.

In summary, Pompeii is stunning not just because of its size, but because of the uniformity of the time period that it captures. It is incredibly rare that we get more than the smallest snapshot of a day in the life of a human being from two thousand years ago, while Pompeii may be a snapshot of a very BAD day, it remains one of the most compelling examples of an abstract history made concrete that I have ever visited.

Crystal Symphony Entry 12

Last night was the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. We also passed by the wreck of the Costa Concordia some time during the night. That's a strange set of coincidences.

But the ship is still afloat; we're docked now in Civitavecchia.

Crystal Symphony Entry 11

Cadiz is a port city located in Spain just west of the strait of Gibraltar on the Atlantic ocean. The city sits on a narrow spit of land and protects a large harbor.  It is a vital strategic point for the passage of trade through the strait (second only to nearby Gibraltar) and has been settled continuously for the past several thousand years. The succession of ownership follows a predictable trend -- first, the Phoenicians, then the Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Moors, Castillians, and finally modern-day Spain.

The city was walled for much of its history, and the old sections of town sit behind the remnants of those walls. A series of pentagonal batteries protect the various approaches to the city, including one that is located at the end of a very long causeway out in the shallows. Columbus sailed from here twice for the New World, on his second and fourth voyages, and it is likely that these walls were the last he saw of the mainland before heading South to the Canary islands.  Cadiz was also one of the few Spanish cities to hold out against the French conquest during the Napoleonic wars, and has been the birthplace of several popular revolts (one of them to restore the constitution of 1812). 

The old city is a maze of narrow streets, beautiful architecture, and carefully-sculpted parks. The parks are laid out in geometric patterns -- the Moorish influence can be seen in the blue tile and diamond patterning, while the Christian influence can be seen right alongside with the images of the Virgin Mary and widespread use of crosses on just about everything. The huge trees lining these parks are said to have been brought from the New World and planted here -- they are massive, with branches like the limbs of dinosaurs stretching out overhead. Cadiz is one of those social tidewaters, a place where the world's great cultures have each ebbed and flowed, leaving a complicated, layered remnant behind.

It is good to be back in continental Spain once again. I had not realized how much Spain feels like home until I had a warm chocolate Napolitana in my hands (a kind of fluffy pastry with chocolate in the center, not unlike the French pan au chocolat). A long walk along the ocean was just the thing I needed to settle my head today. I'm looking forward to Malaga tomorrow, and then Barcelona most of all.

It is a holy week this week (the build up to Easter), and so the square in front of the cathedral was being prepared for a procession. I saw marching bands warming up and lots of people in strange pointy hats, but due to a rehearsal I had to get back to the ship before they got started. The route was like a parade route, with boxes, television cameras, and barricades everywhere -- to get inside the cathedral was impossible. Many businesses were closed.

The thieves, though, are always working. I learned about a new scam today -- the hard way, of course, as this is how one usually learns about scams -- but it was a cheap enough lesson and provided me with some entertainment as well. On my way back to the ship, a deaf man burst from a side alley and confronted me with a petition to open a center for the deaf. I tried to explain that I wasn't from the area, but as he was deaf he couldn't understand what I was saying . . . I signed the petition and donated a Euro. About ten seconds after he left I realized that the petition had been in English . . . oops. It isn't particularly likely that a petition to open a center for the deaf in Spain is going to be written in English, after all.

The man was still in sight -- I wasn't about to confront him over a single Euro, but I did follow just to see what the deal was. He met again with his partner, who had a big stack of forms, and dropped off the money. I watched them work; it was a fairly professional operation. The second guy kept the money and watched for police, while the front man worked the tourists for cash. A quick whistle and they'd pack up shop; I had to move fast to keep up with them. The real tip off was when I saw the "deaf" man I'd given the donation to talking on his cell phone . . . the half hour of entertainment I got by following and watching them work was definitely worth the Euro I lost. Thieves have got to eat too, after all . . .

Crystal Symphony Entry 10

Casablanca.

On land, the city of Casablanca is most famous for the classic 1943 movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman . On the ship, it is notorious for being totally unlike the movie (which, in retrospect, should not be too surprising as the movie was filmed on a lot in Los Angeles). Many of the crew who have been here before decided to give it a pass, and the guest newsletter contains a wonderful little warning that I've paraphrased here: “Casablanca is not yet up to the first class tourist standards of Europe with regards to buses and drivers. Occasionally tours may encounter delays and unplanned events. Try to accept these events as cultural experiences.” Despite (or perhaps because of) this obnoxious warning I headed out into the town after crew drill -- aren't unplanned events and cultural experiences the point of traveling?

Oh, and "town" isn't quite the right word. Casablanca is a city of four million people; its history dates back eight thousand years to the Phoenicians, but the modern city was founded as a French settlement at the beginning of the 20th century (Portugal had largely abandoned it two hundred years before). The city speaks a mixture of French and Arabic, although American dollars are widely accepted along with Dirham (the local currency) and Euros. Luckily I have a Quebecois friend on board the ship!

