Good morning!
So. While I have the gourmet egg thing with vegetables and polenta (aka, leftover grits) cooking in the oven for our brunch, I will begin again on Hemingway's house.
More pictures.
The bedroom. I love the reading lamp over the bed.
View from the writing tower.
The pool. They could make a fortune if they filled it and charged entry.
I think this is the saddest and most awkward photo I've ever seen. Bless that little boy's heart. It must have been hell to have been one of Hemingway's sons. Another thing I'd love to read about.
The Pilar. Hemingway's beloved fishing boat. Restored to shiny glory.
With American flag.
One of the more interesting trees on the grounds.
Ernest Hemingway's bathroom! I just had to cringe at the thought of Hemingway looking down from heaven to see tourists from every country in the world, hanging in the windows of his bathroom, taking pictures of his toilet. I myself did not take pictures of his toilet but I did take this photo which shows two jars of preserved somethings in them. One is probably a lizard of some sort. The other? Albino bat? What do you see? Why? Why did Hemingway have jars of preserved creatures in his bathroom? The many, many heads of dead animals he shot wasn't enough?
Oh, Papa. Such a man you were.
Okay. Now I've just gone and read a lot more about Hemingway, his life, his years in Cuba, his writing, his illnesses, his death. Here's an incredible article written in the August, 1965 issue of The Atlantic by Robert Manning, who had visited Hemingway at Finca Vigia (the Havana home) in 1954, the year I was born. The picture from that article.
It appears that Hemingway and Castro were good friends until Castro decided to nationalize property owned by Americans in Cuba. That picture was taken in 1960, the year I moved to Florida.
And the rest, as they say, is history and Hemingway moved to Idaho where his health deteriorated drastically, both physically and mentally. He received many ECT treatments and ended up shooting himself with his favorite shotgun. His father, brother, and sister all also committed suicide.
The other day I read a quote and damn if I can remember where it came from. But the quote was, "Life, I forgive you," and I cried when I read it. Reading about Hemingway brings that sentence to mind and I could weep again.
And to tie all of this together in a completely inappropriate way, I give you this picture.
Remember the coach? After we'd toured the house and the grounds of Finca Vigia and visited the gift shop (I bought two postcards), we all found our way to the little covered patio where musicians were playing and you could buy sodas or drinks. And that's where the coach and one of our party met up and began to dance together, beers in hand.
There is nothing in this world that makes me happier than seeing two men dancing together whom you would never in this world think would dance with other men. There is just a pure, honest joy in the music and the moment which transcends all.
I never quite got the story on the coach, but I think he may have been a well-known ball-player in his day and now, here he is, coaching the Cuban equivalent of Little League, enjoying a beer on a hot summer day, meeting and dancing with sudden, newly made friends.
This is what I loved about my trip. Not just the amazing history, the politics, the food, the new experiences, but the chance encounters, the exchanges made between human beings of so many different races and colors and talents and abilities. The connections made despite the language gap.
Here's another quote I just read and it comes from a review of a new book by a Tallahassee writer whom I have long admired, Bob Shacochis. Kingdoms in the Air. Dispatches From The Far Away.
Travel is the road to perspective; only your dog should recognize you upon your return. Travel lightly, for nothing “can be exchanged honestly, or permanently, except memories and goodwill.”
Saturday evening and I am firmly in Lloyd, listening to Garrison Keillor's swan song on Prairie Home companion. I've busied myself with the garden this afternoon a little. I weeded, I picked green beans which just keep coming. I've sprayed those nasty bugs on the peas with soapy water with rosemary oil in it. I've picked those zinnias, all from volunteer plants, reseeded from last year's planting of them. And I've made Mr. Moon's favorite dessert for a belated birthday treat from a recipe that I alter completely. This recipe came into the marriage with him and it calls for things like Cool Whip and instant pudding so of course you know I change it. I make my own chocolate custard, stirring milk and eggs and chocolate over a double boiler and I whip heavy cream and I add sugar to the crust which is made of butter, flour, and chopped pecans. I have told my daughters that if I die and Daddy remarries, they must give the recipe to his new wife and if they like her, they can tell her the changes I made and if they do not like her, not to say a fucking word.
