MakingHappy

24 Horrs (Santiago de Cuba)

I did not sleep well last night therefore am running on a quarter tank, and have a long to-do list to complete before end-of-day, so naturally I thought, Wouldn't it be fun to scan some Polaroids?

Song: "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" Reverend Cleophus Robinson. (Courtesy of my friend Jen who has sought out at least a few covers of this song.)

Pool Ruins (Cuba)

Our hotel in Cuba had suffered extensive damage as a result of several hurricanes that hit the region a few years ago. They had done a lot of rebuilding since but ruins of former structures and roads littered the land along the coast. It was not exactly safe, with huge pieces of glass and steel bits sticking out of the sand all over the place. Of course we couldn't resist investigating. The saddest part for me was all of the pieces of coral that had been pulled up and washed ashore. There were giant pieces of brain coral and huge fans of purple fan coral literally everywhere!

Entering Santiago by Boat (Santiago de Cuba)

Song: "Mad World" Tears For Fears. Yeah you read that right. I am on a Tears For Fears kick.

Supermercado Panoramic (Santiago de Cuba)

Another view in colour over here.

I loved those median bumps and used them as a design element in a bunch of shots.

Decorative (Santiago de Cuba)

Saturday Rides at the Park (Santiago de Cuba)

These are the same wrapped rides in use.

We are feeling really horrified about the block of buildings that burned down on Queen Street just east of here this morning. The first images I saw this morning were gorgeous photos taken by Miles Storey on Torontoist. I can't help but feel an extra pang of sadness and loss for the people living in the apartments over the stores, people who have lost everything -- many without insurance -- and are now homeless. It also worries me a little, acting as a reminder of my own tenuous position living above a store and attached in a long row to a chain of other stores and apartments. We are unintentionally locked in a sort of communal dependency and unspoken social contract with our neighbors. Living so close means that how I treat my environment and the problems that can arise affects them and vice-versa.

Song: "Waltz #2" Elliott Smith.

Rides Wrapped in Plastic II (Santiago de Cuba)

Another view of the wrapped rides.

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Two things: Davin turned 39 on the weekend. We went to the island which is one of our top two places in the city. It occurs to me that all of my favourite places in the city are green spaces. Anyways, the island was incredible. Freezing but bloody beautiful. Two: The show aired last night. It was good.

Song: "Once in a Lifetime" Talking Heads. Did you know David Byrne has a blog? It's fantastic but of course because I have not updated my links page in eons I keep forgetting until something reminds me. This "something" is actually often a certain someone whose photo magazine keeps him fairly knowledgeable about the photo/art world. He is constantly mentioning artists, photographers, shows and exhibits and I'm all, "WHO? Huh? Whatareyoutalkingabout?" Come to think of it, my friends in general collectively put forth a lot of effort to catapult me into this decade as far as art and music goes. I am stubborn and do not go easily.

Rides Wrapped in Plastic (Santiago de Cuba)

We first came upon the rides (hidden under plastic) on the preceding Saturday when they were unwrapped and in use by brightly smiling children. Later that day, we came upon another park with larger mechanical kiddie rides in use. I asked around thinking the rides were special for the holidays but it turns out they're a Saturday thing. I took this photo the following Monday. I'll post the pictures I took of the rides in use sometime in the future. The ride on the right are sharks and dolphins, and the ride on the left are horses.

Song: "Who'll Pay Reparations on My Soul" Gill Scott-Heron. I know I've mentioned this one at least one time in the past. How could I not? It's a brilliant song.

Into Light (Santiago de Cuba)

I rented "Days of Heaven" again. Not at all obsessed.

It took me until yesterday, the middle of the month, to switch to the Feb page on my calendar. I will miss looking up at the January photo. I do not miss the month of January itself.

Song: "Whatever (Folk Song in C)" Elliott Smith. I woke up with this melody in my head.

Supermercado (Santiago de Cuba)

I'm not sure if this picture really captures the frenetic energy of this corner. It was the Saturday before New Year's Eve and the sidewalk lineup to get into the Super Mercado was so long we couldn't get close enough to the windows to see what was sold inside. When we went back a few days later the place was closed and this corner empty. We looked into the window and saw mostly shampoo, giant stuffed animals, and a rack of shirts. Not much by North American standards, yet this was one of the largest and fanciest stores we came across in the city.

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The documentary show I mentioned six months back is going to air Monday night. Nervous, excited, and fearful doesn't begin to describe the range of emotions I am experiencing. I haven't actually seen the episode yet so I'm extra nervous about seeing it when everyone else does. If I do manage to see it at all. We don't have cable and it turns out NONE of our friends have it either. I may have to walk into a local bar on Monday night and ask to turn the channel to a gardening show. Ha! I would have planned ahead by renting a hotel room and inviting people to watch it with me but I'm way too nervous to do that. I'd rather watch it alone... which isn't going to happen because we gave up cable years back so I could save money and stop indulging in an addiction to horrible MTV reality shows.

Song: "My Sweet Lord" George Harrison. Chris, wrote to tell me about a reissue of Nina Simone's "Emergency Ward" which includes a rousing version of "My Sweet Lord." The write-up sounds so good I have got to get a copy. In the meantime I've been listening to the George Harrison version repeatedly which is a very nice song with a lovely melody and that great slide guitar but is driving me nuts because it is such an obviously religious song. Only music can make words come out of my mouth that would never be uttered by me otherwise.

Target (Santiago de Cuba)

I took a lot of photos of motorcycles in Cuba. Probably because there happen to be a lot of motorcycles in Santiago and also because they are attractive old-school Russian models. I often keep cars and other motor vehicles out of my shots anywhere else because they are UGLY and date the image in a bad way, but in Cuba it was incredibly FREEING to incorporate vehicles into photos of street scenes. There were times when I actually waited for a vehicle to drive into a particular spot in the frame.

