DAY 1 — DREAMING A HOUSE IN MARAÚ

Bacurau Is Here and Now. Tetéia Is Coming.

It was all blueprints and wild vegetation. In this photo, from left to right: Rodris, Regina, and Alcinei.

This is the first entry of the Almost Daily — and as the name suggests, it won’t be daily. Nor will it be linear.

A lot had already happened. Building a house in the middle of the woods, near the sea, in a village of just over 600 people, is quite an undertaking — especially if you are coming from São Paulo, where human time and algorithmic time move at nearly the same speed.

That was our first reality check in what I affectionately called Bacurau — a nod to the Brazilian film about a small, defiant village in the Northeast. In this case, it was a compliment.

Living in a small place like Maraú felt like temporal re-education. A different rhythm. Slow living, as marketing likes to package it. There, it simply existed — no concept, no hashtag, no curated promise. Just the pace of people who had lived there long before we arrived.

Where we stood at that moment:

• Architectural design: approved.

• Contractor within the original budget: confirmed.

• Technical projects and permits: secured.

• Bank financing: approved.

Three months of construction delay: of course.

Construction without delays is a myth. Foundations had been dug. Concrete beams waterproofed. And the slab was coming.

And in Brazil, slab day means something.