A group of us negotiated with a taxi driver to take a little tour around the city. After deciding on a price we walked out to the car, a battered old diesel BMW with strange elongated doors. It had the body of a sedan but the seating of a van, with one manual window and one automatic. The driver had a cassette mix tape playing that he would rewind every few minutes – I don't know if the Gnawa music and wailing double-reeded horns were for the benefit of us, the tourists, or if he was actually enjoying it. Sylvain, my Quebecois friend, sat in front and chatted happily away with the driver in French while we watched the city go by.

It was my first time on the mainland of the African continent – the Canaries and Madeira are technically part of Africa, but I don't think they really count. It was also my first time in a Muslim country. The dress was half Western and half North African – long, dark colored robes that are good for cutting the heat. Long sleeves and pants are the norm – very few people have exposed forearms or calves. It's hot already, but the sea breeze keeps things cool enough. Inland it's already over forty degrees centigrade.

Our first stop was the Hassan II mosque. This is a relatively new mosque, completed in 1980 for a cost of half a billion dollars. It has the highest minaret in the world, can hold 20,000 people in the prayer hall, and at night shoots a laser 30 kilometers towards Mecca.  In the thirty years since it was built it has become one of the most recognizable symbols of Casablanca. Muslim architecture is fascinating because it contains no representative imagery – everything is abstract and symbolic (contrast this with the Christian architecture in nearby Spain, where everything is adorned with images of saints and martyrs). The ceilings, floors, walls, and most other things are covered in complicated patterns either carved into the stone or created through delicate inlaid mosaics. The more delicate layers of patterning are not visible until you've looked at a certain surface for a period of time . . . they disappear into the larger shapes, which in turn disappear into the larger shapes of the building itself. The end result is almost on the level of an optical illusion, where different layers of complication can lie invisible, nested inside one another.

I didn't go inside, as I wanted to respect their place of worship, but I did peek inside the massive gateway to the hall. People were walking past me (men through one door, women through another), slipping out of their shoes at the gateway. It was a beautiful setting – right on the ocean, with the constant sound of the pounding waves and the bright African sun overhead. There was a sign advertising tours (I think – it was in French, after all . . .) but we wanted to see some other parts of the city.

The driver took us along the seaside next. This was definitely the upscale, touristy section of town, full of bars catering to Europeans and cheap beach side resorts. There was even a McDonald's; I don't know if they had McCousCous, but I sort of hope not. Bogart and Bergman would not have looked nearly as good sitting at a plastic booth behind the golden arches.

Our driver dropped us off in another part of town, near a market, so that we could explore. Some of my companions got trapped in a carpet store (the salesperson actually said, “We are not pushy salespeople here!” as he was being a pushy salesperson . . . I was suspect that our driver was getting a cut). As we waited outside the carpet shop, the only girl in our group was subjected to a series of awkward English compliments . . . as a blond young woman, she sticks out in Morocco, and so the men say things that don't really translate right. “Has anyone ever told you that you look like barbie?” is not really a compliment back home, after all. The cab driver had been calling her “belle gazelle” in French which was sort of endearing, but all in all it seems that Morocco is a tough place for Western women.

I began to sense that my companions were feeling a little out of place . . . those of us who had escaped from the rug shop decided to wait by the car until the others emerged (I had hoped they'd come out with big rolls of fabric, but no luck). I, on the other hand, elected to explore a bit, since I don't know when I'll be in Morocco again. The main market was a few streets over, and here I began to feel a lot more comfortable. It was not at all a tourist market – this was a street market in the truest sense of the word, as cars and motorcycles were constantly pushing their way through crowds of people and between vendors' carts. I saw all sorts of things for sale – mostly food, but also questionable electronics, stacks of tires, and books in a wide variety of languages. The degree to which everything was mixed together was fascinating – you could find yourself swept along by a group of children just out of school, stepping over the legs of somewhere working on a car in the middle of the street, while three feet to your left there are suited businessmen taking tea at a small cafe. My favorite sight was the old lady selling passports – a rainbow of booklets in muted hues, presumably liberated from unfortunate tourists. I almost wanted to browse just out of curiosity.

I was surrounded by all sorts of smells. The fumes from a passing moped, a brief blast of roast chicken, and the bitter whiff of hashish wafting out of some darkened corner were all recurring themes. Stores and restaurants that were contained in buildings seem to spill out into the street during the day, only to close at night like a row of blooming flowers. One bakery even brought their ovens onto the sidewalk, a strategy that must be life saving when summer really gets going.

