from a glacier to a beach

I pride myself on being able to sleep without interruption on an airplane. Usually, I fall asleep before the plane takes off and wake up for a moment in the middle to see the clouds and lights below and then fall back into sleep until the plane begins to descend. Not this time. I was half asleep and my head whirled with portuguese phrases, french conjugation and even some spanish nouns and adjectives scattered about in there. I was wrapped up like a mummy on this glacier posing as an aircraft and unable to sleep. I woke up as the sun was rising and flipped once again through my blue portuguese notebook hoping something additional would stick in my portuguese-baby brain.

I watched the sun rise out a crack in the window shade...the sky going from a violet to silver to rust and rose, and there I was, mummified and remembering this feeling of relief and release in being above it all. I opened to a page with the words YOU ABOVE ALL scrolled across it. I don't have any idea when I wrote it, I just remember hearing or reading the phrase somewhere and knowing that it was important enough to write down. Like, Dana, remember this, it will mean something later. Et voila.

Messages coming from all over to remind me that taking this trip, by myself, is a bit of the divine. And if I had my doubts, all was reassured when I saw the masses of flesh a praia da barra and spent the day swimming, eating roasted cheese with oregano and molasses (ain't no hot dog that can touch that beach snack) and laying in the sun. O fundamentilismo da bunda (the fundamentalism of the ass--as theorized by R) dominated the beach and I have never seen so much greased up, slicked down, squeezed and dimpled flesh as I did today. I had the smallest booty on the beach believe it or not. I like to believe I could fit in, um, that way.

Well, there's always tomorrow.