Proof

Proving the existence of God is fairly easy. Any idiot can take a stab at that. As one might say in Chicagoese: What, you think all of this made itself up? Yeah. Sure.

-Carlos Eire, Learning to Die in Miami, 302.

Irenaeus, the World to Come, and Bowling

Irenaeus of Lyons, a second-century Christian bishop, once said that in the world to come, the fruits and vegetables will all beg to be picked and eaten, and actually try to outshout one another, all crying in unison, "Pick me, eat me, eat me." The first time I ever read that passage in Irenaeus, years later, I thought of the sound made by bowling pins when they're struck by a fast-rolling ball.

"Knock us down, hit us as hard as possible. Kill us, reduce us to splinters."

And could there be any sight sweeter than those pins scattering in all directions?

-Carlos Eire, Learning to Die in Miami, 86.

Little Deaths

I've died several times since then, and it's getting to be routine. In fact, as I'm writing this I see another death hovering on the horizon. A big one. And I'm starting to feel like my father, with one crucial difference.

Though he claimed to have lived countless lives, each in a different body and at a different place and time, I boast of having lived about five or six lives in the same body. Sometimes even in the same place and at roughly the same time.

I just don't seem to get this reincarnation thing right. I've even returned to a place I once lived, seventeen years later, as a very different person, in an older, more vulnerable body. It would have been so much nicer to have returned with a new body, and a tougher heart.

There are many ways to die. One one kind is final, of course. But before that one pulls you under, many others come along, like waves at the shore.

-Carlos Eire, Waiting for Snow in Havana, 375.

Metaphors Matter

I loved explosions. I loved them in war movies. I loved them off in the distance as I went to sleep. I loved them even more close up when we set off firecrackers.

I loved the sound of the match head on the rough side of the matchbox, the flare: so suddenly there. I loved the sight and the phosphorus smell of the burning match as it approached the fuse on the firecracker, as it transferred that living flame to it. And I loved the sight and smell of the fuse as it came alive and was consumed, eaten by time and fire.

Such a perfect way of thinking about those fuses, and also life. You begin at one end, and as you make your way forward, point by infinitesimal point, you give off sparks. And what you leave behind is charred, consumed, transformed. But that glorious voyage toward the end: poets never grow weary of trying to describe it. The end, or telos, as Aristotle or Aquinas would tell you, is the very reason for existence, the purpose of anything that exists. Our telos as humans, yours and mine, is to abide with God for eternity. The sparks on our way there, large and small, call them love. The telos of a fuse on a firecracker is a nice explosion. The sparks on the way there, call them love too.

On a really good day, I will fight to the death with anyone who tries to tell me that those sparks are not also love, fight with my bare hands or the jawbone of an ass or the broken stump of a sword. Metaphors matter to me, especially perfect ones.

-Carlos Eire, Waiting for Snow in Havana, 64.

Preamble

If all the characters in this book are fictional, none of them knows it yet.

All resemblances to actual persons were preordained before the creation of the world. It matters little that the names don't always match.

All the incidents and dialogue come straight from God's imagination. As does the author himself. And the reader.

-Carlos Eire, Waiting for Snow in Havana