We sat on the patio of the restaurant located behind the red vehicle on the right side. Actually Davin shared his crumbly and very white cheese sandwich with me when I unsuccessfully ordered a plate of chicken, rice, and beans. I swear I used all the right words! My Spanish is infantile, but damn it I know how to order most foods and beverages. The bathroom there was the worst I have ever experienced and believe me, I have experienced some terrible bathrooms. This one didn't have any running water in the toilet or the sink, a situation that is perfectly reasonable when the bathroom is an outhouse. However, as an indoor bathroom with plumbing it makes for a very unfortunate experience.

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Davin has taken the lead again in the race for the 2008 Better Partner Award with his personally designed surprise desktop valentine. Although I didn't have my glasses on when I turned the computer on and thought it was some kind of crazy virus. The Nice Virus.

Song: "Beauty Lies in the Eye" Sonic Youth. I wanted to post something with a love vibe today. "Sister" was one of my favourite albums in my teen years. I actually prefer "Kotton Krown" but it always seemed to be a more of a love song to a drug than a person. And while I'm at it, if you're a fan of "Sister" you might like this.

From the Top (Gran Piedre, Santiago Cuba)

Photos like this are such a shock on days like today. All that sun! I can see some sort of tropical palm in the foreground. On our first try we got lost and started to climb the stairs that go up to the tower in the photo until someone realized we were probably going up a set of utility stairs and not the "proper" tourist stairs to the top of the big rock. The stairs to the big rock were "of concern" but the stairs to the tower were very disconcerting.

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All is well with my files. The drive is toast but the files are recovered. Huge sigh of relief. Thanks to Davin who saved the day with Disk Warrior. I have a new drive now. It's a shiny black box with a ridiculous blue light emanating from underneath. It reminds me of one of those bass cars that seem to float on a platform of purple light. Doesn't quite match my white and silver mac but at least it works!

Song: "Watching the Detectives" Elvis Costello.

Sugar Cane or King Grass

The drive I keep my photos on got corrupted somehow and I can't access any images. This is very much not good.

I didn't think I could post anything but remembered I've got a bunch of botanical images on my main drive that I've been posting to the new Daily Botanical feature elsewhere. You can see what I wrote with this image when I originally posted it. I still can't say which it is.

I did a little cleanup of my Green Minds Project site over the weekend. I'm still looking for Austin, Texas subjects to photograph next month.

Song: "From the Morning" Nick Drake. I wrote about this song a few posts back but it is my very favourite right now and actually goes nicely with this photo. The line, "And now we rise, and we are everywhere..."

Man with Crutch (Santiago de Cuba)

This may be my last post until next week. Maybe. Probably. I don't know. It depends. I'm traveling for work and I still need to run errands and pack. And I'm bringing a laptop and there are no images on the laptop and blah, blah, blah why I am I telling you this anyways?

I have passed through or landed in Vancouver every single Feb for the last three years. I have never been to the Pacific North West during any other month of the year, ever. What is up with that? As long as it is green and the Ocean is still there I really can't complain.

As per usual I am uber stocked with things to do and read on the plane. I like to take advantage of all that free time. This time I have:

• "365 Days" by Julie Doucet. Davin presented this to me last night as a gift for my travels this week. I started reading it at 6am this morning when I woke up with insomnia. I've been following Julie Doucet's work since my late teens and have every issue of "Dirty Plotte," though not preserved in sealed plastic and stored in a temperature-consistent room because I am not even remotely anal enough. Although the daily journal style appears boring and relatively mundane on the surface (much like this site. Ha! p.s. Happy Five Year Birthday to this site last month which I totally forgot) I am enjoying the little stories that capture her daily life and am finding that I most relate to this body of work. I always appreciated what she was doing but didn't relate on a personal level to her stories except in that I was also a female art school student. This time I am nodding along to stories about annoying people who make her angry, frustration with artwork gone wrong, problems with book publishing, applying for art grants for the first time, money woes and moments of self-doubt and uncertainty about artwork. All of that and I'm only a month or two into the year.
• Seed catalogues galore - Of which there are many. I have a lot of highlighting to complete.
• Magazines - Garden magazines. I'll probably buy the new Walrus at the airport and allow myself to indulge in one tabloid which I am only allowed to buy or read on plane and train trips.
• "The One Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka. I wrote about this one over here.
• "The Brain That Changes Itself" by Norman Doidge - This was recommended by a friend. I read a little at her place last night and was convinced to go buy it. Written by a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst about new developments in neuroscience, called neuroplasticity, which challenges the notion that our brains are hardwired. It's an incredibly hopeful way of looking at ourselves and our brains, and our capacity to change; overcoming trauma, emotional difficulty, and even some forms of physical damage. There are interesting case studies in the book that outline how psychotherapy isn't just an examination of our subconscious that affects our thinking but physically alters our brains. Fucking awesome.

Song: I've been listening to "Pitseleh" by Elliott Smith from this live show a lot recently.

Posted by Gayla at 09:38 PM

Gran Piedre

The view from the top of this mountain was incredible. We could see the shadows the clouds left on the hills. We were actually on top of a very large rock, perched on top of a mountain. It's kind of incredible that I was able to stay up there relatively unphased considering my fear of heights. I will state for the record that my fear is mostly based in real danger. My level of fear tends to be equivalent to the level of danger involved. Although I can experience vertigo just approaching the edge of a rail-less roof.

Really the only part that concerned me about Gran Piedre was the last assent up a ladder to the top because I had learned by then that some things in Cuba aren't exactly kept in top form. Some things were downright crumbling. I got a feeling a great many people had been up and down those stairs. There was a message at the bottom stating, "Use at your own risk." So you know, if the stairs somehow came unattached, chances were good that you'd just fall and die. The end.

But we did not fall or die and the view was pretty great.

Tania La Guerillera

A little propaganda park sat at the turn along the edge of the little town nearest our hotel. I can only describe it as a propaganda park because it was filled with paintings and statues of Cuba's heroes. It was surrounded by a living fence of euphorbia and decorated with tin chains cut from thin soda cans (both can be seen in the photo). This hand painted billboard is a tribute to one of Cuba's female war heroes Tania la Guerrillera.

