Arroz con Mango

Nationality: Cuban
Age: 54
Occupation: Customer Service Supervisor
Residence: Miami, FL
Performance Date: 4/15/18
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Cuban culture in general is incredibly vibrant and colorful. With recent tourism to Cuba rising, foreigners often underestimate how vibrant the buildings, cars, and clothes are in Cuba. And this powerful expression also transfers over into language and proverbs. When visiting home recently, my aunt and grandmother came over to share common Cuban vernacular with me.

One idiom is: “Arroz con Mango”. Phonetically, it’s easy to pronounce since it utilizes the same Latin alphabet. It’s literal translation is “Rice with Mango”. Although it may sound like a delicious Cuban delicacy, it’s actually shorthand for describing “a terrible mess.” It’s such a specific description that if said in the right way many Cubans could be laughing up a storm. My aunt was cracking up as she remembered the phrase, suddenly taken back to many memories of growing up in the Cuban section of San Juan, Puerto Rico. So if something is chaotic or messy, and it can be tied to metaphorical things too like relationships, then it could be “Arroz con Mango”.

Shamanism

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Miami,FL
Performance Date: 4/25/18
Primary Language: English

My friend Josh believes that shamans and this tribe in Africa that has this super advanced astrological system. They have extensive knowledge about the stars, planetary alignments, and past lives, and yet shamanism is still such a primitive practice. He doesn’t think their accessibility to this knowledge is alien, but that they are able to tap into another mind state.

I think that this may be true, since the expansive nature of Buddhism is dedicated to understanding the aspects of the mind and realizing the limitations of consciousness. Maybe these shamans are just better at it than most people are.

Look good, Play Good

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Miami,FL
Performance Date: 4/25/18
Primary Language: English

Every football game my friend J would make sure our clothes were clean, shirts tucked in, everything in order, etc. Josh sticks to this ritual today; whenever he has an exam he’s nervous for, he will wear nicer clothes because he thinks he will do better. And he typically does.

I can believe that this ritual, since it is comforting that it would make him perform better. It probably would make me perform better due to the pseudo effect.

 

Synchronicity

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Miami,FL
Performance Date: 4/25/18
Primary Language: English

My friend J has been researching Jung and his universal archetypes and the idea of synchronicity. It was not until he listened to the The Police’s final album also entitled “Synchronicity” that he began to take it seriously. He began to obsessively research how Synchronicity, explained by Jung and Sting, is when random events that have no discernible connection are somehow connected through meaning. Jung believed that this was due to the collective unconscious portraying itself through reality; that there’s a larger pattern to life and not just random chaos. In his own personal experience, the idea of an underlying pattern guiding life is a better alternative to chaos. It isn’t something that at our stage of evolution we can understand, but one day we may be able to grasp and see evidence for this common theory.

The idea of the unconscious manifesting itself in dreams and the idea suggests that it also manifests itself in reality.

Wedding Slander

Nationality: Ukrainian American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles,CA
Performance Date: 4/20/18
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

My friend V says that at every Russian wedding, it’s custom for the audience to yell “bitter” once the vows are being read to the couple. And that when they kiss, everyone stops and counts how many seconds the kiss last. According to superstition, the amount of seconds predicts how many children they will have. In Russian communities, a lot of kids is desirable so the longer the kiss the more bliss.

There’s another version of the superstition that says the amount of seconds is how long the marriage will last.

Personally, I like the first version because it’s hopeful and exciting to have great things in store for the future. On the other hand, if someone has a horrible marriage at least its end is in sight.