2004-01-23 - 4:45 p.m.
It’s the music I miss at first. Sean Paul reverberating from the sound systems under the seats of bicitaxis, Juanes from car windows, son groups playing for tourists in 24 hour cafeterias, and the music of the city itself. Roosters, dogs, squealing brakes of the Camello bus, the engines of ancient cars, conversations floating up from the street, I cannot believe it is so far away now. Even the architecture of the city is a kind of music; crumbling facades of Spanish colonial architecture mixing with stark, blockiness of 1950’s moderism. Wide tree lined avenues with spindly, narrow streets and alley ways leading off of them, laundry and Cuban flags flapping in the trade winds over head. And then there is the Malecon, the famous seawall, which waves crash over when the wind is strong enough.
Havana is everything I imagined, and more than I even dared to dream of. It is a city that is haunting my memory and seems too difficult to talk about. A part of me still thinks I can walk out the door and go down to the Malecon, up the hill to Coppelia at L and La Rampa, or walk through Centro Habana on San Lazero. The reality of Havana eclipsed everything else I knew as soon as I got there. I a drifting on autopilot through cold New York streets, I know my way but I am having a hard time remembering what or why. I am still translating everything I see into Spanish, it is a comfort for me to walk down fifth avenue in Brooklyn and read all the signs in Spanish, but here the colors are red, white and green for Mexico, instead of red, white and blue for Cuba.
(there will be more coming soon)
