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Pelvic Thrusting Your Message: Gozando en la Habana
No disrespect to Miami as I know there can be some political charge and subtext behind this song… “Celebrating in Havana, Crying in Miami.”
This Reggaeton beat is infectious and it becomes a pulse of the Havana night when you hear it on the Malecon while people celebrate. Poignant to hear this live, blasting with its back turned to the US interest section/Embassy, the mass audience facing the embassy singing towards it.
Havana Cabs
The Havana cabs are a diverse species. Just like other material objects in Cuba, cabs are a wedding of what’s available. You have your standard checkered yellow, George Jetson Cocotaxis, pedicabs held together with some clever salvage craft, and then these… the ones that defy time, science and embargoes… what makes Cuba feel oh so 1950s. More on taxis to come.
Havana Days: The 5 Senses
Note: The Havana entries are evolving reflections of Cuban odysseys. They should not be taken singularly… meaning they should not be taken as a generalized finality of experience. They should be viewed as a part of a continuum of experience, which includes reaction and ongoing reflection.
Arrival.
Sight
Rain. Shit and slime covered cobblestones. Oily green and brown pools of fetid water. Cracked crumbling roads, decaying buildings. Urban murals that are shrines to the orishas.
Sounds
Voices, singers, ping pong ball hit back and forth. Man coughing up his morning phlegm. Kids going to school. Motors. First edition ever 1980s home printer sound (prints with the sound of a laser gun on the paper with perforated sides). Rustling plants in wind by barred windows. Rain drops, metal clang of window chain knocking against the wood door shutters. I keep getting up to answer a wind ghost that isn’t there. The soft banal voice of the colleague, overridden by the cowbell, cantante, and piano… he’s been here for years but still his voice is overwhelmed by the music.
Smells
Raw sewage,vapors seeping from the stones of road into my room. Mildew walls and streets, dog shit. Never the smell of food.
Trapped with a group who speak a language of science, while all I do is dream the symbols of language. I care more about the movement of the potted plant behind my colleague than his instructions, more about the irony of the music drowning away his voice, and I cheer for it to overwhelm him.
Taste
Canned string beans, spam ham, morro, yucca… Eating is a means to satiate, not pleasure. One of the first food things to import if the embargo is lifted is Goya seasoning (or some simple pepper). Eating is enjoyable in someone’s home.
Touch
The least used sense for me in this trip. My memories of touch are only of hand sanitizers, to erase the memory of touch. Cuba, will you crumble if I touch you? Cuba answers: No, new arrival. I am stronger than the facade of my infrastructure. Touch me and learn.
the other (salsa) shoe
Supposed to be editing my novel, but couldn’t resist this entry (darn yahoo news is distracting). I checked out Tavern on the Green’s Monday salsa night the other week to see if it had an on-2 following. It’s a magical atmosphere (not for on-2 though): dancing in the park at night with Chinese paper lanterns hanging from the tree branches above you like stars… Nice mixed crowd, low entrance fee, etc, etc. But while dancing in the outdoor garden I caught a glimpse of the scene encased in the glass chambers of the restaurant. Different crowd altogether. Then passing the young guy with the top hat who opens the door for you like a butler, I glanced back at the old-world decor of the place, and thought: how bad of a financial state is Tavern on the Green in if they have salsa nights that actually blend into pop club music (my exit cue)? Hate to think that way, but I said to myself how many old fogies are either rolling in their graves or jumping into their graves before schedule because Tavern on the Green hosts this type of younger ethnic crowd, dancing with music that has lots of drums and fewer stringed instruments? then the NY Times runs the story, Tavern on the Green Filing for Chapter 11 (picture from NY Times article). Sorry that I had to wonder about the other shoe dropping, but here it is. That aside, for all I know this event has been going on when times were good too. The timing still struck me.
Ghost School
Walking in East Harlem, I passed what looked like an abandoned school. It looked a bit creepy with it’s boarded up windows. What was most haunting was the school yard with a wild jungle of weeds and vibrant, colorful murals with kid paintings. Among the waste and stillness, the still standing murals leave the impression of lingering children spirits playing in the yard. The murals and the tentacles of plants are the only things of color left to an otherwise bland building. It has a spooky gate, like a warning not to venture in. It is sad, but the murals also give you the impression that the school is ready for a new cycle of birth.
Endangered species- local movie theaters
For better or for worse, we’ve lost a lot of our local movie theaters. In its last days Metro theater had cheap prices, peeling art deco decor, nasty seats, and I think only two movie rooms. But I didn’t have to trek on a subway or bus to see a movie. I could take a neighborhood stroll. I believe Metro is now land marked, so it’s in this odd limbo world of what to do with it. I hold my breath walking under that awning. It looks ready to fall flat down and squash you like a pancake out of anger for its decrepit state.
There are benefits to going to a mega theater- nowadays we want good sound and good images to entertain us, less so the storylines. And cleanliness is always nice. But loosing local places seems like one more step towards our cities becoming more like the affluent suburbs.
