Nostalgia travels with us wherever we go. It appears when we least imagine it, whether we emigrate and do not return to the port that once saw us leave or, on the contrary, if we remain anchored in the place where, by chance, one day we were born. But it does not manifest itself as simple melancholy and longing for what was, but rather it is an emotional richness. More than past it is present.
At 42, I have lived longer outside of Holguín, the city where I was born, grew up and from which one day, at the age of 20, I took flight to other destinations.
I return to my beloved homeland frequently, and perhaps because time has distanced us without being able to avoid it, during my last visits I walked through the City of Parks and took photographs. I did it with nostalgia, but “good nostalgia.”
It happened without me realizing it; I didn’t notice them until days later, back in Argentina (where I’ve lived for more than a decade). When reviewing the images captured, I discovered that there was a prism of longing for moments, people, places or situations from the past.
The same situations, places and people that, while I lived in Holguín, were familiar to me, part of everyday life and that I would never have thought of photographing, this time absorbed my attention.
Holguín is a vast storehouse of memories in my life. Indelible traces persist in me, like the house at number 191 Agramonte Street, where I grew up. The electric pole on the block, resisting the passage of time and raising intertwined cables, continues to be for me the base for playing hide-and-seek.
I can visualize myself submerged in my elementary school pool, even though it is now dry and almost abandoned; in a young complicit smiling couple; in a group of children playing ball in San José Park; or when crossing the empty and desolate Calixto García Park at dawn, imagining it full, on a Saturday night, when I used to meet there with my friends.
I feel great familiarity when I come across iconic characters of the city who, even though they don’t know me, inspire in me, like most Holguín residents, a feeling of closeness: María de los Ángeles, librarian and founder of the Alex Urquiola Provincial Library for more than sixty years, and in charge of the Art Room that I used to visit in my adolescence; the watchmaker on Maceo Street, always with his cigar; the peanut vendor with his striking color combinations and his proclamation “I exchange peanuts for money”; or the postman who delivers the newspaper in the neighborhood on his bicycle every morning.
Good nostalgia is never bitter and acts as a bridge between the past and the present. It allows me to maintain a sense of continuity, reminding me of who I was, and who I am now.
Author
Kaloian Santos
Nuestra Hermosa Cuba nunca se olvida, donde sea que vayamos llevamos el amor y recuerdos de nuestros familiares, amigos, mascotas que alli dejamos y tenemos cada dia presentes, amo mi pais natal siempre..un abrazo de un cubano qie ama a Cuba. Amén.