Author: Jorge Milanes

“Hey, it’s hard as hell to get it. It’s a mother… I don’t have any family, so for the past several days I’ve been visiting some friends who stay there.” He then gestured with his head, pointing to the psychiatric hospital that we were riding past in the bus just then.

I had the opportunity to visit some sessions and listen to the performance-style poetry readings, a trend that — because of social and cultural circumstances — the Caribbean is now being forced to assume, despite it having reached its peak elsewhere back in the 1950s.

“The pregnant women’s seat, please?” was heard in the center of the bus. It was a woman who was asking for that seat. It wasn’t for herself, though, but for a young woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy. Still, no one replied.

A colleague of mine invited me to her 50th birthday party. It was in held at a rented beach house so it had a pool, a bar and a beautifully landscaped garden.

On the corner near my house, a group of neighborhood men always get together with a bottle of rum. Each will take a sip and then pass it on to the next guy. A greeting by one of them made me stop. He then asked me if I had any books of adventure stories or novels at my house for him to read.

Facundo is 50, and has gray hair and a beard. He’s thin and spends most of the time in a wheelchair. Genetic problems forced him into a state of immobility, while his hands barely serve to wipe crumbs of food on his face.

My neighbor’s daughter, Rachel, has a tattoo near her ankle. Frankly, I had never noticed it before. I guess because my eyes always focused more on the silhouette of her body.

On a visit I made there recently, I realized the importance and the social impact of this project as well as its role in calling the attention of institutions, specialists, psychologists, philosophers, historians, students and anthropologists to this community in need.

I felt a deep communion with the past, with memories and desires that reappeared unexpectedly, now at a stop, suspended in view of everyone as a great work of conceptual art, admired by some and disliked by others.

The director of the daycare center informed the parents that they wouldn’t be able to accept children today due to a lack of water, and that they should call tomorrow to find out whether the problem had been resolved.