These days I’m bidding farewell to something truly unique. I believe that in the history of all humanity, in the whole world, unless you’re Cuban you won’t know how to explain it, and from whose separation I don’t know if I’ll survive. I speaking of my beloved “ration supply book.”

Waiting can drag on eternally here. I believe it must be the damn fact that there’s water all around. That’s the way it is. No one can go running around and end up farther than the shore. Maybe that’s why my mother tells me she going to come visit “in just a little bit,” but doesn’t show up for more than two hours later.

To live in Havana was to be in that part of the country where there is a little more of everything, despite the shortages. It was living in a city that I could brag about despite the regional differences and phobias; the place where everyone wants to move to; the center of entertainment and economic development.

At the moment, for example, I am transforming into a housewife with two children, a kitchen to attend to and a lot of clothes that need washing, but who, despite all that, has found an opportunity to read a good romance, detective or terror novel that was recommended by her best friend, who does have time to go to book exhibitions and presentations.

Anytime anyone mentions reincarnation, I immediately think of the experiences my girlfriend and I have gone through for more than six months. We’ve had to haul boxes over here and boxes over there. When we couldn’t stay at one place anymore, we’d have to look for another place to rent.

I feel nostalgia for a sonorous city that I’ve never known. Havana -according to a friend- is full of jazz, son and bolero singers, who crone equally for lost love as for the pleasure of good rum. That is a Habana located far removed from what I experience; it is one with a projected image that makes us appear to be what in fact we are not.

I’ve never heard the calling of God. It’s not that I don’t have halfway mystical experiences to relate; in fact I have tons of them. But these have never inspired me to seek out the church and completely surrender myself to prayers and devotions.

Some who come to the beautifully restored neighbourhood of Old Havana might find that the only Cubans they see -other then the security guards, park wardens and street cleaners- are blonde or brunette with skin that is, apparently, white.

If my brother had wanted to become a carpenter, he wouldn’t have been able to; not because my craftsman grandfather’s death occurred unexpectedly, but because my grandfather wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to teach him. He didn’t have a workshop, or the raw material (wood) to work, or a way to obtain it.

I’d never given thought to those jobs. I’d never even asked myself who takes care of the trees in my city, or what’s the name of the man who passes by at dawn, sweeping the street clean of what others have tossed on the ground.