PROPAGANDA pt 1

Here are some pictures of things that you don’t see so much in the USA, or at least not in this form. I guess it’s ‘propaganda’ in the American sense, though in Cuba the word is used for advertisements for consumer goods, which don’t really exist in Cuba.

Monument to the Cuban Five in Viñales

signs at paseo y linea

pharmacy on 23, la rampa

G y 13

bus-waiting in casablanca

santiago, serendipity

baseball stadium in la habana

Getting Around in Cuba

Here begins a series of picture-posts of Cuba, since a lot of pics couldn’t load on the slow Cuban internet, part of a longer series of retrospective posts on Cuba. Maybe I will complain about America some more in the middle of this series, we’ll see. 

Coco taxis - mostly tourist fare; once we bargained with a really spunky coco taxi driver who asked us if we had caramelos

fancy máquina

shitty máquina

campesino in horsecart

a moving guagua in havana, they are normally this full or more

FREEDOM BUS, sent from some church or other type of do-gooders in the US

electric train - the 'hershey train' - from havana to matanzas; most likely 50+ years old

empty pilot's cockpit of train

inside of the train; as you can see, seats were super comfy

normal vehicles in santiago

tourist cars waiting outside capitolio - on the sides are painted the words 'rentar una fantasia'

plane santiago-havana

open back camioneta, hitchhiking

floor of the camioneta, covered in frutabomba

horse- taxi, one peso per person

cienfuegos, cleanest most put together city in cuba, the 'pearl' they call it

In Search of Humanity

Turns out, the American suburb is actually hell.

Less than a week ago, I was in sunny Havana, living in a renovated house from the 50s in el Vedado, the nice suburbs of the city where the University of Havana resides. This is what I did every day: I walked outside in shorts and a tank top, with no cell phone and no watch, I saw the sun, I saw people sitting outside, sometimes we would greet each other, if they were men they might throw some piropos at me, I walked a few blocks to a busy street and bought food, or caught the bus, if I needed the time I would ask someone on the street. I lived in a city full of people, and lo and behold, I could see them, right there, on their porches, in the streets, la la la la la.

Now I am back in America, in my parent’s house, which is lovely because my parents are here and I love them. Unfortunately, however, it is located in suburbia, in one of those subdivisions on a golf course surrounded by other subdivisions on golf courses. It is also desafortunadamente located in Michigan, where it is freezing. A few days ago I was trapped at home (no car), and felt a desperate urge for human company. I was not bored–I had lots to do, things to read, emails to send, instruments to play, and the whole world wide web at my free speedy disposal for the first time in four months–but I was a little lonely. I decided that I could easily fix this. I put on my coat, gloves, scarf, and boots and went on a walk in search of humans. After all, I live in a residential area, where people supposedly reside.

I ran into three people and a lot of empty looking houses. The first was a woman who was running with her dog, I smiled and waved at her, her dog stopped to bother me, and I didn’t even mind (I don’t normally like dogs), but she yanked at its collar and told it to get moving. The second two were a daughter and father taking a walk together. I greeted them, too, of course, and thought about starting small talk or asking to join them, but decided against it because maybe they were having special daughter/father bonding time. A few cars drove past me, and I guess there must have been people in them, just like there must have been people in the houses, but I couldn’t get past the shiny metal exteriors and tinted windows in the little time that they rushed past to make eye contact with the drivers. One honked at me in an unfriendly way, because I was walking in the street (the sidewalk was icy), and that startled me a bit. By this time I was frozen. I had forgotten how being outside could do that to you, even if you were walking briskly (strolling also doesn’t exist in this country/weather). I ran into my house again, and started to make phone calls to friends, which required a boost of courage because I much prefer conversing face to face. But it was nice nonetheless, especially since I hadn’t spoken to some of these people in a long time. In the end I guess I found humanity, if accompanied by a few degrees of technology-separation.

Here is my rant: there is something wrong with a society in which I can be physically surrounded by lots and lots of people (all the houses and cars! one after another after another) yet NEVER see them, even when I actively go looking, where a cell phone–something that is obviously not fundamentally necessary–becomes a necessity for sanity, where I yearn for a car even though I am morally against private cars because without it I am trapped and cannot live. Why did we do this to ourselves! This kind of lifestyle, while addressing the individual-society conflict by allowing us to tap into a warped version of society when we want if we want on our own individual terms, cannot be the answer. The cold, of course, doesn’t help either. Conclusion: suburbia is hell, long live warm weather.