And who knows? If he does remarry, should I die, his new wife might be a better cook than I am.
I hope not. I'd rather she be younger and cuter and a terrible cook.
I'm mean like that.
It makes me so damn sad that this is Garrison's last night on Prairie Home. I can barely stand it. My Saturday night ritual for so many years has to been to listen to the show while I cook Saturday night supper. Maybe there will be podcasts of the old shows. Perhaps not quite as pleasurable but better than nothing.
I suppose.
Life just keeps changing, doesn't it?
I'm going to string and snap those green beans and listen to the show now. I'm going to make some cornbread and I'll cook the beans with some of the potatoes we grew. Jason sent over some pork he smoked and pulled and I might heat up last night's okra and tomatoes too. A very, very fine summer meal.
And I'll get back to Cuba later. Until I do, here's a picture from our last meal at the Artist's Pub. Lis and I again got there first and we had a coffee and then both of us tried a new rum.
A fan, a menu, the oil and vinegar for salad, rum, a bottle of water, the prospect of one more delicious Cuban supper before us.
It's a hot, steamy day in Lloyd, almost one o'clock already and I have done nothing but little dribs and drabs of this and that. A quick sweep-up here, a tiny bit of laundry there, a walk to the post office where I had to stop on both the way there and back to admire my neighbor's crepe myrtle.
And this, people, is why you should not cut back your crepe myrtle.
I just finished my breakfast/lunch of watermelon and leftover zipper cream peas and rice. Perfection. As I ate, I read a review of a restaurant in the New Yorker, it's description of a side-dish of sweet potato puree with lemongrass and I had no longing to taste that particular pairing. The complete satisfaction of the simple peas with rice suits me absolutely and I could wish for nothing finer in this world. I want to get out into my garden today to weed and tidy and spray the fucking aphids on the peas. Last night Mr. Moon said that he thought them so delicious that he wants to tear out the entire garden and plant nothing but those peas. I understood.
I got to talk to Lis this morning. Her life has not slowed down one iota since we got back. I don't know how many gigs she's had since Wednesday or how many people have recorded at their studio which requires her to not only sit-in as a musician but to also provide the meals. When I say that I am a badass, I can't even begin to compare myself to that woman.
Here she is with a lady who was selling peanuts, singing in the most gorgeous deep voice you ever heard. Lis joined her for a moment, harmonizing and it was instant love between them. We bought the peanuts and never did get around to eating them all although they were delicious. We were just never hungry enough, nor did we have enough time! I'm not kidding you.
Okay. Cars. Isn't that the image everyone has now of Cuba? The vintage cars. I know I posted this before, but doesn't it sort of sum up what we think Cuba might look like?
The Revolutionary billboard and a vintage American car?
Here are some more of those old beauties.
I could have taken a whole lot more and here's what I learned- most of the most beautiful and lovingly restored old autos are taxis now. If you've ever had any idea of going down to Cuba and buying a '55 Chevy for cheap, forget about it. One of our group talked to the owner of one of the taxis and he paid $30,000 for his several years ago and said he could probably get twice that now.
How, you may ask, can a Cuban taxi driver afford such a vehicle?
Well, according to Ruben, again this is mostly possible with the backing of an American relative. With one of these taxis a Cuban can make far more money than say a doctor or a lawyer and I believe they get to keep their tips. So don't be looking at those beauties as something you could ever buy. They represent an entire business and income to the owners.
If we'd had a little more downtime, I would have loved to have hired a driver to take us around for a little tour in one as one of our group did. He said it was an amazing experience.
I feel as if we got to see such a very, very small part of Havana which is, in itself, such a very, very small part of Cuba. The only drive out of the city we took was to go visit Hemingway's Cuban home and I loved that trip despite the fact that I almost died from heat stroke.
