wish you were here

Today I moved my black and white picture postcard of a favela in Rio de Janeiro. I had a similar one before, when I was a third grade teacher, of a block party in harlem in the mid 80s. Black folks on bicycles and on stoops. It was a strong cultural pose against the gray backdrop of the rising crack epidemic. The picture was aesthetically beautiful, but I never thought it hopeful. The glossy finish secured a false representation of the people inside of it. The postcard I have now resonates in a similar way. Poverty. Some may call it abject when placed on a global scale, because there is some concept that says that poverty should be measured by degrees. It is relative. It has transitive properties where juice and milk become sugar and water, a moment where the monetary dilemma "I'm broke" fades into a pobreza de coração, that which can't be undone with government cheese. You know it if you've ever seen candy wrappers dropped from the fingers of children float in spastic movements to the pavement. Or dirt. The back of my picture postcard, in festive cursive letters, reads: Favelas. underneath, the english translation: Slums. A glorification of human suffering and misery. Wish you were here doesn't seem appropriate. If I rack my brain for an american equivilent, I come up with a rural trailer park in a southern town. Unschooled, dirty children fleeing the weilding fist of an alcoholic parent. Somehow, the image doesn't carry the same cultural allure, does not summon the hip-shaking rumble of a samba beat. In america, this must not be the stuff that postcards are made of. This is the stuff that other people observe and record with a cannon EOS. It is the stuff that is published or hung in a gallery where it is critiqued by people with cocktails in hand who mutter prolonged hmmmms and use words like chiaroscuro, stark, and amazing. Makes blackface theater look like a respectable gig. At least my postcard is in black and white, masking the usually colorful hillside spreads. A spectrum of hues and tints by day, at night beautiful constellations made from thousands of electricity-syphoned lights. A sprinkling of stars seen through makeshift windows and doors with no screens.