Once again I was not able to get myself out of bed at the crack of dawn, shuffle to the packed train, and join the mass of out-of-towners with their spawn in tow and witness the spectacle of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I’m not hating on the parade. My childhood memories are filled of being dragged out of bed to go to it (after staying up late having visited the balloon set up the night before). Really I just wanted to go because it meant a container of hot chocolate and perhaps a visit to a Greek diner for some scrambled eggs. And we didn’t go to the musical orgy on 34th street- we kept it real as a parade should be enjoyed: people passing you, you cheer hooray! and then you walk away.

That said I watched some of it on TV this morning, not with child wonder eyes but as an anthropologist. We all know this, but either this year’s new balloon additions drove the message home more or things are getting worse: it is a parade of raw Dinsey packaged consumerism! All I got from watching that parade was what movie is coming out soon (Smurfs, 2011), whose CD is coming out next (Andrea Bociello Christmas albums and a plug for the opening musical, White Christmas), what retro toys are making a comeback (Care Bears?!) and that Planter’s Peanuts (making a cameo in his Monopoly Man tux) is now being made with sea salt. The recipe Macy’s uses is the same witchcraft Disney utilizes to mesmerize our oh-too-innocent young seeds.

That said, I wondered what a Thanksgiving Day Parade might look like in Cuba:

• It would still be called “Thanksgiving” but with bitter sarcasm to drive the point home. “Thanks, white man, for bringing disease and genocide to the New World and strengthening the spirit of the descendants of oppression to make the revolution possible, liberating everyone, including you.”

• Now that the theme has been introduced with a wide, white banner with red letters, speaking of disease, the first line of parade marshals would be the public health servants of disease control, reminding everyone of proper hygiene, the ills of still water and the glory of vaccines. They’d wave their hands with their medical masks covering their mouths, with white and blue coats, tugging the parade’s first balloon, a giant syringe with the letters “P-R-E-V-E-N-T-I-O-N” blazened along its graduation lines, followed by “THE NEW ARMS AGAINST THE LEGACY OF COLUMBUS.”

• Next would come the float with an ode to the campesino. A giant gourd with yucca, greens, beans, eggs and young, strong looking people proudly holding adzes and rakes beside it. The balloon, of course, would be an image of the farmer himself and herself (gender equality emphasized- this aint no Grant Wood portrait) . People would clap in line with the party line, but gaze at the float, hungry.
• There would be floats that honored the Afro-Taino roots of the Cuban people.
• All floats would be pulled by farm tractors.
• The car clubs would show off their pimped out, time-machine crazy mobiles, categorized by turn of the century, 30’s 40’s and 50’s.

• Glory to the solider of the Revolution! High school marching bands would be replaced with various “Committees in Defense of the Revolution” from regions all over the island, singing, chanting (”¡En cada barrio, Revolución!” and dancing, demonstrating how the revolution is as relevant, raw and alive since the Granma ran ashore in Granma Province on December 5th, 1956. The ballon? Why a peasant man wielding a machete and shield draped in the unity star and stripes of the Cuban flag.
• Now of course Cubans also know how to have a good time (a really good time), so expect singing, bands, and dance troupes of all forms, Casino Salsa, reggaeton, Son, Danzon, cha-cha, mambo and the ever so playful RUMBA.
• Clowns would be in full force, except they would be dressed as Fat Cat capitalists with the US flag on their top hats. Their clothes would be sharp, their bow ties knotted in perfection, but they would be blindfolded with a black cloth, their blood-stained hands flayed out in front of them grasping the air, a long ball and chain shackled to their ankles. The crowd would roar with laughter, chanting, “Only revolution can free you, Sam!”
• The cherubic child star of the parade, would be, who else? Elian Gonzalez, who mysteriously is still a child, and would be periodically given the mike to thank Cuba for bringing him back home.
• The NY Thanksgiving parade ends in the mecca of consumerism, 34th street Macy’s. So where would the Cuban parade end for the big party? Why where all of Havana’s parties happen: in front of the American interest section (the former embassy). Replacing Santa Claus on his sleigh to give his saintly blessings for all to shop and trample eachother to death starting immediately after a gluttonous meal, would be ol’ Castro himself, beard and all, waving from a replica of the holy Granma, the boat that made him the Papa of new Cuba. He would chuckle, “Ho, ho, suckers! I’ve outlived all of you and the revolution is still here”.

Thus ends Nova’s Thanksgiving daydream of parallel universes.

Happy Turkey Day!

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One day I’ll be able to do this song justice.

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Hail the hustle in Cuba! Done with a straight face, intelligence and craft, you got to respect it. Recognize and ascertain whether you should accommodate the hustle. How much is it for you to loose this battle? Can you acquiesce without being cheated and everyone’s dignity maintained? If not say, “I respect the Hustle”, then walk away.  If acquiescing you have a choice of either remaining a passive participant, or leaning close to the Hustler and whispering with a tilted head and squinted eye, “Asere. Don’t try to hustle me. I got you anyways.”

More to come on some specific hustles.

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One curious site in Havana Vieja was the abundance of little hot dogs walking around. All types: the standard straight-up weiner (pictured), the spotted mutt- dogs that don’t look that they should be hot dogs but somehow are.

I have to say I had a moment when eating out and reading a menu. Listed was “perro caliente”… Within the context of a country of poor resources together with the images of all these little weiners walking around, my heart sank, until C-mixto explained that the translation works the same in Spanish as in English. A bunned, not fur, hot dog.

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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.

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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.

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Probably one of the more interesting cities Nova has visited (as I write this, a young Cubano is asking me for a peso, now reading this over my shoulder asking me questions- telling me how bonita I am, then pointing to the hole in his shoe, asking me for a peso again… he is what, 7?)

It is as if time has stopped here in the 1950s for anything material (buildings, cars, equipment, furniture) except it still decays. People here, though, are vibrant, alive- with music, singing, life pouring out “from every crack” as LL put it to me. 

For Americans it is hard to grasp- what is life like without (much) commericialism? without much “private property” (or at least to the extreme degree back at home?) What if branding didn’t exisit? What constitutes pleasure and human happiness?

Ok, I should be off to enjoy the city more- stories for us to all reflect on when we get back.

Viva la Cuba.

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What could possibly balance a trip to the material kingdom of Disney and glitz of Miami but an odyssey to socialist Havana? Stay tuned for some Havana news, if I’m able to write there; if not, there’ll surely be lots of stories to talk about when we get back.

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