Loving With Lime Juice and Fidel Castro

I was reading about Cuba last night. Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Jose Marti the whole gang. It's so poetic. Fidel Castro pens his "History Will Absolve Me" speech from a prison cell in limejuice. The limejuice acts as an invisible ink between the lines of letters written to family members. Hundreds of thousands of copies are produced. He loves his country.

I've been listening to old editions of This American Life online. While I was listening to "Godless America", I read Ira Glass' piece on how to get onto This American Life. This is consequently the exact same thing as the lecture he gave in Ithaca earlier this year. He mentions this moment in Alaska, when he was interviewing someone about cleaning birds after a recent oil spill...

"Berkner on tape: It's a series of baths in hot water. It's a solution of Dawn dishwashing liquid.

Interviewer on tape: Dawn dishwashing liquid?

Berkner: That's correct.

Interviewer: You're going to get letters from Ivory and the other companies.

Berkner: You know, I hate to sound like an advertisement, but Dawn is the best soap for the job. I've tested just about everything out there, and Dawn seems to remove the most commonly encountered polluting oil. [Jaunty music begins in background.] It rinses out of the feathers very well, which is extremely important, because if you leave any detergent residue in the feathers, the bird won't waterproof up. So we have been sticking with Dawn. I'm open to suggestions in a lot of areas about bird care, but I won't allow any substitutes for Dawn. [Music swells.]"

When we saw Ira Glass speak he made funny jokes about how they were like, "Dawn?! You mean you're scientists that work on healing animals from these disastrous events and the best you can come up with is Dawn?!" We laughed.

He elaborates later in his speech about this moment. The moment about the Dawn. He says everyone has Dawn on their sink. Dawn personalized the story and made it different from the rest of the news clippings of the day. People have remembered that Dawn moment for years. It was poetic. It was limejuice in between the lines.

Today is my second anniversary. I have been married for two years now. I can honestly say they are the most poetic years of my life. My wife is a part of me. There is a point of intersection here.

I thought about this visual of George Bush in a prison cell looking at this lime in his hands like, "Well what am I supposed to do with this?" I thought about the writings of Che Guevara and Jose Marti and that story about Fidel Castro writing words for a revolution in limejuice. The passion he felt for his country. The premonitions he had of defeating the Spanish army with a fraction of the men. And then I think of George Bush holding this lime like a plucked fruit. He didn't grow up dreaming of his country. Can you imagine W. penning a poem about the beauty of his nation, penning a few stanzas of what he believes his country could be?

It was eleven thirty pm when I finished reading about Fidel Castro and Dawn soap. I thought that it was important for me to love like Castro. Our president has become accustom to his country. He knows it will be there, it will dominate, it will conquer with force. Press conferences will not be enough for my love. I want to write invisible prose in limejuice between the spaces of every letter. I love my wife. Were I in a prison cell, I can assure you I would know exactly what to do with those limes.