UNDER A CUBAN SUN (SEVEN VIGNETTES)

UNDER A CUBAN SUN

(SEVEN VIGNETTES)

SOVIET STYLE HOUSING UNDER A CUBAN SUN

The sun was rising and had made its way over the Soviet style apartments that sat and watched the one lane highway at the north end of the island. These abodes were in design overly stoic, pragmatic, and even sullen, but I smiled to myself when I looked at the joyous pastel and deep hues they were painted. Inspirational orange, beautiful blue sky blue, hot dazzling sexy base-chakra red, happy energetic yellow, lovely and relaxing green,- and several more. Variations on the theme of color. Amidst this, cows with ribs almost jutting out from their skin, broken brick atop other broken concrete forms and bases, electrical wires frayed, exposed, open for better or worse like the sun,- and people waiting under palms everywhere for rides,- happy and proud and fair and interesting people foiled against a strange landscape of decay and beauty. And that was Cuba when I first saw her. Cuba, a place that didn’t lend itself to easy explanation or understanding, but called a viewer or visitor towards an inspection of its history and present, and also to look at self. I snapped a picture as the asphalt way was turning and the old cars passing one by one by one by one red and green and yellow and orange and even pink, cars colored like the soviet style housing. Everything was being exposed under the rising sun, but exposure did not mean full understanding of what was being seen.

CATHEDRAL SQUARE UNDER A CUBAN SUN

Celia has a good heart, - energetic smile. She talks to our group often, and we express ideas to her. Yet, - there is not much that is understood. I ask about religion and churches and she has no idea what is being talked about because I know little of the language. I had said I was baracho she laughed so hard that it solidified the friendship. When she finally understands the idea of church she laughs and makes the sign of the cross really fast as if to say, I know that, have heard of that, and can even do this sign of the cross, ha ha. I ask if there are any churches open in Havana, and she says yes, of course. But I somehow know she means open to look at and not that they provide any mass or service. Soon I learn my instinct was correct. Cathedral Square is beautiful, old, full of history, or ‘very historic’ as Celia says. There are two bells. The sun again has arched incredibly high and makes most all people, indigenous and otherwise, to lessen their pace, to take it a bit easy, and even to sweat. I see an old man, incredibly old in fact, and he is wearing blue pants, a dark shirt, and black shoes. He uses a walking device, a metal cane with three prongs at the end. He looks black to me. He is arched in the upper back, - and carries in the left hand a plastic bag and over the shoulder a knapsack. I love old people, and somehow this one represents everything good about them, - his slow gait, and his calm demeanour. His black or dark brown beret has a star on it, - and he moves slowly across cobblestones large and interesting but difficult for anyone to navigate. He makes for perhaps my favorite picture. I know he is good, and imagine that he has seen not only the revolution but everything that had gone on after it. The years have piled up on him but he still makes his way through cathedral square.

NAKED BREASTS AND A LOBSTER UNDER A CUBAN SUN

I walk and seek out shells like I did as a child. They are mini-conchs and what could be called regular White Sea shells. There is a crab that I find, and also the corpse of something called a cow-fish. This fish has solidified through time and circumstance and has the same consistency of a shell. Its markings where teeth were still show and its sides are decorated with what seem like little stars. I love the fish as I love the colors, the cars, the old man, the Cathedral Square, the sun itself. The tide is calm in the morning and the beach is poster-brochure white sand and wide and long with an actual blue and turquoise sea, nearly as good as the best that Playa Del Carmen Mexico has to offer. In the afternoon the tide becomes rougher and the undertow washes out the sand in the ocean and leaves barren coral that can trip or cut one’s feet. As I go along I see a large lobster but it is missing its bottom half. I poke my finger slowly into this monster-like creature, and the jump up startled as I suddenly hear a loud ‘Boo!’ called out from above. It’s a woman, perhaps thirty years of age, adorned of a golden tan but not adorned of any top. I see her eyes and hair and breasts and they all seem to mingle with the sky and sea and sun and even some verdant palm leaves and feral shrubs in the far distance where the sand meets more of the land. Like sea shells, all breasts are breasts but all are different. Hers are of medium volume and her nipples are erect perhaps for a breeze that is wafting from the ocean and she has obviously made the choice to repeatedly avoid tan lines. Her chest waits at attention as she had bent over a bit to call out her word and then stands straight. She is cool, on the level, approaching a man in a different country and making a joke. She says a few more words about which is the head and where the body was. She is French. Though I am not a huge fan of the French, maybe sometimes they are okay. An American or even Canadian woman can sometimes feel like someone who only thinks someone else is going to steal their purse. You got me, I admit. We both walk off in opposite directions but I do take the lobster with me as I want to look at more. The woman was good for her lack of clothing and markings and her sense of humor. The lobster was good for its odd markings, - dots and lines and even dangerous prickly parts, - and for its odd still death-ness. But, - I can know neither the woman’s secrets nor the lobsters in the end. I am at the same time reading Melville,- and whilst talking about the great whales and their skeletal structures, he explains that no matter how much one knows scientifically, there is a secret to some of the whale’s behaviour and this secret can only happen in life.

