Rush Hour Existentialism.

Where am I going?

 

Nowhere. I am going nowhere, stuck here in my own specific superstructure of time, space, history, energy, and culture. Sitting here in traffic, watching the other side of the highway; watching cars chase each other in that psychosexual Freudian-accordion dance of mechanized war. Where are they going? Somewhere. Somewhere other than here.

 

What time is it. It’s not a question. It’s a feeling I get while sitting on the exit ramp; a state of mind I enter while staring at the pink sun-eating clouds on the horizon, watching as a white Suburban flies in front of me, watching him, her, whoever move up one car length and advance a millisecond in the space-time continuum of rush-hour exit-ramp pole-position, watching the oblivious gaze of the driver who I see now is a fat man in a football jersey, a man who has just maneuvered into twenty-seventh (instead of twenty-eighth) place in line at a red light: that perfect analogue for the end of one’s life. Do you see it? Let’s pack it in folks, sit impatiently, inch forward ever so slightly, and sigh in that especially touristy way over the performances of artifice you only hear on drive-time radio.

 

The light turns green and you realize that a third of your life is gone,

(if you’re lucky).

Don't Axe, Don't Tell

I Don’t Sleep Well in Cuba

                I woke up this morning breathless, partially due to the amount of combusted carbon I’ve inhaled since arriving in Cuba, and partially because I just had a nightmare. I had just witnessed a vivid and dramatic axe-fight in my dream. I’m not sure what started the whole incident, but the results were undeniable: a group of men began fighting with large axes. The dream was extremely graphic, too. I won’t go into detail here, but just know that I saw a very detailed type of gore and brutality.

                This dream was significant for a couple of reasons. After seeing a man get the side of his cheek smashed in with an axe, I immediately felt the urge to run. In the dream with my mouth open and heart pounding, I began backing away. Unfortunately, (or perhaps most fortunately) I didn’t see what followed because I woke up right after this, but the notion of escaping doom was so real I could taste it. In fact, my jaw is still sore due to its crocodile-like, vice-tight clench. As I emerged from the very real sounds of metal meeting flesh and bone, (which can only be described as having that same wet thud that one might experience if he or she were to chuck meat-filled-water-balloons from atop the Empire State Building) I started thinking about the Vikings, the Samurai, Native Americans, the machete wielding Cubans, and a swath of other groups that would have most assuredly done battle with such metallic implements. Then I started thinking about modern warfare, which, of course, includes everything from bayonets to bombs to Bouncing Betties. And then I started thinking about the countless dead. There are lots, vast lots.

                So, there I was lying in bed, thinking about axe fights and war while listening to Havana awake from a very short night. Then, in that special way in which my pre-morning, pre-coffee, pre-conscious, and precluded mind is wont to operate, I began to flesh out this idea a bit further. I started thinking of my detachment from violence. Sure, I’ve seen some documentaries, but I’ve never experienced soul-raking violence first hand, and for this I am grateful. I started thinking about the dichotomy which exists between eras of war; between civilian soldiers and professional soldiers. I started thinking about the concept of sacrifice. Of course, in war exists a sacrifice much deeper than physical; it’s spiritual and psychological along with the physical—but this is a dumb cliché, so I’ll retract.

                Regardless of the sacrifice, we (and I say we as those who have never experienced this sort of violence) have been taught that this is the price for freedom, but such a primitive sentiment has morphed over the years into a sort of motto, a militaristic mantra. Nonetheless, I think there is a more fundamental truth in this idea of sacrifice. What is the meaning of sacrifice if not the selflessness of one for the selfishness of others? In other words, one self gives his or her life so that other selves might have, well, selves. Whether or not my dream was due to something I saw on T.V., an idea inculcated, or the result of a stomach full of rich and hard-to-digest Cuban food I cannot tell. Nevertheless, it was still pretty compelling.

                I think about conversations I’ve had in the past with my friends. We’d puff our chests while consuming multiple adult beverages and boast about our unflinching ability to do what was necessary to protect ourselves and our loved ones, when in all honesty I’m not actually sure what I would do if I was confronted with such a thing. But, if my dream is any indication, and if the perpetrator wields an axe, a sword, or a machete, then you can bet your bright little behind that the only thing anyone will see is my behind making its way fast and furious in the opposite direction.

          I tried to kick up some dust in Hemingway’s hotel room today, but it had been cleaned, meticulously. It was sterile in the most counterfeit of ways, replicated ineffectually with museum-esque forgery. Hemingway might have stood here once, but the aura is gone now, and all that remains is the perfume of a tour guide.

