Theory of Color

In the Winter of 2016, my omonim[1] visited me

And my Korean fiancé, her daughter, Emily

To plan our wedding ceremony,

Eagerly anticipating our matrimony.

Before going to dinner one night,

We visited a Merdardo Rosso exhibition.

Illuminated by interactive light,

My omonim insisted, love creates the aesthetician.

I think back often to what she said:

Indeed, True Relations clarify.

Now, I find myself well-wed,

And wise enough to never dare defy

My wife or her mother

In the least

With no one above her

I am allowed celestial peace.

Returning to Ol’ Rosso,

I enjoyed his plasters most oscuro,

Supported only by dusky luminescence

While his works in wax seemed incandescent.

-James B. Moog

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[1] Omonim means mother-in-law in Korean.

Un Hombre Libre en Cuba

In April 2013, the story of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s trip to Cuba was all over the news.  They had received a hard-to-get visa that permitted them to visit our controversial island neighbor (you know, the one with the missile crisis).  President Obama was taking heat for giving them special privileges and maybe the absurdity of this situation contributed to his subsequent decision to restore U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba and try to usher in a milder stance towards our isolated neighbor.  Regardless, I was there first. 

I visited Cuba using a person-to-person exchange visa obtained for me by Washington University.  I was part of a trip led by my friend and mentor, Professor Schraibman (Pepe). Pepe had grown up in Old Havana, where a vibrant Jewish community used to exist.  This community essentially vanished after the Revolution, as Jews had been on the wrong side of too many revolutions and had learned to leave while one could under such circumstances.  Still, Havana was Pepe’s home and he returned each year with supplies and medicine for the people of Havana and a group of lucky, young students in tow.  The people of Havana loved Pepe and their love was returned in this case.

Many in the United States maintain a romantic conception of Havana.  In pictures, we see brightly colored cars and historic Spanish-colonial style buildings.  Perhaps, you are familiar with the vibrant music of the Buena Vista Social Club?  It has a passionate, languorous sound.  Voices, jangling guitars, maracas, drums, and horns interweave into an oceanic ebb and flow.  This music could only have come from Cuba and the unique fusion of cultures that fertilized it.  Yet, such “social clubs” were abolished in the aftermath of the Revolution.  In a famous speech, Fidel Castro spelled out the future of art in Cuba: “The Revolution must have an attitude for…the intellectuals and writers…within the Revolution, everything goes; against the Revolution, nothing.” One did not need to crack a book to see that the Revolution had left little in Cuba untouched.  The streets were silent and the war was over but the Revolution lived on and it held its children in a suffocating embrace that left them gasping for air.  The machinations of the Revolution had been sustained by the lives and dreams of its people, which it fed upon in the name of the People. Against the Revolution, nothing.  What remained beyond the Revolution?  The vast and empty sea. A sea that imprisoned a people who had been assigned the motto, “Homeland or Death!”  And beyond that?  Everything.

In Havana, time could have been measured against the crumbling of pre-Revolutionary buildings.  I walked through a city that was falling apart around me.  A city of the condemned living on an island without boats.  The beautiful ocean that encircled Cuba was like a moat that stretched as far as the eye could see and there was not a single boat within sight.  The people of Cuba were overjoyed to find United States citizens on their island.  They had been waiting in vain for recognition from their powerful neighbor.  They were stuck in limbo, living as hostages of a sovereign feud and our arrival was interpreted as a good omen. 

The strong attraction that Cubans felt towards foreigners was, however, a product of their two-currency system.  Cuban citizens were paid in pesos for their government assigned work, a currency that was worth next to nothing and was highly illiquid, analogous to food stamps, perhaps.  Everything other than the bare essentials had to be paid for with CUCs, a currency that was pegged to the dollar at a rate of 1.0 USD to 0.8 CUC. The 20% premium was arbitrarily established by the Cuban government as an off-the-top collection.  For foreigners like myself, this currency was like a token system at an arcade.  There was no changing your money back, while for Cubans, there was no playing without it.  Within the Revolution, everything goes.

