On Saturday I woke up in Havana. The sun was just starting to soften in through the stained glass above the threshold of the wooden doors leading out to our balcony overlooking Old Town. The city was quiet, in that delicate pause of pregnant time when the cool inhale of night shifts over to the steamy exhale of day. Anything feels possible. The birds start first, and they have a lot to say between high trills and sweet scales of notes. I lie in bed and listen. Voices start rising from the street below, and I hear a car somewhere, then another. The city stirs to life and by 8am, Cuba is simmering, alive and ready to boil its bright colors with the salty-sweet air that pours in from the sea.
The Cuban work day starts promptly at 8am, which we’d learned just a few days before, thanks to Teri, sister to the owner of the beach hostal at which we stayed for three nights earlier in the week. If you stepped from the door of our room there, you’d enter the warm waters of Bay of Pigs by the time you hit your tenth step. Teri and another woman, Manuela, both in their 50s, cooked all our meals and sat to shoot the shit with me and S in between.
We learned a lot from Manuela, Teri and her 74-year-old brother, Fidel—I cried upon leaving them, their warmth sunk to my core and their optimism shook me as much as their pains. Everyone S and I met in Cuba extended their hearts to us, and everyone had a connection to the US: a brother in Houston, a mother in Boston, a nephew and cousins in Miami. Manuela is saving money to move herself to the US; her eyes welled and voice broke as she told us she doesn’t want to leave her family, but she now needs a better way to help them financially. She doesn’t take off any day of the week, she said, for how else will she eat? Since the new administration was installed a couple years ago, life has grown increasingly difficult. Teri agrees—at the beginning of 2023, she had to leave her 40-year career as a physical therapist because she could no longer live off that salary. Fidel’s hostal, dealing almost exclusively in Euros and US dollars, provides them both refuge.
If travel is a natural teacher, local humans and the environment are its best lesson plans. From where we stayed on Playa Larga, S and I hired a naturalist to guide us through the Zapata Swamp, one of the most humid places on Earth. Our guy Lázaro first pointed out the Cuban national bird, the red-white-and-blue tocororo, and how it swoops, torpedoing through the steamy, dense mangrove branches. We saw flamingos picking their way through crystal-clear lagoons and crabs scuttling to cross the old road built by salt miners of the last century. The next day, we cliff-jumped into a nearby freshwater cavern, saw turtles, a baby crocodile, and the epic Cuban gar, or manjuarí, an endangered prehistoric fish with two rows of fangs that only exists in Cuba and is one of the most primitive beings alive.
Back in Havana, we ate ice cream and walked along the Malecón, revered statues of the great political philosopher Jose Martí, wandered between the Vedado neightborhood’s bookstores, and drank daiquiris at Ernest Hemingway’s old haunting grounds. We gobbled up as much fish and lobster, camarones and crocodile, beans and rice, plantains and lime juice, mango and pineapple, as the hours in a day allowed. With a week on the island, we didn’t want to miss a beat of rumba, but with the heat, the midday siesta quickly installed itself as our saving grace.
On Sunday, S and I returned to the ranch. I’ve just started to fill in my journal with all the sights, sounds, and feelings I want to memorialize. I have so many questions. There’s much to digest and I’m humbled by our experiences. As a friend said before we left, it’s a country as complex as it is beautiful. Everyone should go.
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING
The Agüero Sisters, by Cristina García: Set between the Zapata Swamp, Miami, and Havana, it’s the dynamic story of family myths that’ve been tangled by time and complicated by space. (And oh how I loved reading this while on the Zapata peninsula myself!) The novel bravely raises questions about betrayal: How are we loyal to those we love? If a loved one lies to us, do we accept the lie, or seek the truth? Rich with Cuba’s flora, fauna, and natural history, and the story is also punctuated by US-Cuban politics. García is an imaginative storyteller and I’d recommend this to anyone who likes thrillers and family lore.
For Whom The Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway: I can’t remember the last time I sobbed at the close of a book. Hemingway wrote this while living in Cuba, so S and I both read it as a preamble to our trip. It’s a book about war, and I felt deeply for this clan of guerrilleros in the Spanish hills who are fighting tooth-and-nail for democracy in the country’s 1930s civil war against fascists. Hemingway was there himself and I think he wrote this novel to cleanse himself, to make sense of what he saw and felt. Reading it and steeping myself in such violence and passion added more weight to the already heavy sadness I had been carrying for days around my shoulders. But what kept me going back was the love—the texture of it, the contrast of it—how it changed the guerrilleros, how it challenged the officers, how it moved the souls… like a bed of pine needles making a soft thing from a million sharp pokies. This book is about relationships; they are the meaning of life! And I think in a perverse way I couldn’t stay away, even though it made my depression feel worse at times, because it felt good to have a comrade in such deep thinking about humanity: someone who also could look at darkness, who knows it, who could contemplate it wholly—the reality of it and all that extends far, far, far beyond darkness’s reach.
