Zero Page

 

Where are we? Yes. Cruz Diez. I never took that picture. I always thought I was coming back. A half empty suitcase. I’m going to work hard, save some and start better this time. I guess thus is what many of us have in mind when it comes to this. An ambulance is passing by.  I hear it from the kitchen.  I’m cooking. A black coffee with no sugar so I don’t break the fasting I planned to complete last night. I broke it; free breakfast on the house. On the agency in this case. We can’t help the impulse of seizing whatever available for free. It’s in our nature. It doesn’t matter if you were born poor or middle class (by the way, now I know our middle class has more to do with other things aside from money, and that’s why, although poor as well, this middle class is still looking above the shoulder) as Venezuelans, when something is free. We must take it, and we must take it first. There are plenty of stories of pride and joy after seizing anything some other may have paid for. Even if it’s not true. The mood of the advantage must prevail at all cost. Nobody wants to tell a story where a potential spoil was not seized at its best. I could say that’s not in our culture. We seized when we can and when we can not, we make it happen then. We got in the plane. Some candies to share when we land. Miami first. After a short stop at Dominican Republic. We spent the night at the airport. Next flight was too early in the morning so it was not worthy the hotel room. North Carolina.  So different from Miami. Our temporary home,  or so we thought.  The excitement of the first visit, of being new at everything,  at anything. Almost five years of that day and almost five years of so many things that never came back, and never will. We didn’t know then several goodbyes were going to be forever.  Fue is now sounding in my ear. You think this is coincidence? I think it’s not. We’re living a movie someone already watched, the soundtrack is proving it. The eternal return. We play the song and play ourselves over and over, aiming to spot the detail we once missed. Then we laugh, smile, or cry. Cry is good, it’s sort of clean up from within.

 

It was March, I remember,  March the seventh, the power supply had gone, gone for almost four days. That’s how I remember it. Fourth days in Caracas not knowing about anyone. There we were; living a post-apocalyptic movie in our body. I think it was that what triggered our thoughts.  We've got to do something.  2019 was a terrible year. 2020 was Covid. Covid took us abroad, took us here, trying to figure out that this was a new life and not a time off from the crisis. Quite a word: crisis. It’s more like a burden, a burden that floats right behind you. Wherever you go, the burden goes as well. It’s kind of like a signature that certifies we come from the underdevelopment,  that it's what we are, what we know, and specially,  that we survived it. Now we are in spiritual and conceptual reset. Learning to live again. Times like these on my mind as I’m writing this.

 

We ran away. We had to, we had a story to share, we had threats to dodge, and a new life to take care of, to give our lives away for. I came out from the office and got some wine to sit and write. I was thinking how, and where this sort of tale should start. Let’s go to 2022, where Venezuelans were granted the chance to bring family. 2023 was a year of reunions, so many mothers holding their children again for the first time in years. Some others are still waiting for that to happen, wondering if they did something wrong and that’s why they haven’t been blessed that way.

Parents started coming and a new phenomenon rose: the new beginning of the new beginning.  It’s a bit like people’s age crisis, but with families. Another turn in their lives. Now it’s more evident who came here to start over, those who ran away from oppression, and who came here with money, disguised as runaways. Anything massive brings a lot of surprises.  It’s unavoidable.  It’s not our fault, it’s no one’s, actually.  The turned tables in politics are reflected in people’s steps.  Social media has a lot to do with it. Not mentioning all these series of influencers showing a lifestyle hard to believe it's based on publicity. I find it hard to believe.

 

A professor of the UCV was fined with four thousand something for the alteration of a building in the university to park his Ferrari.  Obviously such a news didn’t go unnoticed. How do we explain that to the world? How do we talk about inequity and this is in every front page when it comes to Venezuela? It’s a process. It’s like those times when the gas was unexplainably cheap. I bring this up because somehow I get that we don’t get it. This sort of news represents the dimension of a void we fall in when it comes to understand why we start over. Why we are this surreal. Yes, we are surreal, and surreal are our thoughts. Thoughts I want to chain and put them in some order so I can express myself through foreign words. This is my attempt to it. I have to go the bank first. It’s Thursday,  a Thursday to throw back and forth, of course. But it also feels like Friday. Or it’s just me that I didn’t get it well and I’m just pullulating around like nothing happened.  I’m afraid to ask. Let’s go to the bank first. It seems nothing happened indeed. So, 2023, another new beginning.  The relativism of the beliefs.  The deconstruction of the costumes; of our previous tryouts. New rehearsals and therefore new details spotted. New debts; debts over older debts. Existence dressed as survival – again – and some of that was what made us move. There you are, crisis. Let’s serve some words. Let’s find some context to at least try. Memory serves, I remember.