Sometimes you just have to wait.

You don’t have to know what you’re waiting for.

You just have to sit still long enough to suspend expectation and relax into the hopefulness of the moment.

Once enough time passes, you find you can be okay with doing nothing…

Still you wait. You sketch the fountain, trying to capture the silver brilliance of a splash. How do you capture the essence of water?

Wait a little longer…and the birds come into presence. You write a note to yourself. Later you find the words dated and listed in a scrawl – May 12, 2014 cigar smoke, breeze, coffee, dog shit, dirt, dust, Cafe Torrelavega, Calle Obrapia, primavera.

You start to truly listen.

You hear the singing conversation of far-off Spanish voices. Heels clicking against cobbles. You hear the scraping brush of the woman in her careful sweeping, her infinite chore, her lifetime responsibility of keeping the little square clean, and then, then you realize that you hear an irregular sound, like heavy drops of rain and you realize flowers are dropping, landing thick and bruised on the ground.

They litter the square, one falls on the table, others land in the dirt, and still more drown in the fountain. They are pink and bruised and more exquisitely beautiful because of their dying.

Surrounded by the sweet smell of death, I take another sip of the best cafe con leche since my arrival in Cuba and remember again, that simply by waiting, something perfect has occurred.