The blackout is the time of stumbles, collapses, falls that sometimes end in fractures…
HAVANA, Cuba. – Everything must be ready before the darkness becomes denser, somewhat thicker. Everything must be ready before the black thickens that will cover the city suddenly and in all its spaces, in each of its nooks. Darkness is a very bad advisor, darkness is an atrocious and despicable bug. And rice, it is very prudent to have it washed very early, long before the outlet stops receiving the electricity we need.
The rice could be half-cooked, soupy, my grandmother would say, grimacing: “No one can eat this.” Rice takes time, rice does not believe in the pressures imposed by these circumstances, those that the “softest” call special, while others decide on the most profane of all expletives, those that some call “special”, while others shout what could turn out, here and now, much more than unpronounceable.
The blackout It is the time of stumbles, collapses, falls that sometimes end in fractures, in plaster boots and even in bitter crying and strong, prolonged pain. Blackouts are very similar to death; It is bitter crying and even insults galore. The darkness of the blackout is the anteroom of an orthopedic room, as happened to Estela, my neighbor, who walks today very slowly and complainingly, almost in a perpetual drag, towed by a family member, by a neighbor who accompanies her when she has time.
The blackout could be the most monstrous moment, the one in which the stillness of the night leads you to remember what you don’t want to remember. The blackout brings you closer again to family members who are gone, to those who have already died. Darkness is the closest thing to delirium and it is even that which you do not want to remember. The darkness of the blackout is always very close, it is overwhelming. Darkness is ignorance, the lack of love that people feel for each other.
Darkness is ignorance, it is the opposition to light, to that light that today is a sign of past freedoms, and it is also the death of reason. The darkness is the sorrows, the greatest mortality. Darkness is not, as some insist on pointing out, a romantic principle, tenderness is the problem of one person and also of the other. The darkness is, above all, fear, and it is uncertainty.
Preparing for the blackout is preparing for danger and evil, it is putting aside the colors and giving way to emptiness, to a life without nuances, to prepare for darkness, to commune with emptiness, with violence and the most ruthless aggressions. And so we prepare in Cuba every day to be able to deal with the blackout, to make reconciliations, instead of the most open confrontation. The choice, Sartre would still say, is the deliberation that man makes, a deliberation that is difficult to define and in which we commune with the deepest darkness, with the most merciless of nights. And so we prepare every day for the blackout, to reconcile with it, instead of facing it. The blackout is that silence that kills us and that we have not yet learned to face. And how long are we going to wait? How long are we going to accept these blackouts? Will we forever commune with the darkness that consumes us?
