i have 900 emails from the time i was in cuba, that i have yet to check. i cant bring myself to delete them. majority of them are news updates and i barely kept up with the US while i was away. i have to catch up with what went on. its part of our history.

i can barely talk about my time in cuba. and now so much time has past, its not even.. an issue, a topic. i mean.. what happened here? -- there? but did so much time past that its not.. worth it to go into detail..

its so much harder now.

i felt a huge distance.. when i was talking to my sister 4am the morning of my arrival on april 20th. i was telling her all these things, huge weights that i didnt get to resolve or.. reconcile with before i left cuba altogether. things about cuba that is so common in the rest of the world, but the people and their great resilience that i have yet to witness here (not yet). and now months later, i can barely go through my journal, my notebooks. if i was to describe something, i know i would be doing havana wrong. the words would be right. but.. the comprehension would not be there. i can barely hold onto what i had for that short amount of time. how could i, in turn, share it with someone else.

how big was that gap my very first hour home, and how big it is now. could i speak about it.

speaking to the students i went with.. majority of them have not reopened their journals from our time there. speaking to students who went the previous year, it is incredibly how.. different it was. of course experiences are singular in many ways.. but it was hard to find a common ground between the two groups. it seems like this year we got out farther, met more people, and was less wasted. (wasted still of course, from time to time). different experiences..

nyu sent a letter to my parents house (in english) and warned that students who went abroad would feel reverse cultureshock coming home. ..ill have to post some excerpts sometime

theres a part from Fahrenheit 451 that i find so relevant here. pg 7

Her face, turned to him now, was fragile milk crystal with a soft and constant light in it. It was not the hysterical light of electricity but--what? But the strangely comfortable and rare and gently flattering light of the candle.

One time, as a child, in a power failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and they, mother and son, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon...

i went to cuba for a lot of reasons. i mean, when i thought of going abroad my sophomore year (probably your junior year), i was thinking prague at the next chance i could get out of there. i thought it would be an easy transition and beautiful, so beautiful that i couldnt help myself.

why did i go to cuba. because i had to leave here. i had to leave nyu. i had to re-find myself. right after freshman year i felt like i gave up so many things that meant something to me. i was ready to call it quits. life gave a harsh wake up call and told me that if i tried to take my own life it would whoop me in the ass. it certainly did and all i ever wanted to do was enjoy life again.

sure right after being sick, gosh-- walking around groups of people felt great. everything felt great. the winter following, being back in school. i was loathing finals, and realized at some point that was what i wished for. to be able to loathe finals, take them, and be done with them. felt great. the novelty of this all wore off though... i got to be a college kid but didnt re..focus .. my compass lets say. im still lost. well im lost now.

cuba was the wake up call i needed. (i need them annually or biannually it seems) it showed me the beauty of so many people, the struggle, the resilience, relationships, the honesty. i feel so distracted here, and im in the constant search for the distraction if im not. i .. can barely begin to say what i learned.. it will take years perhaps. another long visit. i passed the time in havana similarly to how i pass the time here, but it was different. are things slower there? just too hyped here..

cuba, my wake up call. my candle. i was in my brief moment of rediscovery and.. the lights are back on and i felt it.. too soon.

first day back to work, my second day back in the states. the girl hired to cover me takes one look at me and says, oh you havent changed a bit.

is it weird? as soon as i came back, i literally went back into my armor of black. my fail-safe outfit for nyc. all the things that were being said to me by my sister, coworkers.... its like i had new glasses on and i really understood them for their core meaning, and not just peculiarities, the weight and bullshit that is everyday life. but going back to the same routine, the same black outfit, the same expectations of you, of who you were. if you were different, it wouldnt make sense in this context, there would be no way to witness it. i felt it melting away slowly. the brief moment in the candle light, gone and replaced by fluorescent office bulbs.

everyone askes.. was it just a dream

Open Cuba

http://www.opencuba.org/

On this site, there is a form where you can send the president and your representatives an email advocating the lifting of the travel ban. And you can get $100 dollar coupon to go. Got the heads up from a fellow photographer from the program, Rachel.

a dream with a cuban touch

So I was meeting up with Rita, probably around her school and we decided to go shopping. We go into this shopping center/mall place and I go up to a window and comment on how much I like this one bag. Rita says she'll ask how much it is and goes in. I look at it a little longer and saw the tag and it said something like $5675. So I go in to stop her and I already hear the guy at the counter saying "well that depends it could go anywhere from 25 - 5 (25 hundred to 5 thousand)".. so I turn around and start talking to Rita while looking as some bags in the glassy store and I turn back around a second later and she's gone. I felt a little foolish for talking to someone that wasn't even there and then I take the few steps forward to where Rita was and realize the tiny bag store had another entrance/exit.

I step out and Rita is waiting for me outside around the corner of the store where we first saw that $5000 bag. We continued on and went into this huge second-hand part of the shopping center. Rita and I were here for awhile and it was mostly because of me. We were poking around in the clothes and books, and all the really friendly middle aged to elderly people who were working there .. were really friendly and offering help.

I started to find things I remembered from Cuba, books that looked interesting but I didn't buy because my spanish was too weak or I just didn't want to invest and carry it back home. At some point Rita went to the back where their was a cafe, sorta like how barnes and noble have starbucks tucked in there. So I kept on searching and she sat and waited there. I felt really bad at some point cause I know how I can get and I can dig around for a long time if I'm allowed.

I must have kept on doing this thing where I was holding one or two things, and I would put it down to pick up another, and when I would go to pick up my previous things I would accidently pick up something new/different because I wouldn't have what I thought I originally had (if that makes sense). 

