The little cigar making room, entered through a small corner tobacco shop in the Zona Colonia, has four men inside. One is reading the paper, another is watching the cigars being made, two men are working – making cigars, by hand, one at a time.
” He is muy rapidio, ” I remark.
” He can do 300 in a day if we don’t talk to him, ” one of the non-workers says.
By the look on both men’s faces, who are working, they must be paid by the cigar. They are intent on what they are doing, responsible for making cigars so people that smoke them won’t smoke any flaws.
This workplace smells like tobacco.Tobacco leaves, dry and thin, are clumped around a press on the floor. There are pieces of leaves on the desk of the man in the gold colored shirt, and more on the work table of the man in the blue shirt.. It appears the two workers make a team. One man makes the rough cigars, stores them in a wood sleeve that the other man pulls to his table and finishes. The tools both men use are simple and not any different from what either might have used a hundred years ago to do the same job.
I watch the finish man pick several cigars up from his finished stack to check the smoking end to make sure, once lit, the cigar will draw air and keep its combustion.
These men take pride in their work.
If I was a cigar smoker, I would like to smoke the ones they are making this day I am watching them.
Men will turn themselves into machines if it profits them, but men, bottom line, were never made to be machines.
Just off Colon Plaza, straight east past the Pizzerella pizza parlor, Juan Voight shows up to work every day.
He says he has been an artist since he was a little boy, teaches at the college just behind his little outdoor work space, and makes his living as a full time artist. He works deliberate. Watercolors demand precision, a good sense not to let the brush stay too long in one place, be too wet or have too much color in the bristles. Watercolors can be quirky, like water itself.
Juan’s items for sale include originals, but, also popular, are postcards he runs off in series of 100 and sells three for $10.00 U.S. His prints are of scenes one sees in the Zona Colonia – the Cathedral, the Plaza Espana, the Parque Colon, the Alcazar de Don Colon.
Juan remembers me from an earlier conversation and takes the time to make me a special carrying pocket for my postcards, carefully recording his name and instagram gallery url on the outside.
I remember the studios of Carlos Paez Vilaro, the Uruguay artist ,and Roberto Ibarra, in Montevideo, and Ann’s studio in Granada, Nicaragua, and my mother’s studio in the downstairs of our home in Albuquerque, paintings in all stages of completion hanging on walls till they were shipped to competitions or hung in galleries.
I remember the Cerulean Gallery in Amarillo, Texas.
I remember street art everywhere.
Juan’s works are a combination of creative spirit tempered by the hands of a craftsman..
The medium you work in makes demands and determines your process and product.
Scotttreks postcards average two hundred words each.
You can’t say too much in two hundred words,but you never want to say too little.
Every time I pass, I see customers at this little empanada stand – ordering, sitting in these plastic lawn chairs,visiting, stopping a moment in life, standing, moving away, replaced in moments by someone else.
It is all very random. The process is like those parts of the atom scrawled on our high school Biology board – the protons, electrons, neutrons and all the things not up there that we still don’t know about, and may never know about.
The empanada menu here is extensive and all are less than one U.S. dollar apiece. This morning, for breakfast, my order is a ham and cheese empanada, a pollo empanada and two orders of pineapple juice naturale, served with ice in a dixie cup.
I should have tried these empanadas earlier in the trip but stuff always crowds you on trips, distractions and diversions, side trips and just plain not getting around to it. The point is, there are always places to get a quick bite within walking distance of where you are staying, if you look.
I appreciate fine dining with exquisite tastes and beautifully designed plates served on white tablecloths with a candle and the best silverware, but I always regret having to pay for a meal and then having to go buy more food to feel full.
If I lived here, I would be a regular and D would give me the local price, like anyone else.
At night, when it is cool, Santo Domingo neighborhood people, in the Colonial District, congregate in front of the local mini market and watch sports on a big screen television.
This group of grown men and women, on the closest corner to the the LaPuerta Roja Guesthouse, are watching an American basketball game on television this midweek evening. Some men are on their cell phones, others are talking about something other than the game in progress, the rest of the congregation are watching equally grown men in under- shorts running up and down a hardwood court, tossing a ball into a basket, and getting paid millions.
Anything that gets people out of their house and visiting their neighbors can’t be all bad.
Sports and competition run deep within all cultures.
We all like to be entertained and mildly challenged but when things get too serious or too hard, many take their ball and go home to bed..
Spectator sports have long been one of the world’s biggest enjoyments.
Sitting out at night under the stars watching a big screen television on a working night, and not spending a dime, is beginning to make a lot of sense.
Words, bless their little hearts, can say a lot of things. They can take the form of a contract, come firing out of mouths like an old gattling gun . They can make people love or hate us, and, in the right mixture, sooth and calm the most indignant customers.
This afternoon, words escape me, as a young woman carries a basket of baked goods for sale atop her head, past me on the sidewalk.
By the time i turn to get a photo she is past me, only a fleeting mortal being moving across a busy Zona Colonia intersection.
At this moment, the only words that some to mind are ” Poetry in Motion. ”
In my mind, she will always be frozen in time, beyond words.
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