comemierda

After dinner today, uncle lou and mane (my aunt) were "discussing" something and I, adding to the noise, was asking about who wanted coffee. While all this bulla was going on, I hear abuelita quietly murmuring to herself while washing some plates.... when I got close, she was saying in a hushed voice, "ay, what bullshitters these people are.... so much bullshit all the time...sheesh.... dame paciencia, virgencita, dame paciencia." "Abuelita!" I exclaimed. And she proceeded with, "what? you don't think you don't add to the comemierderia around here? who wants coffee, who wants coffee? YOU want coffee."

Then uncle lou chimed in, "Mami, what is going on? Why are you upset? What did we do?" and Abuelita's reply, "I think I need coffee."

comemierda

After dinner today, uncle lou and mane (my aunt) were "discussing" something and I, adding to the noise, was asking about who wanted coffee. While all this bulla is going on, I hear abuelita quietly murmuring to herself while washing some plates.... when I got close, she was saying in a hush voice, "ay, what bullshitters these people are.... so much bullshit all the time...sheesh.... dame paciencia, virgencita, dame paciencia."

abuelita and I about living too long

Me to Abuelita: "Abuelita, did you know you have lived three of my lifetimes? How did you do that? Isn't that just way too long? Geesh, I can't imagine facing two more of these...."
Abuelita: "Yes, it was long!! It was too long, but I don't want to die yet. I just don't want to live another one. I am so very torn."
Me:"Yeah, I barely want to finish this one. Geesh, I can't imagine two more. I would be torn too. But if you die, I will die too. So we have to figure out something. I love you Abuelita."
Abuelita:"I love you too, crazy one."

Life as a grad student

I know I should feel lucky. I should feel privileged that I have had the opportunity to get a graduate education, not paid a cent to be a professional student.... but I have to admit it has been a shitty experience. Instead of saying I feel lucky to be a grad student, I can only say that I feel lucky that in about two years this part of my life will be over. My cousin asked me today what I thought about her going to graduate school-- was it worth it? did I enjoy my freedom? was school very difficult? did I feel hassled by my advisor? And I had no idea what I should say to her. Part of me wanted to encourage her to continue her education because when asked in vague and general terms, I believe that the more education a person has, the better able they are prepared to tackle the world around them. But practically speaking, I wanted to yell at her, "RUN! RUN AWAY! FUCK IT! WORK YOUR BUTT OFF AND MAKE SOME FREAKING MONEY!"

I have to say that when thinking about the job market, I am very worried. The stupid press continues to publish that the careers of the future are in education-- specifically, university level-- and that people should go back to school. Meanwhile, the university hiring-system exists in a permanent hiring freeze and very few individuals can find worthy, tenure-potential jobs. In fact, I am not even sure I will work in academia and, yet, I cannot imagine myself working in any other sphere. I am hyper-educated, and absolutely unqualified for most jobs. I am the most qualified, unqualified person I know.... well, besides other doctoral candidates.... I guess I could lie to future employers and, if you are a future employer... hire me, please!,.... but, yeah.... it has been quite an experience.

I guess, in certain ways, I am lucky. Everyone I know who was married or in serious relationships when they began grad school have lost those marriages and/or relationships. During my master's degree, I lost a love of mine, but since then I have been free and clear of any serious relationships in any shape or form. whew.... thank goodness.... uh huh, yeah. Just mindlessness and awkwardness since my entrance into serious grad school, i.e. UNC. Mindlessness and awkwardness, to say the least.

My cousin told me she just felt that grad school would be a great place for her to meet interesting people, who were articulate and sophisticated. I immediately retreated to memories of German Historians singing Nazi Anthems at a bar in Chapel Hill while laughing hysterically and completely bombed during my first year of grad school.... not articulate or sophisticated.... just stupidity, given an unfortunate and misguided sense of validity. IF YOU ARE A GERMAN HISTORIAN YOU NEVER SING NAZI ANTHEMS AND THEN LAUGH..... the holocaust is plain not funny. My response to my little cousin was, "I met one interesting person and a whole bunch of looney-tunes. The person I met was just as depressed and cynical as I and that is how we bonded. Don't go for the people, go for the work, if anything."

It is too bad that in order to be successful in grad school one must follow the great advisors, despite bad locations, rather than move to a great location and register in the local school. So many great schools exist in such horrible and isolated locations. I lost three years of my precious young life in Chapel Hill, being in Miami makes my grad school experience nominally better.... but, I am still not convinced.

