‘I’ am Very (Very, Very) Tired

Maria Matienzo Puerto

HAVANA TIMES — There was once a people that was so poor and miserable that they didn’t recognize themselves as being such.

It got to the point that one day, when talking to a classmate in my foreign language class, that “I”* (the protagonist of this story) wanted to make her see how our take-home wages were below the index of poverty designated by some global organizations. However her partner said “I” was exaggerating.

“I” remarked how difficult and painful it is for people to recognize themselves as poor, and this wasn’t far from the truth. One day “I” had to visit her classmate at her house and “I” realized from the furnishings in her front room that her reflections had been correct.

Of course, the conversation didn’t have a part two. “I” respect the decision of others to remain in complete ignorance.

But these miseries are fleeting, “I” thinks. Perhaps these can be taken care of with a stroke of luck. (Here you can never take care of anything with only what you’re paid from work.)

But the people in poverty referred to in this story are close at hand. This is a misery that has been gradually cultivated, over 50 years of paranoia of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution; it is poverty that follows certain unwritten laws concerning those who deserve more or those who deserve nothing among people who work like slaves.

These are pressures that make an immigration official tell me that my grandmother “for all practical purposes, isn’t Cuban”, because she has Nicaraguan residency. This same person will then treat me like a “bitch” because I know a thousand words more than him and I have the appearance of someone who has traveled half way around the world while he has had to sit in a chair eight hours a day “providing information.”

My story also discusses the poverty of Laura, another classmate of “I”. In trying to look better in the eyes of her German teacher, she said that “I” was a lesbian and a gusana (a counterrevolutionary, literally a “worm”).” Who knows which of the two would be the most tarnishing problem in the eyes of the teacher.

It’s not that “I” voicing what she thinks about the system or saying she likes women is so scandalous.

The problem is that people here are so used to hiding what they think, that Laura (the poor girl) thinks that her “revelations” will bring her some kind of advantage.

But “I” (the protagonist in the story), is very, very, very, very tired.

And I understand her. It’s a spiritual weariness. It’s one of those that you feel when surrounded for a long time by provincialism and mediocrity. It’s what happens when you don’t have the freedom to choose your own destiny.
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NOTE: “I” (the protagonist) and “Me” (the narrator) are the same person. But having a split personality is an inevitable consequence of the psychological pressures caused by such limited horizons around me.

 

Maria Matienzo

Maria Matienzo Puerto: I dreamed once that I was a butterfly who had come from Africa and discovered that I had been alive for thirty years. From that time on, I constructed my world while I was sleeping: I was born in a magic city like Havana; I dedicated myself to journalism; I wrote and edited books for children; I met to discuss art with wonderful people; I fell in love with a woman. Of course, there are certain points of coincidence with the reality of my waking life and it’s that I prefer the silence of reading and the pleasure of a good movie.

2 thoughts on “‘I’ am Very (Very, Very) Tired”

  • We have here a case of alienation; a conditioned caused by feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness. What is the Rx? Hard to say. As in Green Medicine, when one tries a variety of infusions from leaves and roots to aleviate the symptoms, if not cure the disease, a variety of solutions must be tried. In any event, whether the impoverished Third World (which is really, Cuba’s problem, and would continue to be such, even if the system were changed), or here in the First World, the daily reality of most folks can be described as alienating. How to transcend this alienation? Through love: the love of friends, lovers–and strangers! through developing and embracing a network of like-minded friends who can trust and depend on one another. That is one solution. (Of course the harder one is by developing a strength within yourself.) Finally, as an aside, last night once again I viewed a wonderful little independent film–“Smoke”–with Havery Keitel and William Hurt, which exemplifies the magical power of love, and how it resides within each person: a power given by the gods, which will ultimately make us their equal.

  • When Cubans, as a whole, are as tired are you are, change will come. It won’t be much longer.

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