Shapes II

 

What is this place? It looks like a TV screen stand-by loop program waiting for you to press any button on your remote. So remote it is how we get pressed. Do we know by whom? That’s what I’m trying to find out. I want to get to that being, or whatever it is, and asking for money. I need more money to play this game. Entertainment is not free and surely is not cheap. We tend to confuse it with deceiving. I’m not talking about lies to keep going, I’m talking about money to fulfill the role I play in this game, your game, so please let me get to you and have a talk face to face, or whatever you have to make a conversation with me. Is it that you talk through me? Please, pay me better.

 

I opened my eyes and found the remote in my hand.  I think I was dreaming; textures again. Bad eyes staring at me, I feel like I’m bothering, but I was here first, and besides, I’m working. I don’t get those silent people that speak with their faces and say something different when it comes to talk, I mean I am like that too but at least I let my silence isolate the voice of my face, so people can get what I mean. Anyway, let’s play some music...  I wasn’t working, I took a nap and had a weird dream I can’t remember.  My thoughts flows like te snow that never comes and it is every day announced. 

 

It’s cold outside, there’s time to spend for smoking a few cigarettes and fit in on Instagram feeds. Breathe and cry, so then you can get clean for understanding.  I need to surrender my ego (Yes, like Queen) I want to say something stupid but I don’t want to bare its consequences.  Sometimes a fight is avoided more because of its consequences.  I hear steps. How many more cigarettes with this weather, for God’s sake! Am I asleep again? I can’t tell the difference.  It’s just Tuesday. Problems from the poor. If I were rich, I would be playing the drums right now, but I’m here, in bed, hoping, expecting, and waiting (all three words would be the same verb in Spanish,  by the way)  No, I am in front of the TV,  watching kids shows and singing along with them; dad’s thing. A Christmas tree still in January,  that’s the way we are. This could be our year, let’s see. Acceptance is a social-economic momentum word.  

 

The voices of the water, of the running water in this case. I’m thinking about another moment. My mind travels while I’m babysitting. I could hear the screams, the yelling. I’m back to the running water: the argument through the wall. Was that a couple? It’s always a couple, isn’t it? The frustration coming out because of the acceptance, again, poor happenings, in my opinion. Where did they come from? The police came, by midnight,  hitting on the door like some drunk husband claiming to open the door. Is it because we are foreigners? Is it because our English is not the native kind? I keep thinking about it. The thing is that the sound that echoed through the water turned into a police officer hitting (because that was not knocking) on my front door to wake my family up only because he could. He didn’t even bother finding out about the screams, he just asked for a blood stain on the floor. Apparently, someone called worried. I couldn’t get back to sleep after that, and I had to work the next day.

 

The night got sad and so did I, words were gone. I’m sorry. I’m tired, I’m tired of being alone. These thoughts weights every time more and I’m just getting fatter and older. I see myself years into the mirror, in my face, in my fake smile, in my loud silence. I see time leaving and left, for good, for bad. I’ve seen hope become smoke drags on a dirty space. There’s nothing me in there anymore. I just need a drink and keep feeling sorry for myself. Eventually our pity becomes more and more acquainted. It’s unavoidable. Especially when effort needs more focus on daily basis things, like getting up from bed, like tie your shoes without feeling tired. The air conditioning in winter season reminds me I’m producing too much warm, even in cold times. Let’s get up and keep drinking. Social Media has invaded my time, my memories,  and all I want to do is eat and drink. I woke up, I guess I could get some sleep after all. I feel fine, weird, but fine. My fake isn’t that smile, or is it the other way around? Never mind. Hope comes back in the morning and pick me up to go to work.

 

I started this book about money. I wanted to understand the concept, I wanted to find an answer. I didn’t but not because the book were no good in some way, but because I wasn’t paying too much attention, and I decided to stop the quest as well. What it got me was the value, the value of things, and its proportion compared to what we earn and how difficult is to earn it. For instance,  how much of what you earn must be spent in food? What sort of food? Do you eat as you want? If not, why? Isn’t that the purpose of working for someone? Being able to afford? I remember when I was a kid, in the eighties,  most of the jobs (even in Venezuela) provided certain affordability. What change? Governments, yes, I know, but to what end? Jobs have been losing worth as years went by. Now we watch videos of people cutting potatoes, cleaning their room, unboxing whatever toy they bought, and even worse, we also watch people making opinions about people doing things like the ones I just first mentioned. Where are we going? We are heading to a simplicity trend of vision, either to emerge from such a bottom, or to stay there and fade along with our memories and narratives; narratives about better times in our minds, only built up by the power of Nostalgia, and of course,  our parents’ middle class who could afford the toys and the amusement then. 