We eventually made our way back to the ship and the numbing safety of our tan plastic cubicles.  I am entirely alone in my opinion here on board, but I liked Casablanca. People dislike it because it isn't like the movie, but I disagree. It's an industrial, hot, grimy, jumbled together kind of place with a weird mixture of languages, cultures and customs -- and I like it all the better for those things. If we can let go of our compulsion to judge a place by our own standards, we can begin to see it for what it is. The fifth rule of the camino, “Sometimes there are mountains,” and its corollary, “Sometimes there aren't,” definitely applies here. The world is just the world, whether there are mountains or not, and the Buddha is as surely in the acrid stench of a moped in Casablanca as it is in a Shinto temple on Mount Fuji. People forget that Bogart and Bergman are acting out a story set in a hot, grimy, stench-ridden, smoke-filled gambling hall, located in a city rife with crime and occupied by a fascist state. The beauty of the story is not in the locale; the beauty is in the blossoming of love in a place that is so ugly and worn.  In this respect, I think Casablanca is exactly like it was in the movie.

Crystal Symphony Entry 9

I've survived another Atlantic crossing . . . we docked in Funchal four days ago, and Lisbon two days after that. It feels good to be back to the Iberian penninsula, although I didn't expect to be back so soon.

I was eating lunch in the mess with my new roommate (Cezar, a Polish-Swedish trombone player) when an older man we didn't recognize came up to us. He asked where we were from, and then returned later with two little pamphlets in our respective languages. "Read, and they will explain you why so many bad things happen to people." It was of course a short collection of musings and bible verses -- although they were from both testaments, which was unusual. The guys from the seafarer's mission usually stick to the new testament, it's a little more upbeat and sailors generally need to hear the good news first.

We were polite and took the booklets -- he was a nice man, and seemed genuine in his beliefs, but I couldn't help but think about his chioce of words. "Explain (to) you why so many bad things happen to people." That's a fairly dismal way to put it . . . from a philosophical standpoint, how can the answer to that question be anything useful? It speaks of a system that has already decided that life is shit before it even happens. That's not how I want to live . . . and how do we know which things are bad and which are good, anyway? I thought of telling him a story from Stephen Mitchell's commentary on the Tao te Ching, but English wasn't his first language and missionaries are not usually very interested in hearing what other people have to say anyway.

The story goes like this:

There was a young farmer who was very poor. He had no wife or children, and only one horse to work his entire farm. One day the horse ran away and he was left with nothing. All the villagers came and said, "Oh, how terrible! What a tragedy!" except for his elderly father, who just smiled. Later he asked his father, "Why do you stay so quiet, father?"

"Because maybe this is not a tragedy. Maybe this is the best of fortunes!"

The farmer shrugged. His father was getting old; he would be patient with him and his foolishness.

A few months later, the horse came back. It had found a wild mate of good stock, and soon the farmer had a whole stable full of excellent horses. He became very rich breeding them and soon had a large estate, a beautiful wife, and a handsome son. All of the villagers said, "Oh, what luck!" except for his father. One day the farmer asked him, "Why are you so quiet, father?"

"Because maybe this is not good luck. Maybe this is the most terrible of fortunes."

The farmer was puzzled, but he loved his father and so he smiled and went about his business.

The farmer's son loved to ride the many horses they had and was an excellent horseman. One day he slipped and fell, breaking his pelvis and receiving other terrible injuries. The villagers gathered around his sick-bed, consoling the farmer and his wife. "Oh, how terrible!" But again the farmer's father said nothing. He just smiled to himself in his big chair in the corner.

"Father, how can you be happy when your grandson is so injured?"

"Because maybe this is not misfortune. Maybe this is the best of luck!"

The farmer was angry, but his grief kept him from fighting with his father.

The son healed slowly, but he had acquired a limp and could not ride any more. The farmer and his wife did not care; they were happy that he was alive. A year later, the barbarians invaded from the North. All able bodied young men were called up to fight in the army; all of the young men from the village were taken except for the farmer's son, who was not fit to fight in the war. The battle was fierce, and nine tenths of the village's young men were killed. The villagers told the farmer, "You are lucky your son could not go!"

But his father sat in the corner, silent.

---

I think you can see the point of the story.

In related news, we will celebrate Easter this cruise, and at the weekly entertainment meeting the cruise director introduced the variety of religious personnel that Crystal has brought on board to cater to the guests' spiritual needs. Usually we have a Catholic priest, but in Lisbon we added a Protestant Minister and a Jewish Rabbi (Passover is coming up as well). I realized as we were leaving that this is the first time in my life when I might actually witness a Priest, a Minister, and a Rabbi walk into a bar . . .

Crystal Symphony Entry 8

Today was likely my last day in the Caribbean for the forseeable future.

