There’s a building across the street from our house on Calle 13, and from the roof you can see everything. Sometimes my friends and I, on temperate afternoons or after rainstorms, sneak up in the elevator. We climb a rusty old latter to the very top of the building where the lightning rod is, silently fearing that the latter will break under our feet and send us tumbling downward. The floor of the roof is not a totally comfortable place to sit, the brick-red material underfoot is uneven, much like a popcorn ceiling. It’s very worth it though, the view is breathtaking.
From the top of that building, some of the secrets that Vedado and Havana in general keep are unlocked. You can see the rooftops of all the buildings for miles, the terraces, spaces behind houses that you never would’ve thought existed, how the streets are organized, the cosmopolitan splendour of Calle G, the sheer mass of trees that line every street in the neighbourhood, and just how far the city extends in every direction until it suddenly stops at the Malecón.
We played Eye-Spy at the top of the building. We pointed out Sarao, the obnoxious club that is all white with color changing lights, the eyesore of Vedado. We pointed out some of the spots we had been to on the first few days of the trip, when it seemed like we had to walk so far to get somewhere, and we felt lost all the time, like the Ludwig Foundation. There we met our art partners for the first time, those intimidating artists that would slowly become our friends as our Spanish became less terrible and our confidence rose. I slowly began to feel like I knew the streets, organised alphabetically and numerically, logically and simply. We pointed out the monstrous Melia Cohiba, whose height rivals that of the apartment building we were sitting on top of, and the restaurant just across the street where we were sad to discover the best food in all of Havana that we hadn’t been eating for the past three months. We pointed out the Fabrica de Arte where we experienced night life in Havana for the first time, recalling how Jack and Lawrence got lost in an area we didn’t know, worrying while we ate one of the most expensive but delicious dinners we’ve had here.
I find it appropriate that my first time seeing such a magnificent and all encompassing view of the city came just before I was about to leave it. We have just under 2 weeks left here. It’s as though just as I’m becoming truly comfortable here, I’m yanked out. It all feels very abrupt. There are a mountain of things I miss about home, people and habits I’m eager to return to, but not knowing when I can come back, see my friends, do all the things I love doing around here, feels strange. I don’t know when the next time I can go to the ISA and run around campus, through the ruins, through the ENA and through the arte plastica building, encountering various friends along the way, chatting, joking around and finding the next adventure. Ironically I’ll miss the reggaeton that one hears echoing constantly through the city, around the streets, coming out of cars.
On top of that building I felt the onset of a kind of premature nostalgia. The nostalgia will probably stay with me wherever I go. The only thing I can do is hope and pray that relations between Cuba and the US will reach best friend status (unlikely) and it’ll become cheap and easy to visit this place frequently. Right now to remedy the premature nostalgia I’m focusing very much on the summer ahead of me, which is shaping up to be a good one – full of Oregonian nature, friends and independence. Oh, and out there in Oregon, days where it occasionally dips below 80 degrees!