“In a time of crisis, the peoples of the world must rush to get to know each other.”

Havana's Symphony of Sound
By Reif Larsen

"The country’s complex identity is inherently bound up in the duality of this proximity, in its ability to feel both so close and yet so far away at the same time."

"So then why go to Cuba and dive into the cross hairs of both diplomatic and acoustic uncertainty? Because this is why we travel. As José Martí, Cuba’s talismanic national poet and philosopher once wrote, “In a time of crisis, the peoples of the world must rush to get to know each other.” No one can predict what will happen to Cuba in the coming years, which is why you must rush there now. As in, right now. To visit is to witness a rare bird about to fly the coop."

"We were constantly called out by strangers: “Where are you from?” People beamed when we told them. “We love the U.S. I have a cousin in Queens. It’s cold there, yes? I would die. Please tell everyone that Cuba is beautiful. No Mafia, no war. Just Mojitos and salsa dancing.” Hand on stomach, the dance was demonstrated, the toe expertly twirled in the dust."

"And you come for the sound. Havana is a land of sound. Never have I been to a place whose identity is so entangled in its auditory fingerprint. The guttural putt putt of eight cylinder Cadillacs built before my father was born; the ocean rising and slapping at the Malecón like a newborn babe; the dip and pull of the timbale’s bell chattering at a bar across the street, tin tin — tin tin tin; the shuffle of a man demonstrating salsa for you on the sidewalk; the swish and chop of a broom on a doorstep; the plush boom of the ceremonial cannons fired every evening from the Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña; the clink of ice cubes in the most delicious mojito de piña you will ever taste."

Cuba is beautiful. The favorites of my photos after the jump. One day I'll be a decent photo editor, but for now I Vsco'd the shit out of these. 

Show up for yourself.

© Clarkson Potter

Am I There Yet?: The Loop-de-Loop, Zigzagging Journey to Adulthood
By Mari Andrew

It's 8:30pm. I am already in bed (lol)—cozy after making a delicious, healthy meal, taking a long shower and practicing the piano. It feels so good to take care of myself. I know I may not always have this quiet so I'm treasuring it now.

I was really excited to receive Mari Andrew's new (first!) book in the mail. The weekend after I returned from Cuba, I had every intention of completing necessary chores and getting back into a routine: laundry, grocery shopping, spring clean the apartment (kitchen and bathroom, especially). But I woke up Saturday morning and all I could do was lie there. One hour became three hours became the entire day. I don't remember exactly what I did besides read and be still.

Sadness overcomes me after returning from a vacation and it takes about a week to fully recover. (Saudade may be the best description: a deep-felt appreciation for an experience and the simultaneous yearning once it's lost.) Being completely disconnected in Cuba was the best respite for my oft fast-paced, busy, complex emotion-filled life here in New York. Having to go to work the next day didn't help. By the time the weekend arrived, my body said, "nah." I needed some time to recalibrate.

This was the perfect book to get me there. I'm growing and could feel how quickly I'm evolving by how in tune I felt with the words. I'm proud of my journey. It brought me so much comfort it made me cry. Not sad tears. Tears tied to feeling recognition and a reminder that all the things I have felt—good and bad—are not new to the world.

Sometimes, I really feel the weight of my past experiences. I'm thankful an illustration exists that perfectly articulates this weight. Some days—like days I take a boxing class and feel so fucking proud for doing well because it means I'm getting stronger, and I think of my dad and how proud he might feel if he knew (he introduced me to boxing)—I feel the weight tug at me a little harder.

Most days lately I have it so good and can appreciate the sweetness that encompasses my life. The minutiae. I can take full breaths. I know my time on earth is limited and it fills me with excitement and purpose. As I've made more time to love on myself, I reflect on my life in disbelief and become overpowered by that feeling, nearly bursting with the anticipation of all the things I'm working towards and all of the things that can be good.

My relationship to New York City—home—is and has always been about my relationship to yearning.

Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York
Edited by Sari Botton

It's been a year.

2016: an emotional, rollercoaster, depressing sh*tstorm of a year. Filled with needed revelations.

In many ways, I've been preparing to leave New York for some time. In my reads alone, what's resonated with me most over the past couple of years have been brave voices encouraging similar bravery of their readers; the fearless pursuit of one's full potential. I never want to feel as lonely, as depressed or as disappointed as I did earlier this year. A number of circumstances made it easier for me to take the leap. Timing. I decided it was no longer worth denying myself purpose, happiness, clarity and good vibes. I want to be better in a myriad of ways and I found I could no longer in the city.

