Fifth page IV

 

Thursday. Hispanics tend to confuse it with Tuesday. Second language things. Sunny. It’s sunny. We’re all outside for a luncheon. Employees appreciation, they call it. It wasn’t that bad, I’m full, actually.  There’s a cookie in front of me and I feel I can’t eat it. I’ve just had enough for now despite I do like cookies. Well, not really; I love chocolate chips cookies. I’m not interested in any other. Raisins,  for example; I hate them, but  the one here it’s a chocolate chips one, so I think I’m going to eat it and feel regretful later… and so I did, and so I feel. I had’t had such a perfect time before for writing, only that I have nothing to say. I’m wordless, and worthless I feel too, because now I regret from having that extra cookie. Mind what we eat it’s perhaps a prominent metaphor for understanding our impulse over other things. We know we shouldn’t have this much sugar in a day. We’ve learned and studied a lot about it, and yet, we fall in temptation and feel remorse after that. So remorse is our thing here. I could also say we like remorse. Specially immigrants, immigrants’ stories are nothing but an exhibition of remorse in a thousand forms. There must be a lot of it in this very text indeed. Sorrows. Sorrows too. As I may have mentioned ut supra, in some way we learn how to live in constant grief, perhaps remorse is an ingredient that our grief sometimes asks for; then we cry, we think, we pray, and keep going. I was making my breakfast. I have to go to work. Bas news. Someone back home is in great pain. Doctors already said to expect the unavoidable, so here we stand, far from a hug, far from holding each other and feel the warmth that, only someone who cares about you can give you. That’s another burden we have to carry: all those goodbyes we never thought we should have said since we might not have another chance. Only that hope doesn’t work that way. Hope, hope keeps us believing, despite any adversity, that someday, and somehow, we'll meet again with our loved ones; those deeply missed because of the circumstances. We've become good at hiding it from the outside by choosing these sort of poses, specially those that makes us, to a certain point, and from a very certain perspective, look cool and nice people. I wonder how the nationals see us. I don’t,  really.  I don’t care. It is what it is: a process in  development.  We must be patient to ourselves. Let’s all hold on and go back to work. Back in the balcony.  Not for too long. In fact I just sat and went away. Wine is back, also the balcony at night. It’s cold. It’s a bit disappointing,  but that’s the way it is. Social media is coming first. There is this sort of club of prominent Venezuelans, which seem to – from what I see – dictate the path we all should choose, if we want to be seen as cool guys. This group is composed by, more or less, actors who came late when national television was worthy, middle-high-class guys, who found themselves out as comedians, personal trainers, and some allegedly artists, whose art is known precisely because of their social media impact. These are our mentors. Not knowing them places you aside from the coolness, which is where I stand, by the way. So I’m doubly lost here: I’ve lost touch and interest. These mentors are also called influencers. I know this is happening all over the world, but I’m talking about those from Venezuela, they have gone to a point where even their routines, since this is all public access, have become in pretty much the main topic of conversation for so many; let’s add Reggaeton as music taste to that. Wow! What a combination! That’s why I feel so lonely in my island of uncoolness and Rock music, and I’m not going anywhere, but on the other hand, everyone is welcome to it.

 

Saturday. There’s something beneath one of the heaters of the stove. I could tell for the smoke when I was trying to boil some water. Smoke saying good morning,  I guess. I was writing about our influencers; the cool ones, on one side. There are also the politicians, on the other side, and the analysts of whatever happens in our country. This is pretty much how our social media is fed. I think that, for those abroad, following these people, despite the pursuit of the nice and cool, in a way it could be also a sign of wishing they were there, and perhaps in order to evolve, this is one of the necessary steps. I guess I’m not a part of it because I don’t want to, but at least I have the pleasure to write about it. Who knows! Maybe someone different than me will need these impressions in the future. I just feel the need for saying it now. I’m always confused but I’m working on it, or at least I tell myself so.  Saturday morning still. A boring voice from a testimony is filling my hearing space with a personal life I don’t know. What amazes me is that such a story get to be interesting to someone, to a point that I have to listen to it just because I insist to be in the wrong place. I guess it’s part of life. I have this void, again. It comes and goes. It’s not like I manage to fill it up and gets empty again. It’s more like rain: when it shows up, I fall into it and feel lost for a while. That while is now. There was an interesting posture over Open Source when it comes to news, but I just forgot it. It went more or less as some sort of reactive, kind of like in blood tests, to see how the news behave and what sort of opinions pops up because of it. In some way that’s the thing with the news, but the article was trying to make a point regarding printed newspapers and distribution rights, along with intellectual property. Who do we answer to, anyway? More than one would claim no one, but it’s not true, I mean someone, or something owns us, why do we feel the impulse to belong? Maybe because some entity made a campaign for it. At least that’s what I need to believe, if I want to understand that anybody’s private life, just because whatever he does, or whoever he sleeps with is uploaded (by him, by the way) on social media, get to have several people somewhat interested – and eager – in knowing further details. It occurs to me, now that I’m writing about it, that this could be part of the nostalgic wave it is now in vogue. We used to be that eager for gossips back in schools era. Somehow this kind of information evocates it so. Being an immigrant, among a lot of things, is about longing and remembering other times, perhaps more than others, and we get so immersed in it, that our world of impressions is reduced to a cell phone screen.