annika hagen

It has been almost two months since I came down to Brazil and I suspect it has not yet fully sunken in. I find myself still quite in shock at times. What wild impulse brought me down here? Well, love of course. Has there ever been a better reason for any wild impulse in history? (no). But I believe this level of wild-abandon is somewhat rare and dissipating in our modern times. Where I am from individuals have grown rather smart. They have learnt from scientific sources that this dreamy ethereal floating feeling we call love can be deduced to brain chemicals. So, often the individual is skeptical, cynical and more pragmatic in choosing a mate. Sensing love, yes, but making choices geared more toward self. Which I have certainly done periodically in my life. I have been selfish. More than any other lesson I have learnt in this short time, I have learnt that I am a creature of habit. I might even call myself a little stuck in my ways. I like my usual haunts in my usual neighborhood with my, (however exceptional), usual friends. I have relished in my balancing habits unwaveringly for the last ten years. I love Main Street. I love going for coffee in attempt of attacking writing goals while sitting for long hours at Our Town Cafe or Gene, rarely venturing more than two blocks from my home. How many nights a week for the past few years could I be found at Cascade enjoying a Manhattan and chatting with all the lovely people that place attracts? (Lots!) I like specific local grocery stores for my often unadventurous culinary pursuits. Specific brands of hot sauce, mustard, corn tortillas, juices, cheeses etc etc have maintained a high level of importance in my daily functioning. Maybe something that took me ten years to learn about myself in certain routines living in Vancouver, is that my needs for basic happiness and security were pretty simple; a clean cozy home, a nice view with lots of light that would work to overcome my seasonal defectiveness, my favorite meals (1.quesadillas 2.egg and tomato sandwiches on rye 3.quinoa salads...), little comforts in strategically placed nicnacs in my home; my apple brand technological gadgets, access to decent tv and movies when required, and my friends. Most importantly are my few, very close, very integral to my happiness friends. 

So it is with a lick of irony that I find myself here, all jostled up and without a large percentage of the things that kept me balanced at home. Another key realization in this change that those who know me well most likely know better than I do... I only act tough. I think I am a scared, fragile weakling under the calloused armor.  So unlike what it looks like, my brazen move to Brazil has sort of lately been feeling like a leap that is a little out of my league. But here is how I plan on defeating this thinking.... First of all, deep down this is exactly (and for love), why I am doing this. To shake things up. To change life. To change habits. To be OK in whatever I do, wherever I am. The thing is, realization #37, I am super spoilt. I’ve pretty much always found a way to do exactly what I have wanted to do with minimal effort. In 2005, when I was 26, I made some money from some TV writing I did and promptly took off to Europe to spend it all instead of saving it like a forward thinking adult. I thought I had had it with rainy dreary dull Vancouver and I was outta there! I aimed for Paris for two months, and then Berlin. I thought perhaps I was meant to live like a Parisian. Sure thing, I was very good at it. Daily bicycle rides, fantastic food and lounging around all day in coffee shops and museums. Idillic!! But was I happy? I found out, no not really. As my father has been telling me since I was a child, and a child who was lucky enough to travel a lot... “Wherever You Go, There You Are”. This always sounded so obviously silly and rudimentary to me, but only as I keep experiencing these repetitious pursuits and realizations that the fundamental concept of this adage has begun to really sink in. If I am not intrinsically happy here, it is semi-likely that I will not be truly happy there. 

However, I am often good at arguing against this statement on basic surface levels. I convince myselt that I am sure to garner more happiness when living in a big, active, lively city than I would in a po-dunk town in anywheresville. This could very well be true. I may well be happier living in São Paulo than I will be living where I am now, in Ribeirão Preto, where I followed my love to, as it was the most sensical move at the time. He was not ready to move to Vancouver, as he has many projects on the go here, and we didn’t want to spend more than the three months we had already spent apart. Plus, I was flexible. Thing is, and I knew this going in, that in Ribeirão Preto I am not finding the little niches of trendy shops and cafes that I have always sought after in all the traveling to interesting places I have ever done. Creature of Habit. I am out of my element here. I have not yet grown comfortable enough to ride around town on a bicycle, (this is not much of a pastime for the city’s inhabitants, not that I have yet noticed anyway). Perhaps A). because it is extremely hot or in contrast, under tropical downpour most days. and B). because I don’t have a bike. Coffee culture has not hit Brazil in the way it has in the first world. People don’t sit around drinking venti lattes tapping away on laptops or fixed into books. Laptops aren’t carried around and showcased for fear of theft. Hard realities here keep people from experiencing the freedoms we have at home.

