Every time I leave my house I give the dogs some treats so they don’t bark their heads off as soon as I drive off. Not that in suburbia there are people after 9AM but anyway.

Today I return home and my big dog is in her cage, locked up. There is a dog biscuit in front of her cage. Outside of the cage. None of the other dogs had gotten it. Many hours of opportunity, but no – the biscuit is still there.

Yes, the big dog has big teeth. Yes she shows them to anybody willing to see them. Yes, it works even if she is locked up in a cage.

But the moral of this story is different from “Big teeth get you anything you want.”.

The way we are, who we are, goes beyond the imaginary cages that we lock ourselves in. One can not change who they are, cage or not. Never forget that.

See! You liked what you just read.

1975, Cuba. I was 7 years old and lived in a boarding school. There were about 6 kids to a room, all different ages. The boss of our room was a skinny 5 grader whose gold front tooth sparkled in the sun when he smiled.

One day I return from school and tell the “boss” that we have to find a way to cut my hair because I was told that it was too long. That was a communist school you know – there were rigid rules. So the boss takes control, says “Yes! Right now!”, and summons everybody to prepare the terrace for the spectacle of my hair being cut.

Now, you must know that we were housed in a mansion nationalized by the Cuban government. It had checkerboard floors, black and white, huge terraces, spiral staircases – the works. So here we are – me sitting on a wobbly chair in the middle of the terrace. The terrace is about 50 ft. long and about 25 wide and its floor is terracotta tiles. The tiles are super hot under the hot Cuban sun so, as I sit, I lift my bare feet one at a time to cool them off. The other kids are running in an out of the room to fetch things that the boss needs to cut my hair. He is trying a variety of scissors. Tiny hobby scissors used by first-graders like me seem to be to his liking. I towel is wrapped around my neck. The sun is in my eyes. We are ready!

Of course the first cut is done on the front of my hair. A mirror is brought by a kid whose bare feet burn on the terracotta tile and he is tilting his body left and right when he lifts one bare foot up to cool off and then the other.

We all look in the mirror. I can’t see – the sun is in my eyes. The boss says “No. It is crooked.” So he makes another cut along my forehead. The mirror comes up again. The boss is not happy again. He makes another cut. At this point it is clear that we can not just continue doing that. So the boss commands “Bring me a right angle!” . A clear plastic triangle that kids use in geometry class is being brought in. The boss presses the triangle on my face. He is trying to get a 90 degree angle using my nose as a straight line. Then he cuts the hair again. Yes, it is crooked. He declares the work good enough and I am off to take a shower.

A day later my mother comes to see me and just about faints. She gets me a funny hat to put on until my hair grows out. Except that an 11-th grade girl that just loves me and can not get her hands off my fat cheeks claims the hat.

For the next 30 days every time I see her I run after her screaming “Give me back my hat!!!”. But she just smiles with a beautiful smile and touches my cheeks. I maybe in love, I smile in return. The hat stays with her. My hair grows out and I get the hat back when it doesn’t matter any more. Pretty philosophical situation if you ask me – that is how life goes when you are a kid and when you are not: We all fall for a beautiful smile.

It was 1995 and I was getting ready to start a life in a new country. Immigration, at that time, even few weeks before departure, seemed something unattainable. Something out of reach. Something that happens to other people, in other places. I remember going to some public office and having to say aloud that I was about to immigrate. There was a visitor there that overheard me. She just looked up and froze. I looked at her for a second and I knew exactly what was going through her mind. “I’m seeing a lucky person. A person I will never be. I don’t think I’m even seeing him.” That’s how I felt too – the last few weeks were completely unreal. A dream. A dream that belonged to someone else. For a long time I had been living with the hope to have a hope. Not a chance or opportunity. When things started to materialize I could not fully accept they really were happening.

At that time I had talked to a few friends about immigration. “Why don’t you immigrate too? That’s the time. In a year or two no one will let us go there any more”. The answers puzzled me. “I’m well connected here now.”, “What am I going to do there? I can’t start from zero again.” “My mother is here.” I could not understand how one can have a shot, even a desperate one, and never try.

One of my friends was a creative and upbeat person that was getting pushed more and more by the depressed economy. He had a woodworking shop. Loved what he did. Practically lived in the shop. Often he’d pay his utility bills and have nothing to eat for 3-4 days. One day I found some expired Jiffy peanut butter at the store. It was not expensive because at that time very few Bulgarians knew what peanut butter was. I bought a jar and took it to my friend. He hadn’t eaten in about 2 days. “What’s this?” he asked. I said “Just get a spoon and try it. You’ll like it.” And he did like it. Fifteen minutes later half the jar was gone and he was peeking into it still wanting more. No, no apple to go with it. No banana. Just a spoon.

Few years ago, in Africa, I had tried peanut butter for the first time. Three of four months of starvation made my mother look and find some connections to buy a few things at the diplomatic store. Among the few things she bought that day was a jar of peanut butter. Being starved really made me thing that that was the best tasting thing I’d ever had. I ate it smeared on bread with a piece of ham on top. I stood on the balcony and looked over the city. It was mid-afternoon and the streets were empty. I closed my eyes savoring the peanut butter. The salt and the sweetness. The hunger disappearing for a few minutes giving room to gluttony. Peanut butter on bread.

Back to my friend’s shop where he was peeking into the half-empty jar. “Keep the rest” I said “Eat it the next few days”. “I don’t know if it will last” he said. “It’s so tasty”

Then he showed me a few sketches of some new furniture he designed. One piece was called “The Crocodile”. It was a green chest with very short stubby legs. It looked blocky and both sides were tapered. The “body” was curved. The shape really suggested a crocodile. I smiled. “Nice!’. “Nice, isn’t it!” he said.