Merry Christmas! and more capitalist blues

I will reluctantly be receiving an iPhone for this holiday. My mother called me today from work and said, “Gracie, do you think I should get an iPhone?” and I said, “Mom, I just came back from Cuba, you know what I think, that it’s completely unnecessary.” Turns out, it was her tricky way of asking me if I wanted an iPhone for Christmas. Once I found this out, I told her emphatically to PLEASE not get me an iPhone, I don’t want any presents, I don’t need anything, the last thing in the world I want is an iPhone, please don’t feel obligated to get me a useless expensive gift just because America is telling you its your patriotic duty to be a consumer right now.

Unfortunately, my dad spoke to me later about this, and the bottom of the dealio is that if we get two iPhones (and Mommy needs one because her Blackberry doesn’t work, but Daddy doesn’t because he has a Blackberry that does work) we can get a better monthly phone rate than the one we have now, so it will be a money saver in the long run. I decided it would be hypocritical of me to refuse the phone just because I don’t want to identify with rich iPhone-carrying youngsters, and because the idea of having everything I could ever technologically need in a little metal square in my pocket terrifies me a little (already with free WiFi 24-7, I am a little overwhelmed with internet addiction/endless-possibilities-stress, and wish that I didn’t have such readily available WWW), also I hate having a cellphone anyways, I hate feeling it vibrate endlessly all over the place, never really pick it up, and love it only for its alarm clock function. But I guess for the sake of economic necessity, and practical necessity (having a cp in america counts as practically necessary, right?), I will switch in my little 6.5 year old Samsung number (the buttons were starting to stop working) for a sleek piece of unbreakable magic metal which I will most likely scratch up and ruin within the first week. The one thing that I am excited for, though, is having a decent–by decent I mean functional–camera with me at most times, because then I can take pictures of things that surprise me.

Today, I also got my nails done (bubble gum pink, its kind of disgusting, but they look good with my mustard yellow arm warmers), went to a giant grocery store, went to Blockbuster, and watched an American movie ‘Julie and Julia’ the one with Amy Adams and Meryll Streep about cooking with my parents. In the grocery store checkout line, I read tabloid and trashy magazine covers with my parents, and looked at the pictures of all the beautiful celebrities with their beautiful airbrushed skin and plasticked bodies, and started to feel all the insecurities of trying to feel beautiful in America. I am re-learning daily how fucking complicated this world is, with all its plethora of distractions, inventions, things to read, things to see, and things to buy. America, America, why are you brainwashing me again? Today I have started to feel bourgeois urges rising inside me, urges that truly did not appeal to me the past few days at all, urges I thought I had overcome. For example, I want to own fun colors of nail polish and another pair of arm warmers. For example, I ate beef, and when I was at the grocery store, I found myself wanting to put far too many things in the cart–brownies, flan, green peppers, oatmeal, yogurt, soy milk, cookies, pies…unnecessary bourgeois food cravings! For example, when I looked at the magazines and saw something about THE BACHELOR I felt an urge to watch it. When I entered Blockbuster, I dreaded picking a film, because all the escapist movies that my mother would want to watch seemed utterly repulsive to me at first, but by the end of my stay there, I could imagine myself watching a romance comedy. Already, everything about this world is making me feel much smaller, and because of it I feel myself turning cynical and pessimistic again, especially in the face of all these adults telling me what a young optimist I’ve become. America is TURNING ME INTO AN OBJECT AGAIN, or rather making me believe I am one, a pin in the system of everything who can do nothing but let the world create me and move me through it, Oh Lord, Heavenly Father, who sent us His only son this day 2009-ish years ago, on this day please let me not forget everything I discovered in Cuba about my position in this world as SUBJECT AND AGENT, please don’t let me cower in the face of all these images and messages flying at me from every direction every instant and become immobile, please give me courage to continue believing fervently in the creative imaginative potential of humanity and by extension my own as well.

Okay kids. Merry Christmas.