We were docked in Grand Turk, an island that is known for being a possible landing point for Columbus when he "discovered" the Americas, as well as the nearest point to the splashdown of the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule containing John Glenn. The ship was the tallest point visible -- we were docked at a pier within a hundred meters of land. The water in Grand Turk is so clear that not only can one see the keel of the Crystal Symphony, but one can see the shadow that it leaves upon the sand beneath; it makes one feel as if the ship (which weighs tens of thousands of tons) is flying through space -- a particularly odd feeling when you realize that it contains your home, gym, workplace, recreational areas, and nearly every other part of your life. We could have swum out to the ship from the beach -- Grand Turk truly is a diver's and snorkeler's paradise.

I took a long walk away from the ship, people, and everything else today. The Grand Turk pier deposits one right among a series of tourist traps -- the beach stretchs to the left, towards the Margaritaville restaurant (the largest building on Grand Turk besides the ships themselves) and so I headed right instead. After circling round a little fence I was able to follow the beach for quite some distance, passing a series of abandoned cinderblock buildings covered in graffiti, a stable, and finally reaching a coral rock outcropping before having to return to the ship. The rock has been eroded in strange ways -- a large outcropping protrudes from the cliff face, hanging precariously in wait of some force strong enough to dislodge it. I climbed part of the way up, but the coral is too sharp and would have cut my feet and hands if I had kept going.

I needed the walk. Fifteen minutes from the leaving the ship, the only things I could hear were the waves, the wind, and my own footsteps. Time does funny things when you get out beyond the shops, commercial beaches, and canned music . . . a larger consciousness lives out beyond the tourist zone, a mind that exists day in and day out without any concept of the passage of time. Here, the waves have always broken against the rock, and the wind has always blown from the ocean onto land, and the petty concerns of humanity matter little compared to the constant roar of the ocean. The quality of the Caribbean sun is nearly impossible to describe -- the island shimmers with heat. Everything is white and blinding without some sort of eye protection -- a shattering contrast to the vivid starscape that is visible from the regions near the equator at night. Soft white coral sand underfoot, blinding white sun overhead, and everywhere the sound of the ocean -- this was my day on Grand Turk.

Crystal Symphony Entry 7

Yesterday I visited the Cristo Redentor, a huge statue of Christ the Redeemer that overlooks Rio de Janeiro from Corcovado Mountain ("The Hunchback"). If there is any symbol that represents Rio to the world, it is the Cristo Redentor.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.



You can see the rectangular stands of the sambadromo here:

JC is big.

Crystal Symphony Entry 6

March 3rd, 2012

Buenos Aires, the Paris of the Southern Hemisphere . . .

My interest in Buenos Aires was first sparked two summers ago when I was persuaded to take a tango class with a friend in Ann Arbor. Tango is a dance between couples, and can be either a social dance (Argentine style) or an artistic/competitive one (American, International, and Ballroom tango -- there are significant stylistic differences between the two approaches). I found myself drawn in by the passionate, melancholy music and by the improvised dance itself – the intimate embrace combined with the risk of total catastrophe is an exhilarating experience, particularly in a culture like ours that avoids physical contact of any kind. Buenos Aires is the birthplace of tango, and when I found out that we had an overnight stay I was excited to go see tango danced in its natural habitat.

There are two main ways to see tango in Buenos Aires. The first option is to go see a tango show. There are many venues for such shows, all usually combining a meal, drinks, and dancing. There is no audience participation – your only job is to soak up the food and drink while the dancers and orchestra provide the evening’s entertainment. These shows are usually geared towards tourists, and range from the gaudy “Senor Tango,” which seats hundreds of people and features a chorus line, to tiny, intimate venues with four or five tables. They can be quite pricey, but usually feature excellent ballroom tango, with complicated pre-choreographed routines and athletic lifts, kicks, and such.

The other way is to go to a milonga. A milonga is a social event where people come to dance in the Argentine style – a subtle, improvised dance more suited to crowded dance floors. Milongas can vary widely in style, music, venue, clientele, and degree of formality. It is estimated that in Buenos Aires there are anywhere between fifteen and twenty milongas each night, most of them running well past three in the morning. There are a well-defined set of social rules that govern milongas – I could go on about the mechanics of tango, but for those who would like to know more I point towards google.

The difference between the two approaches is focus. In performance tango, the energy is focused outward towards the audience, while in social tango the energy is focused inwards into the connection between dancers. The type I studied in Ann Arbor was social tango, the more intimate of the two, and so I decided to research milongas instead of tagging along with my shipmates to a show (I haven’t traveled all the way to the Southern Hemisphere just to see some damn Disney tango!).

