The Traps of Nostalgia
Verónica Vega
HAVANA TIMES — That the pangs of nostalgia can deceive us, painting our memories of the past with bright colors, is a feeling I had for the first time some years ago, while reading a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
As I’ve grown older and had my share of bitter experiences, I have, expectedly, become slightly more suspicious of any romantic perception of the past. Even when a melody takes me back to a distant love, an earlier time in my life, or those fantasies about the future spawned by the excesses of youth, I take a step back and try to organize my memories, take apart and analyze past situations carefully and try to recollect faces and attitudes objectively.
Our upbringing gives us an exaggerated sense of longing for times past. Not only in Cuba, where the early years of the Revolution are constantly idealized and the martyrs of yesteryear turned into something of a mystical cult. Generally speaking, this is true everywhere.
Nostalgia is exploited in the mass media, through retro fashions and in most romantic songs, which are often dripping with cheap sentimentalism.
We are taught to hold on to things (with our hands, our eyes or our minds), in a world where life is just the opposite of this, an endless process of transformation, which starts with our very own image. Our friends depart, not only to a “better place”, beyond the horizon or the grave, but also because circumstances, interests and paths diverge.
Couples part ways, parents depart, children depart. Even if they do not leave their homes (as is often the case in Cuba, owing to the great housing problem we face), children experience body and mental changes and our relationship with them similarly changes.
Objects, no matter how much we cherish them, ultimately wear down or break. The spaces around us assume new forms. Ideas change, “the times” change.
So, why go against such natural tendencies? Why not conclude, like Tagore, that:
“(…) Beauty is sweet to us, because she dances to the same fleeting tune with our lives.
Knowledge is precious to us, because we shall never have time to complete it.
All is done and finished in the eternal Heaven.
But earth’s flowers of illusion are kept eternally fresh by death.
Brother, keep that in mind and rejoice.”
A change in perspective.
I aim these comments especially at myself, for nostalgia seems to follow me like my own shadow. Lately, I catch myself avoiding places I went to with my younger sister, who left the country years ago, or with a friend who no longer lives in Cuba, or circumventing the building where my mother once lived.
What I recoil from most violently, however, is the severe deterioration shown by the places of my youth, the places that once housed my dreams: the “Russians’ beach” in Alamar, the swimming pool I used to go to with my sister and our kids, places that have become ruins, a collection of dilapidated walls submerged in foul-smelling water.
A movie theatre in Old Havana, where I saw an unforgettable film, is now unrecognizable, buildings that are torn down and replaced with parks, stores or kiosks that strike me as fake, as though clumsily superimposed on the composition using Photoshop.
It terrifies me to come across this past, trampled on by a derisive future (now present), corroded by an inherent weight I was unable to see before and now leaps at me from its ruins.
Some days ago, however, these visual impressions produced the opposite effect on me: I was able to see, with the utmost clarity, that one tends to miss those things that brought one pleasure at one point in time, isolating those things in one’s memory, severing them from their evolution as events – separating them from their “before” and, particularly, their “after”.
As such, we do not see the experience as a totality, or where the causes behind our loss lie, or the fact that what we miss is but a detail in a ceaseless flow of events.
It makes sense that a battered city, at once a witness to and an intimate part of our identity, should have an impact on us, more so when its image is frozen in the instant we felt we were flourishing, with the city, into something beautiful and prosperous. Carefully pulling apart my memories, I find only scattered splashes of splendor, as I do right now.
What, for instance, do I miss about Centro Habana, where I lived in what was once a hotel, a building with corroded beams and walls that reeked of humidity? A building that, as early as the 1980s, looked as though about to collapse, a building that’s still there, inexplicably defying gravity?
From Vedado, perhaps you could say I miss what the Coppelia ice-cream parlor was years ago, the variety of flavors and the richness of the ice-cream, the ice-tea we would drink at the intersection of 23 and G streets, at noon on a sweltering summer day.
Perhaps I miss the small delicacies, which, today, have simply moved elsewhere. The things saved from the wreckage are no longer where they used to be, true, but, in the end, we have gained more than what is perceivable at first glance.
Because, what we believed was about to come into existence before was simply a mirage. It was an illusion sustained by our alliance with the Soviets, an impasse in the real process of transformation which has not ceased, not even in moments of apparent inertia.
