Nomadic Breadcrumbs. The objects left behind.

Some of us walkabout life leaving breadcrumbs. Like Hansel and Gretel, we forego bits and pieces in the path to map out the trails of our journey.

The various objects and locations in our lives not only reveal memories and stories, they also index social relations, status and power forming contemporary Kula rings, through which many humans construct relationships.

My return to Rio de Janeiro made this process apparent. I had come back to Lapa after a semester away in New Haven, and it was time to move out of the apartment bearing my name, possessions, history and security deposit. Feeling the pangs of anthropological displacement, which can be violently humorous (if you were, like me, working class and also not very well funded in the field, realities that color moving from travel). I looked about the apartment with longing, sad eyes and mourned, bidding goodbye to the objects of my affection. (And the objects of my disgust, more on this later.)

Blistered by the sun, the old oil paintings I’d drawn with Heitor hung somberly by the veranda. The many maps I’d collected over the last travels had changed color. Dangling over the window, the spiky mini-conch shells I’d haggled over at a Mozambican Street Market, looked out into Rio de Janeiro’s first YMCA, across the street. These objects marked time; these objects had marked me, too. They’d also taught me valuable lessons about value in Brazil.

The kitsch delicacy of the kitchen dining set, a seventies sky blue table piece that expanded. It was equipped with six chairs that matched the table’s hue of blue Formica with contrasting gold brass trimming. It was so eighties classroom and seventies kitchen simultaneously, and its matching buffet table really brought out the design and superb style. I loved it. I had bought it at a junky antique shop up the street. The kind that housed old overpriced furniture and the occasional overpriced gem. A sign of, no doubt, how historical inflation has condemned these objects into a strange value tournament, their values suspended, casting these objects into heterotypic oblivion. It wasn’t cheap, over 200 dollars. I’ve always been struck by how much these junkie albeit antique pieces cost so much. But then I recalled the Brazil’s version of Wal-Mart: Lojas Americanas (ironic?) that sell just about anything, from pots and pans, etc. A cheap veneer press wood table goes for at least 100 dollars. It becomes clear that the luxury taxes make it difficult for self-styling in this neoliberalizing place.

It is labor, and costly, to domesticate a home in Brazil. And here I was saying goodbye to the Danish table, which magically folded into 3 positions, discovered one Saturday afternoon on Lavradio Street. The home of Rio de Janeiro’s antique district. Should I sell them on “Mercado-livre” Brazil’s ebay parallel? Compelled to sell the things I loved so much, I joined the junk sellers one morning on Rua da Gloria.

We were sardined between two major intersections, where the Rua da Lapa meets Rua da Gloria and connects with Avenida Augusto Severo. By day, this area is a bustling site of commerce, formal and informal, equipped with all the visual extravagancies of buzzing capitalist movement. Lanchonetes nourishing hungry clients, serving salgados such as coxinhas de frango, and sucos pulped from all sorts of Amazonian fruits. Lines form at Lotericas to buy lottery tickets or pay bills. Taxies humming along next to deliveries on large and cumbersome bicycles. Pedestrians of all sorts pouring onto the sidewalks already cramped by street vendors and food carts. Amidst this chaos, sprawled with strewn tarps line the Portuguese pebbled floors inviting passersby to shop. This is known as the shop chao. The floor shop. It is as informal as economies go, a sheet thrown to the ground with goods on it, the exchange of junk for centavos e reais..

TBC