Buzios

More soon..

Finados - Pleasure and forgtefulness

Today is my first posting... Tomorrow, the second of november, is a big holiday in Brazil, people will be flocking to beaches, and bodies will be celeberated on Ipanema beach. Big holloween parties with all the latest DJs and dressing down rather than up will fill the hedonistic clubs of Rio, TheWeek, galleria, and others. Pleasure and beauty for the devouted queer. People always expects it to rain in Rio during finados, and usually this strangely happens, a big party pooper for the beach boyz.

For the more traditional it is a day that celebrates life through remembering your ancestors. During Finados many people in Rio visit cemeteries and churches, with flowers, candles, and offering prayers. The celebration is intended to be positive, to celebrate those who are deceased. Some devout Brazilians spend a good deal of time in front of their private or church alters praying for the saints, and deceased family members. The deeper religious catholic theological meaning to this day is intedended as remembering all those who have attained have a vision of god (or beatific vision) in heaven.

All Souls day, today, is left almost out of memory here - it is the day in which prayers are offered to the dead who have not yet attained for their sins, therefore unpure, and not yet in the heavens. Not very sexy, huh?

But god is a DJ, as beauty and pleasure are heaven to the Cariocas; it is an art of extraction of joy even if you can't genuinely feel it at the moment, you are expected to extravagantly display it. It is the rain that is that incumbent obstacle, simply a rainy day that can transform from a literal to a metaphoric one if you cant display and/or watch others' sunga on Praia de Ipanema. Today the tourist industry celebrates through the fine art of maximising your blissful liesure lime, leaving the sour financial reminder on the credit card a month later. Rain and plastic - its fantastic!

So tomorrow I am off to for contentment in Buzios this finados. With hommage to pleasure but without a clouded past.