Diaries Archives - Page 553 of 642

On Talent, Trustworthiness and Invisibility

Maritza is my favorite. She’s beautiful and intelligent. She’s one of the most talented women I’ve ever known in my short but intense life. I have nothing to say about her that isn’t positive.

Buying Patience

Ultimately, we cannot use the excuse of economic difficulties to explain the lack of a Communist Party congress for the past 13 years.

My Neighborhood Veggie Market

The “plaza” in my neighborhood —where the State sells its agricultural products— has more rallying power than Havana’s Revolution Square itself.

But Things Are Changing

I know of a concrete and living example of something that’s finally changing. What is it? – or rather, who is it? Well, it’s me myself.

Wars and Condoms

To mark this date, the news on Cuban TV presented a report (or rather a piece of oratorical journalism with tragic background images) on “Wars and the Environment.”

To Write and Wrong

Less than a month ago I was invited to write for a national publication. Four of us writers were willing to send in reviews on a weekly basis. On what? – art, theater, music, dance…whatever appeared.

A Visit to the Zoo

Since I hadn’t stepped into a zoo for many years, and my last memories were from childhood, I wanted to see how I would feel going to see the animals at 22.

White Toothbrushes with Green Bristles

The first morning, almost as soon as we greeted, she admitted that due to the haste in which she had organized her trip, she’d forgotten to bring a toothbrush.

When did Peru get so screwed up? So begins the great novel Conversation in the Cathedral, by Mario Vargas Llosa. It turns out that this question posed by Zavalita to a friend in a mid-1950s Lima café can be extended in time to present-day Cuba.

El Megano Cinema: A Dark & Safe Place

El Megano is a cinema in a peculiar neighborhood, Centro Havana, and is patronized by marginalized people of all types: indigents, alcoholics, illegal immigrants, homosexuals, transvestites… According to their needs, all of them seek to take advantage of the physical covering afforded by the building.