The World Is Like This, Saint Joseph (Part Two)

Precisely one week, exact day and time, after my mother left this world There I was, completely shaken, but as prepared as possible to take the exam that would signify my "first steps" towards the best opportunity of my adult life.

Follow the itinerary of our 800 km journey along the Via Dutra highway:

I don't blame those who, at the edge of the open grave, embraced me saying they would contribute financially: some even asked for my bank account number, but I understand both the emotional outburst and the fact that we are a poor family where each one is going through an economic situation as or more miserable than mine.

I put my life into perspective: in a home devoid of a father figure, one of the reasons I joined the Brazilian Air Force at age 16 was to honor my mother, for whom I was legally responsible for my entire life.
The cruel blow came when, at the time of his death, I was ostracized by a law that, created just over a year ago, prohibited the payment of "funeral assistance" to that specific category of dependent!

I would have had every reason not to have risked the trip, since I had spent that week—originally intended for reviewing my studies—begging for alms to cover funeral expenses and, more than that, to provide food for my children: out of so many relatives, only two provided any assistance, and in the end, those who really helped me (at least in that first and darkest month) were my friends, namely, the brothers who joined me in the military career.

Such desolation ended up becoming the desperate impulse to try to change this wretched reality: I used my credit card to buy gas and went to take the exam for Urban Planning and Aesthetics Inspector in the city of São José dos Campos, the place that became my dream because — unlike the chaotic and degraded Rio de Janeiro — it allowed me a glimpse of life, security, urbanity, progress and order… without having to leave Brazil!

MY JOURNEY

I apologize for adding so many audiovisual records interspersed within what should be just text, but (for those who are able to understand) the dates of the recordings and the emotions shown in them prove how spontaneous and gradual the growth of my sincere fascination with that place was.

Finally, my days there came to an end, and returning to Rio de Janeiro couldn't have caused more frustration and anger than what's shown in the video below (posted on social media and the last one in this post):

Everything here is so disorganized that the documentation for the "home I own" where I live is completely irregular, to the point that it doesn't allow me to sell it: every day I would go online searching for a job that paid enough for rent and was worth the increase in my income tax rate... until this job opening came up in September.

To occupy my time and alleviate my frustration, I had started a degree in Marketing and was getting excellent grades in my first semester. However, given the possibility of having the resources to live in São José dos Campos—note that for me, in addition to the location, the main factor was the salary, as even stability or the prospect of a second retirement pension are fundamental—I decided to reconsider.

I managed to get a booklet with over 600 pages and started dedicating 4 to 6 hours a day to studying "Master Plan," "Zoning Laws," "Municipal Regulations"... things I had never even encountered in Rio de Janeiro. I was amazed to learn about them from a São José dos Campos perspective, and from now on I will briefly list the points that most caught my attention and made me even more convinced that São José dos Campos is the pearl of the Paraíba Valley!

LAWS AND FACTS

To try and anchor my mind to something solid and escape that psychic storm, I went to confront the so-called 'Master Plan' — a concept that never found space in the urgent needs of Rio's favelas, and of which I will, despite it seeming tedious, share the first two pages:

I imagine most Brazilians would be too lazy to read a mere two pages of laws, articles, and paragraphs, so I'll transcribe below the parts that left me absolutely amazed:

• The first paragraph of the first article already provides an impressive instruction on the document's function: to define guidelines for the sectoral policies and for the land management and to foresee the instruments for its implementation, guiding the city's development towards social and territorial balance;
• In the second paragraph there is an important mention of the role played by agents public and private entities operating in the municipality;
• In the third paragraph of the same article, a reference to organized civil society;
• In the second article, there are two sub-items, on 'quality transportation' and 'social inclusion,' that particularly delighted me, because I ended up seeing not only laws, but the possibility of navigating a world in which, for the first time, there seemed to be consideration for the existence of someone who lives in the realm of silence.
  • Social and territorial inclusion, achieved through access to, is a fundamental right of the citizen. quality transport and to the accessible city (Item II, letter d);
  • The city should be fully accessible and safe, recognizing the diversity of local and municipal conditions, and prioritizing the enjoyment of public spaces, public transportation, and... smooth shifting modes (item VI).