So I keep finding stuff that makes me think I've seen it in Havana, and versions of books in spanish that I've never seen (like harry potter). And then I run into my old Spanish professor, Martha, and she's one of the friendly older people working the shop. (Its really great, cause I love her) I see an old copy of Alice, a real flimsy paper copy thats in a horizontal rectangle shape, from 1866. I take it. I see a copy of a movie I "supposedly" saw in Cuba, called Rojar, "to paint red/make red", with the guy from motorcycle diares/science of sleep/gael garcia bernal starring in it. I pick that up. (rojar is not a real word)

I go to show Rita my finds in the cafe area, and I see her sitting at a table. I don't know if she's feeling impatient or not, but I feel bad for making her wait so long so I see the look of annoyance on her face. I'm at the cafe counter talking to the girl behind it and she says shes not sure she can ring me up. And the guy a little farther away says he can ring it up and comes. And of course he has trouble ringing it up. And the total is $34. And I say for two used things?? And the girl was like c'mon, you can ring her for lower (like he just typed in a general code for book and dvd and that was the price I got). He didn't change it, I got really offended. Feeling really ripped off. I start ranting, did you know thats like 2 months pay in Cuba?? And they're both like really? 

I say, For the average person in cuba they make like $16 dollars avg a month, they can't even buy themselves one beer sometimes. Then I go on to say Thats why so many people want to get into tourist industry cause thats where all the extra money is.

I ended up walking away but I knew I wanted to say that it was basically 10cents to go to a movie, 40cents to go to a nice concert.. 

I woke up feeling very angry and odd-like torn between two worlds, seeing things from cuba.. 

(beer is around 80cents to a dollar each [not at a bar, hotel, etc], so if your salary each month is 325$ equivalent to 13 dollars, you really cant go on and buy yourself a beer whenever you want. But thats only some of the population, there's plenty of people who live comfortably and extravagantly by the cuban standard of living)

If I could only articulate

This is an excerpt from one of Brittany Shaw's emails, another tischie in Cuba, from her friend Ginny, that I think begins to touch upon the feelings of those who leave/come back and try to share:

You are so brave. I don't know what to say about how you'll be able to relate when you get back - even saying that I don't know seems like infringing on something deeply personal you're going to have to go through. It seems unfair that you have to go through living abroad on your own (plus your group) and then when you get back, you will have to deal with these dual worlds now existing in your life and memory, also alone. We'll probably seem really frustrating and stupid. And no matter how much you tell or show us, we'll never really understand what it was and is like. But maybe that's just the thing. In all of our experiences, however drastically different, we are the solitary bearer of a singular perspective and the experience of that experience. We live with the memories of all of them every day, floating around somewhere in our heads. And it's terrifying. To realize that we are each living in a separate reality, a little bit. That where you've been is somewhere different than where I've been - even if we've both been in the same place for a long time. And by going somewhere very different and for a very long amount of time, and then returning to what we think of as a cohesive reality, it throws the entire terrifying matter into examination. And maybe we come to the conclusion that we've always known. That that which we are experiencing and with whom we are experiencing it is sacred and temporary. (Sacred because it is so fleeting - and perhaps, fleeting because it is so sacred.) And soon it will cease to exist except within ourselves - and within every other person there, from wherever place they happened to be standing. It's the same here, same everywhere, I want to think. Only here we won't bear the burden of sudden change in a month - it is not as if I will need to attempt to explain to you what the common room looked like this past semester (although one day they did bring in the ugliest black tables and I nearly had a panic attack!). I think no amount of understanding on our part will satisfy you, or could. It's the scariest thing to consider the extent to which our experiences are solitary or even our lives, solipsistic. (The current anxiety is not of EXISTING at all, René - but of existing alone.) I think the comfort is to be found in the memory, maybe. And the art. And the fact that we are creating new memory as we attempt to understand the past ones. And that regardless of the degree to which our experiences differ, from being side by side in separate heads to the farthest reaches of the world apart, they will be different. And the joy in sharing, in creating impressions of that once fleeting experience for those we love to also experience, that's the thing, maybe. Our stories are shadows of our once first-hand experiences - and through our stories, however they are told, those shadows become first-hand experiences for someone else. In this way, we aren't alone. We aren't ever alone. Because you continue to exist with the imprints of my memories, and I with yours. And suddenly our shadows are crossing, making different shades of light and dark. And something unifying has been created. Maybe that's what art is. Maybe I'm full of shit and about to get my period and feeling ugly and alone. (But ah - the point I forgot to make! You being there means that the only place isn't just here - at this specific and singular moment in time. And if here is not the only place existing at this moment in time - then certainly, I am not the only thing existing at this particular point in time. And that means I'm not alone - you're not alone - there is no alone. Not quite so snappy as I think, therefore I am (and maybe it should be so simple) but as Carrie Bradshaw says, the loneliness is palpable!!! Don't know where I'm going with this. Ha, I feel fucking alone. I feel like a fool. Wish we could go to Hogwarts and have wands.)

back in the EE.UU

I knew I had fell asleep, but for how long?
It was an odd feeling waking up flying over the green lands surrounding Miami when I fell asleep flying over the receding Cuban country side. So similar. The swirls of worn paths in the fields. Spots of blue water. Which is which, where am I really? So close but yet so far.
Did I really leave?

After passing customs, I saw that a lot of my friends got admittance stamps. I didn't. (Why?)
My friend Camila said, How could you come back if you never left?


The only evidence that I was away for three months, the only proof that I existed for some time in Cuba is a staple where my student visa once was and a little bit of red ink that bled through from the stamping of the Cuban customs agent.

Did I really fall down the rabbit hole or was it all a dream?