The places we will never go to.

I took a few days off from blogging, being premenstrual and all. Then I googled the words Cuban Interiors because I was in the mood for traveling.

It got me thinking about all the places I will never go to.  Michael Eastman did this beautiful series of Cuban Interiors.  

Cuba is one of those places in the world most American will never get to visit.  What a waste, what loss of beauty and experiences, how terribly inaccessible some dreams are you tell yourself. Yet you make peace with it.  You tell yourself photographs will do.  You will dream, imagine, and maybe even manage to convince yourself that imagining is better than an actual experience.  You, then, will have entered my world.

My world is one of thoughts, self expression, analysis (analysis, dear god yes...oh the humanity!) Mine is a world of learning and feeling, and reading and trying to understand, and in some measure of intellectual risk taking.  It is not, however, a world of direct physical experiences.  Or very few of them.

No I'm not paraplegic.  No such excuse.  For example I could say without lying that traveling the world is what my heart most desires. Yet I am frozen.  Traveling absolutely terrifies me. Before, during and after.  I know, strange coming from a person who left her country behind to live in another, but there is it, I said it.

Unfortunately, traveling is not the only thing that terrifies me.  Traveling is not the only way in which I am frozen.

Thank goodness for therapy and self help.  I will not, as the French say 'spit in the soup.' Psychotherapy, in my case, was never a luxury.  It was a necessity.  But now I prefer self-help.  I went as far as I could in therapy, and then quit after 10 years when I realized I was finally ready to feel better and walk on my own two feet.  It's very hard to feel better while you are in the process of going through the gut-wrenching task of understanding yourself and your past.

At the same time I wonder if self help without some form of psychotherapy first isn't counter productive, if it's not going to make some feel worse.  I worry that most likely people will read all the should and ought of self help and get discouraged because they simply don't have the will, the strength or the self knowledge to apply what they read.  Even with the best intentions, the utmost desire to change.  Issues of willpower and fear, after all, are hardly something you can just pop out of.

The good news is, I am not done growing, and I am not done trying and learning and struggling, and messing up.  I'm not done falling, brushing off my knees and getting back up.  I'm not done dreaming either.

 

I just thought i'd tell you, you know, being premenstrual and all...

All image courtesy of Michael Eastman, who's a certified genius.

Comments

[nadia]

Corine, wow this has hit home for many reasons. One Cuba itself, a beautiful place being canadian our spring breaks were places like cuba...it is beautiful one day i woul like to live there on a boat!

but my head has been spinning, my brain, my heart are disagreeing about every vignette of my life. I have only known self help, it always has been the way for me-but lately i wonder am i missing someone else's insight....

i love you for this precise thing the honesty and the fact although difficult you embrace the fact that there is so much to learn still and i hope for me while lying flat on my death bed although on -although i do imgine a more incredible departure from this planet(you know me)but somehow i think my last words will be in a form of a question!

wow she can talk & talk!sorry

[Leah]

Corine, you might like this book, too:

http://morewaystowastetime.blogspot.com/2007/09/good-reads-inside-havana.html

[stljoie]

I had the great fortune to have therapy for seven years. I was finally able to take control of my life and create one where I could be happy...and I am. It didn't happen over night but I'm here.

[karey m.]

i'm so sorry traveling isn't easier for you...i can't even imagine the inspiration that'd overflow if you actually touched some of the beauty you show us every day...

thanks for this post...

[janet]

The pictures you show us are always inspiring, but your honest and frank self-revelations are the inspirations that I learn from. Thank-you.

[suzanne, the Farmer's Wife]

Like you, psychotherapy was not an option for me, it was a necessity. I did therapy for five years and it was the most important thing I ever did for myself. It saved my life......no, it gave me my life. You are correct in your assessment that many people will not voluntarily get help and self-help isn't really the answer for tough problems.

Five years in the therapists chair was enough for me. It was at that point that I realized I was living to do therapy instead of using therapy to live. I quit and started putting everything I'd learned to use.

About Cuba - these photos are hauntingly beautiful but it's important not to romanticize Cuba. The people there are mostly living a hardscrabble life WITHOUT the possibility of travel, even within their own country. That's right, they cannot travel even to the other side of their island without government approval.

You will be interested in reading Generation Y, the chronicles of a Cuban woman struggling and blogging (in secret).

http://desdecuba.com/generationy/

- Suzanne

[virginia]

don't curse pms...squeeze it hard to get the last inch of inspiration out of the tube, but send everyone out of the room while you're wrestling with the cap.

wonderful art work below (RISD grad and writer, lives in LA):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebrubin/
via this site:http://www.book-by-its-cover.com/

read and watch "Like Water for Chocolate".
another book:" i know why the caged bird sings" by maya angelou.
one i picked up just for the title:hypocrite in a poufy white dress by susan jane gilman...hilarious.

eat, pray, love by elizabeth gilbert...one i hesitated to pick up because of the title and hype!

movie: rabbit proof fence and... the whale rider.

and finally: Life of Pi...

[al]

Wow.... lovely interiors. Somehow, nice to see from afar and glimpse for a moment, but not to live in. Somethings foreign are best admired from afar or at a distance. Keep them a dream-like mystery of what we can only hope would be a magical experience but perhaps best left unexplored.

[Liberty Post Editor]

First. I've been to Cuba and it truly is beautiful I've been drunk in the 'real' Tropicana - the open aired ceilinged club (think Rickie Ricardo) - I've had Cuban children mob me for gifts. And, I've been treated so rudely because they thought I was American!!! After they realized I was from Canada, they treated me like royalty which pissed me off...anyway...Second. We stayed in a private villa and the 'help' lived in cardboard boxes. Third. My entire existence growing up was funded by my Father's business dealings with Cuban hotels. How ironic. And finally, Fourth. This too shall pass and when you begin a new day, a new attitude will be awaiting you. You are brave. You are lovely. You are perfect.

[Trina]

Oh, how beautiful is that first room. That green green room.
It took my breath away. I wanted to paint it, to blow the picture up wall size so I could wake up and pretend it was my room.
How could you live in those spaces and not walk about as if in a wonderful dream?
Lovely days to you xxx

[Maria]

Hi
You really touched my heart by the choice of pics and where they came from and your words. Alltogether it ended up as poetry.
Life while it is lived.
Maria

[carolyn]

Those photographs are incredible and yes it does seem a shame that politics will probably prevent you from visiting such a beautiful and intriguing place. But it is best to keep safe.

[karina]

Great image for such profound and honest words.
I ve tried both in the past self help and therapy and to me it work best together.

[Angelina]

Beautiful! both pictures and words...

[Fifi Flowers]

GREAT photos! Travel can be scary... you can virtually travel all over the world via blogs and be safe.
You should visit my site... I'm always taking my readers on VIRTUAL TRAVELS!

[Tartelette]

I just keep coming back to those pictures, over and over again! Oh wow....
Your words along with them are perfect!

[lasourceauxbois]

What a wonderful compilation of greens. These stunning pictures gather everything: beauty, refinement and simplicity, print of the past and usefulness of every object.

[muralimanohar]

Well, you know I just about fell off my chair when I saw these. :p Simply GORGEOUS!!

[le petit cabinet de curiosites]

I love the ambiance of CUBA !
The patina is unbelievable

[Cat]

Beautiful symetry with the pictures and your thoughts. I cannot tell you how much I agree.
Cat