Quiet birthday

My birthday was yesterday, which I celebrated in a very — how shall I put it? — discreet manner. Got up around noon (I've often been sleeping 10, 12 or even 14 or 16 hours at a stretch, partly due to the Lexapro I've been taking) and lolled about the house all day. I hadn't much choice but to loll around, since I do not know how to drive (but this household has only one car, anyway), the nearest bus stop is 6 blocks away (an ordeal with my lower limb primary lymphedema, asthma and 90 F heat), and Mom is working both the morning and afternoon shifts as an instructional aide until the high school hires a new aide.

I did get some nice gifts, though. My friend Tritia (who is a grad student at San Jose State University) sent me a choker of faceted rondelles (chrysoprase? new jade?) with a filigree cross pendant. Alas, the choker is 16" — too literally a choker for my thick neck :-) But fear not: I got out a plain 8" silver bracelet I have had for years and used it as an extender. The necklace looks just as nice at 24" than it would at 16" — and much more comfortable.

My mother gave me a ring with marquise-shaped sapphires forming a flower, as well as a DVD of The Passion of the Christ. No cake, though: Mom was too tired to make one (and the kitchen is too hot, even at 9 PM), and she had not thought of ordering a quarter sheet cake (marble or German chocolate with vanilla custard filling and vanilla whipped frosting) from Albertson's. Ah well. Considering that people are suffering in Sudan, Iraq and God knows where else, I don't have that much to complain about :-)

And what is this Diamantina da Brescia name, anyway?

Funny you asked. It's not my given name, obviously: too florid, too much the romance-novel heroine name, n'est-ce pas? And, despite what some people have thought, I have no known Italian ancestry. (My father's people were Prince Edward Island Acadians and Québécois: my mother is of New Mexico Hispano and Irish descent.) But the name does symbolize two aspects of my life.

Diamantina is a city in Minas Gerais, Brazil. I visited it two years ago for the centennial of the birth of its most famous native son, Juscelino Kubitschek (the 1950s Brazilian president who ordered that Brasília be built in the middle of nowhere in five years flat). It's a lovely 18th-century colonial town (the name "Diamantina" comes from the fact that it was a center of diamond mining), isolated and hilly. Although Diamantina's most famous native son was Kubitschek, two of its native daughters may be even better known: the 18th-century Afro-Brazilian folk heroine Chica (Xica) da Silva and the 19th-century child diarist Helena Morley.

da Brescia refers to the city of Brescia in northern Italy, which I have not yet visited (though I would like to, given enough money and time). St. Angela Merici spent most of her life in Brescia, and Giovanni Battista Montini — Pope Paul VI — grew up there.

Les raisons d'être du blog de Mlle Diamantina

There are three main reasons why I am writing this blog:

1. Personal diary entries (though not too personal!) — these are mostly for myself and people who know me offline

2. My adventures trying to discern a vocation to some type of consecrated life in the Catholic Church. This is made difficult due to my disabilities. Some are relatively minor somatic disabilities — asthma, lower limb primary lymphedema and the like — and some major psychological disabilities — depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder. The fact that I am on SSI is also at least a temporary barrier.

3. Stretching my wings in creative writing after a hiatus caused by four years of grad school and two years of acute illness. Expect some verse, but mostly sketches for a possible historical novel that I am dreaming up. More information later as it develops, ladies and gentlemen... :-)

Introduction

Over a year ago, I kept a blog called Brasilianista Aspirante. I stopped writing in it because I was becoming too ill to successfully be the upbeat graduate student specializing in Brazilian history and culture, and I did not want to discuss my illness or other personal difficulties to all and sundry. Self-pity is unflattering, after all.

I am no longer in graduate school — although I want very much to return, God willing, when my health is better and I have more money. I have been on SSI for the past several months, living (resignedly but for the most part calmly) with my mother and my younger brother, a musician who plays the McCartney role in a Beatles tribute band.

One way that I am maintaining my Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) connection is by attending Portuguese Masses at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, a Catholic parish in Ontario, California. (By the way, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton is one of my all-time favorite saints, so that is another factor in the parish's favor.) Ontario is some 20 miles away from home and I have no car, but St. Elizabeth Ann Seton is the closer of the two Los Angeles-area Catholic parishes with Portuguese Masses. Considering that there is a sizable Brazilian community in Palms, Culver City and other parts of the Westside of LA — not to mention the several Brazilian Protestant parishes with Portuguese services — I am surprised that the only two LA-area Catholic parishes with Portuguese Masses are in Artesia and Ontario, where immigrants from the Azores settled in the early 20th century and became dairy farmers. Ah well — I suppose Cardinal Mahony has other things to think about than the spiritual welfare of Brazilian immigrants....