Song: "Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" Lauryn Hill. It's been a long time since I've listened to anything on this album. It was in high rotation at one time.

Field of King Grass (Cuba)

Tonight requires a calm and fairly simple image.

I've had a bit of a demanding evening. I'm spending hours everyday just answering email and it is starting to overwhelm me. I have managed to reduce my inbox to almost 1000. I know. I know. I complain about email a lot. But come on already! Can we get on this human cloning thing please? With spring on the way email is truly the most overwhelming aspect of my job and equally frustrating because it is not paid work. I am working more hours and making less money. That's not good math. And about 70% of it are demands for this or that which is also unpaying. And then an email from a magazine I interviewed with (via email) which wasn't an interview at all but them just taking my words verbatim and piecing together an article that they didn't have to pay or credit me for and then emailing me and calling it "an editorial mention" and then having the added gall to request that I promote the "editorial mention" via my website and press release. Uh huh. Bite me. I've been screwed enough times to put my foot down and say I am not doing any more email interviews unless I know the person or am very sure it is not going to go sour. Lesson learned.

Anyways that's only a part of my day and certainly doesn't represent the quality of it on the whole. Today I also felt very pleased about upcoming travel, had a nice meal with a good friend, and Davin met me halfway home bearing a blanket to make the remainder of my walk more bearable. He's a good one. I mean the guy is nursing a bad cold and he had only recently returned from a 45 minute walk of his own. And let's be real here for a moment; while I'd love to be able to say I would do the same for him it's pretty damn cold out there and I am a cold weather wimp. It would appear that he is winning the 2008 Better Partner Award. Except that I win by default for tolerating his mother.

Flags (Santiago de Cuba)

Tonight I had to choose a pretty photo without much of a back story. I just lost three hours of my life dragging my heavy moon boots around an airless and obnoxious mall searching for a shirt to wear to a TV appearance next week. Oh, except they want three different outfits. Ha! I have two pairs of winter-appropriate pants that are in regular rotation. I ending up buying two versions of the same shirt in black and grey. I think they requested bright colours but have you seen my wardrobe? Mostly black since 1988. Except that one year when I overdosed on orange.

Dragging my ass around the mall made me feel like a late eighties-era fifteen year-old, slumped over with winter gear hung down off their shoulders and dragging on the floor. Mine was an older, less cool, and less energetic, more haggard version with greying hair and painfully chapped lips. It's true. I'm sure a few new grey hairs developed within those three hours. My bag was impossible to carry, overstuffed with winter wear layers that were shed to account for mall temperatures. My feet itching profusely because of the woolen socks that were directly against my skin and rubbing inside those massive puffy boots I wear to tackle winter. Outdoor winter attire is not appropriate for the mall.

Shopping for TV clothes is a pain in the ass. Stipulations include: Must look "nicer" than my daily life but still resemble a reasonable version of me. Must not have stripes or polka dots, or crazy patterns, or material that makes me sweat profusely. Must be affordable because this gig is classified as "The work that does not pay, the work that costs money." I chose The Mall for no other reason than it was close to the place I got my hair cut. The experience has drained me of my life force. Brain is dead. Can't form the sentences.

Damn, that was ranty for someone so brain dead and tired. I guess I didn't enjoy that trip to the mall or something.

Fisherman's Island (Lucky Ship)

This ship, "Lucky," passed as we sat on a balcony eating lunch. As soon as Davin spotted it we were up with our cameras trying to get shots. We ate crab cakes and rice while watching two young guys swim in the dirty, gassy water just underneath the balcony, catching rides from the boat we came in on that had started making extra dough ferrying people from the mainland. Smart and profitable multi-tasking.

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Davin is sick. So is our neighbour. What do you wanna bet I am next?

Antonio Maceo Airport (Santiago de Cuba)

Last photo taken in Cuba while walking across the tarmac to the stairs. I wanted to take this shot on the way in but was put off by the myriad of security officers standing around. I'm not sure why I thought it would be safer on departure.

Untitled (Horses and Grass, Cuba)

The spiky plant in the foreground is a bromeliad similar to a pineapple but non-fruiting. I don't know the name but it was used everywhere as a spiky living fence. My favourite part of this picture is the palm tree in the background. No actually it is the illuminated grass underneath the horse on the left side.

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HELP. I am going to be in Austin, TX and San Francisco in the next few months and I am looking for gardeners to photograph in their gardens. I know you're out there. Please email me if you know someone or are a gardener yourself and live in either city.

Light Shines Through (Cuba)

I wrote recently about watching the Terrence Malick film, "Days of Heaven" (1978). I've thought about the film endlessly since then. Those grasses, the light, the silhouettes -- there are so many reasons why I relate to the imagery. Not surprisingly its influence has crept into my photography.

I dream about open landscapes a lot these days. Quite a surprise coming from a person who used to feel bored by the idea of so much open vertical space. Going out to see "No Country for Old Men" over the holidays was all about those beautiful landscapes on a huge screen. I was not disappointed. I HAVE got to get out to the desert this year! The violence was a bit much though. I can't seem to stomach violence in film these days. I can't seem to disengage from the realness of it like I used to.

We watched another Terrance Malick film, "The Thin Red Line" over the holidays and I basically winced my way through the entire thing. The light and landscapes were beautiful again but I missed a lot having to turn my head or block my ears every few minutes.

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It looks like I am going to be in Austin, TX and San Francisco in the coming months (this from the person who announced, "No work travel!" in 2008 only months ago). I am looking for gardeners to photograph in their gardens for a body of work I am building called the Green Minds Project. Please email me if you know someone or are a gardener yourself and live in either city. Don't be shy!

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And on another note it looks like just maybe this site won't turn into That One Week in Cuba for the entire year. I am actually getting to the end of scanning my film from the trip. Another New Year miracle.

Empty Lot (Santiago de Cuba)

I think that might be a zucchini plant growing just behind the rubble. I only noticed it a few moments ago while looking at the scan. Havana is internationally known as a leader in urban agriculture and community gardening so I looked around in Santiago hoping to see some of the same. I think we might have found some had we been able to see more outside the core of the city. We did see one from our bus ride to the airport on the way out of Cuba. It was in front of an apartment block located on the outskirts of the city where there was a lot of open land.