After finishing work, I got my maps together and set off into the city. It was a perfect evening – cooler after the heat of the day, with a bit of a breeze off of the ocean and just enough humidity to smell like summer. In most ports it is something of an adventure getting from the industrial area into the city proper by foot, and Buenos Aires is no exception. Widespread poverty stalks Buenos Aires just as with all cities in South America, and on my way to the train station I passed through one of the transitional zones. It was an odd little collision of worlds – on one side of the boulevard was a wide park with the English clock tower, while on the other side streets ran away into a shanty town where mountains of white garbage bags stood piled against walls. Along the sidewalks (and at some points integrated into the train and bus stations) was a long open-air market where people of all incomes mingled among racks of cheap handbags and kabob stands. It was a strange place – not quite anywhere, but not nowhere, either. I was reminded of the body of water Buenos Aires is located on, the Rio de la Plata, and how it is neither an ocean nor a river. Perhaps this is the urban equivalent.

Speaking of streets, Buenos Aires is a city of massive boulevards. They can be fourteen, sixteen, even eighteen lanes wide. I used to think that I liked large boulevards . . . but after two hours in Buenos Aires and I have changed my mind. They look pretty and carry huge loads of traffic, but from a pedestrian’s standpoint they are a pain. Imagine the length of a crosswalk when you’ve got to get across eighteen lanes of traffic! I am lucky to be young and in good shape, because there were a few instances where I found myself playing real-life frogger during my exploration of Buenos Aires.

Despite the various hazards to life and limb, I made it safely to the more pedestrian-friendly urban center. Here the Casa Rosada is located, where Eva Perón made her famous speeches to the people of Argentina. A short walk away from the water is the Plaza de Independencia, where a huge obelisk has been built(reminiscent of the Washington monument in D.C.). I stopped for a quick bite at a dollar pizza joint (four pesos) before reaching my first destination of the night, a milonga at La Confiteria Ideal.

I stopped for a moment outside. So far, Buenos Aires had been much like any other large city that I’ve visited in the past twenty three years or so. La Confiteria Ideal was the first thing I’d seen to set the city apart. An ornate marble front bordered the little side street it was located on. Behind dark wooden doors and plate glass windows I could see an elegant dining room, with cloth napkins folded up into flowers on each table and ceiling fans spinning lazy circles above. A dark-haired waiter stood outside, sleeves rolled up and smoking a cigarette. The big French doors on the second story veranda were open, and from within I could hear the sounds of music . . . I headed inside.

The interior was just as rich as the exterior was. A stone staircase twisted around the wrought iron elevator cage, depositing me at the head of a long room. Warm colored stone and wood were everywhere, reminding me of the strange café in Santiago de Compostela where I ate with the Koreans (only a month and a half ago!). Tables, draped in red and black, surrounded the floor in little groups. I was early (it was only midnight, after all) and got a spot in the front row.

I stayed planted there for a few hours, sipping red wine and enjoying the music. The dancers were of various skills and ages, but all moved smoothly and comfortably. The music itself was exactly what I was looking for – old school tango from the thirties and forties. The crowd was roughly half and half foreigners and locals, judging by the mixture of languages I could hear, but I’ve heard there is a large expatriate population in Buenos Aires and so more of them may be locals than I thought.

After an hour or so the floor was cleared and an exceptionally good couple (professionals – they were here with their students, I believe) danced a tanda (set of three to five songs) to wild applause. “Si, senor!” “Otra, otra!” “Bravo!” I stayed there through the next several tandas until a different couple was featured, a couple that I enjoyed watching much less – I took this a sign to move on, as I still had lots to do. One night in Buenos Aires is hardly sufficient.

Half an hour’s walk later, I arrived at a converted warehouse that is known as “La Catedral.” The club was on the second floor – I paid for my ticket at the folding table set up in the entry way and climbed the chipped tile stairs towards the music.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. The central room of the warehouse had become the club, and was kept in near darkness except for a few strings of lights hung from wall to wall. The offices surrounding this space are filled with beaten leather couches and low tables where people come to smoke and relax a bit. A bar stretched along the entire opposite wall. I paid for what I thought was a glass of wine and received the entire bottle – after I asked, the bartender gave me a glass as well. Stumbling to an empty table in the dark, I settled in to watch the show.

It was a much younger crowd at La Catedral, and as a consequence the rules of milonga were more relaxed. People got up or sat down in the middle of tandas, wore jeans and T-shirts, and were teaching each other steps at the edges of the dance floor. Looking for a bit of assistance in consuming the entire bottle of wine I’d found myself in possession of, I made friends with another American, two Irish brothers, and a pair of Chilean guys who were quite excited to find out that I knew their country’s cheer (“C-H-I! L-E! Chi Chi Chi! Le Le Le! Viva Chile!”).

The style of dance was less reserved here as well. Perhaps it was just a function of the advancing hour, increasing inebriation, or lowered lighting, but people were dancing with much less restraint. I finally left at almost four thirty in the morning, and they showed no signs of stopping. A few guys I’d seen dancing earlier had acquired instruments, and as I passed them on the stairs they were playing tangos with two guitars and a chromatic harmonica.