So. Time to talk about that part of the trip I suppose, since I've found my way there. I have so many pictures. Please be patient with me but in Hemingway's home I found another of my own personal dream houses and couldn't stop snapping. The Cuban government maintains this house and the grounds as a museum and it is gorgeous. They obviously are very proud of Hemingway's residence in their country, his love for it. And say what you will about Ernest Hemingway, Papa, his style, his lifestyle, his drinking, his overtly macho behavior, his hunting, his wives...
Doesn't matter. He was and remains a very important American author and for good reason. The man led a life. And he did indeed have a way with stringing words together to tell a story which was unique and all his own.
And now that I've been to this place I want desperately to know more about his time there. As with this entire journey, one road leads down another and I could spend the rest of my life learning more about it, trying to answer just a few of the many, many questions I have.
The entrance to his estate. I guess it's an estate. Whatever. As we pulled in, we noticed that a game of baseball was being played off to our left by little boys. You see that guy on the left in the white pants? He's the coach. Don't forget him. He comes into play (so to speak) a little later on in this story.
You are not allowed into the house. You can, however, lean into open doors and windows and take all the pictures you want. You sometimes have to stand there in line to do so, the hot sun beating down on you as people from all over the world take their own photos with phones, with cameras, both fancy and simple. Here are some of mine.
Dining room, I suppose.
His desk in his writing tower.
The entrance room. Do you see those magazines?
A living room, I presume.
I'm going to have to start part two of this particular adventure on another post because I can't figure out how to get any more pictures into this one.
And it's two-thirty now and I have a few things I need to do around here.
Here? There? Where the fuck am I?
Can I tell you that I don't think I've enjoyed anything so much in forever as sitting here, writing and sharing photos about this trip? I read a quote once about how writers get to live everything twice. The living of it, then the sharing of it. I believe this to be true but I would add that sometimes we get to live everything over and over and over and over again.
Sometimes this is horrible. Sometimes, it is wonderful.
This story, this re-experiencing, is wonderful. For me.
So. This is the sort of thing that was happening at my house today.
And like this.
And of course this.
And then we went to the Indian buffet and to Big Lots where this happened.
And many, many other things including Gibson shedding his britches as soon as he got here and when we asked him where his pants were he said, "Pants BEGONE!" and ran out of the kitchen and now I'm like...Cuba? Did I go to Cuba?
Yes. Yes I think I did and I seem to have the pictures to prove it.
Okay. Where was I? Fuck if I know.
I haven't spoken much about the people I traveled with. The musicians besides Lis and James Quine were Eva Danielle, Michael Jordan, and Sam Pacetti. I've known Sam for years and had met Jim before but had never met or seen Danielle or Michael play. And they blew me away and represented the US beautifully. The Cubans seemed to love them all. There were others in the group who came along and I'm not going to name them because they aren't performers and as such, they deserve some privacy. But they were all a good group of people and by the end of the trip we'd shared a lot of laughs and experiences, not to mention plates passed around the table. I was somewhat shocked in this day and time to discover that not a one of us had any dietary restrictions and if we did, no one said anything about them. We ate all the food groups and drank all the rum drinks. The last night at the club they ran out of beer but that wasn't a problem since they still had plenty of rum.
God. It's a miracle we all made it back alive.
And yet...we did.
Lis and I adapted to our little nun room. We'd come in at three in the morning with our four keys and Miranda, BLESS HER HEART had to open at least one of the doors for us every night until the last night when we finally figured out out to open the main door. The lock was tricky, y'all. Even in the sober light of day we couldn't figure out that fucker. Lis and I would whisper apologies to Miranda profusely and she'd shrug and roll her eyes and go lay back down on the couch and Lis and I would go into our room and turn on the AC and the fans and take cold showers and put on our cotton nun nightgowns and fall into deep sleep.