This empty lot was a bit of an anomaly in the areas we covered. The only available green space or empty space for that matter were a handful of public parks or squares. People had almost zero space outside their homes sitting between the sidewalk and the street so we only saw the odd container garden and they usually contained flowering or foliage plants.

I have so much regret that we didn't get into the city one more day for further exploration but we just didn't have enough time and other factors were working against us. A week is great for relaxation but not enough time to really see a place.

Countryside (Santiago de Cuba)

Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day. God that sounds trite doesn't it? "Happy" doesn't exactly cover it.

It's funny. Somehow what I am about to write ties into the day. Maybe its the part about freedom? Geez this post is sinking fast. It's starting to read like one of those embarassing pieces in which the writer reveals intimate and very obvious details of a dream and then end it with, "So what do you think THAT'S about? I have no idea!"

Anyways, what I want to say begins with me (there I go again) having a shitty day. I woke up feeling woozy and a bit comatose. It was not one of those days wherein I wake up feeling alert and ready to go. Instead it took me ages to fully wake up. I had strange dreams but couldn't remember them. I had gone to sleep feeling one way and woke up feeling another. A few hours in I had an awkward business phone call rife with misunderstandings that left me feeling confused and a little bit pissy. I do not like when things get muddled and confused. This kind of situation is always likely to push my buttons in the worst way, an aspect of my psychology I have come to understand in better detail over the last year.

Later in the day, still feeling pissy and irritable, I sat here thinking about what I had written recently about the New Year and how I see the future for myself. I was thinking about how one of my hopes for next winter is to spend a month living in Dominica. Dominica is a small Caribbean island and my maternal grandmother's birthplace. My mother was born on a different Caribbean island but for some reason I have always felt more connected to Dominica even though I have never been there. In fact I have never been to either island. There is just this certainty in my heart that Dominica is at the root of things for me. I need to go there.

So of course years have passed since the idea first came up. I have been sitting around here waiting for the right opportunity, for all of my ducks to line up. Waiting for the time. Waiting for the money. Ideally the hope has been to go on a 2 week visit to both experience the place and research my family tree in public records. Last month I decided it was time to stop dreaming about it and start looking for a way to make it happen. The need to go has intensified recently and I have got to make it a priority.

The goal behind this trip has always been to trace my roots and get a better understanding of where I come from and how that plays into who I am. The problem is that there is no one left to ask questions about my history or my family's history and even when there was they did not want to talk about it anyway. I am the only one left in the family (that I know of) with this last name. I need to know where it comes from. Trail was my birth name, my mother's maiden name passed down from her mother. I think my grandmother got it from her father. As far as I can tell the name has Scottish roots but I do not know of any Scotts in the family. When I took the name back a few years ago the one thing that scared me was the possibility that I was reclaiming the name of a slave owner who had owned and enslaved a member or members of my family. In the end I decided to go ahead anyways but I still think about that troubling possibility. It's a pretty real possibility. I mean, I KNOW with certainty that there were slaves in the family. My grandmother was a black woman born on a West Indian island. Someone not far back in my lineage was stolen from Africa and placed on that island. I sometimes wonder if I should have just created a new name for myself or found another name in the family to inherit. Of course there was more to consider on a personal level. Taking back the name was more than just the sum of its heritage but also about its recent connection to me and what I felt had been stolen from me. It was very much an act of rejecting one thing and accepting another. Taking what was me and mine with a big ole' "Fuck you" to the rest.

The reason why I am revealing these details, is because in contemplating all of this I discovered that the word that would best encapsulate what I want from this year, while it looks and feels like "freedom", is actually spelled "clarity." People in my family have all operated on a certain level of vagueness about facts, details, emotions, and experiences. As long as things are left a little bit vague, a person can't make clear choices, take responsibility for themselves or be sure about a perspective. Vagueness leaves you feeling like you can't be certain about anything at all. While on the surface vagueness seems like a nice self-protective cocoon to wrap ones self in, it's also disorienting and passive. It's a trap, really and one that perpetuates an overall sense of powerlessness.

I like that the word clarity is defined as "freedom from ambiguity." Because ultimately the freedom clarity offers is one that results from knowing who you are and where you come from both literally and figuratively. It's about having the facts available and in front of you where you can assess them for yourself, take a position, and then act accordingly.

I am ready now. I am ready to collect the remaining pieces of this puzzle and free myself from ambiguity. I want that kind of freedom.

La Defensa (Santiago de Cuba)

I just got some more film back from the developer's and have carved out a little window of time tonight to scan. I was pretty excited about a few of these rolls because they are closer to the kinds of pictures I strive to take around here (here being Southern Ontario). I diverge a lot and experiment with different ways of taking pictures but there is a certain style that I see as being most indicative of what I am trying to achieve. They are quiet pictures, I think. They say a lot but they say it slowly. They do not scream or demand to be seen. The tones are really neutral, almost flat at times but with a certain quality of light.

God, I wish I had shot more like this but I was stupid and got sucked in by the extreme sun that we experienced most in Cuba. That and the fact that the camera I brought is one that I only use one kind of film in now-a-days. I am so glad we were in the city on New Year's Eve when both the city and the sun was shockingly quiet. And I am so glad I had the wherewithal to switch film and stop fucking around with the more intense stuff.

I am really liking these pictures a lot.

Vintage Car (top of Padre Pico Stairs, Santiago de Cuba)

Time to get back to a city photo.

I took this photo while walking down the Padre Pico stairs, a steep set of stairs that offers a beautiful view of the city of Santiago de Cuba. The neighbourhood around the stairs was particularly poor with a lot of little kids asking us for money and chocolates. Disorientation and exasperation was starting to hit me by this part of the trip. It was nearing the end of the day and we'd gotten a bit lost trying to find the stairs. That, in combination with the bad air and the heaviness of the last half hour was starting to get to me. I found it difficult to focus on photography while descending the stairs which was also caused by my slight fear of heights. Consequently, two scenic photos I took from the stairs were double-exposed when I forgot to advance the film between shots. I am so accustomed to habitually advancing directly after clicking the shutter that this never happens.