It was not easy to leave. Once I came to terms with my wants and needs, and, subsequently, my impending move, I became so sentimental—with simple moments inspiring tears. Walking down Broadway in Astoria as the sun set. The embrace of late summer's warmth. I'll never forget that golden light: the way it illuminated the buildings and the path home through twilight. A vision of beauty and grit. The best borough. I love New York fiercely, rep Queens 'till I die, and I hope to return someday and not too late. There's so much I was sad to leave behind. But I wondered whether other places could become part of my fabric, too.


---

Some of my favorite words about New York documented in this blog have been written by E.B. White, Patti Smith, David Carr (I'm a little tired of the fight). I didn't love this compilation, but here are some passages I liked:

"Leaving home does something to your sense of identity. Either you become more of that place than you ever were while you lived there, or your identity calcifies around the rejection of this place. It is challenging to inhabit the space between these two positions. All of these perspectives on the same place. It's dizzying. " (p. 131)
- Losing New York by Lauren Elkin

"To talk about New York--living there, aspiring to live there, having lived there—is to talk about currency. Not privilege and not money, mind you; money is simple. Money is straightforward. Money can give you choices, options. Privilege skews how you see yourself and others, fucks with our head. Currency is something else. Currency is terrifically complex. Money and privilege can make you comfortable, but only currency gives you real power. You can't buy currency; it eludes plenty of rich, entitled people. Beauty, originality, fearlessness: these are some of the currencies of New York." (pp. 138-9)
- Currency by Elisa Albert

"There is that ache of not having another place in the world where I might ever feel so alive and alone, invisible while visible, ever again. Alone in exactly the right kind of way. My relationship to New York City—home—is and has always been about my relationship to yearning. But this is what I understand about leaving New York: I have to leave, or I will never be able to restore my own capacity to write about home." (p. 235)
- Captive by Dana Kinstler

I've returned alive & well & mourning the end of a beautiful trip that was much too short. (Post-vacation depression exists, right?) I did it alone, but often had the company of wonderful people throughout the week--by way of friends, Airbnb, and group tours. I'd travel solo again in a heartbeat & as I quickly approach age 26 (tomorrow!) I am seriously contemplating when I may be able to do it again--hopefully sooner than later.

Atop the Campanile di Giotto during one of the most peaceful hours I've ever experienced; instagram.com/noeliasophia

I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage.

Travels with Charley: In Search of America
By John Steinbeck

"During the previous winter I had become rather seriously ill with one of those carefully named difficulties which are the whispers of approaching age. When I came out of it I received the usual lecture about slowing up, losing weight, limiting the cholesterol intake. It happens to many men, and I think doctors have memorized the litany. It happened to so many of my friends. The lecture ends, "Slow down. You're not as young as you once were." And I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton wool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap.

Who doesn't like to be a center for concern? A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby. I knew that ten or twelve thousand miles driving a truck, alone and unattended, over every kind of road, would be hard work, but to me it represented the antidote for the poison of the professional sick man. And in my own life I am not willing to trade quality for quantity. If this projected journey should prove too much then it was time to go anyway. I see too many men delay their exits with a sickly, slow reluctance to leave the stage. It's bad theater as well as bad living."

(pp. 17-8)

Many of the items looked like they belonged in a cabinet of curiosities

The Brain That Changed Everything by Luke Dittrich

Esquire, November 2010

"My grandfather's home was full of curious artifacts, each with its own story. He traveled a lot, all over the world, and always came home with something new and strange. It was a lifelong occupation: In the mid-1920s, he'd taken what was in those days a very unusual trip to China and ended up paying some of his college tuition by selling the exotic jewelry he brought back to the States. Many of the items in his home looked like they belonged in a cabinet of curiosities. There was a carved wooden totem hanging on one wall of his dining room, some sort of pagan king or god. It was maybe three feet tall, had a soulful, mournful expression. One Thanksgiving, when I asked where it came from, I was told he'd received it during a trip to South America, perhaps in gratitude for some operation he'd performed there. The carving had apparently once been an object of worship, owing mainly to the fact that it would, at times unpredictable, weep, drops of water streaming from its eyes. Did seasonal moisture variations and the way the wood responded to them cause the tears? Probably. That or magic. My grandfather had appreciated the totem's beauty but was unsentimental about its emotions. When he brought it home, he had someone polish it before he hung it on the wall. It never cried again."

"The operation was crude--the surgeon would drive a skinny ice pick up through the thin bone behind his patient's eyeballs, then quickly swish the pick back and forth, cutting a messy swath through the frontal lobes--but it was inarguably effective at transforming otherwise difficult and uncontrollable individuals into placid, carefree creatures."

