Tenth Page IV

 

Greensboro has welcomed a lot of us. For that I’m grateful.  We’re divided in several small groups because there are still some Venezuelans with the need of leader self proclamation. It is kind of understandable since the need to impress is strong. That seems to be part of how we are: we need to show something to impress. It doesn’t matter if it’s real, if it’s true, but if it can be used to impress.  That happens in Venezuela too, so many people who want to be the leader that they make difficult unify a bigger group. I suppose that this is happening all over the world now. I believe it is a part of our process and this may constitute a step forward we must take to get where we want to go and how we want to be. Only I don’t know it. I’m still figuring myself out. Let’s keep with this journey. Let’s keep listening to some good music. Let’s see if we will overcome the urge for showing on social media, and the impulse to pretend and post as well, like life is about good things only, and that what we do on those posts must fit in what is sold as cool, which we all seem to buy by the way. I’m going to wipe myself and take a nap.

 

Oil. One of the things Venezuela is known for is the oil reserves.  We grow up hearing that there is enough oil for 300 years. Nowadays Venezuelans are facing a gas shortage, and I read that they are importing it from Iran. I mean, seriously; it doesn’t make any sense at all.  Politics do that. Politicians can burn an entire industry to the ground. In our case, they only needed the help of the military. Some of them have become rich because of this alliance.  Unfortunately the people only can hope and pray. Enough fellow countrymen have died trying to face this situation with the illusion of a change. There’s no change. We stayed there until 2019 thinking something was going to change.  It didn’t.  It haven’t. It is very likely we might never go back. Let’s put some silence here. This won’t be part of any immigrant post. It might lie behind the cool things, who knows! The thing is that we're learning,  more like, we are relearning, and whatever it comes with it.

 

Sunday. Some coughing but not too much not to go out for a walk. The playground must be still wet. It’s going to be a carry time. I love it. I hope to keep myself strong enough to still carry my boy. I’m a papá pure. We have to deal with it. Doomscrolling, I’ve been talking about that in some way. It was interesting to know that people fall into it attempting to find something useful. I thought it was more like a vice, like smoking, despite the information against it, we still do it. In this case, it seems to be more like a trap. It could be. It makes sense, but the impulse of start scrolling is not always in the pursuit of illustration but more likely entertainment. The amusement of everyone else, projected through condensed pills of images and short texts, showing how their lives look like, and which you invited to take a look, even to make comments sometimes. That’s why we’re called followers. It is very accurate.  Still Sunday.  The afternoon is here giving me a voice o the TV and the expectation of the already made beef I got to avoid the work of cooking it. I don’t cook, my wife does, my mom does. It’s just a way to put it. Cooking can be like cleaning: to have to, and to want to, don’t meet at the same time. The sky is painted in gray. A rain is forecasted. This was a home weekend. It was boring, as boring as real life feels when money and time lacks. We’re left with excuses. Excuses to pretend how different would it be if only… if only… Our mantra as immigrants: if only! I’m thinking about Ghost’s lyric: are you on the level, are you ready to swear right here and right now. I’m ready to eat, and I was just told: help yourself.

Anendophasia, or no inner voice. Do you guys think it is why we jump towards social media? To find a relation between what we think and how would it be? Do you think we need to look over and scroll for a while to get the answers we’re not able to get by, for instance meditation? The study also says it affects only a ten percent of the population, but ten percent is quite a lot, I think. Who know about these things? Are politicians taking profit from something like this?