MAGIC TRICKS AND PESOS UNDER THE CUBAN SUN

The market place is crowded and there is what seems like hundreds of booths situated in long lines down fifteen or twenty isles. Most of the wares are similar and include bracelets, rings, postcards, shirts, cigar paraphernalia, blankets, shawls, books about the revolution, et al. On all four sides of the open aired building are also people. One area opens up to the sea, and just beyond somewhere is, curiously enough, a cruise ship. Its monstrous and about five to seven stories high but apparently it is not one of the bigger or biggest vessels. It reads on the back, NASSEAU. There is before one exit the market, more aisles dedicated to paintings. The artists have rendered their own interpretation of cars, of Havana and its cobble stone roads and vine and railing strewn walls, of the accompanying sea and its scenes also. I go out to the air to take a break and some teenagers are doing magic tricks with a deck of cards and a ping pong ball. They have no booth, and the tricks are not advanced. Someone or something calls my attention away and I have to go, reach in my pocket to give their leader some coins. I am stopped by a local guide who is polite and succinct. Please don’t give them money. It encourages begging. If you want to give them something give them educational supplies. I am bothered by that, but it’s her country and I have to respect that. I step back and the main magic trick performer is visibly vexed with the woman the interruption she has created. I shrug my shoulders to say Sorry it’s out of my hands, in the best universal body language I can muster. The woman is right and wrong. I admire her self esteem, her belief in her country and its cause, in the idea that an exchange this small represents something so large. Her people, she is saying, have free education, health care, and the revolution succeeded in creating and maintaining these things. Surely she thinks begging is a product of a lassaiz faire economy, an almost evil offshoot of the capitalist market place, a sign or signature of the oppression of imperialism and colonialism. I went to school also, and read and have seen some of those things. Yet, and it was her word ‘…begging,’ I don’t think in political terms. I just wanted to give the kid a dollar or two. Besides, he was providing a service, the magic trick. Oh well, I thought,- and moved along away from the incredibly bright sun that had seemed to come down upon Havana itself and sit to warm but like an overzealous old school ethnic aunt that loves, yes,- but gives a too tight hug.

MOHITIO MADNESS AND TWO LOST SOULS UNDER THE CUBAN SUN

In no time at all I had gone too far. I drank cerveca and mohito, pina collattta, daiquiri, and then more mohito, and this repeating loop along with the sun worship and the general overall huge change in gestalt threw me off kilter. I ended up getting a sun tan, yes, - but then also followed sun burn, sun poisoning, and a light sun stroke. But the music was good and soulful, and the ascent of the fun, like the sun, was strong and wonderful and certain. I was beginning though to have the strangest dreams, none of which I can remember or care to remember anyways, - and it was like being alive in a living dream anyhow. I admired the local feral cats, thin but spry and sagacious, - the wonderful lost souls- dogs, - that ran around or pranced here and there in their pack of seven. Somewhere white or black, but most were that beautiful light tanned color of many Caribbean dogs called I think Pock dogs or some term like that. One of these dogs, not part of a pack, would come and sit under my chair in the sand. He would show up after me in the morning and as I watched the sun come up through the sky, he would dig a small hole in the ground and go cool himself off there. Perhaps he felt safe with me, and wanted some company. Surely even in the crowds it could be lonesome. So there we were, two lost souls,- unable to sleep in,- me for some type of insomnia and he because he didn’t really have a place to sleep and the workers arriving in the morning no doubt made him leave the common areas because they needed them. And he would stay far longer than I thought, - an hour or two,- while the real day as integrated and regular people call it, would begin with, well…people and the clink of glasses and the concerns about food and towels, keys and lotions, reading material and food and libations. Yes, two lost souls, watching the world go by, the one under the chair  always lightly sad but cool, and the one above the chair always partly inebriated and hot.

STRANGE CIRCUS AND ENYA UNDER THE CUBAN SUN

There was the sea blue and pristine, hardly ruffled, and some speaker began to blast the music of Enya towards the ocean and the horizon line. There were no boats, only an island in the distance with a lighthouse white that reached up to kiss the sky and a small grouping of clouds. The girls snickered at the music but I loved and love Enya and thought it was perfect. I found a piece of coral near the small lapping waves and was white with black little caves and inlets in itself. The coral was like the beach, the coral in a way was like life. Afterwards performers did circus tricks but slowly, patiently, and one stood atop the other, then one stood atop that one, and they stretched their bodies and arms and legs in odd formations. They was a kitsch or bric a brack backdrop,- and it boasted too loud colors and faux diamond sparkles, plus lettering that looked like it was made for a grammar school play or theatre show. Yet, - I liked it all, - and it was full of soul and heart and some kind of innocence or trueness that we have lost. The people have not left the island, and do what they do the best they can with what they have and what they know. I liked it. I learned we don’t need a seven dollar drink from Starbucks,- the only Starbuck I need is to read about him in Melville,- yes,- Melville,- which I found hard to access,- but once I did I understood and enjoyed.  In a moment of silence people would clap and the actors would let out a smile. Any harbors must have been further inland, and any marinas, but for the most part what I saw in land were fields and green and skinny cows. Sometimes a turkey vulture or something close to it would alight on something and watch the walkers or traffic…watch, - basically, - the world. I too am a turkey vulture watching the world, waiting for something, - sitting silently in the sun.

SITTING WITH SHELLS UNDER THE CUBAN SUN

The journey was coming to a close, and all in all it had been a good journey full of white sands, turquoise beaches, a friendly town full of smiles, an old city laden with character and history, blue skies, and of course the Cuban sun watching always over everything. I sat on the terrace that looked out on palms and a vacant lot and listened to the tide getting higher and higher, rougher and rougher, while the sun began to depart. An hour or so went by and I was lost in some reverie or another, rightly hypnotized and lulled to relaxation by the wave sound and the quiet music of the wind as it brought itself through hundreds of palm leaves. I had my shells, and like a child, was organized them, inspecting this one or that, and then re-positioning them here and there on the table. I was proud of my shells and found each one on my own. Maybe other people had wanted to go scuba diving. Maybe another dreamt of deep sea fishing, or further adventures in land. Surely one or more would have pursued the half naked French woman with the supple breasts that had approached and joked around. But I had chosen my shells and was glad for it. The shells, like the Cuban sun, were ancient, but always new, and had staying power, brightness, often a kind of artistic nuance and nurturing quality.

The shells were poetic.

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