BARRIO BLOG, otro blog cubano en las afueras: La Mulata que me parió.

BARRIO BLOG, otro blog cubano en las afueras: La Mulata que me parió.: Mami Mima Nací en el “ Año del Esfuerzo Decisivo ”, que fue como los comunistas en Cuba, mi Patria, llamaron al año 1969. Allí...

STARGAZER: GOD vs. JAPAN

STARGAZER: GOD vs. JAPAN: "Innumerable requests for prayer and candle lighting ceremonies for Japan plague my e-mails and my FB page. Prayers, bead counting ..."

GOD vs. JAPAN

Innumerable requests for prayer and candle lighting ceremonies for Japan plague my e-mails and my FB page. Prayers, bead counting and candles assume deity status during these rough and perverse times when mankind seeks answers to why and a faithful approach to calamities, hunger, unemployment, child abuse, homelessness, earth shattering earthquakes and the more than likely reality of a nuclear catastrophe.      

In truth, God knows all that and these... and more.   

He is definitely and attentively looking down at Japan; He is watching now as He was then during Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It is possible that He has a plan, I hope. And that when the time for heavenly judgement is at hand, the millions of dead Japanese Buddhists, and of those converted to Christianity, and  other religious philosophies,  will be amongst the first to be granted a physical body, a spiritual one or  the miracle of reaching Nirvana.

There has been no rest and no peace or solace in this little Planet as the apocalyptic Seventh Angel rides...this time in Japan. However, we may all be in agreement by now that our Kind's disruption of Earth's ecosystems at this rapid rate deserves the intervention of an angel or two.   

I thoroughly believe in God. The logistics of science and nature are too complicated to be the offspring of cosmic explosions, even a nuclear one could not have sufficed.  I speak to our  Maker everyday and thank Him for sparing me for a latter day. However, in the midst of all this disaster, I just wished He, our merciful Creator, could give us a map with an X to mark the spot.

Journey - Faithfully

ALGUIEN COMO YO.

Cuando converso con queridas y sinceras amigas repletas de sabiduria, las dejo hablar. Y mientras hablan , reflexiono. Lo que pienso, siento y como digiero los acontecimientos por los que con tanta urgencia les hable para opiniones, son veleros autonomos y aun asi mi propiedad, aventuras mentales que me plagan al amanecer y al final del dia; creaciones de mi personalidad y el reflejo de mis necesidades. Sus consejos sabios me llevan a la desesperacion porque mi fantastica realidad es mucho mas apetecible.

Mi fantastica realidad es una obra de teatro que nace y cobra vida en mi patio a las dos de la madrugada, o por tres dias consecutivos en los dias sin sol, las noches con luna o estos fines de semana tan largos...Mi atuendo, una camisa de flanela azul con cuadros, propiedad de un hombre que ya no vive aqui, en la que vivo y muero, no porque fue de el sino porque es comoda,caliente y no tengo que desabotonarla para ponermela casi siempre al reves.

Blah, Blah, Blah!

Que pasaria si fuera una mujer normal como muchas otras y dejara de estar en esta lista con el resto? Haria tal vez un presupuesto, (por supuesto), tendria al dia un calendario , un libro de numeros de telefonos en orden alfabetico en mi bolsa, asistiria a las visitas al medico, al peluquero y posiblemente hasta la gata fuera mas feliz visitando al veterinario cada tres meses. Mi pelo siempre fuera rubio o negro y con el mismo corte...o me hiria  de vacaciones en grupo a ver museos y el deshielo global desde Alaska. Arreglaria elegantemente mi cama, algo que no hago hace dos decadas, con vuelos y encajes, y pondria cortinas violetas y a veces verdes en mis ventanas...O tal vez, buscara con quien casarme otra vez, pero esa idea fue la peor de todas las que tuve, la mas fatal e inadecuada.

 Blah, Blah, Blah!

