I wish I had so much more than words to describe saudade. A painter with a brush and canvas may do better. In Temporary Carioca I fought to describe the
remarkable range of emotions I had never felt before, yet continue to feel after my six months there. Among those, there is one emotion I can’t get a handle on, saudade.
My first
instance of saudade is the time when I heard the wheels lift off the tarmac and
thump up underneath the body of the plane. I was startled that I was no longer
attached to earth or Rio as the rest of Brazil fell away into the night. I
could not turn back. I was now headed toward a distant place that would never
recognize me as the same man who had left
I have
tried to describe saudade and the best I can come up with is that this
Portuguese word confirms a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for
something or someone that one was fond of and which is now lost. The word often
carries a fatalist tone; it acknowledges that the object of longing might
really never return or be obtained.
Saudade remains
a vague and constant desire for something that represents a turning towards the
past, or in my case, rarely towards the future. A stronger form of saudade may
be felt towards a lost lover as a deep longing or yearning for a relationship which no longer exists.
Saudade may
have prompted this writer to begin this blog, even as I was flush with
all the amazing things I was to see every day. For I knew that someday I
would be far away wishing I had written everything down.
Surely
other writers have found themselves in Rio
re-energized and re-made after having lost their way in the world only to feel
saudade under the weight of knowing they would have to leave it someday.
Temporay Carioca is and was a recollection of places and events that once brought excitement, pleasure and well-being. Even
thinking about these events can sometimes trigger the senses and take me back once
again to the present, but only for an instant. Often, however, I am reminded these moments keep us
locked in a past that no longer exists.
Perhaps I was
just an intruder in Rio ,
foolishly in love with something that remains foreign and overwhelming while
making me feel at home at the same time.
Perhaps I
was just another in-between eccentric who may have endowed Rio de Janeiro with images I’ve collected but
never the truth. Perhaps this is saudade.
Cabralia, Bahai
photo by Delma Godoy
photo by Delma Godoy