Chicago

Today I drove to Chicago with my daddy to get my Chinese visa. Chicago is a beautiful city, elegantly modern and not too tacky. This is what I remembered from my previous trips there.

This time, I felt like I was discovering it all over again, it along with all of America, or at least America in the cosmopolitan city sense–it was wonderful, and I felt like an endlessly curious and alert child, every store window display grabbed my attention, every noise–the song emanating mysteriously from the restaurant awning as I walked by, the beeping noise across the street from the walk sign, I looked unabashedly at the people who passed me, the clothes they were wearing, their faces, their races, and the smells! that delicious smell from the mexican cafe, this one from the italian restaurant.

It was snowing, and the colors were thus: gray, brown, white. I felt a reflexive urge to say ‘buenas’ to the strangers whose eyes I met, instead of ‘hello’ or ‘good day’ (today I also kissed my neighbor on the cheek in greeting without thinking when he came to visit us and bring us a turkey, but that is unrelated to chicago, just another anecdote of reverse culture shock), and it wasn’t even so cold. As the day went on, I learned to think of snow as beautiful again, if in a cold, bleak kind of way.

But all of this is unimportant procrastination. The important thing is that when we drove into the commercial section of downtown Chicago I was struck, to say the least, by the number of stores stacked horizontally next to each other, their big shiny glass windows revealing quantities and quantities of beautifully stocked shelves. My dad, at the steering wheel, was muttering about taking wrong turns and directions and stuff, but I couldn’t pay attention, my eyes were glued to the gleaming store displays, glittering with Christmas decorations, hyper-elegance, and hyper-abundance. Is this the realization of man’s potential?

Although I didn’t want to be a bitter commie cynic, the words ‘unnecessary’ ‘profligate’ ‘exorbitant’ kept on flying through my head, and I couldn’t help but wonder who the hell is buying all this shit? Supply seems to have reached such a high level in this country (to ensure comfort, convenience, a sense of abundance and wealth) that all sorts of artificial demand must be created to match it. No wonder we are in an economic crisis, no wonder there are so many advertisements everywhere. My dad showed me the Polo Ralph Lauren store on the ritziest part of Michigan Ave, and it was decorated and organized like a museum/mansion from the mahogany days. I guess it was artistic and kind of cool/original whatnot, but does that justify how completely unnecessary it was?

But even in all the glitzy elegance there were some slips of obvious TACK. The first was a store named ‘Material Possessions,’ with old fashioned lamps and other fancy looking things in the windows. The second was a mannequin Christmas window display for a mid-high end clothes shop that featured Christmas-lights pronouncing the giant words JOY and CHEER. I wish I could have taken a picture.

There are, however, some good things to say about the system. It’s all clean and pretty, and brings a little color and life to the boring winter scape. The food is yummy. Getting my Chinese visa was the easiest, fastest, most efficient thing that’s ever happened to me. Except for the 4 hour drive to Chicago, it was no hassle at all, in, out, done, something which never would have happened in Cuba.

America

Being back in America is still confusing and a little overwhelming.

Last night, at around 3 AM, I turned on the faucet in my bathroom and out came a gushing, strong torrent of water, and in less than 5 seconds this gush of water became scalding hot, which I forgot that water could do, coming from a tap. I thought about how I used to be hesitant drinking the tap water from my bathroom, and then thought about all the Cuban tap water I’ve drunk and chuckled a little.

Last night, at around 12:45 AM, I was heading down to the baggage claim from my airplane and almost stepped onto the escalator. Then I remembered that before I was in Cuba when I was in America I was morally against escalators (unless I had a big chunky suitcase), stopped, and took the stairs right next to them. I think I saw an escalator once in Cuba, but it wasn’t working. If it had been working, I probably would have taken it, for the novelty of things. Anyways the point is that this was a decision that I hadn’t had to make in 4 months. Remember that I had to walk 11 flights to my Economics class two times a week every week, and that my blind professor would sometimes walk those 11 flights as well.

This morning, I opened up my refrigerator to look for something to eat, and promptly closed it. The quantity and variety of comida it housed was frankly alarming. Looking around my kitchen, I thought that I probably hadn’t seen this variety of food in any Cuban store.