We felt so bad about having to wake Miranda up and finally, on the last morning, Yosi came over and did some translating for us so we could finally talk a little and she assured us that it had been no problem and that she had been so happy to have us and we were welcome back any time.
That's her and her daughter. Lis gave them each one of her beautiful ribbon flowers she'd made and we left them a good tip, I think. Through Yosi we got to tell them how much we appreciated the beautiful, amazing breakfasts and coffee every morning and how sorry we were to have woken them up every night. Also, how grateful we were to have been able to visit their beautiful country and Miranda told us that it used to be that Cubans could fly to Miami for lunch and come home for supper and she hoped it would be that way again some day. That the feelings between the people of our country and hers were positive and beautiful, no matter what the governments did.
And of course I cried. Even Yosi teared up a little.
Lis and I were excellent traveling companions.
We just purely love each other and I was so happy to be her roadie, despite what I said about carrying instruments. When she was playing I'd tell the person sitting next to me, "Mi amiga!" and point to her. She's so talented and beautiful and strong as hell. We both curse like sailors, we both love our long-time husbands to pieces, we both love to cook and eat, we both like our beverages. And here's something so sweet- while we were gone, Mr. Moon and Lon went to Dog Island together and it made us so happy to think of them playing cards, fishing, and relaxing together. Especially the relaxing part because that's something our fellas rarely do. Well, Lon never. So that was a sweetness in our hearts while we were there.
As I said, we split our meals and that worked out beautifully as the portions were so huge. I know! I don't have enough pictures of food! It seemed like such a fucking cliche at the time but now I wish I had succumbed to the cliche. Here's some ropa vieja, though, with eggplant.
Holy mother of god, that was good. We had salads, we had fish, we had lobster, we had pork, beef and chicken. We had croquetas. Lots of croquetas. The food was simply amazing in all regards. Fresh, beautiful, perfectly prepared. Yosi told us that ten years ago, there WAS no food in Cuba but there sure is now. I do not think that the people of Cuba themselves get to eat the way we ate by any means, though. And this is another of the mysteries of our trip. We saw several government owned grocery stores (although we did not go into any of them) and there was a rations place right across the street from Casa Miranda. It was dark, gray, and people lined up outside and were called in, one by one and would come out carrying a small package. I did not see bakeries or markets although I did see people walking by with loaves of bread in their arms.
Tourism is beginning to happen in Cuba and there seem to be a goodly plenty of restaurants catering to them. Ruben told us that since Raul Castro has taken the reins of the country, private businesses are becoming more common but as I understand it, they have to be businesses you run out of your own home. So even for a fancy restaurant, there may be someone living upstairs. Or in a back room. And most are started with money sent from relatives who have moved to the US, even though sending money to Cuba is illegal, I think. So much is on on the down low there. It just has to be. The businesses which I noticed were the Casas Particular, the restaurants, bars, and souvenir shops which all seemed to carry the exact same ten items which were mostly hats, a few crude carved wooden toys, and...well. That was about it. Fans. Fans were a popular item and Lis bought more than a few and I bought two because dammit- the heat.
One of the main differences between Lis and me is that she does not sweat. At all. Whereas I sweat like...well, I think I set the sweat bar on the high end.
Here I am, meandering again. But yes, Lis and I never once got annoyed with each other (well, she says she never got annoyed with me but I don't see how that's possibly true) and I would carry the napkins and sometimes a banjo if need be and she would navigate me through the streets when that was called for. I get lost in hotels. No. Really. I do. One evening, while everyone else went to a concert in a cathedral, she and I took off alone to explore a little. We were in a square where there were a few things for sale and I was looking at something, and then turned around to see this.
In the time it took me to look at a few pieces of pre-revolution pesos, Lis had negotiated with and begun getting her hair braided by a woman named Jaimie.
Isn't that a beautiful picture? I think so. And after that, we got coffee
and then made our way to the restaurant where we were all meeting after the concert, solely by Lis's abilities.