I don't think I would do this again. I would get a nice, difficult (the word should be challenging.... but I am depressed and cynical so my word choice of difficult is reflective of how I see the world.... not as something to overcome, but something I am forced to deal with) job in Washington D.C. or New York and try to work my way up the ladder. I might seek a master's degree for pay reasons, but the monetary benefits of the PhD do not equal the losses endured monetarily and emotionally to achieve the doctorate degree. I have had wonderful experiences with university students as a TA, but as the future is so unstable it is hard to imagine myself teaching university students forever. And, I am sorry, but 15 thousand is never a living-wage, I don't care what anyone says to dispute that fact. Nor do I feel like dealing with other competitive academics in a professional manner. One of the worst experiences of grad school was dealing on a very daily basis with competitive grad students.I came into the grad school experience with a very utopian, UCHICAGO-mentality.... education is about listening and learning.... appreciating and valuing others' insight, trying your best and working on a daily basis to improve. Everyone else seemed to believe that education was all about one-upping, fuck enrichment and sharing. Fuck trying to answer questions or concerns about the readings we encountered. Let's tear this shit up and explain why we are so much better--- despite the author being a nobel laureate and a two-time Art and Sciences Academic award-winner. I always wondered.... why do people compete with one another? The subject matter we all deal in is completely at odds (I am one of five people who work on Cuba and within the Cubanists, none of us work on the same topic or time period... i.e. there is nothing to fight about... there is no fight! EVEN LESS SO BETWEEN A GERMANIST AND CUBANIST or AFRICANIST for that matter), and no one is writing on the same topic. It is wonderful that you have an article published, but your article reflects nothing on my non-article status and vice-versa. So why compete? I just don't understand. Isn't the goal finishing the dissertation? Focus on the dissertation. Please. Get done, get out. quickly.

Obviously, I am getting desperate to leave this incredibly dismal period in my life. Writing is just another word for isolation and, while, I appreciate my freedom-- no one else has as much freedom and so life as a grad student is really lonely. Hopefully, my cousin will read this posting and see my answer jumping from the page.... you have been warned!

Why Study Cuba?

After being at the Cuban Heritage Collection for 6 weeks, I have found tons of sources and realize how much I still need to learn to write this dissertation! To be honest, I feel overwhelmed and I have moments when I can't imagine actually finishing this monumental task. When I look around the main room of the archive, I always focus in on all the different faces of other researchers who have dedicated their lives and work to the study of Cuba. Often times they are Cuban, but sometimes they are German, Irish, Mexican, Puerto Rican, American.... what have you.... and I wonder to myself, "Why would you choose such a profession, without any personal connection to the island?" I didn't wake up one day and think to myself, "I am going to work on..... hmmmm...... Croatia." That sounds nice, and bam! I was working on Croatia. So I decided to ask a few individuals why.....

I have pondered this question for a long time, to be honest. Since I moved to UNC and realized I was the only Cuban studying the island of Cuba in the group. My fellow grad students were from all over the place and had told me that their interests had stemmed from a range of reasons: two such individuals had visited the island and fell in love with its "quirkiness", one wanted to study Haiti, but couldn't because the archives were in shambles and so instead chose Cuba as a runner-up option, and another stated that she had read some Cuban poetry in college and it caught her attention, so she decided to apply to grad school. I kept my mouth shut at all these responses, but to be honest, I was appalled. These weren't reasons to study Cuba. Cuba isn't a hobby or something fascinating to be anthropologized. It is a living, breathing economy and society which deserves respect, not some off-handed interest. A new girl joined our group of historians and I asked her the same question and she said, ".... some places just capture the imagination...." and that was her reason for studying Cuba. I don't get it. I understand believing in the Revolution and understanding the processes that led to its creation much better than I understand the "capturing of the imagination" scenario. I understand being apart of the community and seeking to learn its history and preserve it. I understand trying to understand a complex society and diaspora or being a member of the American community and trying to understand Cuba as it relates to American society.... for that matter, being Spanish or Venezuelan and researching Cuba as it relates to those societies' historical pasts..... but just randomly? because you liked it? I like ice cream, but I haven't dedicated my life to it. The reasons given to me by my colleagues on why they wanted to study Cuba do not give me confidence that, in the future, Cuba's history will be done justice.
The biggest problem with these individuals working on Cuba is that they consider themselves experts on the subject, when they have no real clue about the island, the culture, the heroes and idols, the every day life and times of Cubans today, let alone in the past. If you can't understand the culture, language and daily routines of people in the present, how will you ever truly understand the past? I have been asked many a time by my colleagues about simple things such as what type of food... tal y tal is.... and why couldn't you say papaya, and instead had to say fruta bomba..... if someone doesn't know these little ins and outs of the Cuban culture, how can you possibly even postulate to know the past? One great example of this perceived expertise by my colleagues was when a historian I know, actually had the audacity to correct my Spanish-- despite Spanish not being her first language, her never even being in Miami or Cuba or any island for that matter, and not really speaking the language great at all. If you know the language well, then fine.... correct me.... but not if you learned it in Kansas or Oklahoma..... Connecticut or Washington State, North Carolina or Georgia..... She actually told me, "according to the real academia, you don't need to say tu in front of a verb." I responded, "that is just how some people speak..., especially Cubans...." and she looked at me incredulously and said, "no." She was also the one screaming to the high heavens that she loved papaya and got upset when I told her to never say that...... (papaya means a woman's private area for most Cubans.... so she was yelling, "I love women's privates!" over and over again. I am very worried about the future telling of Cuban history if the sources up for analysis are studied by individuals like these.....