As a Hindu proverb proclaims, “Though lies may run for a year, the truth shall catch up to them in a day.” Cuba is, today, more than what it was when it was nothing but a promise. Idealizing our past does not help us understand our existence or how the world works. It envelops everything with a thick fog, making us lose our way, while history continues to move forward.
I believe that what we miss, most of all, are our own dreams, our minds’ great flights of fancy. In this sense, our nostalgia is no different from the nostalgia a person living in the First World experiences, when they feel sad at being unable to recognize the neighborhood they were born in (even if this is owed to inevitable progress).
A friend told me that, one day, he was walking down the street with his father. Coming to a halt before Havana’s Parque Central, the father froze and his gaze went blank. When asked what was happening to him, he replied: “it’s just that I saw…if you could only see what I just saw! I just remembered how everything looked before (1959).” In his eyes, rather than nostalgia, one could see pain.
Those who feel they benefited from the revolution will likely react in anger, and I understand them. I also think that, if change came, it was because something was festering, somewhere beneath the splendor. Might it not be a positive sign that the festering wound is now on the surface, like those pustules that, once burst, can only be drained and heal?
Yesterday, the main character in a film I saw said something which left me thinking. She said that one is afraid of the future because, in a way, one feels that nothing is going to change, that the future will ultimately be something like what we have now. But things do change. And if things do not yet feel right, if they still do not satisfy us, if we continue to harbor a feeling of lack, of conflict, this means that we have not yet reached the end.
This may come as a painful blow to you, Luis. But I really don’t think about you and whatever idiotic rant you might post.
I write what I think about the topic. Period.
I sugest you look up the term logical fallacy as my comment was in no way a straw man argument. As for the rest of your diatribe, It is so completely incoherent as to make it completely unintelligible. I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about and find myself unable to respond.
By the way disagreeing with your view point does is not a propaganda war
“You may be surprised to know that I am not in favor of the embargo.”
Straw-man. I directed that to Moses, NOT you.
‘Given a choice’. Well I assume you should begin to understand that History is not a pop-quiz, but it is a constructed process of relationships between humans. Should we demand all countries of the world a referendum of how the power and social structure should be and then, ‘zap’ things would change immediately? Or does it ‘only apply to Cuba’? Sorry but that’s not how it works.
And if you CARED to observe my whole point and noticed that, at first, I was treating those two with more respect before they went berzerk with their propaganda war and, thus, deteriorated this whole space, you’d stop your little ‘lesson’ to me right now.
No, I ranted AFTER Moses’ excuse to say crap, and BEFORE you posted those artificially crafted ‘poetic insights’ to try to invalidate my point.
Intellectually dishonest at its best.
You may be surprised to know that I am not in favor of the embargo. I believe it should be removed as soon as possible as In my opinion it’s ineffective and counterproductive.
That being said, It is possible you know to disagree with your “philosophical insight” as you put it without parroting the state department.
I too disagree with you. Having traveled to Cuba to visit family on a number of occasions I see the resigned discontent. But you are correct in that not everyone wants change in Cuba, but it would be nice if they were given a choice. After all the Castro’s have been in power, and handing down edicts, for the past 54 years! Other than Queen Victoria who reigned for 63 years, no one else has held such absolute power for so long a period of time over the last 200 years!
Luis, I do find that you, like most of those that those supporting the Cuban totalitarian regime, are uncomfortable with the sometimes messy business of free speech. So grow a pair…If you have a strong argument it will stand up to these little back and forths
Dude, you pre-emptively ranted. Veronica wrote a lovely piece on nostalgia, and you were prompted to rant.
That says all one needs to know about you.
‘the U.S. has little need for such things.’
http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/cia-sponsored-trolls-monitor-internet-interact-with-users-to-discredit-factual-information/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
http://consciouslifenews.com/cia-media-infiltration-operation-mockingbird-legal-internet-trolls/1147665/
Oh really?
With a 50+ year propaganda war on their ‘lost property’ Cuba, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Nice doing so AFTER I posted my rant. Really nice dirty little tactic.