This excerpt made me cringe. And all I could think was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

"In 1848, an explosion drives a steel tamping bar through the skull of a twenty-five-year old railroad foreman named Phineas Gage, obliterating a portion of his frontal lobes. He recovers, and seems to possess all his earlier faculties, with one exception: The formerly mild-mannered Gage is now something of a hellion, an impulsive-shit-starter. Ipso facto, the frontal lobes must play some function in regulating and restraining our more animalistic instincts."

I still have a very clear picture of the inside of that hut and of the bearded man with the bright fiery eyes who kept talking to me in riddles.

While Roald Dahl was in Palestine...

"I still have a very clear picture of the inside of that hut and of the bearded man with the bright fiery eyes who kept talking to me in riddles. 'We need a homeland,' the man was saying. ' We need a country of our own. Even the Zulus have Zululand. But we have nothing.'

'You mean the Jews have no country?'

'That's exactly what I mean,' he said. 'It's time we had one.'

'But how in the world are you going to get yourselves a country?' I asked him. 'They are all occupied. Norway belongs to the Norwegians and Nicaragua belongs to the Nicaraguans. It's the same all over.'

'We shall see,' the man said, sipping his coffee. The dark-haired woman was washing up some plates in a basin of water on another small table and she had her back to us.

'You could have Germany,' I said brightly. 'When we have beaten Hitler then perhaps England would give you Germany.'

'We don't want Germany,' the man said.

'Then which country did you have in mind?' I asked him, displaying more ignorance than ever." (p. 198)

Soon after, Roald Dahl finally made it home, being sent home due to blackouts probably the effects of his previous crash. It's unbelievable to me that he had such an unbelievable life pre children's books. A part of me really wishes that I could adventure in the same way that he did but back then he was more free to do so in a world that was still vastly unexplored. There were many dangers, of course, but he was so unaware of them that it led him to live freely in a way that I could never do today. I'm a little envious. Everything is planned (if even loosely), safety measures and precautions always in the back of my mind. I could never have that uninhibited careless adventure because there are too many risks and it's better to be safe than sorry. But look at him, he lived by instinct--some quick impromptu decisions literally saving his life--and in the end he died an old man with great memories and stories to tell (both fiction and nonfiction).

His memoirs are entertaining, nostalgic and insightful. I recommend Boy and Going Solo to everyone.

The croaking of frogs is the night music of the East African coast.

Going Solo, Roald Dahl

"Suddenly the voice of a man yelling in Swahili exploded into the quiet of the evening. It was my boy, Mdisho. 'Bwana! Bwana! Bwana!' he was yelling from somewhere behind the house. 'Simba, bwana! Simba! Simba!' Simba is Swahili for lion. All three of us leapt to our feet, and the next moment Mdisho came tearing round the corner of the house yelling at us in Swahili, 'Come quick, bwana! Come quick! Come quick! A huge lion is eating the wife of the cook!' (p. 35)

I had an epiphany here... Lion King. Simba. It all made sense. This excerpt leads to a really fascinating story which spans a couple of pages so I won't post it. But essentially, the lion literally carried the woman in his mouth, slowly leading her into the forest. As soon as they scared him off with a gunshot he dropped her, not having hurt her in any way, and seemingly never intended to.

"All around us in the forest the frogs were croaking incessantly. African frogs have an unusually loud rasping croak and however far away from you they are, the sound always seems to be coming from somewhere near your feet. The croaking of frogs is the night music of the East African coast. The actual croak is made only by the bullfrog and he does it by blowing out his dewlap and letting it go with a burp. This is his mating call and when the female hears it she hops smartly over to the side of her prospective mate. But when she arrives a curious thing happens and it is not quite what you are thinking. The bullfrog does not turn and greet the female. Far from it. He ignores her totally and continues to sit there singing his song to the stars while the female waits patiently beside him. She waits and she waits and she waits. The male sings and he sings and he sings, often for several hours, and what has actually happened is this. The bullfrog has fallen so much in love with the sound of his own voice that he has completely forgotten why he started croaking in the first place. We know that he started because he was feeling sexy. But now he has become mesmerized by the lovely music he is making so that for him nothing else exists, not even the panting female at his side. There comes a time, though, when she loses all patience and starts nudging him hard with a foreleg, and only then does the bullfrog come out of his trance and turn to embrace her. Ah well. The bullfrog, I told myself as I sat there in the dark forest, is not after all so very different from a lot of human males that I could think of." (p. 61-2)