Happy Birthday, Cousin Claire!!!

May you have a blessed birthday and may this new cycle of your life be the starting point of new beginnings and many roads to travel and choose from.

L'Chaim!

Rosh Hashanah at Cousin Claire's

In spite of our lateness and of Cousin Claire's anticipatory anxiety about the acceptance of her dinner -or more specifically, of her cooking abilities–, the event was a complete success. It served as an occasion for the family –the Jewish side of the family– to get together again and share some quality time in celebration of the Jewish New Year. The dinner was simply superb! Her culinary phobias and insecurities aside, Claire made some amazingly tasty, varied and visually stunning dishes, which pleasantly surprised everyone's expectations and palates.

The piece de résistance, though, was little Bella Rexon, the newest member of the Rexon-Clay family, daughter of Joshua (Claire's son) and Laurel, his fabulous wife. Bella is the most beautiful and most incredibly behaved 2 month-old baby I have come across in a long time. She is socially very adept to smile, coo and flirt (yes, flirt) with the people around her, especially the 'boys'.

Thank you, Claire for being a perfect hostess and thank you for a most memorable and delicious dinner and evening of family bonding.

Le Shanah Tovah!

The old man and the seed

He sits across from me at my own table.

He likes it when I go there to pick up a quick bite (usually a sandwich) or to eat larger fare like chicken fricasée, vaca frita, ropa vieja or arroz con pollo or carne con papas for lunch. Today though I had not planned this visit nor was I terribly hungry or in the mood for small talk.

He invariably greets me grinning amply with his hands on his narrow hips or inside the stained pockets of his white cotton guayabera shirt. Today I surprised him by entering the back way since I had no quarters to insert in the parking meters alongside the long, congested sidewalk.

He has always reminded me of my father, not so much in physical type, but in the essence of his being, in the way in which he approaches and tells about life and how slowly and deliberately he does everything, whether it's setting the table utensil by utensil or bringing the steaming dishes one by one. My father is not that way, I mean, not so slow in doing things or bringing them to the table when he cooks back at his place. But there is a rough gentleness, a noble and venerable rhythm about them that I can't help but find very similar among these two very different men.

Today the place is completely empty except for the people working in the kitchen and his son behind the bar counter. His son is good looking -I think to myself- in a Lincolnian-Cubanesque kind of way, with his very dark brows, sideburns and thick, quasi geometric goatee. He doesn't look like his father but then I remember his mother and find a familiar, faint and gender-mutated semblance between the two.

He asks me how I am and how things are going and If I have noticed how strange the weather is behaving lately. He worries about some unforetold atmospheric world catastrophe giving us signs that we cannot or are not willing or wanting to perceive. He reminds me once again that he was educated in one of the best Catholic schools back in old Cuba and how the priests and nuns used to scare the pupils witless with the reading and discussion of the Apocalypse and how terrified he went to bed those nights when the sultry Caribbean would propel waterspouts, storms and hurricanes into the defenseless and beautifully dispossessed island.

His son comes to the table and asks what I want to order.

- One media noche sandwich for here and four to go; and one order of palomilla steak with rice, black beans and ripe fried plantains, also to go.

He goes away muttering the order, without writing anything on the pad he holds crumpled in his left hand.

The old man clears his throat and asks me if I want something to drink.

- I'll have a malta, with lots of ice. I haven't had a malta in a very long time and I feel like one.

He nods and gets up slowly, almost wheezing, moving and dragging his slight feet parsimoniously, as if wanting to scrape something very discreetly and softly from the bottom of this worn and unappealing black leather shoes.

- I'll also bring you bread - he said as he disappeared behind the door dividing the kitchen from the rest of the room.

Once again I let my eyes go from wall to wall scrutinizing details or their absence. This place is bigger and is newer, but it lacks that relaxed, unhurried ambiance and feeling of homeyness and tackiness of the previous locale

He returns with the drink and a cup of ice. No straw. No bread.

I say nothing and proceed to open the bottle and pour the dark, foamy, thick liquid which immediately fills the surrounding air with its root beer-like aroma. I take a sip. I don't care for the excessively sweet and burnt taste of this brand, but again, I say nothing and continue to drink, thankful for the rate of at which the flavor looses strength in pitiful struggle with the waning ice.

He sits again and this time he does it in a way as only old men can do it: heavily, hanging onto the rim of the table as if afraid of falling or hurting himself. He takes a deep breath, pulls at his stained guaybera and tells me that his wife is in the island, visiting her old, sick mother.