A Farewell To Arms, by Ernest Hemingway: As far as I’m concerned this book can go in the TRASH. After FWTBT moved me so deeply, I rushed to read AFTA, which is described by the literary establishment as ground-breaking love story. I was so disappointed! The relationship portrayed is absolutely toxic, ultimately resulting in the death of the woman and a man walking into the future with all his entitlement intact. There, I spoiled it for you, so you don’t have to read it.
Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez: After reading Enriquez’s two short story collections (The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, and Things We Lost in the Fire), I couldn’t wait to dive into the Argentinian’s landmark novel, translated from Spanish and published in English earlier this year. The book absolutely builds upon her gift for horror—it’s an occult saga that spans multiple generations of a family embroiled in paranormal obsessions. The characters are vivid and the storytelling comes from multiple points of view, with everyone spiraling around the question: What must we leave behind in order to move forward? Highly recommended! Here’s a new short story Enriquez recently published in the New Yorker: “My Sad Dead.”
Cuba: An American History, by Ada Ferrer: An essential companion for our travels to the island! Truly an easy and fascinating read. From the Pulitzer Prize website: “An original and compelling history, spanning five centuries, of the island that became an obsession for many presidents and policy makers, transforming how we think about the U.S. in Latin America, and Cuba in American society.”
WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO
This song has been on repeat lately: “Pachamama,” by Beautiful Chorus. It’s light and airy and I could listen to it on repeat all day.
...There is no high, no low Except inside within your heart And be just who you are Pachamama I'm coming home...
WHAT I’VE BEEN WATCHING
Again, not a ton this month… (⭐️/5 stars)
Midnight in Paris ⭐️ I watched this for the references to early twentieth century writers, but ufffff, neither Owen Wilson nor Rachel McAdams pull off this storyline.
Pamela, a Love Story ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ (I actually watched this last month in Portland with Amelia, but forgot to share!) This documentary was full of tender reflections on love and the courage to keep loving. We liked how integral Pamela Anderson’s journals were—she kept meticulous and detailed diaries about her life, starting as a child! Her scrawling script reveals a tender woman trying to find her place in a tumultuous and greedy world. As far as celebrity documentaries go, this did turn me into a Pam fan.
WHAT I’VE BEEN EATING
Using this quick 10-minute jalapeño pickling recipe, I subbed in carrots and red onions… you could do any hard veggie! They add the most wonderful crunch to any meal.
And if you like a loaded salad (I know I do), The Salad Lab provides the perfect inspo!
WHAT I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT
The power of journaling. I loved this reflection by
, riffing off the line by Mary Oliver: To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work… Jaouad writes: “That’s what the journal affords me. It allows me to do our endless and proper work—the holy and whole-making work—of noticing and naming…” For me, journaling is as much a tool for paying attention as it is for digesting what I’m paying attention to. As I wrote in my most recent book review for The Colorado Sun (covering Alba de Céspedes’ 1950s novel Forbidden Notebook, which is framed as a series of secret diary entries): “As [the protagonist/narrator] writes and contemplates herself anew, this “forbidden notebook” becomes key to her personal and secret rebellions, unlocking new ideas about her life and her potential in the world.” In these ways and so many others, we should never underestimate the individual and collective power of reflective writing.The #MeToo movement turns five this year. The Pew Research Center has published a fantastic set of research outlining current public perception of #MeToo (which now seems to be solidified as a proxy term for gender equality in justice arenas). Unsurprisingly, much of #MeToo’s perception is closely aligned with people’s political and cultural values: “Republican and Democratic women who have heard of the #MeToo movement are more likely than their male counterparts to say they support it, though the share of Democratic women who say they favor it is far greater than that of Republican women (76% vs. 28%, respectively).” As assault stories and lawsuits continue to emerge in the news, we can sense the movement, but what changes have happened, and where?
WHAT I’VE BEEN LEARNING
Like the experience of traveling by plane, how people living outside the US perceive the US has changed a lot in my lifetime. Between the ages of 12-18, I lived in Europe and traveled much with my dad’s job—and today (10-15 years later), I get a much different response when I tell folks I’m from the United States. It’s hard to describe in any other word than deteriorating, not unlike how flying with any US airline has become.
WHAT I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO
Seven weeks at home on the ranch!
Finishing the final prep on the garden beds with S: before we get everything into the ground, we need to build a fence to keep out the deer, rabbits, and other hungry lil creatures!
xx Emma
PS: I have a new email! Let’s stay in touch: eathenamurray@gmail.com
What’s been tickling your senses this month? Leave a comment or hit the reply button!