Climbing the gangway at six in the morning, I stopped for a moment to admire the glow of the advancing sunrise. Finally, a city that keeps the same hours I do . . .

Crystal Symphony Entry 5

I finally left the sambadrome at around 3:30am after about five hours inside. Another school had just started and the party was only intensifying. I've heard that the parades usually run until five or six in the morning (about eight hours straight) on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday of Carnival, all without repeating a single performer.

I wandered for a bit, shell-shocked from the loud music. Finally I came to my senses . . . I had followed the performers from the sambadrome back to the staging area. Here there were hundreds of people of all ages, sweaty and excited from the show, eating food from paper plates and drinking beer. Other performers were lining up on the avenue nearby, ready for their turn, and passers-by clung to the chain link fence yelling encouragement. The avenue led back towards the ship, and the night was warm so I decided to walk back.

The street party around the sambadrome stretched for blocks. With the streets closed, people had set up camp around coolers and televisions to watch the parade. Even at 4am there were vendors of all types working the crowds. Police officers were stationed at most corners, as floats from previous days were still parked here on the street. All of the banks I saw were either boarded over with plywood, like preparations for a hurricane, or had erected temporary fences patrolled with security guards. Carnival must get rough sometimes . . .

I was almost back to the ship when I passed a place where people had been selling bottled water earlier. The coolers were still there, and as I looked closer I realized that the people were too – huddled up on pieces of cardboard, lying in the filth in the gutter. This isn’t just their territory for selling stuff to tourists – this is where they live, too. I can only imagine an existence that involves selling enough during the day to buy another pallet from the store, along with whatever food you need to survive.

The image of people sleeping in the street like dogs stuck with me as I crossed under the freeway overpass to the terminal. Here, only twenty minutes from the biggest party on Earth, are people who feel so hopeless that the only thing carnival means to them is a chance to make enough to eat for another week. How can a world like this exist? And yet it does.

Living on a ship is a strange thing. We bounce from place to place, in contact with land, needing it, but never really connected to anything. We’re not really responsible for anywhere – the ship, maybe, but ships wear out eventually and cease to be places. It's a fundamentally temporary relationship, unlike a resident’s relationship with a place like Rio or Barcelona or Detroit. We see people in pain, suffering, but it isn't real because the next day it will all slide under the stern like everything else. We feel no responsibility to help them because it isn't a part of the world that we feel responsible for.

And that’s just the thing. A world where people sleep on the street like dogs exists because we let it. The spectacle of people huddled in the gutter like stray animals is not unique to Rio or anywhere else that I've been in the world. No one “likes” poverty, but it says something unsettling about our values that we let it persist. If the will to end poverty existed, we would have done so by now. Our actions speak much louder than words.

Unless . . . I can't help but wonder if there is something inherent in the human condition that leads some of us to misery. It is said that everything in the world exists in balance; there is no good without bad, no hope without despair. Can it be that there are some things you cannot give another person, things which are vital for their well-being but which cannot be transferred from one human to another? If good and bad ARE balanced in the world, why do some have so much of the good while others have so much of the bad? Is it possible that while you can feed and clothe the wretched and the poor, you can never really help them if they do not choose to help themselves? Jesus of Nazareth said that, “Men do not live on bread alone,” and if that is true, how do you give them what is not bread?

This is a subject I've dealt with before in this blog, and I still don't have a good answer. How do you help someone find the will to live?

---

I just came back inside from a late-night stroll on the front of the ship. Here the lights are darkened so that the watch officers can keep their night vision. We’re just off the coast, and a stiff breeze brings the heavy, warm scent of summer to us from land. The stars are out in the full glory . . . what a strange thing to stand here under unfamiliar constellations off an exotic foreign coast in the middle of the night.

Crystal Symphony Entry 4

February 21st, 2012
5:47pm

It's been a while since I've stepped off the ship and said, “This place is . . . different.”

That's how I felt in Buzios, Brazil, standing on the bow and looking out over the landscape. Brazil looks like it sounds. Our anchorage was behind a long, hilly peninsula that was covered in green and wrapped in white beaches. Nearby were round, mountainous islands that stretched in either direction – a maze of underwater geography beautiful and (I suspect) treacherous. The town was sprinkled along the shoreline and up into the hills, red tile roofs and white plaster along winding cobblestone roads.

There is no color graduation in Brazil. Everything is exactly one color – shimmering green blades of grass, wet black rocks on the beach, white sand underfoot. I am reminded of a movie I saw a long time ago where the main characters find themselves somehow transported inside a world of paint. One of them picks a deep violet flower; when he squeezes it, it dissolves into thick paint, and he is left with a fistful of pure color. That's what it feels like to be in Brazil – as if I am somehow inside one of Seurat's paintings, except that he's decided to paint the humid, fragrant, powerful landscapes of Brazil.

