Purpurin

É sua primeira vez no blog? Leia antes o post “Uma Introdução” (em português).* 

After one single ball, it’s become clear that Carnaval is going to have grave, long-lasting repercussions for my life. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The plan was to come back to Rio for a fun week and then go back to studying like nothing ever happened. But now it is the next day, I’ve taken a shower, changed clothes, had breakfast, and I am still glittery. This glitter will never, ever come off. I’m going to study in Argentina and I’ll still be glittery. I’m going to do thesis research and I’ll still be glittery. I’m going to graduate from Princeton and I’ll still be glittery. I’ll have to explain why I’m glittery to prospective employers. I will be glittery at my wedding. I will be buried glittery. And all this because I’d never heard the word purpurina.

I was enthusiastically offered some by a friend before we headed out the door to Trapiche Gamboa. Now, let me say that my command of Portuguese is, in fact, very good. But Machado de Assis and Fernando Pessoa don’t write about purpurina, and I managed to spend six months researching carioca popular music in the 1920s without having to write about purpurina. So when I heard the word I was suspicious, because it sounds like a kind of small larva or perhaps an expensive club drug. “O que é mesmo?” “Purpurin,” one friend translated, giggling. A note to the peanut gallery, for the sake of Luso-Anglo relations: purpurina is not purpurin.

Then it was too late, because they were already glittering me. And since it is never coming off, I’ll have to accept that I am a glittery person. I guess this is my life now.

* Flora voltou ao Rio de Janeiro para o Carnaval e manterá o blog até a quarta-feira de cinzas

Flora Thomson-DeVeaux

É escritora, tradutora, brasilianista e diretora de pesquisa na Rádio Novelo