It’s because I’m FED UP with the likes of you. That’s it. You have offended me profoundly with your first-world superiority complex. Twice. Nobody who supports the embargo needs any ‘kindness’ from my part. You don’t have a ‘opinion of your own’, you parrot the US State Department. And if you really agree with the harsh US policy on Cuba based on ‘moral obligations’ then you deserve absolutelly no respect from me. And being from a country who’s suffered from the claws of the American Eagle, toppling a democratically elected government to install an anti-communist totalitarian regime whose documented tortures (learned with American offician in the infamous School of the Americas) make the violations of human rights in ‘evil Cuba’ pale in comparasion. It’s no wonder I tell every yankee to ‘go home’. Especially those who claim to have met every Cuban in the island in order to argument from authority and other logical fallacies.
You don’t promote ‘sharing ideas’. You promote propaganda. This article has a philosofical insight you cannot fathom to bring any reflections upon. From your first comment it’s clear that you haven’t read the whole article and spew up a a tale to bring again the same old story that ‘Cubans are miserable’ and ‘Fidelistas are ideologically blind’.
Luis, unlike China’s 50 cent party who are paid by the government to steer the online debate in their favor, and the Cuban version working out of the University of Havana, the U.S. has little need for such things. I realize you will never believe this but never the less it is true
I put up two nice posts on Cuban music and literature, and yet all you can do is gripe. How sad.
Luis, your comments consistently seem to finish with some attack on the opposing commentors credibility or motivation to write what they have written. You challenge their nationality, their claims to how they have come to be interested in Cuba, even going so far as to claim that if one agrees with the US government, they are being paid to do so. To live in a free society today demands that all citizens, at the very least, acknowledge that there exists ideas and beliefs that differ from their own. I can’t assume that every one who agrees with the Castros is on their payroll. The exchange of opinions here on HT is a perfect example of what the real world needs. Your rejection of this experience speaks volumes about why communist regimes tend to be totalitarian and close-minded.
Sorry newcomer, first read the whole history of the comments of this site, see how how certain ‘first-posters’ appeared at the same time defending tooth-and-nail the aggressive US policy towards Cuba before trowing bullshit at me.
I find your comment telling. You insinuate that posters on this site critical of the Cuban regime are somehow paid to do so. I would suggest to you that the “healthy exchange” you seek must include contrasting and critical points of view. Otherwise there is no true or valuable exchange
No need to fear the “same old rhetoric” as you put it. It’s just ordinary people pointing out the obvious fact that the emperor has no close!
Of course, when one speaks of the traps of nostalgia in Havana, Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s brilliant novel, Tres Tristes Tigres comes immediately to mind. In English translations the title is “Three Trapped Tigers”. With wildly inventive prose, Infante brings to life the Old Havana in all it’s contradictions of beauty and ugliness, light and dark, wealth and poverty, sin and redemption.
A great song, rich in sentimental nostaligia for Havana:
Los Zafiros, “Habana” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_ONZgnOd4s
And another version, not at all sentimental, but angry over all that was promised and lost:
Los Aldeanos, “Habana” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAqnZvSUI8M
This is why those USINT trolls are RUINING Havana Times. We have a nice insight from Veronica Vega contrasting directly with Veronica Fernandez’s last post perspective.
Now it’s impossible to bring any healthy exchanges because of the overwhealming propaganda that strikes at the comment section. EVERYTHING is a excuse for the same old rethoric, from a simply cup of coffe to the sentiment of nostalgia that we all feel at some point of life.
I always rent a beautiful casa particular in central Havana belonging to a retired Cuban ambassador to a Latin American country. He and I always have some very lively political discussions as he is unfaiingly a ‘Fidelista’ and I am equally not. I respect his views and he appears to respect mine as he continues to let me pay him 25 cuc per day to live in his apartment! Anyway, he is very nostalgic about the Cuba of the early 1960s, and very critical of the Cuba pre-1959. Likewise, he is measured in his criticism of the Cuba of today. He blames most of the problems that plague his country today on the Cuban people’s increasing unwillingness to sacrifice for the revolution. He believes that the Cuban people of the early revolution years were less selfish. Here is what is most interesting: when I press him for what he believes will happen to Cuba in 20 years or so, in view of the demographic data that points to Cuba becoming the oldest country on the planet. When he acknowledges that if Cuba today has to import 80% of the food they consume and there is no trending data to support that agricultural production will improve to change that. Finally, as remittances from abroad to a select group of Cubans increase and salaries don’t, the economic differences among Cubans continue to widen. When I can pin him down to admit these FACTS, he also gets a pained look in his eyes.