We're here, of course, for the Carnival (Carnaval in Portuguese). Carnival is the Brazilian counterpart to Mardi Gras or any other Fat Tuesday celebration in the world; its roots lie in the pre-Lenten tradition of disposing of all luxuries and sweets before Ash Wednesday and the dietary restrictions that follow. It has grown, though, to something much more than that, especially here in Brazil.

The entire country shuts down for a week. Everywhere I went, I saw signs on businesses saying “closed for Carnival.” Street parties, parades, live music, wild costumes, and general chaos are the order of the day. These parties and parades can be on anything from a local, neighborhood level to the national spectacle that is Rio de Janeiro's sambadrome.

What is the sambadrome? The sambadrome is a stadium constructed for the yearly samba school competitions. It resembles the front straightaway of a automobile racing track, with a long straight path lined on both sides with stands and bleachers. It glows like a beacon, with huge halogen stadium lighting on both sides, and giant speakers line either side of the competition path. This is a permanent structure in Rio, mind you, none of that temporary crap that we have back home for parades, and it was my destination last night.

My friends and I took a cab as close as we could get to the sambadrome, but the police had blocked off several blocks of the city around it and so we followed the crowd on foot the rest of the way. They had already purchased tickets through the crew office, but I had not and so we split up. Scalping tickets is strictly illegal, and so of course everyone was doing it. This is generally how it works:

One guy will be working the crowd, asking if anyone needs tickets. When he finds someone, he'll ask them what they're looking for and have them wait somewhere nearby (I hung out in the shadow of a generator trailer). He goes to his buddy, who has all the tickets but isn't talking to anyone, and picks up whatever zone you're looking for – different zones, different prices. This is a sort of reverse version of the usual pickpocket scheme, where the guy the picks your pocket immediately hands off the goods to someone else, so that even if you catch the guy he doesn't have whatever you lost. In this case it insulates the professional ticket scalpers, as if the police pick up the guy working the crowd he doesn't have any actual tickets on him. If they pick up the other guy, he can just say he's not selling tickets to anybody.

The guy will then come back over, and you'll haggle over the price. He will try to give you the ticket, of course, as then you're already “bought it” and it's harder to back out of the deal. After much wailing and disapproval you'll agree on a price – if you've already grabbed the ticket, waving it around in the air can help speed the process, as the scalper is already anxious that the police not notice what's going on. I talked my particular salesperson down from R$100 to R$60 (that's Brazilian Reals – R$60 is a little less than $40). Don't feel bad for him – these tickets went on sale for R$10 a week ago.

Having purchased my semi-legal ticket (it did work in the turnstile, which was a relief), I made my way into the sambadrome. There are no aisles in Brazilian bleacher seating; there aren't any seats, either, just a stepped expanse of bare concrete. I pushed my way up and in wherever I could, finally finding a spot midway up that was just large enough for me to sit. The crowd was on its feet again as soon as I sat down, as the next school had just started, and so I joined them.

Samba “school” is a bit of misnomer. There are no classes or teaching in a samba school; samba club would be a better term. Each school decides on a song earlier in the year, and depending on which song you like you join a different school. Rehearsals begin a few months beforehand.

As the first school came through, I began to realize the scale of carnival in Rio. I had wildly underestimated the number of people involved in each group – they are more like armies than anything else. A school is divided into units of roughly a hundred, all with the same costume. The stronger units have a leader out front, usually an excellent dancer in a massive, outrageous costume keeping with the theme of the unit (for instance, if it is a group of sea nymphs, the woman out front will be dressed as the queen nymph). A school has dozens of these units, all with different costumes and all dancing their hearts out.

In between the big groups come smaller, special groups of dancers. They usually have special choreography – the first group like this I saw was a group of ten men dressed as the Vatican's Swiss Guard. They had complex marching patterns and salutes that they repeated over and over again as they moved down the street. Another group of magicians told a short story about a prince and a princess through pantomime. There was also a man pushing a comically oversized suitcase down the street and running a physical comedy routine with different props before throwing them into the crowd, as well as a quartet of martial arts masters performing a choreographed fight scene . . . these are just a few examples.

And then, of course, there are the floats. If the samba school is an army, the floats are the tanks. They can be nearly anything. One of the first that I saw was a huge carriage, crewed by men in powdered wigs, carrying someone who looked suspiciously like the queen of England. Another was a set of five huge silver heads, all with mouths open in silent screams. Ships were popular this year – one was drawn by dragons, another by huge golden horses, and a third had a unit of dancers surrounding it dressed as waves (this ship would fire cannons into the crowd on occasion as well). Another float was dedicated to great scientific minds of recent centuries – Einstein, Dalton, Newton, Rutherford, Darwin, etc. One of the more curious floats was some sort of clockwork chicken, covered in people sitting on bikes suspended in midair. There was also a wagon being pulled by groups of dancers that would erupt into a huge dragon which they would then force back inside . . . you get the idea.

