To say that I was nervous on that late summer day when I boarded the plane bound for Oregon would be a bit of an understatement. I was petrified. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I had agreed to participate in a creative retreat with twelve other women in a large seaside house.
What was I thinking? I’m a lawyer in the oil industry I’m not creative. I draft contracts for a living. Just because I shoot a few pictures as a hobby? This does not make me creative. I’m a total fraud. And these women — these women, most of whom I’ve never met in real life — will hate me. They will all be exuberant about their wildly artistic lives, and I’ll just sit there dumbly like a mook.
And yet, despite my seriously foul outlook potentially risking the ability of these women to enjoy their beach retreat, I got on the plane anyway.
When I landed and met all of them at the airport, I found I was partly right: they were exuberant, but they were also warm and welcoming. It was lovely. However, through all the hugs and hellos and great-to-finally-meet-yous, I noticed a young woman hanging back, smiling quietly at the group. That must be Alex, I thought, remembering the information that had been sent to each of us about each other prior to the trip. The traveler.
I was right. Over that weekend, I slowly began to know this quiet, mysterious woman. Unlike many of the other women in the house, she was more reserved — a serene observer. I quickly discovered, via her soft Brazilian accent, that she was from São Paolo and was a visual effects producer in the San Francisco Bay Area. I also learned that she left her native home to travel alone when she was seventeen. Seventeen. I was so intrigued.
Because Alex appeared very private, I didn’t ask her too many questions on that trip to Oregon; however, over the years, we’ve developed a sweet friendship and have had many conversations about photography, our tropical homes and travel. On one particular day, during one of our telephone conversations, I finally felt comfortable enough to ask her about her past.
“So, seriously,” I began, cradling the phone on my shoulder and settling into my cup of tea, “you left home at seventeen? How did your parents not freak out?”
“I did!” she laughed, speaking in her charming accent. “I think my parents always knew I was different.”
“Tell me about them.” I said. “You’re from São Paolo, correct?”
“Yes. We’re a very close family — I have my parents, of course, and then I have a sister who is five-and-a-half years younger than me.”
“What was it like growing up in Brazil?”
“I had a pretty typical middle class childhood, I would say. My dad worked at the electric company — he’d worked there since I was fourteen. My mom was a secretary for many years, but she also did a lot of crafts, and she had an affinity for landscape design. We had a very simple life; although they both worked full-time, we didn’t have a lot of money. But they invested all their pay in our education and well-being.
“My grandparents lived by the sea,” Alex continued. “We visited them every weekend. We’d drive an hour and a half — that’s very typical for the people of Sao Paolo, to visit the seaside on weekends. My favorite thing was to spend entire summers with my grandparents at the beach. My life was happy, but simple.”
“Did you guys ever travel as a family?”
“Not out of the country,” she replied, “but my parents loved long road trips. They loved traveling and exploring the country, taking long trips all along the coasts. We traveled a lot together inside of Brazil.
“But me, I was the oddball. I’d always been fascinated with other cultures and other countries. I always loved geography books and maps. I remember we had this sort of — encyclopedia collection, I guess — where each book in the set featured a different country. I remember I would sit in my bedroom for hours, reading the books and looking at the pictures …” she sighed.
“So? When did you finally get to fly away?”
“Well, so I’d been studying ballet since I was about five …”
“… wait, what? You danced? Seriously?”
“Yeah, up until my early twenties actually.” This was the thing about Alex: in any given conversation, I was likely to learn something new and astonishing about her. “So yeah, anyway, I’d been studying ballet pretty seriously, and the ballet school I’d been attending was affiliated with the Royal Academy of Dance, in London. So every year, we would go through a formal examination, and our teachers would often show us videos of English ballets.”
“Because of this, I always had this idea that England was the place to watch ballets (and, it turns out, it is). So even though my parents don’t speak much English at all, my parents were determined that my sister and I would learn English. So we both attended after-school classes at a British school, for years. One day, my parents noticed an opportunity in the paper to win a scholarship to study English in England, and so, since they knew how fascinated I was with England, they encouraged me to apply. I did. And I got the scholarship.”
