A Morning Like Any Other Only More So

Life in photos

Incoherent as it has been, including Kmart trips (Tallulah likes to try on masks and pick out skimpy underwear for me)...I find myself shopping for cookware, always choosing things for someone I am not quite, but maybe could be, or once was...

And trying to get dressed for work without a mirror. 

Spa day, birthday fantasy, shared with good friend Auriana.

Cuba--Havana to Guantánamo and back

The door of the bank. Enormous doors everywhere.

Out the window of the casa particular.

Many of my pictures turned out bad or weird or from an odd angle because I kept taking them without looking to see what I was photographing. Things seemed to stay clearer in my mind that way. Photographing from up high seemed less invasive, too. 

In the Museo de la Revolución.

The "Hall of Mirrors" in the Museo, which used to be the "president's palace."

The museum of Guantánamo province. 

They really do have a bunch of those old American cars, just like you see in pictures.  They are apparently referred to as "almendrones," or big almonds.

Train cars made in Iran.

Giant machete statue in Santiago.

Back in Havana.

A house in Vedado. My friend and fellow researcher Don talked about how some of the people who lived in these grand houses thought the revolution would be just a flash in the pan. They left with a suitcase and never came back. Their houses are still full of china and furniture, right where they left them. Poor people were settled in them by the revolutionary government, and they lived, and still live, alongside those things. 

On the Malecón, in a 1953 convertible.

I have guilt about not having blogged in awhile, and yet I forget about it entirely. Part of that is the fact that it has been hard to get on the internet, in the slipstream of summer, on the run from UVI, and yet up until recently continually in the gaping eye of the university, anchored in Brewer’s Bay in full sight of the new student dorms and the administration building. Now we are in Culebra, which always feels like an odd and desperate place, but at least I am able to think again.

The complicated pleasures of life aboard. Technology is part of this. The frustrations of not being able to “connect,” but temporary freedom from endless pings, exigencies of connection, makes my physical reality so much more immediate.

     Guilt over not seeing Tallulah, and not being able to pay attention to her when I do see her, have been radically lessened by lack of internet and the decision to take her out of school. With extra time on my hands, I decide to immediately begin homeschooling. We explore, informed by the utopian vision of anarchy. Things find their own shape once we stop imposing a generalized order. We scan poetry, do science experiments involving copious amounts of food coloring, discover an aged Alexander Calder animating a strange mechanical circus he has created under a miniature big top, once Adam gets unlimited data on his new phone. Yes, we cluster around the internet again as a flickering campfire, but of course it, like everything, hangs on a thin thread, and will doubtless soon fall temporary victim to the vagaries of unforeseen circumstances. And we’ll feel frustrated, and yet breathe a sigh of relief.

Tai chi at Electric Beach

The semester is over. The summer lurches to life, not that it's not always summer here, in this land without seasons. I am bushwhacking my way through a week of professional obligations and otherwise slouching on the giant exercise ball I use for a chair and staring deeply into the cycloptic eye of my computer. My novel takes shape at its usual pace. Another month, I'm giving myself, to finish it. 

We don't really plan the same way we did years ago (well, speaking for myself), not cloaking our fantasies in as much flesh as we used to. I think we use another logic now, having accustomed ourselves to improvisation, knowing that something is always on the horizon.

The view when I get home from work.

Latest random photos

Double rainbow where we live! And

self-portrait as a cat. Last Sunday Tallulah and I went to "Afternoon on the Green," a UVI event that I perceived as an unwanted work experience, and she perceived as an opportunity for epic fun involving meat, a bouncy castle, and face painting. I belatedly realized that I need to look at things more from her perspective. 

Spring Break Sail to Culebra

Getting ready for Adam's cousin Kate's wedding. My photo choices have become increasingly random--I have no photos of the actual wedding.

Another case in point: gratuitous cat in a box

Tallulah and Olivia--I bought them ice cream after school and they approached it like a new art form, then had races across the deck of the library. It was good to be back--felt sorta like home would feel. I have to guess at that feeling, but there's nothing wrong with that. Then we had to go. No llores, Olivia sang out the window of the car as they drove away. And we went back to Callisto.

Rough weather so we broke up the trip back with a stop in Culebrita, where we hiked to the lighthouse.

Callisto swaying in the swell out there.

And I'm looking across at St. Thomas, on the other side of those whitecaps, fading out in a light mist. Is that home?

Inside the falling-apart, structurally unsound lighthouse itself.