                                                                                     * * *

        I’ve been in a handful of gift shops recently and I’ve noticed an abundance of Hemingway memorabilia in each one of them. This is tourism at its most recognizable; it happens everywhere and Cuba is not immune: the commodification of some regionally important (insert noun here). In this case it’s Hemingway’s aura that is being commodified. This is sort of another glimpse into capitalism, which is, I opine, even more ironic in a country like Cuba because it reveals another basic human characteristic: the desire to be profitable. Hemingway has been idealized and commodified in Cuba, which is no doubt something that he would have hated, (though he also would have probably predicted with a superb fatalism). As I pick up a postcard with Hemingway’s bearded face on the front, a woman behind me says “one CUC.” That’s expensive for a postcard.

I buy it anyway.

          It’s still sort of magical, though. That is, Hemingway’s aura. At least it felt that way when we visited his house in Finca Vigia. I gazed into his extra-organized house and noticed it was eerily well kept. Thousands of books were aligned perfectly on shelves and bookcases, which is curious to me when I think about it now because Hemingway was a writer, and writers tend to have books scattered everywhere; it’s almost policy. I wonder what he would think about what they’ve done to his hotel room, his house, and his beloved Pilar. I stared in through an open window: a military uniform was positioned just so, and a half dozen decapitated and taxidermied heads overlooked the hotel-like-made-up-beds and the ghosts of Hemingway’s cats. It cost five CUC. That’s cheap for aura.

06/13/2012

A Storm of My Own Making

                I’m pretty sure that a large brick is lodged somewhere in my midsection, which is an extremely regrettable thing to have happen in Cuba. It’s regrettable due primarily to a noticeable and significant lack of toilet paper here, (not to mention a significant lack of toilet seats!) I’ve been stuffing my face with rice, beans, and some form of meat for nearly two weeks, and I’m quite certain that most of it is still chillin’ out somewhere in an intestine. At least twice a day I enter into a state of emergency, eyes searching for the nearest place to unleash hell upon a porcelain god. I have yet to unleash anything except numerous beads of sweat and weightless grunts of frustration. Apparently, though I guess quite fortunately, the brick in my stomach is taking its sweet time making its way to the exit in the rear. The down side to my predicament, of course, is that I am terribly uncomfortable: my pants don’t feel or fit right, both my stomach and back hurt, and I’m becoming increasingly irritable. The problem is compounded every day that I don’t purge: food, food, and more food is piled atop an already incapacious arena, and gravity is no friend to this situation. I think about the food shortage again. I think about how well off I am as an American; how spoiled I am. I think about how easy it is to get toilet paper back home; it’s everywhere. People even use it to decorate trees. I think about how easy things are for most of us back in the States and it sort of makes me sick. Whatever. Two things are certain at 5:04 p.m. of June 13^th: it looks like it’s going to rain soon, and I’m finally starting to understand what it means to shit bricks.

Curveball

              I turn on the television in our hotel room and land on ESPN. This is my nightly routine: winding down to Sportscenter en Español. I watch the baseball highlights of the day and see players like Alexi Ramirez, Yeonis Cespedes, and Lyonis Martin, all of which are Cuban defectors. I can’t even imagine what a transition it must be to go from Cuban baseball to American baseball, to go from making virtually nothing to making millions. Then again, I’m American: I’ve been programmed to assign the idea of value to that of monetary worth. It’s hard to break bad habits. Or is it?

               

              I threw a baseball to a young child earlier today. While I was standing outside, waiting for the rest of our group to gather for dinner, this young boy was walking home from school with a cluster of friends. I was tossing a fairly new Nike baseball up in the air, reminiscing back to when I was a freshman in high school, a starting pitcher on the varsity team. The boy spouted something in Spanish that I didn’t quite understand, that is, until he raised his hands. It was clear that he wanted me to toss the ball to him. So I did. He caught the ball and moved a few steps away from his group. He immediately fixated on the ball, eyes staring intently at the words “Nike Official League.” I’m not sure that he understood what he was looking at other than a baseball, just like I’m not sure that the words “Nike Official League” mean anything other than that this baseball was made by Nike. After he quickly showed his friends the ball, he raised his arm to throw it back to me. I said, “No. Keep it.” He didn’t totally understand, that is, until I raised my hands and gesticulated in that universal way that the ball was now his. I can honestly say that this particular second in time was probably the most valuable of our trip, at least for me. When the boy made the connection that he had just been gifted a Nike Official League baseball, a slow yet overwhelming grin crept across his face; it was slow for him and overwhelming for me. I’m thankful that I was wearing sunglasses. From ear to ear this boy looked as if his face was made of shiny gums and brilliant white teeth. Immediately, when the rest of his group understood what had just happened, he was mobbed by his friends. He hid the ball with a joking selfishness then trotted in front of the group with the bravado that most children are innately equipped with. It was magical. We shared something during that second, and I’m not exactly sure what it was, but it was potent. Memories from my youth flashed by, an enchanted time where the mythological was still very much a part of my reality, where gods still walked the earth and blessed the most worthy of mortals, and I remember, for that brief second when the boy realized that the baseball was now his, I felt that magic again. Though the boy ended up with a fairly new Nike Official League baseball, he gave me something so much more incredible, so much more valuable. Without overly appealing to sentimentality or sounding too cliché, I have to say that though I gave this young boy a baseball, the gift was totally mine.

