I left high school in the countryside feeling that nothing belonged to me, not even my body. Living in shelters creates the sensation that your whole life, your privacy, your personal possessions and even your nakedness has become public property. “Sharing” is the obligatory word and it comes to seem normal not to be able—ever—to be alone. After years of mobilizations, agricultural camps, and a sad school in Alquízar, I needed an overdose of privacy.
I’d read, for the first time, the books of J.R.R. Tolkien, and the warm home of Bilbo Baggins was my ideal of a refuge where I could hide myself. I missed having a place to put my books, hang my clothes, decide which photo to tack to the wall, and being able to paint a sign on the door saying, “Stop.” I was exhausted by having to bathe in showers without curtains, eat off aluminum trays, and share the lice and funguses of my dorm mates. The illusory world of The Hobbit offered me this warm and quiet home that reality had never allowed me to enjoy. It was to this fictitious hole in a tree that I escaped, when the indiscriminate cohabitation became unbearable.
The beleaguered individual that I carried inside understood, in these years, that it was not only the camps and the boarding schools that disrespected the privacy of the individual. My Island is, at times, like a sequence of bunks where everyone knows what you eat, who you spend time with, how you think. The grim glance of my high school director was replaced by the vigilance of the CDR.* I’m asked to iron my uniform, shine my shoes, and expected to maintain a certain ideological posture.
The impression of being a “public good” or a “socially useful object” has not disappeared, rather the years have confirmed that I live in an enormous shelter controlled by the State. In it, one hears the bell calling you to come and eat—now disrupted by the shout of a neighbor announcing a new product is available in the ration market. Faced with that call, however, I don’t jump immediately from my bed, but take the time to hide something under the mattress. It’s a strange and dangerous book, where a dwarf with tufted feet smokes his pipe and enjoys a warm and intimate haven in a tree.
Translator’s note:
CDR = Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the ubiquitous block watch groups that keep tabs on every Cuban.
Welcome back!
I love J.R.R. Tolkein’s books, both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Peter Jackson movie adaptations of The Lord of the Rings were pretty good too.
To continue the Tolkein metaphor, I see Yoani in the role of Frodo Baggins and Fidel Castro in the role of the Dark Lord Sauron. The Ring of Power is the fear instilled by the dictatorship in the Cuban people. Freedom and democracy will be restored if enough people help Yoani destroy the ring (the fear) by dropping it into the raging fires of Mount Doom. One question though: who – while wanting the ring for themselves – will inadvertently help Yoani by playing the role of Gollum?
Tolkien takes Yoani to a safe comfortable place. Yoani takes us out of our comfortable places to a country where people hope for a better future. http://talkingcuba.wordpress.com/
I fully share the feelings and preferences of Yoani!. I choose the anchoritic life of St. Millan, secluded in his cave of Suso; above the one, from hundreds of undifferentiated cenobites on the long, medieval, depersonalized and cold common dormitories of St. Mary of the Olive.
It is possible that from some forgotten neuron came the spark to ignite the subconscious lantern, not to seek a whole man; but to remind me the Greek root of “cenobite”, which Diógenes knew very well and it is the same one for “cemetery”.
Maybe that is the only reason why Diógenes asked Alexander the Great to step aside, when in all his arrogance, the king was standing in front of his home-barrel. That way, reasoned the sage; the sun, that come out and shine equally for everybody, will heat his barrel.
#4 — I’m with you (and I love your message… you should spend more time over here on the English side!)…. I guess I’m going to have to take up Greek after all… I’ve been meaning to… but haven’t gotten around to it. And yes, my private cave with the grass and the sun and the birds, in preference to the ‘cenobitic cemetery’ of forced 24/7 association!
Andy, thank you so much for your kind words. Sincerely; Ozy
hello Pendragón, ¿do you remenber me? 🙂