As I read the laws, I reviewed everything I saw in operation while I was there and concluded that there is truly a joint effort between the government and society to create a better environment… and I was saddened to look at Rio de Janeiro and not be able to deny that it works the other way around: a government working poorly and a society destroying public property…

How many times have I personally witnessed people vandalizing public structures — squares, buses, stations… — and then saying, “This is terrible, so I’m going to break it and the government has to fix it!”
Out of curiosity, I decided to look up the Rio de Janeiro Master Plan and, for comparison purposes, I'll also publish an image of the first two pages here:

Reading this jumble of elaborate ideas, punctuated by generic, noble terms, might seem like serious business, but everything gets diluted in the breadth of meanings and ends up being lost before proper implementation, rarely achieving the objectives published "for show": the city where I was born has become a large, seething latrine, and in the text above, the only thing that seems to have value is the landscape!

So what good is it to look at the scenery if I'm being robbed and killed? How can I access the scenery if the traffic is chaotic, the sidewalks uneven, the public roads full of potholes, and everything so elitist, expensive, and distant? What joy will I have looking at the scenery after suffering for hours inside a deplorable public transport system?!?
To hell with the landscapes!!!

Another brilliant detail is the concept of sectoral policies, which prevents — or at least minimizes the occurrence of — the literal chaos that has taken hold in Rio de Janeiro: houses stuck together with churches stuck together with poultry shops stuck together with mechanics shops stuck together with metal workshops stuck together with tenements next to fishmongers…
The prospect of owning properties that strictly adhere to certain aesthetic and functional requirements, which you also agreed to when purchasing your land, provides a wonderful sense of order, tranquility, and security.

To avoid directly discussing master plans, I will only highlight the text that is not on the first two pages (but rather on the 4th) that made my eyes light up: to promote, in the urban area of the municipality, the formation of a network of centralities with a diversity of uses to bring housing, work and other activity spaces closer together (article 4, item III).

In other words, to shape a city that doesn't depend on the hellish conditions of Avenida Brasil to provide jobs and function!
The beauty of watching those commercials about urban mobility and bicycles without finding them ridiculous just because I live more than 60 kilometers away from work…

The study led me to other quite interesting peculiarities that I will try to list briefly:

• The permeability rate of the land;
• The licensing of works and activities (and the awareness that my own house was entirely renovated under completely irregular conditions);
• The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA);
• The Neighborhood Impact Study (EIV)…

Learning all this and being certain that in this mass of condominiums built throughout the city in recent years, they probably didn't do any of that: they may even look nicer than the favelas, but they paved over originally permeable areas, overpopulated spaces without widening roads, didn't replace plumbing, and left the power transmission equipment undersized…

Now, you can see that the places where they were installed have become veritable population time bombs: traffic jams within the neighborhood, lack of drinking water, floods, inundations, blackouts…
Rio de Janeiro continues to be breathtakingly beautiful... in a fit of disgust!!!

All of this seems like a lot, but I haven't even mentioned the endemic lack of education among Rio de Janeiro drivers and the chaotic traffic, nor have I left out the constant insecurity of dealing with people who want to take advantage of everything, even at the cost of harming others.
Finally, when I take the Via Dutra highway, most overtaking maneuvers are done — with the turn signal! — on the left.

When I arrive in a city where people look me in the eye and show genuine interest in answering my questions (and even allow me to lip-read because of my deafness!).
When the difference in the price of gasoline is around 1 real less (per liter!)
I realize it's past time for me to get out of this mess and contribute to society in a more civilized space where it's possible to live... and not just survive.

The only thing that tied me to this city was my mother, and, as mentioned at the beginning of the text, her departure brought a whirlwind to my life's perspective: relief at the end of her suffering, financial despair, and hope for change… and this last hope, of providing a more dignified life for my family, required a lot of determination: if life is a marathon, the time had come to gather strength and try to…

FINAL START

Ayr Picanço Barbosa de Almeida State School.
Sunday, December 1st, 2019.
I wanted to be calm and focused, but while on the outside I might seem like a nearly normal person, inside a psychic and emotional storm was raging.