It is very hard to focus in America. There are distractions, advertisements, colorful and noisy things flying at me from every direction constantly, even in the peace of my own bedroom (free, fast internet!). Everything I need and don’t need is available right here, right now, it’s as if all the doors are open but all I feel is an incredible stress to go through all of them as quickly as possible, before they disappear, or I forget about them, or something terrible like that.

Also, things cost a lot more. I’m going to Chicago tomorrow, and I looked online to see about museums and stuff, and tickets are a whopping $16 or something to get into the Art Institute. Fuck that shit. Someone needs to talk to Obama about subsidizing culture in this country, so that supply can never outstrip demand.

Everything seems a little more unnecessary and exorbitant than it did before, but overall I am rather ambivalent. Half of me feels extremely guilty every time I turn on the faucet because I know really don’t need that much water coming out of there, but half of me (figuratively, not physically half) stood under the hot hot shower (my first in 4 months) for more than a couple of minutes, not soaping or anything, just letting all that water run over me.

Also, its extremely cold here. Everything is covered in a dusty, unbeautiful layer of snow, and its extremely hard to tell the passing of time because the day is perpetually grey.

GOODBYE CUBA

This is probably the last blog entry I will publish in this country.

I leave in 5 days, and the thought of it is rather unbearable. Tomorrow, I leave Havana to go traipsing in the Cuban wild/sleeping on the warm Caribbean sand for the last few days.

There is still so much more to write about Cuba, but I will do that when I return, because like I said, the thought of leaving is quite unbearable.

More from the film festival

Warning: minor spoilers

Last night I saw two American (okay, one was Canadian, but that’s basically the same thing) films at the Cuban film festival. The first was Courting Condi, a comedo-tragic-musical-documentary about this really ugly fat white guy who was supposedly in love with Condaleeza Rice and on a mission to win her heart. He starts to learn about her life, taking a road trip through all of her once homes, and writing cheesy love-song music videos, I think he called them ‘love discs’ (instead of love letters or love songs, you know, play on technology, although discs are antiquated now) that he would send to her. It goes through her life story, how she grew up in pre-civil rights Birmingham, wanted to be a concert pianist, etc. The most interesting part of all of this was how she developed (or rather, had naturally assumed) a philosophy of always looking towards the future, never towards the past, no regret, I think it video-quoted her saying ‘I don’t believe in self-reflection.’ Oh, and another interesting part was that she might still be a virgin at the ripe young age of 55! I guess that would explain a lot of her success, all that sexual frustration channeled into hard work, although she seemed to be pretty cozy with W. Of course, the documentary had to end with a half-hour Condi-bash session, in which the ‘love-discs’ became an angry rock metal you betrayed/fooled me you bitch song. Entertaining, a little weird and original, but also a little too predictable.

The second movie I saw was The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a Canadian film set in the UK with the late Heath Ledger (his last film, he died in the middle of it), set to open officially in theatres across the world this Christmas (yes, I did see a major feature film before it came out in the USA). This was also a very strange film, there were lots of plot elements that were not the easiest to understand, however I would recommend it overall if not just to see Heath Ledger be charming and beautiful one last time and feel sentimental about it. Also, since he died in the middle of shooting, they worked into the story this thing where every time he entered the Imaginarium his face changed, so that Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Ferrell were all in it too, so its pretty loaded with big names and sexy men. That said, if it weren’t for Heath Ledger’s death (resulting in this being his last film and the three other hot shots joining the credits) this movie would probably not be a big deal at all. Other than some interesting imaginative stuff, lots of technological and narrative tricks, contrived symbolism and forced deep religious/good-evil shit, the movie is pretty uncompelling, a silly story about a teenage girl with a weird childhood who just wants to be free to have a normal life and a family, who has two suitors vying for her heart and falls in love one or both of them. The most interesting part was the representation of the devil, who was conniving and a little annoying, and wanted more than anything to just keep playing games. Other than that, however, things were pretty fancy but unexciting. Although now it occurs to me that maybe they decided to drastically change the plot to accommodate Heath Ledger’s death, which might have made it so bad. I guess it was a good choice on their part, because Heath Ledger (and accompanying threesome) will probably make them more money than a decent/comprehensible/unbanal storyline would have. Also, most people will probably be too impressed by all the confusing plot turns, imaginative computer manipulation, and fantastical mythical elements to be bothered with the story anyways. Summary: interesting, but not compelling.

