My Admissions Essay
Having turned 60 and besotted with nostalgia, I've decided to compose a college admissions essay. In the trippy haze of nostalgia, my college years were my peak. I was so invigorated by knowledge I gobbled up everything in front of me including books. These days, either I've gotten stupider or lack the patience to wade through heavyweights like Proust and Virginia Woolf.
Nostalgia and lazy reading habits aren't the only impediments of aging. Seniors don't notice their own body odor. I'm counteracting the oblivious slide into aromatic decrepitude by living in Brazil, where everyone smells as if he just got out of the shower because he just did. To ensure my zesty assimilation, a kind Brazilian saleswoman introduced me simultaneously to aftershave, eau de toilette, cologne, and colônia desodorante, whatever that is.
Am I a discombobulated Senior reliving my youth with a college admissions essay? I confess. However, in my defense, I missed the opportunity forty-odd years ago to expound in this rite of essayistic passage. When I went to college in the 1970s, the only school I applied to was an alternative college that had an open admissions policy – no SATs and no personal essay were required. Despite (or because of) the drug-addled '70s, my exoskeleton hadn't yet developed sufficient body armor, and I was ill-equipped for rejection. I put all my collegiate chips on the roulette wheel of a school with open admissions. Amazingly, I got in.
Despite the ensuing decades and concomitant memory loss, I know I never wrote an admissions essay because if I had, I'd still have a copy. I keep everything. I have all the letters I ever received before email destroyed that pastime. Psychologists used to call us anal retentive until internet porn put that phrase out to pasture. Nowadays, we retainers have computers with a zillion megabytes of memory so nobody notices how much we're amassing. People accumulate their digital possessions so easily and surreptitiously it's not considered odd. Is someone saving all of Taylor Swift's Instagram photos? I bet they are considering she has 86 million followers.
Although my essay is eager to awaken the past akin to a séance, I've chosen a topic from my current status. As my English teacher advised – write what you know. My topic is, “What Brazil Means to Me.” I've already composed my kicker opening and closing lines.
Opening: “I came to Brazil to find god.”
Closing: “What Brazil means to me is I never have to be alone again.”
I just need to fill-in the rest. The opening and closing lines should give me enough leeway to include everything but the kitchen sink. I'm unclear what “everything but the kitchen sink” means, but it's an expression I heard as a boy so it appeals to my nostalgia.
Before I lose points from the admissions committee for grammatical errors, or worse, you jump to conclusions about my lack of respect for The deity, let me clarify why I've neglected to capitalize the Lord in my opening line. While my lack of capitalization could be viewed as the absence of faith in a higher power, it's really a lack of faith in myself. I can't find my slippers in the morning, how am I going to find God? It may not be in my skill set. To make the prize less daunting, I've lowered the capitalization status of my mission.
Be that as it may, whatever that segue entails, if we accept the dictates of globalization, then why not global religions? I'm curious what the grammatical justification is for capitalizing the one God, but not the many gods? Doesn't that demean the polytheistic Hindus, not to mention the ancient Greeks, inventors of geometry and togas?
Apropos of nothing whatsoever, my journey to Brazil from Brooklyn began shortly after I'd convinced myself finding God would guarantee eternal happiness, and I'd be walking on the red carpet to the private jet to nirvana. Perhaps I was delusional, but after all, God works in mysterious ways. How many accounts are there of deathbed conversions? If I were dying, I'd fill my room with candles and shrines to every God. I'd be watching YouTube videos of the Dalai Lama meditating, and the Hare Krishnas would be camped out in my kitchen preparing vegan dishes to save my soul.
Full disclosure: In the 1970s, I stayed in a Hare Krishna temple for a week in Mexico City. I was on the road and broke. I prayed with them at 5 am and spent the rest of the day washing the largest cooking pots I've ever seen. Perhaps it was my hunger, but the food was fantastic.
If one is in search of a monotheistic God, what better place than Brazil with a 90 percent Christian household? Brazil is so Christian that if you order a T-bone steak, you ask for a file igreja (church beef). Brazil is so Christian that if you want to do a quick cleaning of your house, the expression is, “I'll just clean where the priest walks.”
There are about 150,000 Jews in Brazil. There were that many Jews living on my block in Brooklyn. What I admire about Jews is we aren't allowed to lapse. We can forget our religion like getting the flu with a side effect of amnesia, but no one says, “I'm a lapsed Jew,” like being a lapsed Catholic. If your mother is Jewish, you're Jewish; it's a closed loop.
For many of us, religious inclinations slip away as we age, like bathtub water that slowly disappears. We don't notice the escaping warmth until we're shivering.
I assumed it would be easier to find God in a place where everyone else had already found Him. I moved in to an apartment building and met my hallway neighbors, a Jewish couple in their 90s. In Curitiba, the city where I'd encamped, there were only 2500 Jews, but two of them were my nearest neighbors. I had faith I'd find faith.
Thus, I came searching. I hunkered down in my spiritual quest like a child with a blanket over his head, frightened but desperate to peek out. I feared my godlessness among believers would have me thrown to the lions. I was at a metaphysical tipping point. As faith would have it, I met a Brazilian woman who offered to take me to church. Not only was Maria a bona fide Catholic, but she spoke English. Soon I was following her around like a motherless duckling. I surrendered; it beat embracing my fears, which I was afraid to do.
I accompanied Maria to church one Wednesday, the day of novenas, which repeat every-hour-on-the-hour from 6 am to 10 pm. In a Catholic nutshell, a novena is a shorter version of a Mass. On Sundays, there are only five Masses.
I discerned Maria's church practiced a strain of Catholicism called Liberation Theology, which places greater emphasis on charity than on the Vatican. My first glimpse of Liberation Theology was an altar with priests not wearing their black/white collars. “We don't believe Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus. It's a metaphor,” Maria informed me. Church rituals are the backdrop, apparently, the shadows on the cave wall where mythological man first stamped his spiritual hand.
I also discovered the confessional had disappeared, which I thought was the most attractive part of Catholicism, the get-out-of-jail-free card. I wondered if they'd discontinued confession because Brazilians were so guiltlessly happy.
Despite my amateur status, inside the church I felt religious. I don't know if Elias Canetti was thinking of Sunday Mass when he wrote Crowds and Power, but a church is a powerful crowd. Like a Broadway theater, the front rows are the most coveted. Everyone wants to be closer to the action, i.e. God. Enmeshed in a crowd of people who believe in the same thing at the same time in the same place is like being in a stadium concert. Isn't everyone at a Dylan concert devoted to him?
I ascertained that regular churchgoers like Maria aren't that different from the rest of us – they're just more up-front about it. After all, the moment the doctor cuts the umbilical cord, we're on our own, lost in a labyrinth of dark caves. Religion provides a spelunker's lamp. Is it weakness when a man with a broken leg uses crutches?
While I haven't yet made the heralded leap of faith, it's not a complete falsehood to say I found God. I've discovered what everyone in Brazil already knew – if you're looking for God, church is a good place to start. People go there to talk to Him.
The reality of living in a foreign country with a foreign woman, a foreign language, and a foreign religion is not as easy as it sounds. Truthfully, my greatest challenge has been marriage. Having spent my first 50 years as a bachelor, what reference did I have? Even in blue jeans, is a celibate priest equipped to guide me? However, Maria has been my salvation, an exhalation of calm like sitting in an empty church. Unlike other secular Jews from Brooklyn, I'm no longer worried that I haven't got it all figured out. Yet.
What Brazil means to me is I never have to be alone again.
So that's my admissions essay. I doubt it will get me into a decent college, but I'm relieved the essay part is out of the way.