I'm Everyone's, and No One's (thank you, Angel)

I am good company for myself these days

full of fantasies and desires

but not lonely--

face tingling red

these walls are glaring yellow--

It's almost like sunshine and I'm

starting to wish

for the smell of

Havana.

I wrote this a few days ago, from a small bedroom in my friend's house. I'm visiting her in Toronto. It's hard to talk about Cuba with most people right now. Even though I took the class (Cuba and Its Diaspora) with Ruth- even though she's the one who built this program, even though she'll be arriving in two weeks- if anything her class taught me to pull apart my fantasies and myths. To break down my ideas of what Cuba means, how they are attached to a collective American imagination of socialism and its effects. To look critically at the multiplicity of cultures, politics, opinions, histories, experiences that the people who live there and who have left there hold. To know that Cuba is not singular, that its people are not singular, just as it is impossible to generalize about Americans.

I cannot generalize anymore, not even in my expectations. What I can expect for sure is beautiful weather, an ocean and sunshine that I'm sure I will grow attached to, a melange of neighborhoods and accents and communities that I will respect, that will teach me about myself, this white-american-jewish- 21 year old-queer girl-woman, as all of these identities, as outside all of these identities, as inside them, all the time, every day; That will teach me more about how to work inside communities I am not from, even though I can never be fully inside them.

Tomorrow, a woman, our family friend's aunt, who Letty says is "the center of the family" will come to pick me up at the airport with a sign that reads "Jozi." Maybe her seven-year old grandson will come with her. I come bearing gifts: Michigan tee-shirts, Canadian Maple syrup. They come saying that they are about to "treat me like a daughter," according to Letty. I am honored. I am nervous. I'm afraid that I won't be able to communicate to them how grateful I am that they are letting me stay with them this first couple weeks. But I am also more sure than I have been in a long time, sure that this is the right thing for me to be doing at this point in my life.

I won't go into my expectations for our classes right now; that can be later, when the rest of the group is about to join me in 2 weeks. I won't go into ideas for my independent project; I do have them, but I am so sure these ideas will morph and grow as my experiences in Havana morph and grow.

So here I am, listening to Cuban music on a mix CD that some friends made me, trying to understand what it means that I am going to be in Havana tomorrow. I've been doing a lot of observing and reflecting in Toronto. Thinking about whiteness and community and family and career choices and wealth and purpose. Purpose inside myself, purpose outside myself.

All these insides and outsides. Finding where they link up, that's what I'm all about right now.

Currently listening to: 537 Cuba, by the Orishas

Thanks for reading

Un saludo,

Jozi