Then comes the inevitable, dreaded leitmotiv I have been avoiding since visits past:

- La cosa en Cuba está jodida (things in Cuba are fucked up).

I look at him with a big, condescending grin:

- Things in Cuba have been fucked up for a long time now...

He smiles back and responds:

- Not like now. I tell you that something there has to give...

Then, inexplicably and fueling the obsession, I remark in a whisper, as if thinking aloud:

- I wonder how Fidel can live with himself after doing so much evil in Cuba...

His eyes shone and there was childlike glee in his expression:

- I'll tell you all about Fidel and his family if you want, and why he has no conscience or remorse of what he has done to Cuba and to the Cuban people...

I look at him with an expression of surprised resignation.

He gets up with unsuspected agility and walks away leaving me with a curious suspense. Masterful coup d'effect. He knows that at this point I am willing to hear his story.

A big plate with the sandwich and a side of fries announces his presence before I can actually see him coming back from the kitchen. He serves me and then sits down once again.

- Fidel couldn't be any other way because he grew up with Don Ángel, his father, who was himself a pretty evil man and did all sorts of nasty things to his own family and to the neighboring coffee plantations ... But Fidel surpassed everybody's expectations. By the time he was a teenager he had been expelled from the Catholic school he attended and where we shared classes and even his father Don Ángel was afraid of him at that point...

He goes on and on about his childhood, adolescence and youth in Cuba, the son of a well-to do plantation owner, like Castro's father. He mentions names that now are part of Cuba's 'pre-revolutionary' and 'revolutionary' history and I know he is telling the truth. I also know there is pride, relief and happiness in his heart because he is sharing this story that perhaps he hasn't shared with anybody in a long time.

His son looks at me pitifully from afar and makes an imperceptible, apologetic rictus with his twisted bearded mouth. I smile back at him assuringly and he fades somewhere to the back in the growing darkness of the expiring day.

As he tells his story and intertwines it with other related stories, I wonder why it is that I enjoy this moment and the warm feeling of having this old man across from me talking and calling me 'son' and validating every piece of information I give back to him to show that I am not totally ignorant to some of the historical facts spoken about or touched tangentially in his stories. Then I recall my own atypical childhood, brotherless and sisterless, always surrounded by mayores, by people much older than myself... I must be what they call in this country an old soul, perhaps the recurring reincarnation of someone who was very old and had a certain degree of wiseness when he came to take possession of my infant body...

No matter. I enjoy this man and his stories of youth and old glories. I enjoy older people as a general rule.

I think again of my father. He will be turning 80 in just a couple of months. I should sit with him and ask him to tell me his stories. I have never asked that of him before.

I finish my meal and the old man finishes his anecdotes. I look into his eyes. They are tired and glassy with a tint of sadness and a twinkle of bygone mischievousness. Never before did I notice they were blue like the winter ocean.

We exchange a few more sentences and I pay the bill. His son brings me the package with the food to go. He looks at his father, then he looks at me and walks away silently, as if defeated.

The old man accompanies me to the parking lot and walks me to the car evidently pleased:

- Don't be too long to return, son. You've made this afternoon very special to me...

I shake his hand and embrace him. He goes back into the restaurant. I drive away with tears rolling down my face.

Julie & Julia: a personal blog story

Julie & Julia (Sony Pictures, 2009) was the most immediate and pressing reason for me to start writing this blog a week ago. I simply ran out of reasons not to do it.

Thinking that writing a blog would be both very difficult and expensive, I resisted the idea for years, resigning myself to live in self imposed ‘silence’ as a writer. Somewhere in my mind I knew, however, that the true reason for that prolonged and stubborn resistance is the fact that I was (still am a little) fearful of net invisibility and rejection. I did not want to become a literary cyber ghost, someone writing facelessly into the vast, heavily trafficked, hectic and overly competitive void of cyberspace and its wondrously monumental and ever-evolving offspring: the internet.

But here I am, seven days later and some 50 postings later… and loving it! My creative and literary juices are flowing again and I know some curious and other friendly visitors have come to take a peek at my newly surfaced Island and to see (in the case of my friends and family) the end result of my tireless efforts in writing and choosing templates and widgets in my computer over the breakfast area table during the last few days.