Perhaps I should keep this from everyone, but I'll try to transcribe some of the sequence of events that took place in my mind after Alessandro dropped me off at Guiricema Square.
As I walked towards the school gate, I kept remembering exactly what I was doing. at that time on the previous Sunday.

I relived the desolation of the ambulance my sister had called since 5:30 am not arriving. I tried not to remember that, trying to speed things up, I drove all over the Adryana neighborhood, stopping to talk to security guards, then went onto the Posse road and all the way to the West Shopping mall to beg the police officers stationed there to try and get them to call via radio… then I came back, sat on the porch and while having coffee I started to feel an inexplicable chill.
After so many years of living with my mother's ups and downs, I wasn't able to anticipate that, this time, things wouldn't be normal, so I decided to go home to get a coat and leave my wife and children at church.

The gates were open, and I went in to find the room where I was going to take the exam.

I arrived at the gate and the phone rang — “Mom left.”.
The feeling of helplessness, the disbelief at losing yet another person in a... Sunday, arriving only to find her lifeless body in bed, inside the house.
The mental turmoil, the desperation to contact the insurance company (which offered no support) and the coroner, the agony of informing people of what had happened, the embarrassment of not understanding what people were saying while hugging me…

Having found the room and while waiting for the time to enter, I tried to distract myself by taking a picture of the place which, on any other occasion, seemed quite welcoming.

Once the door opened, I followed the correct numbering of the desks to find my seat, observing the appearance of the other candidates and imagining the life stories behind that moment that pitted us against each other in a competition for the single available spot…

Tests on the table, some difficulty hearing the instructions, I'm pretending to understand, good luck to everyone and YOU CAN BEGIN!!!

As I extracted everything I could from my studies, I skipped the questions where I felt conflicted and circled the few that I didn't understand from the wording alone.
I finished the easy part and restarted, attacking only the ones without circles, with great attention and logic: it was exhausting and took much longer than I expected… but then people started to get up and I was surprised that I wasn't in the middle of my test: either I was competing with geniuses, or this meant that I had some advantage over many people!

Finally, thinking I still had a whole hour to go, I started to decipher the circled numbers, considering first what couldn't be answered: my heart was pounding faster and faster, cold sweat was running down my back, my arms and hands began to tremble, and I thought I still had an hour of suffering ahead of me, but suddenly, the examiner announced very loudly, and I couldn't help but hear and understand:

15 MINUTES LEFT!!!

My heart was pounding like a wild horse, and my hand was trembling so much that completely filling in the answer squares was as big a challenge as solving the questions: I looked out the window, through which I could see the well-painted wall of the house next door, felt the pleasant weather outside, imagined how intensely I wanted to live in that city, and, guessing the last questions, ended my attempt.

Well, if there was only one vacancy for such a coveted position, I left there already considering myself out of the running: surely there must be someone much better trained than that deaf old man, capable of acing that exam and, perhaps because he is already from São José dos Campos, continuing to reside in the city without even recognizing what an excellent life opportunity he is having.

I didn't cry, because my tears had dried up the previous Monday while I buried my mother, but I felt such desolation that, even though my pulse had returned to normal, my chest ached from the immense emptiness that had settled inside, as if I were sentenced to failure.

I sat on the bench at the bus stop on Avenida Ouro Fino and, while waiting for Alessandro and his family to come out of church to pick me up, I watched the other candidates leaving, the traffic flowing smoothly along the perfectly paved road, the tranquility of the countryside combined with the quality of a developed city… and I suffered because, once again, I felt that it wasn't yet my turn to become a citizen of São José dos Campos.

My ride arrived: we went home, had lunch, and I decided that staying there would only increase my melancholy.
I decided to stop by Center Valle to buy a new phone case and ended up discovering that paradise isn't perfect: the mall was so crowded, so incredibly crowded… that I had to drive around three times (including the parking garage) before finding a parking spot!!
I wish the problems in my city were limited to this…

I've already talked too much for today, but you can be sure that this story still needs more. One more step to reach the end.Thank you for reading, and if you enjoyed it and would like to help me gain a better perspective on life, I won't be upset by comments, shares, and likes... can you help me?