30enCuba | Scéne á faire

Miami > Havana

Sunday morning we woke up and made our way via Uber to the Miami airport. Before this, Canción had already been out on the beach in her vintage romper, talked with a guy coming off a night of Molly (er, he mainly talked at her), and showered (Right, C?). So then we said bye to the hotel, sipped coffee and tea, ate a piece of toast maybe, and talked about our super-intense itinerary. It was way too probable that we would all be interviewed and then blocked from entering Cuba. Right? I mean, this was the ultimate anxiety-inducing thought of the morning. But really, I figured even if that happened we could go back to Miami and find a boat to take us there. So I was concerned but I wasn’t. And of course at some point I was like, shit, I have dreads and, ugh… I should probably try to braid them or something. I am, in fact, this white girl from the US, with a long-running interest in Latin America. Oh, and I think I speak Spanish and I want my kids to be bilingual and, well, it doesn’t just start to sound bourgie, it is fucking bourgie. My head’s full of this and the effects of the Cuban Revolution on the rest of Latin America. Sunday morning—where were you?

At the airport we stood in a line with big-screen TVs (so many), huge duffle bags of clothing, and other people. Wait. I’ve presumed that you (Hi, Annie; Hi, Colleen; Hi, Mom) already know about Canción and Banning. Just in case you aren’t Annie, Colleen, or my mom, I’ll say a quick something about each of these women. It can’t be long or detailed at all because I love them each so dearly and to such ineffable extents that I have to cap it, in writing at least. Well, at least for now, for here. Canción met me and I met her on a youth mission trip to Acuña, Mexico, when she was 19 and I was 17. We were the two interpreters for our group and being very emotionally involved with, well, our own emotions, we acted like we were friends right away but were quite certain that one of us didn’t like the other. Haylie died just a few months later and I began to stagnate, like the weeks-old rainwater pooling in the middle of our land. Then this happened: Canción’s family moved to Cleveland, Tennessee, and I caught a ride back to Chattanooga (UTC) with Canción in her bright-white Toyota Corolla. We listened to MIA, Bob Dylan, most likely Copeland, and Dashboard—and the Beatles. By the time we reached my Oak Street apartment, Canción’s friendship had been TIG welded to the contours of my spirit.

Canción de Rut Hayes got me and loved me. She was meek (not a thing to do with weakness) and outspoken when she wanted to be. She knew all about that Unbearable Lightness of Being–type fascination with the boy who lived in the blue house up Oak Street. “I mean, he’s beautiful,” she would agree, “how could you not?” And we weren’t talking about his character (different descriptions applied there). It wasn’t that she didn’t know that I was numb and living a purpose-driven life prioritizing unhealthy and self-destructive choices. She definitely did, and we talked about those things; But she didn’t try to pray for me too much and she was able to love the parts of me that could exhale life and love in some way. Anyway, there’s more than a decade more to us, but I’m not going to delve that way here. I’ll now just tell you that when she agreed to come on this trip, I felt grateful.

I met Banning at Centennial Park here in Nashville (2009 or 2010, we think). She was wearing leather shoes and I thought that she must’ve had them for years and years. She also had a cigarette in her hand (tres cool…). She had just come back to the States, back from the spirit-borrowing life of an international ballerina. But we met for real and it stuck in 2013, after she decided to stay in Nashville for more than a minute and launch a proliferative cultural shift here in our city (New Dialect). I’m sure she has other words for what she was doing, but this is obviously what’s going on now. Back in 2013, Banning e-mailed me and said that it was like we should already know each other but we didn’t and that I should come to a New Dialect rehearsal. So I did. And then coffee with Becky and Mary Arwen after rehearsal. I didn’t have the emotional energy to have unintentional friends at this point, so butterflying through a friendship was out. Today she is a most precious friend. Banning articulates her virtuousness and its frailty to me in our friendship—and this is love. I have listened to Banning and have learned what strength can come from vulnerability; she has listened to me and allowed the space for me to temper my foundation when I see it cracking underneath my heels. Oh, there is more, so come to Nashville, buy a ticket, and watch what she’s done (or bring us wine and sit with us). When she agreed to come on this trip, I felt grateful.

So that wasn’t exactly quick, but it explains a percentage of some things. We landed on the island of Cuba and felt many emotions. We waited and waited for our bags, while standing in a fan-free room with hundreds of other citizens of somewhere. Oh, we did have to go through and hand in our visas. I think what happened is Canción complimented the agent on his hair and then it worked and we walked in. Heh. As we rode in our taxi to Marta’s apartment, I kept picturing us on a world map, somehow on Cuba, somehow making our way from the airport to Vedado. It wasn’t a cartoon in my head, but it wasn’t real yet.

Marta’s place is on the 14th (between 13 and 15) floor of a building on La Avenida de los Presidentes. Bronze tributes to Latin America’s revolutionaries right outside our door. Marta opened the door and didn’t seem impressed. Maybe even if we weren’t three American women at her door, the staidness with which she showed us to our room and instructed us on how to use the keys could have been noted. But see, maybe not. I’m still working on this part of me. I believe we all become very interested in Marta and her story about thirty seconds after she opened her door. I’ll mention more about Marta another time, but you should know that my last morning in Cuba was spent hunting flowers for her. If she will have me back, I want to learn more from this composed woman.

We unraveled our things and laid around a bit in the room, before heading out to our first dinner at a close-by Paladar. A pitcher of mojitos, soup, meat, veggies—all in a tiny apartment restaurant. And instead of continuing to ask about dishes from their 3-5–page menu, we asked about the plates of the day. After dinner we, um, borrowed some cigarettes from two Cuban women in the alley courtyard. Banning took a photo of some stairs for Kevin, and then we sat and talked and smoked those cigarillos. We caught a taxi back to Marta’s and got ready for our evening at Fábrica de Arte (http://www.fac.cu).

Fábrica de Arte was incredible. Each of us honed in on different aspects of what was going on around us. It’s a gallery. It’s a theater. It’s a bar. There’s food. There’re classes. The doors kept bridging buildings and our evening was a most entertaining conjugation of conversations. Toward the beginning of our night there, we ordered espressos and drank them from baby ceramic mugs while we watched a Woody Allen play, live and in Spanish. we walked up those concrete ramps and back through the theater and then the gallery, and then up stairs to a guy pasting a giant photo on the wall. I started drinking rum and then we walked down another concrete ramp and into another giant room. It was dark and Michael Jackson’s videos were on the wall. We were almost there until four in the morning. But we weren’t. Our night lasted a bit longer, involving the photography of Enrique Rottenberg and then, finally, another taxi home to floor 14. These are all terrible descriptions of my emotional state that night, an abeyant storytelling of our first night in Havana. But that’s what I’ve got for now, until it settles into my spine.

Coladas, aleluia, aleluia

Ajit said they should at least try to look a little more revolutionary

But this is how we really felt (probably because we are Yumas)

Last block before the Malecón. These boys were all inside their fort. When I asked if I could take their photo, they jumped out, lined up, and did this.