 

Songs from the nineties,  the same songs over and over. I am starting to believe that the famous algorithm that “guess right” mostly, it’s more like a fallacy to for the fools, me; us included, of course. Children programs, it won’t matter how conservative my tastes might be, it always end up showing wokeness and pink colors. At the end of the day, apps too follow an agenda. They are not entirely created to work with you but to push you to, to what? Well, that’s exactly what you and I will try to find out.

 

It's 3:00AM I must be lonely. This is the kind of song that I don’t chose but it feels nice when it is paying. My lovely nineties and all its esthetics. Our gestures: the sleeves of our sweaters covering almost the whole hand. How we loved to seat on the floor and hug your crush without telling her she’s your crush. We didn’t have the friend zone term then. Not there, not in Venezuela, perhaps it was a language thing, I don’t know. I write now, not then, back then I was more into feeling rather than understanding,  nowadays I come here to get what it’s happening and pretend I understand myself but no, I just collect phrases because they can’t remain in silence. I have to let them out someway, somehow. What else can you offer me besides Matchbox 20 and Goo Goo Dolls? Collective Soul, of course. I’ll take it. I like it too.  Alanis, yes! That’s how our gestures were then, like the Alanis copilot in the Ironic video, or like Natalie Imbruglia in Torn. Now I’m smiling alone. A black screen in a dark room. Time to go to bed. It’s Saturday,  but I’m babysitting.  The screen is on, but black, so it’s a black light that illuminates the bedroom. No more music videos for now. No more memories to evocate.  The was not in the mood for going out, so we all had to deal with our energy indoors and all the odds that came with it. That’s how life is once or twice a week. Nothing to cry about. A gray Sunday wakes me up at 5:AM. I guess I must have more coffee than usual.

 

So TikTok is not available in United States and the Venezuelan Supreme Court has fined the app with ten million dollars.  Common grounds,  we can tell, which is interesting. I believe that the nowadays terrible taste for music is in part thanks to TikTok; every Reggaeton listener surely has an account in there and surely takes pride from it. I have never used it. I couldn’t understand it.

 

I’m sure they will work it out, they will find the investor they need and the app will be back soon, and of course, the bad taste will remain until we consider it exquisite.  History is kind of like that: everything starts out vulgar and time makes it worth it. I hope the same for my writings. One never knows!

 

Fog. Fog me! It makes me lazy and unwilling to find some money. The paradox of the spare time.  Neither I rest nor I make money.  I’m surfing social media instead and burning my mental capabilities at scrolling the feeds from those apps. We can’t avoid choosing. Even when do nothing, we are doing something; we are making a choice, we are making up our minds. The freedom we brag about and flatter  with, it’s an obligation itself.  This is not on me, I just read it and I liked it. I liked it because we are always praising for freedom as something we must stand for, and it’s fine, but what sort of freedom if doing nothing is also part of it. 

Shapes

 

My white tree, our tree, the three of us against the world, against the intromission of social media.  

Lullabies played out from the TV. We’re in different times now. So lying is our super power after all. Maybe not lying, but making up stories, perhaps the kind of those we tell when we flirt, when we have a crush on who we are talking to. Seduction, there it is. You become noticed among many by the seductive power that lies upon your story. An immigrant story is not really the seductive kind, unless you are on campaign. So this is a swing state, I learned that today. It’s different.  It’s just different.  Chávez changed us. I’m going to say he changed our generation over politics, and I know there are many out there denying it but it is what it is: A Venezuelan sees a politician and he automatically expects charisma, verbiage,  and theatrical strong sentences like life were a stage to recite hollowed verses that then can’t just ever be fulfilled. We think a politician has to promise like a poem, like a song we learn by heart and sing it over and over to those who stand against,  and what for? Everything has to be a Caracas-Magallanes match, everyone needs to sense the victory, even it means misery. We have to win, and we have to celebrate it, so we have to be louder rather than right, and more aggressive rather than precise. Welcome to the third world drama. Here we are, making our third world statements. You guys can learn something if you take a good look at us.  