Without direct access to dollars or CUCs, the only other means of getting hard-to-find items (what we would consider everyday items) was to be lucky enough to have a kind relative overseas who was willing to send care packages back to Cuba.  The end of the embargo was sought with a religious fervor and many Cubans felt that their problems would be diminished substantially by the return of more Americans.  Accordingly, we were treated like royalty, which made me very uncomfortable.  Once, I saw some bracelets on display and wanted to get one for my wife but there was no attendant.  I stumbled into the home of an unrelated family, yet they wanted me to sit down and showed me the utmost hospitality. 

Most of the buildings in Havana were constructed in a Spanish-colonial style and many were built during the prohibition when Havana was viewed as an island escape for U.S. tourists seeking booze, gambling, and the magic of a truly unique city.  In cities like Rome, I have seen beautiful ruins encircled by new developments and streets filled with modern continental cars. In Cuba, there were only the latter; people lived amongst the ruins of the past─ their homes were literally crumbling around them. The city was very open because there was no privacy.  People lived in close quarters.  Walls had eroded, leaving cracks that allowed families to peer into each other’s living rooms.  I was told that the government had been slowly working on renovating these buildings but it was obvious that they were past salvation.  I wondered how often they collapsed on their inhabitants, crushing the people that they were meant to protect.  I was sure such incidents would not have been published in the Cuban press.  There were no tragedies in Cuba other than those of a counter-revolutionary nature.

Society was so dysfunctional at the macro level that, at the micro level, life had to be held together through relentless collaboration and small acts of kindness and genius. The brightly colored vintage cars that are admired in photographs around the world were perpetually being worked on in the street.  Their continued use did not stem from nostalgia but from necessity, which is the mother of invention and, in Cuba, a culture of MacGyver-like ingenuity. The Cuban populace seemed to entertain few illusions about the quality of the leadership in their country, which presented far more obstacles than solutions; their joy was a product of their overcoming of these obstacles on a daily basis, of their will to live and find meaning in spite of all of the absurdity. 

During my last day in Cuba, I remember walking along the Malecon towards the Hotel Nacional de Cuba where many celebrities and mobsters had gone to enjoy themselves.  As I strolled beside the sea wall, waves crashed against it and broke over the side, rising above and then crashing down on me.  By the time, I arrived at my destination, I was soaked but happy.  I walked in dripping wet and enjoyed a first-class daquiri. This was a world that Cubans did not get to experience.  An island within an island.  It had become clear to me that the Cuban people were exiles within their own country.  Everyone that I spoke to hoped that relations between the U.S. and Cuba would thaw out and return to a more sensible state.  Although I was traveling within a totalitarian state, I had arrived there as a free man, had traveled throughout as such, and would return to a country of unparalleled opportunity and freedom.  What about the people of Cuba?  Had their Revolution served them?  Would it ever end?  They were still waiting…  As Vasilly Grossman wrote, “Man’s innate yearning for freedom can be suppressed but never destroyed. Totalitarianism cannot renounce violence. If it does, it perishes. Eternal, ceaseless violence, overt or covert, is the basis of totalitarianism. Man does not renounce freedom voluntarily. This conclusion holds out hope for our time, hope for the future.”  The many friends that I made in Cuba lived their lives clawing at the walls but with dignity and pride.  They were resilient in spite of everything but, as we drank warm mojitos in the sun, they told me to bring back a message for them.  They said that they were ready for freedom, they wished for renewed friendship with the United States, and they prayed for the day when boats would grace their marinas and planes would arrive on their airfields which they too could board. 

My Handwriting

My handwriting is unruly and frantic.  It crowds itself as it rushes towards the end of the line.  The congestion tightens as it closes in on this precipice and the last words begin to slip over the edge like a herd of buffalo until they are magically transported suddenly to another line like Pac Man. 

When I take notes during meetings or class, it scampers after the speaker like a small dog.  It chases spastically and only catches up during lulls.  Inevitably, it falls behind and, like a child breaking into a sprint to reintegrate himself after straggling, moves into a bizarre shorthand and makes a break for it.

When I write in solitude, I sometimes take the time to try and “pretty-up” my writing.  I am deliberate and careful and then my writing starts to smooth and spread out.  The words have room to breathe and they take advantage of this rare opportunity to stretch, like a man on a transcontinental flight getting up to move around the cabin while he waits for his seatmate to return from the bathroom.  Most of the time, however, they will remain in cramped quarters, piling over each other.

