LEAVING THE COUNTRY / Lilianne Ruíz

Like almost always we give up, we leave the country, or rather, in the abyss of a December 31st we redefine that need to take flight. So no one should confuse the motivations of Cubans to emigrate, we are all, in different measure, political refugees.

We do not understand the benefits of a system based on sacrifice, on castration. Sacrifice is a bizarre word, it’s the height of violence against oneself to which an ideology can bring us, it’s a personal decision, adult, and in totalitarian systems in some way we have signed up to say we want to be treated like irresponsible people who haven’t reached the age of majority (we can’t even enter and leave our own country freely, I don’t know if it’s a nursery school or a mental institution).

So, technically, we are in no condition to undertake any act of sacrifice of our pleasures for the sadness of supporting the interests of those who are dictating ideology, and what we really do is fake it in front of the local nutcase in order to avoid the immediate consequences of his fury, without worrying about the future. I detest the funeral order of such a decorated nitwit. In North Korea as well the images reveal a horrifying, inhuman, order.

If I come to be writing for no one, frankly, I don’t care, I won’t give up. I can only establish myself in an oblique life. You can get water from the pool contained within a stone. This stone that I throw in the river has the power to bring down the wall: the impossibility of acting on the possible engenders a potential of infinite possibility.

Cuba Free of castrocommunism: it’s true because it’s impossible, if the immense spell that envelops us, the stars, the secret will in the intimate center of my hidden soul, accompanies me. With this assurance of things unseen, I am going to start the year 2012 with my daughter and some friends on the Island that was once more beautiful.