mardi 5 juin 2012

LIMINALITY: AN ANTHROPOLOGIST BETWEEN CUBA AND LOS INDIOS


THE MIRAGE OF YOUR FOOTPRINT
In the course of one week I have gone through several geographical and emotional changes: my intense life in La Habana to the affections of my sister and her husband in Miami to the chaos of my relationship with the Indians in North-eastern Nebraska.
I have studied the Liminality concept put forward by the anthropologist Turner, but even that did not help the dramatic changes in emotions: the turbulence of Cuba where the lopsided economic and political system is balanced by an incredibly meaningful social system… that was like a constant storm and then on to the Indians, this time with some perplexing incidents that none can explain.
This morning, the complexity had me down. As I was driving along the freshly green pastures, I thought of the ancestors who had viewed these fields and whose eyes are now shut for ever.
Suddenly I felt so poor, foolish and sad… that line from Pablo Neruda popped up.. where did that poetry soothe me, and when was that?
Walking along the same river, I read aloud once:
Now, may be,
She rests restlessly
In the great cemetery in Rangoon,
Or maybe on the banks
Of the river Irrawady they burned her body
All afternoon, while
The river murmured
Things that I might have said to her in tears.
Pablo writing about Josie Bliss…
Death Disease Illness Suffering Separation Innocence Love Rituals all were staring at me, and I felt suddenly so alone ..
I needed some poetry to rescue me, and  like everything else in my life, it arrived even before I asked for it.

Where did I see the mirage of your footprint on the road?!
Where did I lose your hands that I ended up here?!
In which part of the story have you slept that I am awake in tears, that every night I owe the warmth of your hands to my embrace?!

You are accomplice of my depression, accomplice of this road
you pretend that you are far away from me, I pretend you are here

In the song of your silence, I am looking for a healer
There is no sound in my world, I see just images

There is a feeling that I know I have you,
every night I keep the doors open for you to return


It was time to return to the Indians, one afternoon with them, I knew what I must do, once again reminding me of a poem by Pablo…

And that's why i have to go back
to so many places
there to find myself
and constantly examine myself
with no witness but the moon
and then whistle with joy,
ambling over rocks and clods of earth,
with no task but to live,
with no family but the road.” 
 Pablo Neruda


Right at this moment, I wish I was in Paris, in La Habana, uncertain locations with languages with strange scripts… not to relieve any one else’s grief but to find an outlet for my own.. for my friend who wants to be with his lover in Cuba, for a mother crying for the child who is bewildered by a separation..

Tomorrow night as the rocks are being heated for the ceremony of healing under this great dome, blue without clouds that we call the sky, I will add the little rock I brought from Cambodia …to learn the lessons of sacrifice, nothing can be achieved without sacrifice…

Good Luck in Bruselas, in Guanabacoa, in Baracoa, in Tabriz…
And right here..
In this blue house amidst the Indians in an isolated part of the land the Indians call, The Turtle Island…


the song  Mirage of your footprint is here sung by the well known poet singer Dariush



featured posts

CUBA IS THE FUTURE FOR LATIN AMERICA AND PERHAPS THE WORLD

CUBA IS THE FUTURE FOR LATIN AMERICA AND PERHAPS THE WORLD On my way out of Cuba, from La Habana, on COPA airlines flight to Panama, I w...