Part IV:  The Breath of Cuba:  The Love Affair Continues

For some people, going to Cuba is an exotic vacation, something cool to do, a place to “see before it changes,” as I heard a hundred times on this last trip.  It’s beautiful colonial architecture, unique history, sexy sensual dancing, tender hearted people and seductive crystal blue seas are just another destination on their world trip, another notch on their world travel belt.  Cuba for most tourists it seems is just another round of photos in their camera, and another place to say they’ve been.

I must admit, in moments I am almost envious of these people, and the fact that they can just spend a quick week or two on the island, take some photos, drink a few mojitos, enjoy a few dances, and then go back to their lives as if they never left them, unchanged, unaffected, and free of the kind of overwhelming depression that I always suffer when I leave the island. Returning to my “real life” is a striking and painful reminder of what we have lost in our culture in pursuit of some crazy concepts of “success” and “security,” and the culture shock returning is always far greater for me than when I land in Cuba.

Cuba is some kind of crazy love affair for me. I can’t really explain it in words. I don’t really even fully understand it, I just know that it is. Love is like this. We can’t always explain love, or understand it.  We can’t touch it or hold it or own it. We can’t try to hold it too tight and yet we can’t totally let it fly away in the wind. We want it, we long for it, we live for it, we give it and take it and share it and spread it. We spend hours in magical states of awareness in it’s embrace and we want to know every little nook and cranny of it’s existence, to taste it on our lips and go to sleep and awaken with it. It can never change or be changed by time or circumstances, it is infinite and eternal and inexplicably everything and nothing at once.

This is my love for Cuba. I think of the island as a representation of the feminine because the island is so seductive, sensual, giving, nourishing and downright sexy in so many ways.  She turns me on thru magic, mystery, men, music and inspires all kinds of contemplation in me. She ignites the depths of humanity within my heart, body, mind and soul, and she touches places never known in me with enticing playful sensuality that transforms me in every breath.

Cuba, She finds me there falling in love over and over a hundred times a day. She challenges me and my beliefs and perceptions. She makes me take the bitter with the sweet, reminds me of the impermanence, the simplicity and the profundity of life all with incredible grace. She gets under my skin, sometimes drives me crazy in frustration and confusion, other times in surprise. She fuels my passions, dances with me under a million stars, then softly rips my heart out when I return from Her embrace, and leaves me feeling lost and alone without her, empty and aching for more in spite of the pain. And in the night, while I am away, she calls to me miles away in rapture through her songs and dances to keep me hooked and going back for more.  A true lover in every way, Cuba I am changed forever from your embrace.