Al final del dia las cadenas de esta independencia que regularmente me sofoca,son mas suaves que las reglas y procedimientos absurdos del diario vivir, los libros de eticas, los horarios y calendarios...Porque mis ventanas son alegres sin cortinas, cuando les entra el sol, la luz de luna y la oscuridad. Y mi cama, el centro de mi cultura desorganizada con sus sabanas limpias, libros que leo a medias, espejuelos , cajetillas de cigarros y mi gata durmiendo el mi almohada. 

Si solo pudiera encontrar un hombre como yo!

Click!

A Child's Story.

When we were small, Sonia, Lily, Noel and I, we vacationed every year for a month in Puerto Esperanza,when school was out.  

I think it was between 1955 and 1961/62, before everything went up in smoke, when Papi "borrowed"a different house every year from his well to do friends to take his children on vacation.  My Father was a civil servant, an accountant with a millionaire walk and as humble a person as they come!  Everybody liked my Father.

He stayed in town working and will go over only on weekends. Mami, Papa and Mama will be with us. Except, for one year that I remember the both stayed in town for a week...together and showed up on the weekend. 

That weekend-it was a Saturday morning-I could still see Papi walking towards me on the pier. I had just caught, with a string and a "palito", two little fishes on that side  of the pier where you didn't swim because the fishes lived there, and I yelled "Papi, Papi! mira lo que cogi pa' ti!" -Mami, was already in the house, she seldom went in the water or out anywhere.-

 

During those days,I used to walk about all day long on that beach. Sonia, Lily and Noel too, with cans. Everybody had a can! We filled them up daily with tiny crabs and "macaos" that would be free at the end of the day. Those cans were good filled up with water to pour on the pier as I walked on it, to prevent my feet from burning. I had to have a can, that was the first thing I looked for when I went to Puerto Esperanza. Unstoppable at seven, I most have driven my mother crazy.

I remember, the fishermen bringing in nets full of sardines. I fished out "jaibas" bigger than my small hand from the water all by myself, always with that string hanging from the

"palito", while sitting with feet hanging over the water on the old dilapidated pier, full of holes and rotten wood, at the other end of the beach, where the Santa Barbara was in her urn with the "kilos prietos", remember?

I recall that house we stayed in one year where our neighbor for the summer, Margot, made "melcocha" from scratch. There were two small "almendros" up front. 

Papa took us out every morning at six, or when the sun came out, for a long morning swim, until about 9 or 10. He was in his sixties then, but he is the one that taught us how to swim all by himself, almost in the in the deep end.  Sonia, remember?

Then he would take us back home, but boy, I was out again in a minute and back home at 12 or 1 only to  eat the best "macarrones con jamon" anybody ever had, Mami's.

I would hear lots of crabs walking under the wooden floor, noisy, at dawn...and "el perro huevero" that came into the backyard-the one we never visited-looking for eggs to eat.

Icacos! Icacos! from the old couple's tree...I remember the music coming from a nightclub at one end. I think the "revolution" built that nightclub, along with that "big" hotel on the sand.

I would sit in front of the hotel at about 7 pm and watch the night swimmers in the warm sea water, while the mosquitoes ate me alive. That hotel is not that big... it is small. I just saw it when I went back...I think we were just little...

Noel and I were always everywhere, I don't know how Mami handled it. Sometimes Sonia would come- "Mami nos esta buscando!" The only time that I can remember Mami going into the water with us, I was six (I have a picture),I drifted away in my "salvavidas", until somebody said" "Oye, Cusa, Tere!!! That was a couple of years before Papa started taking us out for the morning swim.

She was not to be trusted, my mother, or was she? Absent minded beatiful Cusa always knew everything would be fine for her kids- She pulled the family through hard times with ingenuity, skill and a great sense of humor, back then when the revolution took away our food ration card and sent my Father to the work camps-  

I remember the night, when holding a frog in my hand and laughing (Just like Olivia does),virtually locked Mami inside the beach house, white as sheet, for a long time! I did it every time I had a chance, I'd be running after her with the frogs! I just caught one in my room, tiny. 

Today is that kind of a day in Huntington Beach. I wished you could have seen it! 

Sade - No Ordinary Love