That was 1995. Soon I left. Today, in mid-2009 I stumbled on a few images. Images of a chest named “The Crocodile”. It was designed by “La Mamba” – a Spanish design studio – so it was called “Cocotile”. It looked almost exactly like the sketch that my friend had done in 1995. The only difference was that this new one had textured sides.
In the last several months I had been looking for my friend but I can’t find any information. Seeing this piece of furniture made me think I had accidentally found him. In Spain. But from what it looks like I’m wrong. Asking some successful old friends about him yielded nothing. They seemed unwilling to even talk about him. I don’t know what happened. I just hope that he kept his creativity going.

Because if you forsake what you have you sometimes see it done by others. That could be motivating or not. As I said in the beginning – do try if you have a shot at something.

In Cuba, in the winter of 1976 – somewhere in November I think – we were sitting in a dilapidated taxi cab headed to the Havana airport. That day the sun shining over the tropical island seemed to light up the people and the palm trees especially bright. The car had no air conditioning so all the windows were open. I remember looking out of the window trying to soak up everything I could. These were the last moments before departure. Here I had had a childhood that now seems like a dream. I think that day I felt that I was about to wake up.

So I looked at the streets, at the people. I remember a dark man wearing an unbuttoned shirt walking down the street smiling. The palms on the avenues were very, very tall and slightly curved as if they had butted up against the baby blue sky. Their leaves where rustling in the hot wind.

I have no recollection of boarding the plane, eating the food, nothing.

It feels like I closed my eyes after I saw the tops of those palm trees moving in the wind. And I opened them when a taxi cab driver in the other side of the world reached and opened the door of his boxy mouse gray communist era car. The interior was also grey. The wet pavement under my feet was grey. The driver’s clothes where grey. His face was grey and he said “Come on in!”. A heavy smell of cigarettes and gasoline rolled out of the open car. We sat inside and he accelerated. He immediately had to stop because a few people dressed in black and grey winter coats were crossing the road. No words, no sound. Just the snow and the fog wrapping the pedestrians like a blanket. And the dizzying smell of cigarettes and gasoline. To this day I get sick when a car smells of cigarettes.

The driver asked “Where are you coming from?”. “Cuba”. My mother gave the driver some cigarettes. He said “Oh! That’s what Fidel smokes, ah?”

I thought “This is supposed to feel like home. This is my first day home. I will never see the palms again.”

The story could end on this sad note. But I also remember thinking “I’m looking forward to seeing grandma.”

When I climbed up the last few steps to the fourth floor she was already outside of the apartment with her hands wide open. She wore purplish-red pajama pants straight out of some Arabic fairy tale. She embraced me and the warmth of the small apartment is the only thing I remember next.

This is my first post here and it has to do with an experience that I remember as “first” too.

I must have been about 2 years old. My grandfather on my step-father’s side was taking care of me that day. I was in his apartment and I remember waking up in a dark room in the middle of the day. There was a big bed with rough looking brown wodden posts. There was an open window and a sun beam had made its way into the room. My attention was atracted by the miriads of tiny dust particles that were dancind in this ray of light. I got up and got close to the ray. I observed the particles swirling in the light. I looked at them from maybe 10 inches away. I could not see them outside of the light. No matter how carefully I followed one single particle I could not trace it outside of the boundaries of the sun beam.

It occured to me that the particles do not exist outside of the light. This could be the ending of this story but it’s not. I also noticed that inside the light the particles did not fall down as I expected them to. They’d endlessly move up and down, swirling, moving in a circular way and many new ones appearing from all directions. There was a melody in all that too.

In later years I’d remember the shape of the sun beam when I needed to visualize a cylinder or a cone. It felt tangible and perfectly straight.

Now we step out of that experience and find ourselves in the same room but at another time. My step-grandmother is arguing loudly with my step-grandfather. It’s about something I had said. Something a 2 year old apparently should not even know. She is saying”It’s because of you!”” and he is saying “No! It was the students from the 6-th floor! They run down the stairs all day cussing loudly! That’s where Niki has learned to cuss! Not from me!!!”

I tried to remember saying something special that made my grandparents upset but I couldn’t. I suppose when you are a little innocent child nothing dirty stays inside you.

Ah yes! They tell me that after the cussing incident I didn’t utter another word for a year. So for the record – the second line that I ever said in my life was a dirty old man profanity.

The first line was “I want. Tomato soup I want.” Apparently I process a lot and then talk because as you see I didn’t start talking with single words. Maybe if you stand really close to me you an hear me processing things. Don’t be bashful – come closer..

Here I publish my experiences, viewpoints, and thoughts. Plus some spontaneous passages that are better off caught in writing before they evaporate as if never existed.

All events and people are real. Some have their names altered, some have their real names. All places are real, but I cannot guarantee that my recollection about details is perfect. And of course as always with memories I’m certain that some parts of the reading are entirely fictional. Occasionally I’ll post a complete fiction piece just because. Do read these pages remembering an interesting fact that I realized some years ago – “Life is much more than a fantasy”.

I’m pedantic about spelling but I will be posting in different times of the day, different moods, and levels of tiredness, and so on.

While typing I’m trying to recall details, often quite a few of them. That’s how my brain works and that’s how each story meanders away and other stories emerge.

There will be light and fun reads and more serious, unusual, or even somewhat bizarre posts. It would be best if you read in order so you get familiar with my writing style, remote associations, and especially my habit of coming back to the original thought from an unexpected angle.

It’s all real. Here we go!