By the time we made it back to the taxi area of town Davin was ready to go but I was still determined to see more. My sense of exhaustion was overlooked by my need to take in as much as possible. Frank, a fellow tourist who had accompanied us into the city made arrangements with a driver to meet us in about an hour and a half. We walked around for another 20 minutes or so until we all decided that we'd had enough and headed back to meet our ride early.

I've got two photos with some info about the madness of that drive here and here with two videos shot from the car here and here. Davin has posted some much nicer shots taken from inside the car in his city set.

Cuban Countryside (with Tree)

It's difficult to make out in the photo but the fence that follows along the side of the road is a living plant fence comprised of a pineapple-like bromeliad.

And while I'm on the subject of plants I thought I'd mention again my daily botanical over yonder.

El Valle Prehistórico (Cavemen)

This is the second photo for today.

I think this educational vignette had something to do with food preparation.

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Over the last few years I've been on a handful of trips here and there all related to work. It's been good in some ways but work-related travel is not the same as real travel. Firstly it is not a break but actually requires more preparation, more work afterwards, and boatloads of work on arrival. And there are expectations to be met. I am there to perform and provide a service. This can be mentally and emotionally taxing. But I enjoy it too. I have learned a lot about myself through these experiences. All-in-all, no matter how well it goes, traveling for work is exhausting and there is often very little time to see and experience the places visited.

Going on a long-overdue week-long vacation recently has opened the floodgates to something -- a part of myself perhaps that I was doing my best to push aside out of necessity. And now it's all I can think about. How can I go more places? How can I take longer trips? How can I make the space and time in my life and how can I raise the cash? I have commitments right now that will see me through 2008. But my brain is churning. Who knows what possibilities will present themselves but I am thinking about next winter and 2009.

We have been watching "Long Way Down" recently which is not helping the travel itch one bit. Those vistas and amazingly interesting places are captivating my imagination. No motorcycle trips for me in the near future though. Hell, I've got to get a license to drive a fucking car first -- something that just happens to be on the agenda this year.

Since the new year recently passed I have been thinking about how to encapsulate where I am right now and where I see myself going in the next year. We used to make up silly rhyming mottos for each New Year that didn't really have much overall meaning. I've never been a resolution-maker but my brain has been in that space recently -- with changes happening inside my head and new things on the horizon, the passing year really felt like turning a corner into something new and a leaving of other things behind. This motto hasn't come to me yet but it's got something to do with freedom.

Song: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Live) Bob Dylan.

El Mundo de la Fantasia (Astronaut)

As predicted my sleep last night -- if you could call it that -- sucked ass. And I hurt in new places, which when all tallied up seem to amount to every single inch of my body. That class kicked my ass.

I think photography can be utilized as an exercise for accessing your sub-conscious mind. It certainly works for me in that way at times. In the case above I actually fooled myself with my own photo, certain that a gorgeously golden and unkempt grassland lay behind this astronaut figure at El Mundo de la Fantasia (I love the way these words roll off the tongue). Then I looked at the photo Davin took of me posing behind a similar astronaut figure and realized that it wasn't like that at all!

Song: I Love You Lou Reed

Con Recreacion Y Teson, Defenderemos La Revolucion

I really am trying to keep up with this insane twice a day schedule, even if it is killing me. In truth it's been fairly difficult at times but is easy tonight because I am hopped up on yoga balls having attended an hour and a half long yoga class this evening followed by 5 oysters at buck-a-shuck Wednesdays AND a cappuccino past my cut-off hour. I may never sleep again.

So the picture... The sign basically translates to "With Recreation and Tenacity, Defending the Revolution." I kind of jumped the gun in approaching this particular location but what the hell. This was a place we came across by chance on our way to the lagoon. We did not stop on the way but since we left the lagoon earlier than planned we asked the driver to stop on the way back. This place, called El Mundo de la Fantasia is an abandoned kids park that just sits there closed down at some indeterminant time not too long ago but open for exploring. It was filled with the kind of metal kids' park rides that have long since been retired in North America (wouldn't I love to find that retirement village) in favour of safer (read: boring) plastic park installations. It also contained loads of crumbling plaster replicas of well-known Disney characters and mysterious local cartoon characters. I think our driver thought we were just going to get out and take a few quick snaps of the entrance but before he knew it we were through the gates, disappearing inside for quite some time. He grew accustomed to our strange photo-taking requests soon into the trip and even offered to stop and indulge us without our asking on several occasions. On most occasions we explained it away by exclaiming about the beauty of the scenery or in the case of botanical gardens explaining that plants and gardens are my job. But I'm not certain he ever really got our excited interest in the broken down fantasy land. What about an old abandoned park could possibly amuse two adults of a certain age? He looked awfully bewildered when we emerged from the park. Our infant-level Spanish was not sophisticated enough to explain. I think the gist of what I said as we drove away was "vacio" (empty). It was the only word I could draw forth from my limited vocabulary.

But man, that place was so awesome I could not stop until I captured everything. Turns out I missed a thing or two anyways. In the end that is how I would encapsulate my entire picture-taking experiences in Cuba. No matter how fast I shot and how many pictures I took there was just no way I could have captured everything I saw. I missed a thing or two anyways.

Song: Everyday People Sly and the Family Stone.

Baconao Lagoon (Panoramic)

I believe that strange group of sticks on the left-hand side is a nesting area for birds. I could see a few huddled in there with the aid of low-powered binoculars Davin packed for the trip. Other than that the lagoon did not offer much in the way of birds. I think we needed to be there in the morning and we were lucky to have made it to the lagoon at all.