Last on the list of materialistic gravitations I am growing more conscious of, the aesthetic trends I am used to, the free-spirited wear-whatever-you-want attitudes of Vancouver and many other big cities have not yet hit this one. Which is fine. I certainly don’t need to be surrounded by hipsters. But to give oneself a sense of belonging and in the pursuit of feeling grounded, we as a society generally move to places and neighborhoods to be surrounded by people who look like us, so that we feel more secure in ourselves. We like to feel like we can relate to the people around us, even if we don’t ever plan on actually talking to them. Then, in getting over the fact that I have not yet found my herd of aesthetically like-minded individuals and to overcome the division to find out what lays beneath (I imagine people are essentially the same beneath the layers wherever we go these days), I am then further restricted by the language barrier. The obstacles begin to feel like they are piling up. So as an answer to many friends back home that may have been thinking after I left, what a brave move, how lucky is this gal, moving to Brazil! How glamourous, how impossibly fortuitous.... I say overall yes to all this, I am lucky, extremely, it has been glamourous, in fact rather fairytaleish - a beautiful man, with a beautiful family in a beautiful warm country. Yes I am super stoked on all these facts and I do not take any of it for granted, but there is a reality underneath and it is the same one I would face wherever I go. 

Maybe many of you are reading this and thinking of how you would relish in the chance to live in a foreign land, away from all the humdrum habits of home, and I would bet a good chunk of change that most of my adventurous friends would be better and stronger and less fearful at doing it than I have been so-far. But perhaps this is not the time to compare oneself to another and more a time to reflect on self and how to swallow the reality that we are who we are against any landscape. I am here. I am tackling fear, uncertainty and breaking out of destructive ways of thinking just as equally as any one of my brilliant, enlightened friends are back home. Trust me, there is little difference. If I stacked up all the things I now miss about Vancouver and found that they tremendously outweighed all the lovely things I have found down here and thereby made an equally wild decision to move back home again, I would bet anyone interested $100 bucks that in two weeks I would be crying about the weather and not finding enough work and how expensive the cost of living is and how lonely I would be. So certainly the answer here is, get over fears, learn a new language, find work and most fundamentally to one's inner happiness, pursue Love. Inside and Out. Quell negative voices in head. Break old patterns and find new and inspiring ones. Soak up and learn as much as you can about yourself through the experience. Soon enough, my surroundings will conspire to comfort me into a new home.

For this opportunity to have landed in my lap, it is true, I could not be more fortuitous. Surely it is ironic that the small handful of staples and routines that created a sense of security in my old life, the little things that made me happy (close friends, bike rides, working in film and very specifically utilizing the english language, the freedom of knowing my way around a city and knowing many of its inhabitants, access to mexican avocados, corn tortillas and hot sauce) are all at present time not even remotely available to me. At this I suppose I can only laugh, make peace with the gap in comforts and carry on. Into myself. Back to basics. Me, my love, my writing and photography tools and the determination to make this new life work. Thank you for reading my first real blog post on moving to Brazil. The newsflash is, life ain’t too different down here. There are still such things as procrastination, self-doubt, and fear, as well as personal discoveries that the most important things in life are good relationships and self-empowerment. I have a feeling that 2012 is going to be a big year from many of you good folk back home. I wish you all the best in tackling the things that hold you back and enjoy the prospective confidence that we can all attain our goals for this year. Beijos a todos meus amigos maravilhosos que você deu-me a força fazer isto. For those of you in rainy slushy wet Vancouver, I hope you can take a minute out of your January blues to reflect on how truly awesome, free and safe the city you live in is, and when dreaming of greener pastures to remind yourself, wherever you go, there you are. 

p.s. today i found rye bread and am very happy that i could enjoy my family's favorite sandwich, the european style tomoto and egg : )  

p.p.s. so as not to go completely cold-turkey on all the comforts of home, anyone wanna send me a care-package with dark chocolate, corn tortillas and valencia hot sauce? (i’ll love you forever!) 

and in the meantime, who can identify these fruits?....