Thank you beforehand and come back often to see how things are improving. It will only get better as my confidence and level of comfort writing in this new medium grow and I get a better sense of what makes my readers and myself ‘tic’ and what works and doesn’t work in the design and layout of the page.

Thank you Julie & Julia et al. Until next posting…

Bon appétit!

Beyond the legend, La Fornés

Rosita Fornés, Cuba's larger than life stage, TV and movie Diva.

Currently 86, Rosita Fornés still fills Cuba's biggest theatre venues, in spite of recent health and age-related problems.

This woman has been my idol since I was a little boy and used to watch every single one of her TV programs in Cuba. When I was 4, I made my mother buy a beautiful bouquet of red roses and wait with me for over four hours outside the studios at Radio Centro, in Havana, while La Fornés rehearsed a radio play. When she finally came out, she was most charming and gracious and kissed me and my mother and smiled with that big, perfect, toothy smile that only true stars are endowed with. She was so gorgeous! I had never seen anyone or anything so beautiful and so elegant in my life...

Time went on and I never lost my admiration for Rosita. She was both the standard and the inspiration I held everyone else against. In 1991, already living in Los Angeles, my friend Yazmín surprised me one morning in May with a video tape of an interview of Rosita Fornés in Mexico, where she was presenting one of her fabulous shows in the Mexican capital (there she is always received as the true legend she is). I made arrangements and we finally met Rosita that very night, close to midnight, in her hotel suite in Paseo de la Reforma. She was older but still incredibly beautiful and as gracious and open and friendly as if she had known us all of our lives. We became friends since that encounter.

I have followed her public presentations and private visits to many places in the world and have had the privilege of visiting her privately in Havana, Mexico City, New York and Miami whenever it has been possible for me to go to see her and enjoy her magnificent, unrepeatable presence.

Today I can say, without any doubts, that I am more of a friend than a fan. I still love her as a Diva and respect her status as one of Latin America's top female performers of all time, but what draws me to Rosita more than anything else these days is her incredibly modest and gentle way of being; her charming, warm, sincere and very honest manner to engage you and make you part of the conversation and of her universe, as if you, not she, were the most important person in the room at that moment.

She has also demonstrated throughout the years a quiet, non-public yet very effective and respectable way of helping people outcasted by the Communist government of Cuba (were she has always resided) and of advancing the causes of those who need the most help (the lepers at the San Lázaro Sanatorium in Havana, people with AIDS and HIV infection since the beginning of the crisis, the rights of homosexuals in Cuba, the rights and protection of the Ladies in White peaceful pro-democracy movement, just to mention a few of her most discreetly yet firmly defended causes).

Rosita Fornés took care of her elderly mother until her death at 95 in 2001. She has been the "godmother" to countless Cuban and Latin American performers (famous today) who were introduced to the public by way of her immensely popular and exclusive TV programs in the 50's, 60's, 70's and even into the 80's. Only Fidel Castro and Alicia Alonso would dare claim more popularity and press magnetism than Rosita Fornés, the most photographed person in Cuba to this day.

May she live many more productive years and may she continue to gift us with her incomparable stage magic, her undisputed mastery of showmanship, charisma and versatility and the always treasured privilege of her very special friendship.

I love you truly, Rosita... La Fornés

Enchanted Garden, Magic Kingdom

My home, my Island

But I also have this two smart, gorgeous, four legged Poodle wonders!

Precious Havana (we call her "Havanita La Bandolera", though she does not have a mean bone in her body!), born on my birthday (December 3) in 2001, Chocolate Phantom Poodle, first photo.

And sweet Cuba (we call her "La Pupa", since she resembled a very fat and fluffy insect pupa when we got her at barely 6 weeks). She was born on February 7, 2006, perfect Apricot Poodle, second photo.

My unforgettable and beloved Migdalia (1988-2005)

I miss this little apple-head long-haired Chihuahua girl every day of my life!

He

(To B.)

He is

the reason

and rejection to all reason.

He yields and yet whips

with unmerciful, childlike constancy.

He gives and he takes

as if balancing

word to action,

action to feeling,

feeling to wanting,

wanting to needing,

needing to mustness,

mustness to oblivion

in an infinite, unending litany

of compelling, somewhat useless word equations.

He loves yet he fears loving.

He crouches and prances

as if hunting

or to avoid being hunted.

He orders and he tackles and he yelps.

I kiss his lips full of brilliant utterances.

Man-child with a thousand reasons

to be.