It was nice for us to get there first. We ordered drinks and settled in to wait and listened to the music.
We tipped them well, bought their CD (Los Hermanos), and Lis gave them one of hers. We told them about the next performance of our group at FAC and they promised to come.
And guess what?
They did.
And as a gift, that man brought Lis a tiny oil painting he'd done that day of a portrait of Lis he'd made from her CD cover art. Have I already told you this? God. I'm really losing my mind and the membrane between that world and this is becoming so wavery. It had to have been a huge financial deal for these guys to come to Fabrica but they did. And they let Lis know how beautiful they had found her voice and that they had listened to her CD all day long.
Listen- I have said this so many times before but I do believe with all of my heart that music and art are the true language of communication and that all of the official diplomacy and blah-blah of governments cannot begin to touch the effectiveness of what happens when people share music and art.
It's time/past time for me to make supper here in Lloyd but I will add one thing. When we were at that restaurant where the waitresses sang and danced for us and Ruben answered our questions, I asked him, "What do the Cuban people think of Obama?" His face lit up like a fully-bloomed sunflower in the brightest light of day.
"They love him!" he said.
And later, when I asked him what the Cubans think of the Rolling Stones and the concert they did, his face got every bit as bright.
"They love them!" And he told us that it had been a hugely important thing for the Cuban people to be able to attend that concert, to have the Rolling Stones in their country because for so many years, their music had been banned and yet, of course, as these things go, so many people had managed to listen to them and they represented so much and to have them there, to play for free, had been amazing. That all of the generations had come together to love that music and the men who played it, old as they are now.
"I don't think that anyone else in the world could have done that," said Ruben. "It was beautiful."
It's only rock and roll, y'all.
It's only music.
If anything can bring us all together, it's only that.
Shitfire. I'll carry a banjo any day if it leads to things like all of this.
So let's just keep rolling here, okay? After the sound check at FAC on Thursday (which came, you will recall, after getting up in Miami, getting to the airport there, going through security, waiting for our flight, flying, coming in to Havana, going through their security, and driving through Havana to the club, our heads exploding with everything we were seeing), we were taken to our various rooms. First to the hotel where the non-musicians in the group were staying. This was a beautiful old place and although I never stepped a foot inside, I hear that the rooms were luxe and fancy and fine. There was a bar. There was a rooftop restaurant. One room, I hear, had a spiral staircase in it up to another room. The non-musicians paid extra to stay in the hotel and that helped pay the way for the musicians who were being funded by a group called The Friendship Association. We were on a deadline that night for sure and we all had to check in, eat some supper and get back to the club by nine for a ten o'clock performance start. After we dropped off the folks at the hotel, Sobe took the rest of us to the Plaza de Christo. I think that was the name. I just called it the Jesus Plaza. Then we got our bags and the instruments (and let me say right here that if I ever travel with a musician again, she's going to play nothing bigger than a ukulele and a harmonica would be preferred) and walked a block or so down the street to our little enclave.
Lis and I were given our assignment- a room in Casa Miranda. We met Miranda at the iron-gated door downstairs and she led us up a dark terrazzo stairway to a another doorway which had a yellow painted iron grill and the door. We walked into the place and I had no idea what the situation was so I put my backpack on the little sofa in the tiny apartment, thinking for some reason that the whole space was to be ours.
But no.
Miranda, who spoke no English, opened the door to another room and this was where Lis and I were to stay.
The room was entirely painted white and there was indeed an air conditioner, although it was not on, and fans mounted on the walls beside the two beds. One a single bed, one a double. The sheets on the bed were white, there were no coverlets of any sort. The only thing not white in the room was the zebra-patterned curtain over the window facing the street.
Then Miranda showed us the bathroom.
Okay. Segue.
