When Dreams are Calling by Carol Vorvain Page B

all
happen.
Sometimes I had tears in my eyes, other times a smile on my face, but
passion,
determination, and faith were always with me.  Red must have
been my color. And
so, I let my imagination go wild and bought my first couch. Red. Taken
by
itself, the event shouldn’t have meant much. After all, everyone has a
couch,
be it red, black, or white. For me, though, after immigrating with two
suitcases and without much money, that red couch was more than just a
couch. It
was a symbol. To create the perfect set up for a sinful night, even if
all
alone, I painted the wall behind it in strong bright yellow.
    After my whole apartment was colorful enough to
compete with a
flashy Lorikeet and still win, I stopped. I took a long bath
accompanied by a
glass of Sangria and let Carl Orff's masterpiece, Carmina
Burana , play
its magic.
    After such a long struggle, one by one, my
wishes were starting to
come true. I had the world by the tail and no one could have convinced
me
otherwise.
----
    Dora’s
Journal Notes
If you cannot find
contentment in solitude,
you will never find it in the crowd.
----

16
Cuba: La Dolce Vita
    Travel
far and travel wide,
    Leave
your worries far behind,
    Royal
Palms, a strong Mojito,
    A
cigar or a burrito,
    Hemingway
and Bienvenido.

Cuba !
My first holiday in years!
    “You’ll
love it here!” the lady next
to me assured me on our way to
the hotel. “I come here every year! You know, it’s the people!”
    “ It’s
the people ... I wonder
what that means. Are nations
indeed so different from each other? Or is each person different from
the other?”
    “Both.”
    Looking
out the window, I couldn’t see much:
just royal palm trees,
the Cuban national symbol and the sea…
    “ Bienvenida a Cuba!” the
lady at the reception said, handing
me the key to my room with one hand and with the other a freshly
prepared
Mojito.
    “Thank
you,” I responded, listening to the
beautiful piano music played
by a dark skinned guy.
    The warm
Caribbean breeze and the humidity in
the air were making me
feel dizzy, a pleasurable dizziness. One after another I could just feel my worries
melting away.
    The room
was simple, the furniture old, the TV
small, but there was
something cozy about the whole place.
    I turned
the TV on: “ Guantanamera,… ”
    “ Guantanamera…, ”
I started
singing along, dancing in the
mirror. “Oh, that feels good! I love Cuba!”
    And from
that day till the last day, my
feelings have not changed.
    Next
morning, I decided to see Havana and
looked for a touring
companion. After meeting a curious Canadian guy about fifty years of
age who
had to ask his father’s permission to get out of the resort without
much
success, I thought it was all in vain. But then I made a Cuban friend:
she
was the
only person at the car rental office. Without thinking twice, she
simply said
to me:
    “You want
to go to Havana and have no one to go
with? No problem. I
close the office and we go.”
    “Right…”
For a second my mind could not process
the information:
job, responsibility, the one and only person in the rental office. Hello,
are you taking me for a fool? She couldn’t just leave the
office. She must
have been joking. But she was not.
    And, there
we were, two women in an old
American car, heading
towards La Habana.
    “ Guantanamera…
guajira, Guantanamera .
Sing with me!” she
shouted while trying desperately to dance, talk, and wave to the other
drivers
all at the same time.
    “ Guantanamera,
guajira, Guantanamera ,”
I hummed along,
knowing the song by now.
    “You,
Canadians, don’t sing much, don’t dance
much, and don’t make
love much.
Here, we live to love, smoke
cigars, dance salsa and drink Mojitos.”
    “We don’t
have much time. It’s life,
always standing in our way.”
    “I know, you
trade time for a bigger TV, a
fancy car, and an expensive restaurant.”
    “It’s a bit
more complicated than that.”
    “It’s as
complicated as you make it, amiga.
But anyway, it’s a