Thursday, 01 March 2007
-
After wrestling the urge to write yet another entry about the weather, I think I should address the larger problem at hand. College has slowly sapped my will to be creative. My craft supplies are covered in dust. Did you know that stickers can expire? My piano is at Jordan's house. Our band practices keep getting rescheduled because of homework obligations and midterms. My diary is buried somewhere in my room under W-2s and jewelry that I am apparently too practical to wear anymore.
I need to do something, fast. I need to smear myself with poster paint and roll around on a piece of butcher paper in the park, like my roommate Laura did last year when she felt similarly boring. I need to experiment with pastry art. I need to revive my addiction to organizing magazine clippings in various decorative boxes that I decoupaged myself.
It's all the Cuban's fault that I'm suddenly so upset by this. I met him last night at the Literacy Center, during the 15-minute break from teaching ESL to an alarmingly skinny and sarcastic Polish man. Once I found out, over the water cooler, that there was a Cuban in the house, I tracked him down and introduced myself, asking him for recommendations of Cuban films that I could watch for my Latin American Cinema class. In other words, he is a fox.
He was so determined to communicate over the language barrier, and my heart basically melted all over the formica table as I heard him say things like, "Fresas and Chocolate is a movie polemica," and "it is open up minds in the community Hispanic," interspersed with several frustrated Spanish cusswords. I wanted to talk to him in Spanish but my 6'7" boss with the wavy red hair, pale skin and icy blue eyes, which altogether makes him resemble a human American flag, if you can imagine such a frightening thing, was standing right behind us. This is a house of English, I could almost hear him say.
So I told the Cuban that we would discuss films after class. An hour later, once Andy and the other students left, I rushed to write my evening report and put on my coat, naturally getting my scarf tangled in the computer mouse when I stood up, causing me to nearly fall backward into my chair. I recovered and accompanied the Cuban and his Peruvian friend out the door, while mentally coaching myself not to rely too heavily on Ecuadorian teenage slang phrases that would translate roughly as "Hella," "Phat," "Choice," and "My bad."The scoop on the Cuban is that he's a political refugee, escaping imprisonment for x dangerous ideal and y instance of being referenced for such ideals in z internationally-distributed newspaper. He was so engaging and animated, and I was so intimidated and infatuated, that I could hardly concentrate on what he was saying. My chin started to quiver in a way that only happens on the rare occasion when I am experiencing a major moment of cross-cultural communication. My knees started to wobble. The Cuban continued talking and I nodded. I looked nervously at the Peruvian guy, who had apparently heard all of this a million times. Was he prepared to catch me if I fainted?
Ten minutes and several failed attempts to show them that I am capable of putting a Spanish sentence together later, I saw them off on a Northbound 147 bus. The Cuban promised to compile a list of must-see films. I trudged home through the slush, a normally mundane task transformed into a zombie-walk of embarrassment and fantasies of zipping through Havana in a rickety Volkswagen, sitting next to the Cuban and discussing in perfect Spanish our favorite songs by Buena Vista Social Club. Sigh!
Now here I am. Surrounded by boxes of unused stickers. Staring a midterm study guide. Wondering what I should wear to the job fair tomorrow. Wondering if I should erase all this and write about the weather instead. No! That's exactly what the Cuban would not do.
Currently Listening
Buena Vista Social Club
By Ry Cooder, Ibrahim Ferrar, Ruben Gonzalez, Compay Segundo, Omara Portuondo
see related
-
recommend
- recs 0
-
share
-
email
- sent 0
Post a Comment