“How exciting for you — at seventeen? Your parents were pretty awesome to encourage you to do this.”
“Yes, they were very supportive of my dreams, even when those dreams seemed so out of reach. The classes were to be held at a school in Bournemouth, and the school arranged for me to live with a family there for three weeks. While I was there, I became friends with this twenty-eight-year-old Brazilian woman, Deborah, who was about to travel Europe, so I asked if I could go with her after the course was over. Even though she was ten years older than me, she said yes. As it happened, my mom had a friend of a friend whose sister, Marta, lived in London, so I traveled to the city to meet her and ask her if I could drop my main luggage at her house so I could backpack around Europe with Deborah. When I spoke to my mom, she was okay with the idea since the trip was just meant to last about a month.”
“Oh.” I frowned, thinking of my own five-year-old daughter; I’m not sure I’ll be ready to let her travel by herself around a foreign continent when she’s just a teenager. “I can’t believe your parents weren’t more worried.”
“Well, they were understanding, and they trusted my ability to take care of myself — I can be very persuasive! So I left all of my luggage and things with Marta, and I took off with Deborah. I went all over western Europe for about a month — the only country I didn’t visit was Portugal.”
“That’s funny. The only country you didn’t visit was the one where you knew the language?” As I said this, I realized that I likely would have done the same thing.
She laughed with me. “Portugal was just too far south for the amount of time I had. It was great — I back-packed and stayed in hostels for about a month. You have to understand: although the concept of a year abroad after high school is common in some countries, it isn’t something Brazilians generally did twenty years ago — just take time off to travel the world. I was lucky to have the opportunity.
“When I returned to Marta’s house, I was full of stories, and I told her everything that happened on my trip. When she saw how excited I was, she asked, ‘Why don’t you stay? Stay with us for a little longer and have an adventure!’ So I did!”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. I had the time of my life, and Marta and I formed a very special bond, which we share to this day. I got to know London really well. I visited the Royal Academy of Dance, which was such a big dream of mine. I watched many ballets. I made friends and I explored. It was fantastic.
“Eventually the time approached when I had to go home. Before I had left for England, I had applied to university in Brazil, and I had been admitted to one particular college to study medicine. So I was supposed to return home to start my education, but the longer I stayed in England, the more I realized that I didn’t want to be a doctor — it felt too limiting.”
“Limiting? Really?” I mused. “I don’t think most people would say that studying medicine was limiting … “
“It definitely would’ve been for me,” she countered. “Studying medicine, I would’ve been too immersed in science books. While traveling through Europe and immersing myself in art, history and other cultures, I realized that I was much more drawn to the liberal arts. Besides, I wasn’t ready to make such a long-term commitment to a path in medicine. Anyway,” she remembered, “all I really wanted was to stay in England and have an adventure. I felt open and I wanted to expand my horizons and see what else would turn up for me.”
I remembered a time a decade earlier when I had made the decision to move to England. I’d actively sought a job opportunity within my company to move overseas; after having lived in Houston for a decade, I was feeling stagnant. I knew the city like the back of my hand, and it had gotten to the point where everyone looked familiar; in a city of millions, I felt like I was seeing the same faces everywhere I went. I was young, single and desperate for an adventure, for the opportunity to go to a new place, experience new things, push myself to navigate a new city and make a new home somewhere. I knew exactly what she meant.
“So, you told your parents?”
“Yes.” Her voice grew more serious. “They started to panic. They thought I would never return to Brazil. ‘You have to come back!’ they insisted. But I really wanted to stay. I started trying to figure out ways I could make the experience last longer, even though I’d already been there for three months by that point.”
“Was there a boy?” I teased.
“No, actually, there wasn’t,” she answered. “I had absolutely no notion of boys. I just wanted to explore. Travel. I was interested in the world.