Our last day in Cuba fell two days after New Year's Eve. We woke up with the intention to hire a cab to the lagoon only to discover that a post-party lock-down was still in effect. It turns out Cubans know how to party and had continued to do so like it was 1999. They also know how to take a day off. Few taxi drivers were working that day and the ones that were had already been booked. I was not to be deterred. God damn it I was going to make it to that lagoon! The first issue was finding out the location of the lagoon. One thing we noticed about Cuba was that nobody seemed to know where things were. The map we bought of the area was terrible. Many roads had no name or weren't shown at all. Distances were vague. Few destinations were listed. That was the best of all the maps I found. I knew about certain interesting locations before we left through extensive online research. But as previously mentioned The List turned out to be useless. Books about local destinations sitting in the lobby of the hotel did not indicate where anything was actually located. Distances were not marked. Asking at the reception desk was mostly unhelpful. Thank god for Raphael who helped me locate some places on the map and provided vague directions for others located off the map. Turns out it's dang hard to make a plan on how to get to a place with only the very vaguest idea of direction and distance.

We tried to rent scooters even though neither of us can drive and the prospect of operating a sort-of functioning motor vehicle in suspect condition on bumpy and broken country roads to an unknown distant location with no service station and no parts available anyways at the non-existent service station scared the shit out of me. I imagined skidding over a particularly sandy patch into a wetland or breaking down within miles of just about anything with nothing but my pathetic baby Spanish to aid us. In the end it didn't matter because all scooters were rented.

Next we tried mountain bikes. We managed to get the last two; both with almost no working breaks and all kinds of problems too numerous to list. My bike was so small I had to ride hunched over with my knees under my chin. Both wheels were bent and aligned as best they could be given their shape. My bike didn't ride so much as wobble and hobble its way in an indeterminant direction. We got as far as the end of our street before giving up.

I started to feel hopeless. Then pissed off, complaining about this fucking place where everything is vague, things kept going wrong, and nobody plans anything. I haven't talked much here about the problems but there were many. We made a lot of jokes over the course of the week that started, "So sorry but...." I started to feel like a prisoner. The ocean is lovely but I did not want to spend my last day laying on a chair with a whole country out there to explore. I can barely stand to lay on a beach for longer than 30 minutes period on any given day. When I have limited time in a place I want to see and experience that place. I would have felt more comfortable about trying to walk even a bit further than we had the day before but the problem we encountered in the Cuban countryside is that it is spread out and hot as fuck out there. Everything shuts down for the holidays. There were no stores or restaurants around to be open or closed anyways. And with the holidays we would be damn lucky if we passed a vehicle to get a ride from. The place was SHUT DOWN. The day after New Year's Day was quiet as can be. People were out walking to the beach and partying in their yards on New Year's Day. The day after was just dead. Eventually we made it back to the hotel lobby on those wobbly bikes with the hope of at least putting our names on a list just in case something came up at some point in the day.

We lucked out! We must have looked particularly desperate because the receptionist took pity on us promising to look into finding a private driver he knew and instructing us to come back in an hour ready to go. Shortly after our return a small red fiat drove up, idling behind a row of palm trees. We were instructed to haul ass and get into the car before we were spotted by other hotel guests since everyone had been told the same story about the impossibility of hiring a cab. We could not believe our luck. I was so thankful and took several self-portraits of myself leaving in that little fiat with a huge smile on my face. It was a day after New Year's Day miracle!

It turned out to be a great day. We loved our driver (I'm not saying his name because private cabs are illegal), loved the drive, and came upon all kinds of amazing things that I haven't even shown here yet.

Road (Cuba)

Second picture for today.

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Left leads to the city. Right leads to the lagoon.

Baconao Lagoon (Boat)

This is the motor boat that wasn't working.

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An article I wrote for the Feb 2008 issue of Organic Gardening magazine is also online. This piece gives a bit of background. I'm pretty excited about work these days. My usual spring madness began on my first day back to work after the holidays (Jan 7). That's earlier than ever! I am hoping this is a good sign of things to come. I've had lots of seasons with crazy weeks but with few things actually coming to fruition. The last few years have been difficult; a constant up and down roller coaster that is zooming up, up, up one minute, followed by a plunging disappointment the next. That's just how this shit works unfortunately. But this year a bunch of things are already solid and February alone is going to be a crazy month. I'm feeling ready but a little bit scared.

Baconao Lagoon (Cuba)

Oh my goodness it is beautiful here. Kind of like a big lake surrounded by mountains. I had been hoping to explore the shoreline looking for birds and other creatures around the mangroves. We considered taking out one of these rowboats but in the end we made too many stops on the way to the lagoon (and then on the way back) and ultimately didn't have time. I was given the impression that the 4 cuc peso cost for taking a boat out included the services of a man rowing the boat, a prospect that would have made me very uncomfortable since I do not like being over-served -- especially when the price is too cheap. They did have a larger motor boat on the dock, however it was broken down. In the end we just stood on the dock, took some photos, enjoyed the view, talked to some freaky tourists with over-inflated boob-jobs, and left.

Net (Baconao Lagoon)

The horizon is a bit off on this one. Oops.

Davin in Cuba

We had two weeks together over the break. Too bad about the having to go back to work and make a living thing.

I took this photo on New Year's Day when we decided to walk to the local beach and ended up spending 4 hours walking to the nearest town and back. Walking was really our only option out since everyone was on holiday and no taxis seemed to be running. A truck driver stopped to ask if we wanted a ride on the way out but we thanked him and waved away the offer, still under the impression that we were just going to walk over the next hill... but the next hill came and then another hill and another turn in the road and we just kept going looking forward to whatever came next. We discussed hailing a taxi on the road back but never did see one -- the road was empty except for cows, circling vultures, and Cubans walking to the beach.

Along the way we stopped to wave and wish a Happy New Year to everyone we passed. It was a holiday and spirits were high all around. Davin noted the strangeness of acknowledging strangers, a social behaviour uncharacteristic to city living. It made sense though in a place so small everyone knew each other. It would be rude to walk past someone without a friendly greeting whereas in the city it would be considered crazy to behave otherwise. Some people looked at us suspiciously but many watched with an enthusiastic curiosity while others invited us to join their party. About half-way into our journey we crossed paths with a multi-generational family headed towards the beach. A woman about our age was nursing a young baby. She stopped short of us, removed the baby from her breast, and promptly plopped the baby in Davin's empty arms. Everyone stood around laughing and cooing at the baby. The family made jokes about leaving, pretending to walk away from us with the baby still in Davin's arms. We all laughed and played along but it was one of those strange experiences that was both light, friendly, and warm but had the air of an unspoken something to it. We eventually parted ways astonished by how open people could be. I guarantee you no one would place their child in a stranger's arms around these parts regardless of how friendly that stranger seemed.