Havana Realism

Perro Means Dog

                There is a distinct sound made when the rusted fender of a ’55 Pontiac Star Chief meets the skull of a medium-sized dog. This happened five minutes ago on one of our daily trips to Case de la Alba, and the sound still reverberates in our minds, our souls.

                We’ve walked the same way every day so far to our lecture meeting place, and during these morning journeys we always see a smattering of feral animals. Well, today, about five minutes from our destination, we walked past a kitten and a young dog; they looked like friends, half grooming and half playing. As we walked by, I attempted to communicate with the kitten via that Universal Kissing Language that humans seem to assume all animals understand—though I must note here that I have to be careful because that kissing sound is a Cuban form of greeting, and one that on many occasions seems to have subtextual sexuality imbedded within it. The last thing I want is to make that kissing sound and piss off a Cuban; I don’t want them to think that I’m mocking them. Moreover, I also don’t want anyone who reads this to think that I’m comparing Cubans to animals because I certainly am not. I’m the animal here; I’m the foreigner, and just as I finished making that kissing sound I noticed an elderly man glaring at me. So, I had to tell him in English “No. I was talking to the cat.”

                As cats are wont to do, the baby blue eyes of this three-or-so month old tabby barely moved, looked at me with an oblivious innocence, sized me up, and decided that the absolute best course of action for this particular situation was to lick its genitals with a specific kind of feline ferocity. The dog, a young, light-brown Labrador mix, though with a noticeably more compact frame, turned with its tail wagging and its tongue flapping and walked. I’m not sure, but I don’t think the dog was following us, just like I’m not sure that it was inspired to walk because of my use of the Universal Kissing Language.

                It was a hauntingly hollow sound, like slamming the door of an empty washing machine, and it cut straight through the cacophonous sounds of a bustling Havana. When I first turned to locate where the sound came from, it didn’t register, nothing did. I saw the ass end of a red ’55 Pontiac Star Chief, its brake lights blaring as it hovered over what appeared to be a dog, one horrifyingly similar to the dog we just past. The dog looked as if it were trying to wake up from a nap in the middle of the street: it lay on its side with its tail still wagging, though with a new, pathetic energy. Its left leg was kicking, trying without success to run away from the Star Chief, from the concrete mattress where it lay, from the jumbled confusion of what just happened. The rest of the dog was statue still, save for the shallow rise and fall of its emaciated rib cage. It became immediately clear that the dog was broken; it was trying to flee because that’s what dogs do. This dog could no longer flee, and the distraught look in its eyes revealed to those of us still staring that such a fact was excruciatingly unacceptable.

                I couldn’t help but stare. I couldn’t help but watch as the dog kicked with its only functioning leg, laying there with the rest of its mangled body motionless, no doubt searching for some dog-explanation, some dog-meaning as to why it could no longer move the way it had just seconds before. That’s when I heard the miserable, heart-stabbing wheeze-slash-whimper, a knife that cut through horns, birdsong, idle conversation, and the souls of those who stared at its origin.

                My initial reaction was to run to the dog. If the dog was suffering, then I had to put it out of its misery; it’s my duty. Was it suffering? It sure as hell looked that way. I mean, wasn’t it my duty? Wasn’t it my obligation to immediately end the dog’s life because letting it continue to suffer was inhumane? Torture? This is not the type of thing I’m familiar with. I didn’t even know how I was to go about doing it if I indeed had to. Did I have the necessary tools required for such an undertaking?

Contents of backpack: baseball, baseball glove, mechanical pencil, plastic Bic pen, an umbrella, and a common Spanish phrasebook. What if I was wrong in my estimation? I mean, the only veterinary experience I had up until that point was changing kitty litter and overusing that Universal Kissing Language. I pulled out the Spanish phrasebook as if therein was the answer. Nothing. Maybe if I used the Universal Kissing Language and the dog responded in a somewhat normal fashion, then I should try to save it, I thought. But the dog did not look normal; it was still kicking the air and the wheeze-slash-whimper had just been accompanied by a wet gurgle. Oh God. I fingered through the phrasebook for something like “Hurry! I need to kill this dog!” It wasn’t in there; this book’s for tourists, and that’s exactly the way I felt as a tall, dark Cubano trotted disinterestedly out to the dog, grabbed its erratically kicking leg, and dragged the dying animal out of sight. This was the best of all possible solutions as far as I was concerned and I’ll tell you why:  the only other option I had was to pull out the Bic and frantically stab the dog to end its suffering. This was a terribly frightening proposition for the dog, any spectators, and for myself, its improvised and exponentially inadequate executioner: I am a naïve foreigner; a dumb animal. I am just a tourist here and they certainly don’t make pens like they used to.

