Search Results for: Yasser Castellanos

After watching Away From Her, a touching film about Alzheimer’s disease, that mysterious and devastating affliction whose depredations I’ve experienced up close, I can’t help ask myself whether everything else in life isn’t governed by a similar, fatal destiny.

While often I have heard that Cuba’s gradual moraI regeneration is unlikely in the short run, I began to reflect on what we could do if a legitimate will to change things existed (not only among the people, of course, but also within the government). These are the points I came up with…

Some days ago, I had what I consider to be one of the most important experiences of my life. I heard an album by the band Quidam Pilgrim for the first time. In the pieces, luminous English lyrics rush through a Celtic soundscape resonating with angels and wandering souls. The songwriters and performers, however, are Cuban!

Yesterday, while walking down a path cutting through a field of grass, I saw a little girl coming towards me and, all of a sudden, I felt my own past and future strike me like an enormous wave. I remembered what I was like when I was that age, recalled how I looked at and what I expected from the world back then.

I don’t generally like to say that I believe in “God”, because the concept has too often been abused. I also don’t like telling people to “stay positive” – not only because the expression has become a cliché, but also because I’ve had to go through some rather rough patches myself, and I don’t take people’s problems lightly.

Many dramatic scenes are played out on Cuban buses. A space one if forced to inhabit for a relatively brief period of time, it tends to create a false and circumstantial sense of intimacy among strangers. There, we breathe the same air, become privy to the conversations of others (sometimes even their thoughts), rub bodies, share smells and emotions.