I took this photo of Davin shortly after we set out on our journey. The road seemed particularly hot on the first leg of our walk... probably because it was paved with asphalt and the rest was mostly dirt or broken up. Davin saw a snake slither into the brush along the road. I was pretty bummed because I missed it and never did see a snake at anytime during our trip. No tarantulas either. Maybe next time.

El Valle Prehistórico (Moose)

I took this photo at a strange Cuban roadside attraction called El Valle Prehistórico. We paid 1 peso each to enter and 1 peso each to take pictures. Fidel's revolution began in the Sierra Maestra mountains and the land this attraction sits on was a former farm that had been pertinent to their activities in the countryside. The premise of the place was cheesy; life-sized plaster dioramas featuring caveman era vignettes. There was a dinosaur area on the other side, but the place was so big and the sun so hot, we skipped it. Despite the cheese (which was awesome in its own right) the landscape was stunning, covered in carpet of flowing, golden grass, dotted with cactus and other interesting plant-life, and backed by the majestic Sierra Maestra mountain-scape. I love my grasses so it was pretty near heaven.

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If you have any interest in my botanical photography I am posting a plant-related photo everyday over here. Expect to see Cuban photos for the next week or so.

Closed Stall (Cuba)

These stalls located at the edge of the small town nearest to our hotel were bustling with activity whenever we passed them previously. They often displayed an assortment of goods, from hunks of hanging meat to fruit to beverages. However, I took this picture on New Year's Day when everyone was either at the local beach or indoor nursing post-party wounds.

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I've written about experiencing fresh cacao over here.

Street View (Santiago de Cuba)

This view is pretty typical of many of the quieter residential side streets in Santiago de Cuba. I welcomed walks down quiet streets like this one as a nice reprieve from the constant onslaught of insane traffic in other parts of town.

Most of what we saw of the city was quite hilly with thin sidewalks and a gorgeous view of surrounding mountains in the distance. Maybe I'm just in better shape but I didn't encounter many hills much steeper than this and certainly not as painful to ascend or descend as most of San Francisco. Or maybe I was just so happy to be away from the cold of winter that it all seemed wonderful and I didn't mind stewing in my own sweat.

If you want to get ahead of me and my slow posting schedule, Davin has uploaded a number of images from his perspective to his flickr account. Be warned that his do not include my superior [cough] accompanying narratives. They're currently arranged into 4 different sets based on location. He has only posted one photo at a reasonable viewing size to his actual site (I do not like viewing photos on Flickr). Someone give him shit.

Sierra Maestra (Looking to the Ocean)

Photo #1 for today.

I took this photo when our vehicle and driver took a break about halfway up into the Sierra Maestra mountains. We stopped at a schoolhouse where a group of farmers were setup along a short wall selling fruit and handicrafts. I bought a red necklace made from seeds, 2 shell rings, and a fresh cacao pod. The cacao pod cost 25 cents and was a pretty big deal. Tasting fresh cacao directly from the pod is on a list of life experiences that I hope to have before I die. Raw cacao tastes pretty terrible but at least I can scratch it off The List.

The woman I purchased the necklace from asked me if I had a pen. She was the first of several people over the course of a week who asked me for a pen. I had read about shortages in certain supplies prior to leaving but it was another thing that I understood in theory but didn't quite grasp as a reality until I experienced it directly. Everyday tools that we take for granted are a luxury for a lot of people. We saw stationery supplies for sale but they were poor quality and high-priced. I have always placed high value on a good pen and am on a constant quest for a pen that meets a complicated and deliberate criteria. However, this experience has made me value pens in a whole new way. You can be sure that the next time I go to Cuba I am going to bring a big ass box of good quality pens and pencils.

Cafe La Isabelica (Santiago de Cuba)

I've recently made a habit of documenting many of my coffee purchases. I generally only photograph the best ones... and once I've been to the same place enough times I tend to stop. But obviously Cuba was special so I made a point of documenting the coffee I drank there, initially anticipating that in a coffee-growing region of the world the coffee would be exceptionally good. It wasn't.

I traveled to Cuba armed with a long and detailed list of possibilities: things to see, museums worth checking out, bank locations and hours, and restaurants that came recommended by fellow travelers. I didn't have a plan but I felt prepared. I had read reviews that this local coffee shop in Santiago was the place to go for good espresso-based coffee with local treats to accompany your beverage and a nice place to sit and rest one's weary feet. I have a no morning coffee policy but we high-tailed it to Cafe La Isabelica soon after arriving in Santiago in hopes of a bathroom break and getting the first decent coffee in days. It took a few minutes of walking in circles and asking directions on the street but we eventually found the store. I had general directions but they weren't very good. This would be a trend for our entire stay. Directions were often bad and places were not at all how they were described in the numerous reviews I had studied online. It's embarrassing how much I gloated over that damn list; puffing my chest out like the Heavyweight Super-Organizational List Champion of the World; turning away the services of the numerous young men offering to be our tour guide for a couple of bucks because god damn it I had The List; offering my vast and superior knowledge to foolish fellow travelers too lazy or cavalier to put together a list of such finery and excellence. Just about everything on The List was irrelevant and the thing was completely abandoned two days into the trip.

Once we found the store and got inside we discovered a cafe with empty shelves. This was another trend in Cuba. I knew this would be the case but I don't think I fully understood the reality until I saw it with my own eyes. People have very little because they are poor, but people also have very little because there is very little to acquire in the first place. Most stores, from those selling general household goods to baked goods and food stuffs were mostly empty with only a smattering of items on display in windows and on shelves.

