The helicopter throbs around the stone monoliths of Rio geology, over the Favelas of uncounted millions and their blue, rooftop water tanks and above the crescents of gold that are the playgrounds of the millions of New Years Eve revelers even now, once again coalescing into the world’s largest party . On looking down I see through oceans’s shallows to the bathers within and looking up I see through light clouds that veil sun and rock and offshore islands. Soaring, breathtaking, as if a 1962 birds eye view to the mindful strains of Jobin & Moraes’s poignant music and lyrics whereby a young and eye catching Heliosa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, likely the original and certainly the immortal “Menina Que Passa” and better known now as Helo Pinheiros inspires them to render : “a golden teenage girl, a mixture of flower and mermaid, full of light and grace, the sight of whom is also sad, in that she carries with her, on her route to the sea, the feeling of youth that fades, of the beauty that is not ours alone”. She passed them daily, them sitting in a bar, their attention caught. It is timeless and I am here right now, suspended above history, geography, myth and legend. Once more to the strains of Bossa Nova. (more…)