Anyway, this is just a rant about the problems of studying Cuba from the diaspora. Cuba is not a curiosity or something "neat"..... it is hard to take these people seriously or to even care about their impressions, analysis and understandings of the past.

los hombres perdidos y el muertico.

My father's generation of men are completely lost. Among my friends, very few have great relationships with their fathers....

I have heard so many stories regarding how messed up all my friends fathers are. Some men cheat on their wives by successively finding new women, marrying them, cheating again, marrying again and so on. Others, just never show up at the time of their children's birth and the worst of the worst are those that stick around when it fits their carousing schedules and leave when the children or wife don't match what the man wants.

My friends, despite these horror stories, all have a lot of humor about the inadequacies of their fathers and through the years I have heard some pretty crazy cuentitos about how whacked men get in their mid-life crises.

Friday night, a friend of mine told me one such story.

Her father, had recently left her mother for a women from Venezuela. Well, the honest truth was that he met the woman 4 years before, had a child with that same woman three years before and had been leading a double life. One in the US and one in Venezuela.

In the US, the father never owned a car and so, to impress his children of his newly established ex-wife, he set out to buy one. One day, her father pulled up in the front of the house, knocked on the front door and presented his children to "el muertico" (the little corpse) and to his surprise his children refused to drive around with him in it. He had bought a hearse. A black, long cabin, windows in the back with curtains around the side, hearse. While he believed his children would enjoy the spaciousness of the back portion of the car..... he thought they could lay down there, play games, even use the car as a sort of tent when camping...., well, to no one who has any understanding of children's surprise, his kids were frightened and mortifyingly embarassed. Their mother knew she had "won".... if a single-mother with several kids can ever really win, that is.

Because the kids were so scared, my friend's father decided to hand-cut the top of the hearse off. If the top did not exist, the hearse would look like a "truck" and the kids would be more inclined to join him on the grand adventures he had planned for everyone and himself. He would be a hero. He wanted to be a hero. He returned in "el muertico" and drove in the coolest looking truck/convertible-hearse anyone had ever seen. His daughter told me that it really just looked like a scary hearse whose top portion had been hand cut with regular ol' scissors and a raving lunatic dad hanging out in front, dirty-looking and with his mustache flailing in the wind coming into the cabin from the gaping hole of the "convertible" section of the car.

I have no intention to use this as a lesson for those crazy fathers out there.... I just thought it should be documented.

los santeros next door

I met a Santero yesterday. Well, in reality, I met him a while ago. But I really spoke to him yesterday. He invited me into his home and showed me a bunch of cositas he had all throughout the house. I met Cuca, his African parrot, who screams "oye!oye!" and "Cafe, Cafe" looking for attention. The parrot is greyish blue with beautiful orangy-red feathers on its tail. Joey-- his name is really Jose-- (the Santero)told me the bird was the main bird of Santeros. When you are initiated into the religion, the red feathers are plucked from the bird and put into the hair of the initiate. Cuca loved Joey, you could tell. From the moment he entered the room, she watched him from the side of her head.... following his movements with her one little eye. And when he would ask for a kiss, she would face her head down, stick her head out to the side,straining her neck and then make a strange hissing squawk.

Joey showed me the two bedroom apartment, my apartment is only one bedroom. He was very nice and seemed happy to speak to me. He showed me the room where he kept all his santeria statues and it was very cool. I couldn't actually step into the room, because you have be freshly out of the shower to step into the room. But from the outside of the door, he pointed out statues and idols and told me who they were and what they were doing. Chango, was in a bowl and above him Bananas were hanging. In order for Chango to be in the room with the other gods, he must have bananas, otherwise he causes trouble and messes shit up because he feels disrespected and uncared for. Chango was not standing, he was placed on his side in the bowl. Joey said that was in case Chango got fiesty-- it would be more difficult for him to mess shit up if he was off-balance.

All the doors in the Santero's house were decorated with Palm fronds and other little items whose working qualities I am unaware. Joey told me that all santeros have Palm fronds above their doors, so as to catch pieces of the spirits as they enter and leave a room. I liked that idea--- that you don't necessarily need the whole spirit, just parts of them. Any part of them would be better than nothing.

I am researching and writing slowly my dissertation and poco a poco I am learning how deeply imbedded santeria was in the development of Cuban culture. I have always been surrounded by hints of santeria through my father's family. They never speak about what they practice, but sometimes I will find empty glasses of water below crucifixes or old cuban coins left in salt and water next to the bed. Mangos under the bed, and yes, bananas hanging over doors, just like Joey's bananas for Chango. I told Joey about some of the things my Tia Ana would do and he wasn't sure if it was Santeria or Espiritismo. He thought she was a medium. I just don't know. I would ask Tia Ana,"Que haces Tia? Porque haces esto?" and her reply was simply, "por costumbre". And then some nights she would disappear. Who knows, she won't tell me..... to her I am too white and mami's family would only judge her (this is according to her).