About a year ago, I allowed myself a spree of indulgence.  I got one fountain pen and then another and another.  It was a sort of “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” moment.  In other words, I figured that I would grow into them.  The child who physical therapists had tried desperately to train to write properly with such novel devices as vibrating pens was ready to strut his stuff.  I loved the fancy nibs and beautiful colors.  Now I chose from colors that burst onto the page overripe, like piles of blueberries, bunches of grapes, or sprigs of eucalyptus.  Even the black inks had a special appeal.  They were a purer, deeper black─that Motherwell hue that just sucks you in. 

Oddly enough, my writing did improve.  I was more conscious of my hand’s movements and the pens were more finnicky; they required some babying.  You see, I liked the flex pens, the ones that create those fun swoops on the downstrokes.  If you press too hard though, they will “railroad,” the nib parts like the Red Sea, leaving an uncannily dry path between two streams of color, an unnatural cleft.  This added flexibility required new restraint, which came to me intuitively out of necessity.  Suddenly, my hand was moving like a dancer─lightly, softly...  And the pen moved like an ideal partner, always anticipating, responsive to the slightest suggestion.  Together, they slid and danced across the page like figure skaters, taking pride in their sweeping pirouettes, never missing a chance to celebrate their union.

The critic within me, however, looked down on this dance from above, peering like a disappointed parent at their prodigal child.  Now, I watched this extension of myself prancing across the page with great gusto but lacking the requisite adroitness to justify a stage presence.  Whipping its partner around like a mop, my hand spent itself overreaching; its movements lacked the economy of grace.  Well, I couldn’t blame the partner, a splendid tool with cat-like reflexes. 

How many hobbies had we been through, my hand and I?  How often had we arrived at them over-equipped and under-prepared?  But look at them dance, I thought; they are having such fun!  My prodigal child had lost his self-consciousness and had forgotten himself in those sweeping movements.  I descended from my critical perch to meet and congratulate them.  This young aspiring dancer was, after all, a part of me.

Why I Write

Once I pressed onwards in darkness without even myself for company and I wrote to drive pitons into a sheer cliff.  I tried to thread myself through them because I was afraid to fall.  I wrote to crack a whip over myself because I didn’t know why I was climbing.  I wrote myself a yarn that I stretched like Theseus as I struggled through an inner labyrinth.  I wrote whenever I could see.  I wrote to erode the Sisyphean pit.

Now I write to rappel into the depths because that is where I found myself waiting.  I write to shed light on my subterranean discoveries.  Then I write to dispel the vertiginous ascent as I carry them upwards.  I write to press onwards─to create myself.  I write to press inwards and center myself. I write to spin my impressions on the wheel, to feel them running through my fingers as my hand guides them with a will of its own.  I write to steal from nature, like Prometheus, and give fire to my creations.  I write to set my words in a kiln and see if they crack. 

I write because I don’t trust my reason.  I write because I am lost without it.  I write because I know how easy it is to lose oneself, so I write to dance with myself until I am exhausted.  I write as an act of resistance against the succession of moments. I write to assert my will, then I write to give into it, and, finally, to overcome it. 

I write as in a log, while I hunt for inspiration.  I tell myself to wait, to hold for the right moment, letting my thoughts run ahead when they catch a scent.  I hold for the flush, my fingers wrapped around the pen lightly like a trigger, and I follow my impressions until just before they crest.  That’s when I pounce. 

I write because I cannot believe in ideals.  I am looking for some aspect of truth.  I write to hear from the silent god within.  I try to trace the outlines on the page and feel him looking at me.  Sometimes I feel he approves and other times I can sense his contempt.  I always listen.

Every evening, I read in bed and so often I am seized by the words of another.  I reach into them and feel myself expanded.  As the night goes on, I forget that a pen lies unsheathed besides me. When I give into sleep, my body presses against it, writing my tossing and turning into the sheets.  In the morning, I am confronted by my chaotic markings but I continue to wrap myself in my nocturnal writings because I know it will happen again.