dear diary, 1984

eulogy for loretta

Michael brought her home one sunny afternoon in March, 2002. He had been driving home when he passed her parked in someone's driveway with a FOR SALE sign in her windshield. He knocked at the door, took her for a test drive and offered the owner $1700 in cash.

I was standing in the driveway when he pulled up with a grin on his face. "Isn't she great?" he said, more as a statement than a question. She was 26 years old, had a cracked windshield, rimless headlights, no radio or A/C, and pink upholstery. She smelled like the '70s and gasoline. I wasn't too impressed, though she was kind of cute.

I drove her for the first time in a shopping mall parking lot with Michael beside me explaining her quirks as I repeatedly tried to get her into first gear and stalled her. I had to work to stop her and steer her. She had her own way of doing things. And she took her time.

I didn't have a car and soon claimed her as my own. I drove her, took care of her, and adorned her with color. Over time, a collection of little plastic animal heads ringed the windshield. A spillproof bottle of bubbles came to live wedged between the seatbelt release buckle and the driver's seat. The glovebox and dash displayed various magnets and a bright yellow sunflower. A strand of colorful beads and bells dangled from the rearview mirror beside the scapulario my mother gave me for protection, brought from Colombia and blessed in the Señor de los Milagros Basílica. A Marlboro matchbook I found proclaiming Even Communists Are Free to Smoke was clipped to the ashtray. Behind the backseat I carried some tools, a quart of oil, a sunflower umbrella, and some VW manuals I long ago gave up trying to comprehend.

I named her Loretta. If she were a woman, she would have been a fiesty waitress in a small-town diner wearing rhinestone cats-eye glasses with her name embroidered in flowery script on her uniform. She was the kind of car that had no pretensions about what she was: a simple old car with nothing flashy or fast about her, but solid and dependable. She embodied for me the essence of what the Japanese call wabi-sabi: the beauty of modest, imperfect, impermanent, and unconventional objects.

We had many adventures around town. People would notice her, ask me what year she was ('76) and then eagerly tell me their own "when I had a Bug" stories. Children would point and their mouths would become little "O"s and sometimes they would ask me shyly about the animals on the windshield. I received many smiles and waves and questions. I was flashed the peace sign and beeped at by other VW owners in a gesture of solidarity that only VW owners display to other VW owners. I suddenly belonged to a unique car culture vastly different from the one of high-tech convenience and speed I lived in.

And then one day I was rear-ended while I was stopped at a light, on my way to give a presentation for work. I was fine, but Loretta's engine box was crushed. My good friends came and rescued us both, towing Loretta back to my place on their trailer. For weeks I walked by her and she seemed to still be smiling at me, as if she knew I would soon be taking her to the shop to get her fixed. But the insurance company told me it would cost more to fix her than she was worth. How do you explain to an insurance agent what a car like Loretta is really worth?

I cleaned her out and said goodbye and the insurance company towed her away to their auto auction lot, where she would be auctioned off to the highest bidder who most likely would use her for parts.

She was exactly 30 years old when she met her end, though I don't like to think of it as her end. Pieces of her will likely end up in other old Bugs. And now I have my own "when I had a Bug" stories to tell at the gas pump.

Goodbye, Loretta. You were fabulous.

bones and dust

October 2004: Havana, Cuba

On one of my wanderings around Havana, I visited the Necrópolis Cristóbal Colón, a huge cemetary filled with gleaming white above-ground graves and crumbling crypts. I have always enjoyed exploring cemetaries and I make a point to visit at least one whenever I travel abroad. I am curious about how a people buries its dead. And I like to imagine the lives that were lived and lost before I ever came into existence.

Strolling through the Necropolis, I found the graves of some Cuban martyrs and Cecelia Valdez, a famous heroine from a Cuban novel of the same name which I had studied in college. I never knew she was an actual person.

As I was heading back to the main entrance of the cemetary, I passed a building which was filled with small concrete boxes, stacked precariously on top of each other. I knew what they were, and my morbid curiosity drew me to the entrance. There was a little old man outside, hacking away at the weeds with his machete. I peered inside and saw some of the boxes stacked on the floor. Some of them had no lids. I inched closer, my skin beginning to prickle. I peeked inside one of the boxes. Was that a pelvis? Yes. And a femur. Bones. Human bones. Of course. It was a cemetary. But why were they out like this, stacked in boxes?

I went outside and asked the old man. He seemed pleased to have the opportunity to take a break and show me around. He explained that in Cuba, there isn't enough room to bury the dead (just like in Colombia.) They are buried for only two years, then dug up so someone else can use the burial plot for two years. If the family has money, then the bones are taken to a private place. If not, the bones are stacked in these boxes awaiting burial in a mass grave.

As he was explaining this, we were walking amidst the aisles of boxes, each labeled with the name of its occupant and the date of death. All the dates were from the late 1990s to 2002. The old man lifted the lids from some of the boxes and showed me the contents: black bones and bits of deteriorated cloth. We turned a corner and he cursed. Someone or something had knocked down a stack of boxes. There were bones all over the floor, covered with black dust which I took to be what was left of the rotted flesh. He grabbed a skull which had yellowed tufts of hair still stuck to it and placed it on the lid of another box.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio! I thought.

The old man turned to me. "You'd better enjoy your life as much as you can. That’s all we have. Life is for living, for loving, for drinking, for dancing. Enjoy it now because this is what you will become. This is what we all become. Bones and dust."

"Yes, I know," I said, staring at the skull. There were the eye sockets, covered with a black crust of dust. Who was this person? What kind of life had he or she lived? Where did his or her spirit go? I shivered. "I try."

Then he began to scoop up armfuls of bones with his bare hands. I watched him, stunned. For him it was as natural as scooping up rocks or dirty clothes. These were people, or what was left of people, anyway. He brushed past me and as he did so, he grabbed my arm to steady himself. I looked at my arm, at the black ashy prints of his fingers he had left there. It somehow felt wrong to just brush the dust of another human being away. I decided not to brush the dust away. To just leave it until I took my cold shower that night.

I felt marked, somehow blessed.

i am the door

She woke up that morning just as her voice was putting on its scarf and heading out the door. She tried to protest, but no words would come. She scrambled out of bed and grabbed her voice’s sleeve, but her voice just frowned in silence and shook her off.

She panicked. Why was her voice leaving? Where was it going? She couldn’t ask these questions, only beg her voice with pleading eyes to say something, give some explanation. But it didn’t. Her voice turned away from her and stalked out the door.

She slumped on the doorstep and cried silently, wondering how she was going to get along without her voice. When her voice reached the mailbox, it turned one last time and nodded farewell. Her voice did not speak, but she heard the words nonetheless: You can always write.