Each float was covered in dancers that had been lifted into place by cranes. Costumes were a riot of color and decoration – jewels, mirrors, wings, feathers, headdresses, tails, you name it (I have never seen people wear so much and so little at the same time). These were the better dancers, usually, strong and drenched in sweat by the time they reached our section of the stands. One of my favorite floats illustrated the divide between heaven and hell, and the devils were playfully taunting the angels above.

There was not much drinking going on in the stands. There was some, of course, but no one I saw was drinking to excess. That's because we all had a much more powerful drug on hand – the samba!

Each school has a group of singers and musicians that perform their school's song for the year. Usually, when a school is announced, the guitar will begin. Then the singers enter, going the song once or twice (we could see none of this, of course, since our seats were near the end, but we could hear it all through the speakers). Then, as the first unit of dancers step off, the drums hit like an explosion and you are transported to a state of altered consciousness.

It usually takes about an hour and twenty minutes for a school to transit the sambadrome. The drums play the whole time, and finally follow everyone else out at the end. This is not merely a “drumline.” There were more than a hundred drummers in the first school that I saw – it was the largest single unit there, and they only kept getting bigger as the night went on. The sound is thunderous – bass drums, hand snares, and shakers all combine to form a powerful, powerful groove. The music is totally about the groove – the song repeats around a hundred times over the course of one samba school's performance, inducing a trance-like state in the audience. The samba is everywhere – in the air, in the ground, in your guts – and when a good school is performing you can't even think because it’s taken over your brain. They have amazing stamina – close ups of the drummers on the screen showed them shedding big drops of sweat, lost in the intensity of the music.

The second samba school that I saw had a beautiful woman, dressed in huge golden wings, acting as drum captain. She wasn't just for decoration – I've never seen anyone play the hand snare like that (especially not while dancing the samba at the same time)! She came by the stands afterward and got a standing ovation from the crowd.

(To Be Continued . . .)

Crystal Symphony Entry 3

February 16th, 2012
4:30pm

We’ve just departed Maceio, Brazil – my first landfall in ten days (I was on duty in Barbados and the stop at Devil’s Island was canceled due to weather). It was good to get off the ship for a few hours.

Maceio is known as “Brazil’s Beach.” The name comes from an old native word meaning “water that comes from the ground,” as there are many lakes and lagoons in the area. The beach is covered in palm trees and is quite beautiful. The trade winds keep the temperature manageable even in the height of summer and the water is very warm.

Behind the row of upscale hotels lining the coast, Maceio quickly becomes a city of rough concrete buildings and broken tile roofs. Poverty lives three blocks from the tourist zone. I was sitting on a bench, cleaning the sand off of my feet, when I saw one of the dancers deposit a bit of trash in a trash can, including an empty coconut that shortly before had been filled with delicious beverage (complete with straw and miniature umbrella). As soon as she left, the man sitting next to me hurried over to the can and went through what she had thrown away. The coconut was his ultimate prize – he brought it back to his companions and they smashed it open on the ground before eating it.

Two different worlds.

Crystal Symphony Entry 2

Entry 2, February 14th, 2012
11:08pm, (UTC -3)

There is a long standing tradition amongst the navies of the world that until a sailor has crossed the equator via ship, he (or she) is not quite a real sailor. These unfortunate people are known as (slimy) pollywogs, while those who have are known as (trusty) shellbacks. Thus, whenever a ship crosses the equator, the pollywogs are presented with an opportunity to be initiated into full shellback status. The initiation ceremonies are of varying degrees of severity; ours, here on a luxury cruise ship, were fortunately quite tame (the navy and merchant marine are understandably more harsh).

The ceremony has a few key elements. First of all, King Neptune must be present (usually played by a senior shellback). He is usually accompanied by a retinue including Davy Jones and sundry other minor deputies of the sea. The pollywogs are brought before King Neptune one at a time to stand trial, sometimes for mayhem and practical jokes that occur the night before (Wog's night, or Wog's eve). Inevitably the pollywogs are found guilty and sentenced to a variety of unpleasant punishments. Ours included getting slimed and kissing a large raw fish, although on freighters and warships wogs usually must climb through a tunnel of shellbacks beating them with hoses, wade through a pool of galley sludge, get covered in used engine oil, etc. Eventually the wogs are dumped into the ocean (or the pool, in our case) and are fished out to become true shellbacks.

Strangely enough, I avoided this fate today, as I was playing in the band for the ceremony. I did get dunked in the crew pool afterward, though, and so I believe that the various deities of the ocean will be satisfied. Also, the navy has various sub-orders of shellback, and while this isn't as prevalent here on a cruise ship, I would qualify for the Order of the Rock, as I've sailed through the strait of Gibraltar.