 

Brain rot. Yes. That’s how it is called being self-intoxicated from too much low quality content on social media… And the time we lose at it, how should we call it? Caifanes has this song titled Quisiera ser alcohol,  in which we could infer he was in love with an alcoholic, so he wishes he could be alcohol, so he can be inside of her. That could be a song for Leaving Las Vegas, where she wets herself in liquor, aiming to get his interest.  I guess I wish I could be a cigarette: quisiera ser un cigarro; cigarrillo, Spanish and its differences. I wish I could be dragged, slowly, but more importantly, and above all, I wish I could get the same interest. I’m tired. It’s other kind of interest what I’m getting; the kind I don’t like. CareCredit, oh boy! Smile is expensive and so it’s getting old. Let’s keep resisting.  We have kids to look after.  I had time for words today. This is good. Unself, here we go. We have to make it to this point where we get to be able to become what we experience, so we can choose to experience something good, and when it gets bad, then choosing the lesson learned from having been there… Surrender your ego like Queen’s song. Watch your child, stay there just looking at him, just feeling how the information is getting transferred. Don’t say a word, just let it happen.  That will be your place in the future, a sort of unself place, get ready because it’s coming. Unself we’ll be, and thus we’ll become tomorrow’s art, tomorrow’s energy.  Let’s just stop staining our visions with Instagram posts or social media hatred, it’s not our hatred anyway.  You can’t be part of that fiction…  and it won’t matter how bad your desire of belonging may be. I know it’s easy to fall into one of those pre-made archetypes around, like the immigrant type, for example, and it doesn’t have to be your case: that’s not you, or you don’t need to be it, we can always transcend and be more, be different, and enjoy the journey.   

 

By the way,  what If each one of us is living in their own time frame? Perhaps my life is more about the time I’m living and that’s why we can’t understand each other, you are living yours and we can’t just sync them both. The moment I left Venezuela my time got detached as well. Everything you got from me is no longer our present. We can catch up, of course. We can keep in touch,  but our present time has changed, so the beats in our lives. It could mean we start feeling different, and we might become memories finding frequencies to tune in once in a while.  

My white tree, our tree, the three of us against the world, against the intromission of social media.   

I have just found out this thing about colors. Colors are reality. So this is where all the mysticism on black and white pictures come from; they are more able to relate with the oneiric,  so they can be stored in your memory along with your imagination, so the pictures change – they may change, I mean – let’s say, they get customized by your thoughts and the language, the words you use to put a meaning on it. All inside your head while you’re brushing your teeth, or while  choosing the clothes you are going to wear today. Colors bring you back where you have no design, where you accept and carry on. We want more time in our designs, we feel like we need to shape and frame and store it  all in our heads as an asset, our assets.    

 

The light, the light is the source of the stories, stories turned into myths and legends. Contrasts give us perspective, in life, and pictures. Lines, lines such as wrinkles in a drawing, in a piece of paper, and even in a smiling face; they give us depth. They provide us with further, with beyond, we need to stare at them and be quiet, perhaps we get to learn how to read them.  

 

This room is different.  There’s no lamp hanging from the ceiling.  There’s no lamp at all. The light comes mostly from the TV and from the bathroom when the door is open.  I have been thinking about my obsession with the opinion in social media, the absence of weight or sustainability every time we feel the impulse to speak our mind. It doesn’t matter who I follow or who I block, I always get a clown from my country posting stupidity at its best. But don’t get me wrong, I love stupidity,  and I end up wasting my time on these coins as well. What bothers me is that I don’t get to chose my own clowns, that I am grouped along with a bunch of people I would never make friends with, and yet we will always be considered the same, and I can’t stand it. Social Media is, after all, a very accurate representation of what we think a mass dictatorship is, and yes, we live in it, and yes, it controls us, and yes, it dictates our steps on how we spend our time, our money, and eventually how our thoughts flow inside our head. What are your thoughts on your daily basis matters? We have to process them first through the social media path, then we think, then we answer,  then we comprehend.  

 

My white tree, our tree, the three of us against the world, against the intromission of social media.  

Information diet

 

Money is talking from the need to pay, from the need to honor, which is a very interesting thing, because who actually cares about it? Mostly, people who want to do good though. People with honor culture are the ones who feel the need to use their money from hard work to pay debts. Doesn’t that deserve a major consideration? I mean, if I ask for a loan to honor my debts, shouldn’t it be like: Well done, Sir, let’s make it happen, and not turn their back on the requester? What a system!

 

October has not brought any cold yet. It feels more like we’re still leaving summer rather than being in autumn though. The bed is not made yet and it’s not going to be made for the day. Nirvana, the band, not the state. Youth calling me through music while overweight and headache pull back to the present, to the coffee tables that Kanye West was talking about. Expired passports issues for us, the Venezuelans.  We were not going to travel any soon anyway.  The sun lies behind the trees while I contemplate from here, from my doubts. Made season indeed, Matchbox 20!