Coolest part of the night: when we got to skip the giant line and ushered into theatre through the bustling mob like kings because we had VIP passes. Well, I didn’t have one, but I was holding the hand of a guy who did, so that made me feel a little like a winner.

Fish

I was walking on the malecón, actually on it, not just along it, and it was wet, like the waves had come over at some point earlier that night. Some people were looking at me, but I decided not to let it bother me. The sea was a little feisty.

I saw a fish on the malecón. It must have been put there by a wave. It was red, and dead. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. For some reason it seemed like it would be wrong to just leave it right there. For a second I wanted to throw it back into the ocean (I would like to think I would have, if it were alive still), then I decided that that would be useless. Then I had a very strong urge to pick it up and take it with me, I didn’t really know why, but I had nothing with me but my bare hands. For a while, I struggled with my ability to suppress that natural girly gore response, and I wanted to do it just to prove to myself that I would be able to do it. It seemed like if I could do this—pick up the fish and take it home—it would prove once and for all that there was nothing I could do. I walked across the street to some vendors and asked for a plastic bag. None of them had one, or were willing to give me one, because this is Cuba, and no one gives things away. I had no money, nothing on me at all. I struggled for a while longer, trying to decide whether it would be worth it to go pull the chinita card and try to get a bag from one of the male vendors. I saw a trash can. There were some plastic bags in it, and also a box. I rummaged around a little. It must have looked pretty strange. But the plastic bag was full of gunk, and then it came over me that the only reason I would want to take the fish home would be to show one of my friends, who would appreciate it. Everyone else in the world would be confused and a little disgusted. What would I do with the fish afterwards? I couldn’t cook it or anything, no, the only reason would be to prove to myself and this friend that I could do it. Maybe he would laugh a little. I decided it wasn’t worth it.

That night, I sat out on the porch and played a little guitar, and talked to the night guard, who we call Papa because his hair is gray, and who is missing a lot of his teeth, so is impossible to understand. Then we danced a little salsa right out there, which was really nice. Papa asked me to call him when I was back in the states to tell him how my life was going and play some guitar for him. I don’t know if I will, its pretty expensive, and really I’ve only talked to him a few times. He’s a night guard by night and a construction worker by day. He lives alone, has a 20 year old daughter studying gastronomy and about to get married, and he really wants to travel to the USA just to see what life is like over there. But he wouldn’t want to stay there, he says, just to see.

baseball and film festival

The 31^st annual International Festival of New Latin American Films started two nights ago in Havana, and we went to the inauguration, where we heard Chucho Valdéz play piano and this famous woman sang, and then an old man gave an extremely long speech and then a very strange Argentinean film was played, <<Los secretos de sus ojos>>. Today someone told me that apparently that film is supposed to win the festival. Personally, I thought it was a little too much, but these are my impressions from it:

-Argentinean accents are obnoxious. They sound like they are trying to speak Italian.

-The camera angles were very strange. I was impressed, however, by their effect, even if I felt it was trying a little too hard at times. Somehow the frames managed to convey to me an image of the world where loneliness and monsters reigned, even before the movie was explicitly about these things. In the beginning of the film, when things still looked like it could just be a normal love story, I started to feel a terribleness welling up inside me—a knowledge of the world as terrible—and by the end of the film, I realized that this was intentional. I guess that’s a pretty impressive feat.

-Too much. It turned out to be a monster story inside a love story inside a detective story inside an age story inside a love story. Meta to the gazillionth power, too long, I thought it would end about ten times but there would be another plot twist and after all that revelation about monstrosity and loneliness the message was simple and trite: time doesn’t kill love. Of course, after 25 years and 2.5 tortuous hours of those twists, murders, and sadness, the two people who truly love each other from the start of the movie get together. Now what’s the point of that untruth?

—

Yesterday I went to a Cuban baseball game—Industriales (Havana’s team) against Holguin (visiting team). It cost 1 peso (about 5 cents), the stadium was relatively empty (it was a big stadium), but the people who were there were pretty emotionally invested. There were two groups of people with clankers and trumpets who would play music like a little cheer squad. When good things happened some people who get up and start shaking their asses. Everyone was very supportive of the team, in a way that felt like family, even though Industriales lost 7-8.