Osmel Almaguer’s Diary

When I was little, my parents made me obey them by telling me that “El Loco” (the lunatic); would get me if I misbehaved. Though I never saw him, I imagined he must have been a hideous creature. Then I discovered that El Loco didn’t appear when I acted up, but only sometimes when walking down the street.

Since the beach is free, the seashore is the preferred destination for almost everybody. That’s why people from all over the capital meet up at the same places and form this mass that I try to avoid, maybe because I was raised in the tranquility of my home on the outskirts.

If Vivaldi had been born in today’s Cuba, we would not know his paradigmatic work The Four Seasons; rather, he would have probably composed something called The Two Seasons.

Without the need for large investments or grandiose gestures, but by implementing a simple change and situating each person in their ideal station, we could resolve many of the problems that today strike us with great force in this country.

In the 1990s everything began to disappear. Within two years, we plunged into the depth of our crisis. Almost no factory operated; benefits and services were null. I was in fact only an adolescent and not fully conscious of the process; I just knew that one day prices began to rise and products disappeared.

Today we have very well-mannered people, but also many people like these, who don’t believe in anybody. Violence engenders violence, because it is as cold as ice, and at the same time it burns like fire, and its light can leave us blind.

I’ve been going out with a woman of late. We met a few months ago, and yesterday she came over to my house for first time. My place is nice, comfortable, and it was great to be able to have my own house to spend time with her.

“The Russian” (as he is known, due to his maternal lineage) was one of the most promising figures on the Cuban men’s volleyball team until he suffered a back injury during the Pan-American Games in Río de Janeiro in 2007.

Enormous cockroaches with human heads climb out across the polished surfaces of the Museum of Cuban Art. Some have fallen, while others seem to have made it to their destination: the roof, or maybe the sky.

It’s counterproductive that we flood our own television with this virus of senseless violence, crass selfishness and a slew of other banalities. This produces a tension within our people’s collective psyche, a dual tendency of acceptance and rejection.