“But then, one day, my father called me, really upset. I remember he said, ‘Your mother is sick, worried about you, and she will end up at the hospital if you don’t return.’ It was awful. I really believed England was meant to be my place, but I was worried about my mom. So I returned home.”
“God, you must have been miserable.”
“I was. I was really unhappy for the next year or so after I returned. In fact, as soon as I came home, I began planning the next trip. Since I decided that I didn’t want to go to medical school, I instead signed up for advertising because it encompasses many art forms — copywriting, art direction, illustration, photography, video, music … so many. At the time, Brazilian advertising was very hot, and I thought that having an education in advertising would allow me to write, design and connect with very creative people. Also, the studies wouldn’t be too intense, so I could intern in the field and keep up with my English studies and ballet.
“So, I started teaching English in local schools. I worked for ad agencies and multinational corporations, including Kodak, which is where my interest in photography started. At the time, digital photography was becoming popular, so I was entranced.
“Once I finished my degree, I started looking for art schools in England — but also in other English-speaking countries. I wanted to study in a formal art school, but I also wanted a school that had a strong technology focus. Back then, I couldn’t find a school that fit these requirements in England … but I found it in Savannah, Georgia.”
“Really? Georgia’s kind of far away from England …”
“I know! But Savannah College of Art and Design was really well equipped with high-end facilities and labs, and besides — Savannah had the same Victorian charm that I’d fallen for in England. I took that as a sign.
“So, I convinced my parents that going to the United States would be good for my career. My mother, by this time, had come to realize that I was intent on living overseas, and so now that I was older, she acquiesced. So I went. I got my Masters in Computer Arts, which includes both 2D and 3D animation. When I graduated, I immediately began to look for work in the United States since I had a practical training visa, which was valid for one year after graduation. I moved to Los Angeles with the help of a good friend I’d met at school, and then a few months later, I received an opportunity at a 3D animation studio and visual effects company in Berkeley, California. So I moved north, worked my way up the ranks and eventually became a visual effects producer over the past ten years.”
“So you’ve been in the United States this whole time. Did you ever travel again?”
“Oh, absolutely. I traveled for work, but I also traveled for pleasure as much as possible. Every time I had any spare time in between movies, I traveled. I traveled all over the United States; I went to Canada, Belize, Guatemala, Mexico and Argentina. I traveled to Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong and New Zealand. I went back to Europe a few times. I spent six weeks in India, traveling from Kerala in the south, all the way to Jaipur and then north to the Himalayas. I spent a week in an ashram. It was amazing. I also went to Australia twice. I traveled extensively on the coast and in the outback, and I even spent three months living in Melbourne while shooting the movie Charlotte’s Web. My passion for travel has never waned. It never will.”
“This passion for travel — what do you think it’s taught you? What has travel given you?”
“Well, Asia is where my love and passion for photography truly flourished. I remember spending many solitary moments with my camera in Thailand that were truly special. And India — well, India was just visual overload. It is hands down my favorite place to photograph. So much color everywhere. And each part of the country felt to me like an entirely new planet. I really want to go back one day and work on a documentary project there.”
“Always looking for a new adventure, eh?” I smiled.
“Well … yes. I love adventure. I think adventure happens when we embrace possibility, whether there’s travel or not. I like to live with the feeling that anything is possible, that the world — and life — is our playground. And adventure is tied to my superpower; I think my superpower is my ability to believe in my dreams and make things happen. It is my natural instinct to push myself farther, to constantly test the limits of my comfort zone. I suppose that’s why I’ve traveled as much as I have, and from such a young age. And then, in hindsight, I realize that it all came to me so naturally. I need adventure. It’s just part of who I am. And while I don’t ever need to be famous or wealthy, I do need to always do what feels authentic to me, you know?”
Yes. Yes, I do know.
“I think adventure happens when we embrace possibility, whether there’s travel or not.”
Alex