I asked to use the bathroom but the store owner had to fill the tank with a bucket of water first so it could flush. I'm not picky and have used some nasty bathrooms in my travels so I wasn't phased, just observant. Locating and taking note of the best and worst bathrooms is a thing I do wherever I go. In the end it was, by a landslide, my second best bathroom experience in Santiago.

On return from the bathroom my coffee was waiting for me. Apparently the espresso machine was broken and had been broken for some time. Thick, black, bitter coffee was delivered to a tiny espresso cup (the same one I saw EVERYWHERE in Santiago de Cuba) via a thermos. This turned out to be the norm during our stay. I tried sips of coffee at a few more locations but they were all the same, thick, black, and BITTER. I've enjoyed thick Ethiopian coffee many times in the past and am familiar with dark, black espresso but this wasn't that. The coffee just wasn't good. I don't know enough about the subtle nuances of different beans to know what made it unpleasant. It may have been the beans and indicative of all coffee in the region or it could have been a rationing issue. It's possible that the beans were just old. Or weren't good beans to start with. It's possible that people just like their coffee this way and it is too much for my exceptionally picky coffee-drinking palette. I did see a few working espresso machines in small stores throughout Santiago but passed, opting to go without caffeine on the trip.

In the end Cafe La Isabelica wasn't what I expected but we did enjoy our brief reprieve there. The owner was a gracious host, very friendly and warm. There were beautiful paintings done by the owner's father hanging on the wall and an old cigar-rolling table sat next to our seats. I would go back again, just not for the coffee.

People Mover (Santiago de Cuba)

I'm going to try and post two photos a day for as long as I can sustain it before my work schedule gets too insane. In a few minutes I will have finished scanning 120 photos with about 200 more to go. If I don't increase my one photo per day schedule I will be talking about Cuba for an entire year... either that or I will show them for a few months before moving onto new film, abandoning these photos forever. Here is photo #1 for today.

And so....

This was one of the first amazing sights we saw in Santiago and one that was repeated many times over the course of a week. I'm not sure if this is a regular occurance or if it was stepped up for the holidays with more people traveling into and out of the city to celebrate. To be honest I am only speculating but my guess is that this is one of the cheapest forms of transportation and that these people are not going to work. I'm basing my guess completely on the fact that a.) They are dressed too nicely for work and b.) It looked like an incredibly uncomfortable way to get from point A to B. Not only were people jammed into the trucks -- many standing for god knows how long -- but like every other vehicle in the area the tailpipes emit a nasty, black, dirty diesel smoke. Just sitting in a car was a horribly unpleasant experience so I can't imagine what it must be like for the guys standing up at the back just behind the exhaust.

Untitled (Motorcycle, Santiago de Cuba)

I took this one late in the day on New Year's Eve when the streets were mostly empty in anticipation of the celebration. People seemed to be at home cooking pork and making cakes, traditional New Year's food. Shortly before this photo we passed a group of men carrying a board displaying a splayed out pig (for roasting) and on the way back through the countryside we passed several pigs roasting on spits. Cuba loves pork.

The blue object in the foreground is a public garbage can. Some of them say "cesto" on the front although this one did not.

Song: I've moved onto Lonely, Lonely from Feist's older album.

Santiago de Cuba (Havana Club)

We passed a parade of fixed-up old American cars on our way into the city. They seemed to be a car club that were traveling the country from Havana to Santiago for the New Year. Santiago is not particularly large so we ran into the same cars on a couple of occasions that day. This is one of those cars. You can tell because it is in such good condition -- most old cars in Santiago are chop jobs on the outside as well as the inside.

Song: The Limit to Your Love. I've taken a sudden liking to Feist's new album, The Reminder.

Santiago de Cuba (Sidecar)

I've been posting quickly here in anticipation of the first batch of film. Once that comes it will be difficult to motivate myself to scan the Polaroids. I do not enjoy scanning Polaroids, they're fiddly and the colours are never quite right.

We saw a lot of motorcycles with sidecars in the city -- red and green seem to be the most popular colours but I saw orange and yellow too. I have always wanted to try riding in a sidecar but did not consider it for even a second in Santiago. The driving there is insane! There are no traffic lights except on the busiest and largest intersections. The style is fast and furious, drivers honking incessantly to indicate their presence and intentions. People manage incredible feats. We saw a guy riding on the back of a motorcycle while balancing a cake in one hand!

I did not feel safe walking the streets or riding in cars. Both seemed to be equally hazardous. The sidewalks are butted right up against buildings and are just barely wide enough for one person. Passing slow strolling pedestrians meant stepping onto the road and putting my life in peril.

Santiago de Cuba (Viva Fidel)

We took a taxi into the city of Santiago de Cuba on Saturday just a few days before New Year's Eve. The city was busy with people lined up outside stores to procure goods for the celebration. Handwritten proclamations praising Fidel, heroes of The Revolution and other socialist/communist icons were a common sight chalked or painted on walls, roads, rocks, and other surfaces. I'm not sure about the tractor in the photo on the right, but in the countryside we did see tractors used as a mode of transportation.

I've been posting digital photos of our trip to my flickr stream.

Cuba 1 (Tropical)

We're back from our trip. There is no way for me to encapsulate my experiences in a few words -- in all honesty I have no singular impression of the country based on my experiences of it. Instead I will have to reveal it slowly through pictures and accompanying stories. We saw and experienced so much and so many extremes within a week that it feels like we've been gone for a far longer than seven days. My head is reeling from it. I imagine there will be more head spinning as I get my film developed. I took 60 Polaroids, countless digital shots, approximately 300 medium format shots and a few panoramics.

I took this Polaroid shortly after fiasco #25 was sorted out with our accommodations. We were stuck sitting in the lobby for 4 or so hours plus an additional hour or so at the airport. As soon as we got our room we dumped our stuff and headed to the water to get a short dip in the ocean and take a few pictures as the sun went down. This picture does not represent my trip or what I saw in any way but I figured since it was one of the first pictures I took it was a good a place to begin the story.