Bathrooms in Cuba are incredibly basic and having been to Cozumel many times, I have seen some basic bathrooms. Toilet seats are not necessarily required. Toilet paper is to be put into the basket beside the toilet after use because the sewer system can't handle more than what comes out of the human body. But at least in Cozumel, there was almost always toilet paper. In Cuba- not so much. When I used the bano at the FAC, I was a bit shocked. I had never seen a bathroom quite so depressing in my life and that would include some outhouses and latrines I've used.
Pictures:
When Lis walked in the first time, she thought the place was under construction and walked back out, mystified. Good Lord but what a depressing place! Gray cement, decorated (?) with pink lipsticked graffiti. Not a shred of a paper product or a skinny sliver of a bar of soap in the entire bunker. Thankfully, we'd been given a huge stack of paper napkins at one of the places in Miami where we'd gone and those napkins were our lifesavers.
And another segue: what IS the Fabrica de Arte Cubano?
Once again- confusing.
It is a government sponsored space for artists. There are floors and rooms and stages for music, acting, dance, visual art, films and it's a club where people can come to enjoy the art, dance, drink, flirt, listen, watch, fall in love, see and be seen. A former peanut refining factory. Here's what it looks like at night.
It's a conundrum, like every damn other thing I encountered in Cuba. It's the hottest ticket in town. It's where Mick Jagger went dancing when his little band called The Rolling Stones played in Havana.
There are computer generated images advertising the acts when you come in the door.
(Some of our people.)
And yet- those are the bathrooms.
There was a bathroom in the green room as well and it was marginally better. For one thing, it was painted white. Bring your own toilet paper, however.
So. Back to the bathroom in our little room at Casa Miranda. We had a toilet seat. We had (theoretically) hot and cold running water in the shower. We had a towel each. We had TOILET PAPER! We had a zebra print shower curtain. In short, deep luxury.
However, when Lis and I walked into our little nun room (as we came to call it), tired, hungry, practically heat-stroked, and just plain weary of too-much, too-much, it was a bit of a shock. I think Lis almost cried. I COULD have gotten a room at the hotel. I could have afforded it and she could have stayed there with me. But no- here we were in the musician digs and although I certainly realized that this was probably the nicest room and bathroom on the block, clean as a bean and with air conditioning and a toilet seat, etc., it was hardly what someone with even a basic American perspective would call luxurious.
We didn't have time to worry about it right then, however. We dumped our bags and met up with everyone on the street and walked the block to the restaurant where we were having our quick supper and that picture up top is of Lis sitting at the table there. We had a fabulous meal. We split everything, Lis and I did, and still always had too much to eat. We ordered a Nicoise salad and a Cuban sandwich and took half the sandwich back to the room. WE HAD A REFRIGERATOR IN OUR ROOM!
Lis finished her supper and ran back to the nun room and took the quickest shower in existence and got dressed to perform. I didn't have time to do a damn thing except take off my bra which I was completely done with for that day. No one knew me in Cuba, I am old, and so the fuck what?
Then, back to the Jesus Plaza, onto the bus, and back to the club.
Ay-yi-yi, mommi!
There was air conditioning in the club. Sort of. It was completely and utterly ineffective, especially when filled with all of the bodies that came to fill it. And here are what the seats we sat our asses on for three nights looked like.
The seats in the film space looked a lot more comfortable.
It was so hot up there that I didn't sit down in one. That was on the second floor.
But let me tell you something. After these guys made you a mojito or two or three (which was like watching an art performance in itself), it just didn't matter that much.
And here's another thing- all of the employees at FAC were gorgeous. As were so many of the Cuban people. And of course I have many words about that and pictures to go with and more questions and more stories but right now I seem to have visitors.
Who are rather gorgeous themselves if you ask me.
More later. We haven't even gotten to the tour of Old Havana, Ernest Hemingway's house, Jim dancing with the coach, me posing for a real Cuban professional photographer at FAC, pictures of food, the art museum, Tim becoming the most adorable person on the planet, making new friends both American and Cuban, and the mysteries of running water and the four keys at Casa Miranda.
