Trying to Live a Good Story

I flew up to Miami a week ago. Brazil already seems like a place I left in a galaxy far, far away. At least, I feel like someone who fell to Earth; I get baffled reading labels at the supermarket, I get dizzy walking through the aisles at Bed, Bath and Beyond. Trying to figure out what to do with your life is difficult at any age, I guess, but I was hoping that by the time I got to be 65 I would know exactly what and where I wanted to be. Who, me? I'm a few weeks away from becoming a card-carrying member of Medicare and the puzzle is getting increasingly more difficult to figure out. So, once again, I've appropriated a line from a movie I liked very much to describe what's going on with me (the first phrase was Status Quo Vadis; once more, you're invited to try and guess which film...I'll give you a hint: it's by the same director). All I know for sure is that there is a story out there that I started to live a long, long time ago in a remote corner of Brazil and that I've been trying to make it a good one. And that, at the present moment, doesn't include worrying about microwave ovens and plasma TVs. And that is the only certainty I have. Everything else is a question mark.

This is the last photograph I took in Rio, out of the second bedroom window. Just saying goodbye for a while.