The return of the paperboy
NYC’s free newspapers, Metro and AM New York, have resurrected a chummy memory of the 1930’s: the talking newspaper, or the paperboy. Newspapers usually remain mute, sitting on newsstands, bookstore racks or milk crates outside a deli or bodega. They lost their human liaison of the 1930’s, a time when we relied more on human interaction to learn of local and global events, to discern our individual and collective experiences, and when information downloads were less a private affair than a community one.
But walking out of the subway in the morning recently, I’m hearing not just the hustle of Metro versus AM and the advertiser of the day who happens to be sponsoring the news… Now I’m hearing clips from what you read inside. And I time travel back to the 1930’s. I feel a momentary connection to the news bearer. It is pleasing because besides reminding me of the chumminess of the old newsboys, it forces me back to the collective world of news and not just my office-based and personal one.
For a history of newsboys, the Depression and the marketing scheme that helped bring it to be, read: Masculine guidance: boys, men, and newspapers, 1930-1939 Postol Enterprise Soc.2000; 1: 355-390 .
For an early history of newspaper publishing in New York, “The Early History of Newspaper Publishing in New York State”
Contrasts of Urbanity-Rio
How does one place the contrasts between poverty and privilege while exploring other universes of urbanity? Rio makes you think of such things when you visit, if you have some heart. The favelas (shanty towns) circle the city in a ring of earthy colors- terracotta hills, tin roofs that reflect the sun, the rainbow of fabrics drying on clothes lines… They’re always there, in every landscape you set your eyes to. Or at least my mind won’t allow me to forget them when I look away.
You’re reminded of this contrast as you stroll the boutiques of Ipanema that New Yorkers might say reminds them of Soho, except for one detail. In front of the window selling $400 shoes is a guard armed with a machine gun. In front of every gated residence you’ll see him there too.
After you eat you’ll stumble on the plethora of street kids sniffing glue, laughing, high because their brain cells are being zapped. You’ll look at their young faces and realize that back home such homeless youth would be institutionalized. It isn’t that there aren’t agencies there- there are-LL worked for one- and it isn’t because people don’t care. But there they are, poverty is such an anchor. They are ignored or sneered at, just as the homeless are here too. See them and you’ll begin to see how their existence is no difference than rats. Your heart will be weighted. Then a young one will approach you for food, you know he’s only like eight, but the way he asks you will make you realize how hardened he is, and that’s he’s a full fledged punk.
Perhaps you’ll be forced to think about this more in Rio while exploring its scenic beauty, its samba rhythms, its carnival, the joys emanating from the favelas, because your eye will also catch the silhouette of Christ the Redeemer, the gigantic statue overlooking the entire city from Corcovado mountain with open arms in the Rio sky. I wonder (I often wonder this), is it an embrace for love and protection that is being offered to us, acceptance, or is it an invitation, an acknowledgement of the agony of the cross?
Keep Off Everything
Does Parks have nothing else better to do but put up fences everywhere? You can’t promote connecting people to nature if you’re constantly putting up barriers. I swear walking in some of our parks (Central Park being the worst in this sense) is like walking in a transient zoo for humans, where the trees get to watch us. Fences everywhere, and cement paths dictating where it is we’re supposed to step. Granted, some areas need protection for growth, some semblance of order, etc, but come on, balance it. The economy may be down but walk in parks and you get the sense they seem to have the cash exclusively to install more fences.
In the Inwood park entrance they took out a beloved man-made trail under a weeping tree and uprooted the darling bench where you could spend some time with quiet thoughts on the not so walked road. There was even an article in the local paper awhile back about how Parks installed some sort of alarm system that threatened you verbally if you walked on the grass or were too close to a tree (can’t remember which one, but it was something crazy like that. I have to note here, we also have crimes of “arbocide” in Inwood, wanted posters and all).
Someone check out the background of who’s behind this. It reminds me of Guliani.
One big overly pruned lawn is not nature. Keep the broken glass, crack vials and muggers out, but give us back our parks.
There goes the neighborhood
Watchers, please report… Are you slowly seeing the shops close down where you live? This has been happening for awhile on the Upper West side as monster condos replace our (admittedly ugly but affordable) rent-stabilized buildings and mom and pop shops. Where comes condos cometh Whole Foods, Victoria’s Secret, Barnes and Nobles and the dreaded Bed Bath and Beyond… But besides being yuppified, the economic wave is hitting Broadway bad. I don’t mourn those fancy-pants baby clothing boutiques. I do mourn the Moroccan trinket store. We just got word that Morningside Bookshop is closing down too and on the way there to bid them goodbye, happened to see a for lease sign on the fair-trade store where we’ve bought our furniture and lots of other household items. The owner was nearly in tears explaining how sudden it happened. That was depressing. When we got to the bookstore, half the room was empty where there should have been books, and the cashier (who is usually very moody) had her head down in her hands as she sat on the rug, staring at the floor. I swear I saw someone sleeping on the floor by the cash register in a sleeping bag.
The only burgeoning street to my eyes continues to be Dyckman street. But so many people hang out there that you don’t need a store to give the neighborhood life. Plus with salsa and merengue playing, life always sounds good. So, report! What have you been seeing around your way?