Text Messages: It’s More Complex Than You Might Think.

       The world is full of conversation; it’s full of moving mouths and noises. The world is full of sounds, zounds, politically motivated paroxysmal outbursts, homiletics, burps, and whistles; it’s full of opinion and monolithic  grandiloquence, symbol, adulation, and hyperbolic forms of verbal flatulence so potent as to blow one’s head clean off his or her shoulders. And here, before us (the viewers and listeners) is this vast visual and sonic landscape of purported fact and conscripted meaning; a horizon so infinitely complex and convoluted that it makes the tautological nature of the dictionary (that which is used to define) seem, well, tautological, circular, and reckless. So, while you (the readers/viewers/listeners of my conversation) are deciphering the above hypercomplex paragraph, let me just add some other variables to this equation.

       Rene Descartes is probably most famous for his cogito ergo sum, that is, I think therefore I am. Most of us have heard this phrase even if we aren’t totally sure what it means. In a sort of simplistic truncation of its idea, cogito focuses on that of one’s consciousness. What it means is this: since I have a consciousness, and since I have given myself the title “I,” then surely I must exist apart from other “I”s, and regardless of whether or not I can truly know that this separation exists, at the very least I can claim that I can think about it. I wonder why such a phrase became so popular?

       Let’s return to my first paragraph. The conversation I’m referring to is indeed complex, for it happens not only between humans, but it happens between everything else as well: rockslides (gravity and erosion), falling leaves (seasonal cycles, gravity, weather patterns), rising and falling tides (lunar cycle), meteorological systems (rising and falling of barometrical pressure), compost (chemical composition and de-composition), et cetera. Of course, without human consideration, these “conversations” have no inherent meaning. One must try to come to terms with the fact that “meaning” and “function” are disparate concepts, (though they often get linked together and influence each other, and both are a sort of discourse with their own, unique vocabulary). Function and meaning are constructed; they are both forms of impression, i.e., of narrative, and they find their domain within a specific semiological system: the signifier, the signified, and the association between the two: the sign. 

        But, it is hard to decipher what is fact and what is fiction, or what is fact from what is fiction. After all, does not everything fit snugly into a sort of fictive framework, especially when considering how these conversations are developed within the human mind? Information enters the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, etc.) which must then be translated into a language that the brain understands. We gaze upon the American flag and see the colors red, white, and blue, and (unless of course colorblind) one can see that these three colors are quite vivid and salient. This is a language that the brain understands, that is, the abstract conceptualization of what is actually a quality of light and the organization of such information. But the concepts of both color and light exist within a scientific discourse, and discourse is just a euphemism for a symptomatic system of beliefs. Scientists will certainly disagree with my previous claim, and this doesn’t surprise me, for their job is to observe and argue. But here is my point, and it hearkens back to the idea of cogito. Just like every other discourse, be it a theological, philosophical, scientific, cultural, and/or societal, each discourse is confined within its own semiological system. In short, even if two very different discourses operate within the same language, (say a debate in English between an Atheist using a scientific discourse and a Theist using a theological discourse) both entities are using their cogito, that is, their own consciousness as an affirmation of truth when in fact all they are arguing over is a belief or a system of signification. Though the two discourses exist within the same language, they are not equal; they are not talking about the same things. Consider oil and vinegar salad dressing: you could shake it for 2000 years. And, as soon as you stopped what would happen?

         Belief requires an extravagant suspension of dis-belief, and some of us have not this specific kind of capacity. We look back at the American Flag what do we see? A piece of cloth. But it’s not what we see that is true in this case. And this is my point. When looking at the flag we don’t see what it is but what it represents, and this, of course, all depends on which side of the pond we’re on. The whole world is like this. The world is a teleprompter: an image not so much fixed as it is fixated upon, a sound stuck in our ever-present ears; an evolving sensation that becomes true when in fact truth is much more complex than most give it credit. Nietzsche said that “Truth is a mobile army of metaphor, metonymy, and anthropomorphism,” and this sentence is, well, seemingly true. However, though I am drawn to this sentence for many reasons, the idea that I cannot escape from is that his sentence is only a metaphor; it is a metaphor for humanity and by humanity, and it reminds me of my favorite paradox. But as such a beautiful paradox is wont to operate, it’s a sentence that both mesmerizes and sends the brain into a special kind of meltdown. Ready? Ok, here it is:

This sentence is false.

                                                                         Just like this essay is a lie.