 

The night has come, on a Sunday,  with a no promising next week. We’ll, perhaps not. Perhaps there’s something good coming up. I’m not sure if I feel like taking about it, but I’m going to go to bed with hope and not only with unsatisfied desires. The living room is dark but it’s not late yet. Lentils, those Lentils are just great. I never knew about these versions, about these Storytellers show. Good for them! I like this band. I had the chance to see them last year. Like I said, hope is invited to bed again.  Bittersweet moments for this Bittersweet life I chose. Did I? I mean, how exactly I decided it, or when, yes, when? When did I choose? I’m not sure this life is the results of a cascade of choices.  Did I write it otherwise? Maybe. My thoughts betray me more often than I can tell, and that’s because I keep thinking what I still think, but today it’s different. Today there’s more hope. Let’s see. Let’s keep going. Bah! The same scam. Unsecured is the key word. Apparently no financial institution is willing to grant anything on whatever labeled as Unsecured, whatever that means to them. That’s the consequence derived from hoping, from believing. Now we see why there are so much skepticism around. All those people might have been laid down. That explains why believing is more a childish thing. It’s cold, it’s nighttime, and we don’t get paid for wondering; not us at least.  Upstart, I appreciate you. We’re on the right path, we always have, it’s just that time is so sensitive sometimes that it can turn all your plans down. However,  here we stand, there are no other choices.  By the way, the cold has come…

 

Information is not truth, it’s connection, and in order to connect a large group of people,  the information needs to be sensational. So we are connected by the sensation of using the same information, and find sympathy through whatever paths they may come out of it. I just heard it and I found it convenient for my thoughts. I joined this program of data analysis but I didn’t continue.  Too much going on. I remember they were trying to spot the difference between information and data. Of course, from the perspective of someone who must present an angle in front of a board or any figure of corporate authority,  data is what you collect, and information what you talk about during such presentations.  

 

Global regulations: how wide can this be inoculated in our mindset? The battle for visibility has a lot to do here. We need more information diet. There’s too much junk out there, and I’m getting intoxicated from it.  I’m starting to brag about the things I ignore like it was some sort of skill, and it’s not. It bothers me, actually.  The need to look at the phone in an attempt to fill up the few seconds of silence and unattention, just as if we need a cigarette to drag the moment out, it definitely bothers me. It bothers me on myself,  and on others as well. I guess I need to write it down, to write it here. 

Perception again

 

I'm looking at this blue towel while I think about these words. The towel is nothing but a squared shape, so I'm having squared thoughts: an open door, a closed window, a laptop shut, a cell phone on, a TV, a remote control, a cushion,  a carpet, the room of the apartment,  my desk, the sticky notes pack, everything with four sides, with four angles. What if we flip it all and ourselves with it? What if the depth lies only in our minds? Well, if not, angles definitely change depending on where you stand. That could explain why the tantrums when others just observe and remain quiet.

 

Drawers. Some of them don’t get open for a while. Sometimes they work better for memories than pictures themselves.  You find that thing you thought it was cool to have, but you never really used it, you just put it there. Now that you’re looking at it you remember what happened when you were buying it, what you were told, you didn’t believe it, but now it’s true, so you put the thing back in the drawer, and you keep the memory for some time in your head, and acknowledge that had to happen, that it’s better this way, that you in fact never got the chance to choose, that you were more like a witness and no photo told you that before. Now you have to stop looking at the towel, get dressed and go to work, and set your mind on what you need to do, and please stop using social media like you do…

 

How is the shape of the void? Is it a circle with a hole? How about Israel depth? Perhaps the depth is built with our issues, all those issues we’ve been collecting and treasure like remembering them was something worth to do. How much have we learned from them. I see myself falling apart in silence and there’s nothing there to bring up for making anything better. Even good memories lose their power to cheer you up when the present is so hope-consuming. So we just have this void to visit and contemplate, like a lake, waiting for anything to pop, to splash.  A leaf fallen from a tree and taken by the wind to flow you, with you; while the silence greets all those memories the same wind brought you when touching your face. I just need more money,  and perhaps more time with myself.

 

Shades, I can see the lamp on their reflex. The house is dark and the lamp is on, even at daytime. The sound of a hairdryer,  the sound of a Sunday evening that awaits the routine to start again. High temperature in the body. The month is about to end, and I woke up with this feeling of frustration that we pay to be fined. I was fined with two hundred dollars by a company named LMS Parking. They are in charge of giving us (we, the residents of this complex) this type of service where my car has to be registered,  so I won’t be fined, and my car wouldn’t be locked. I want to understand why, as residents,  we are not being called, and told first, as a courtesy: dear resident,  based on our records, your car is not registered,  we kindly ask you to do it so. Instead, the administration just send a general email stating, pretty much, that if the car is not registered,  it will be locked, and you will be fined. Just like that. It felt rude, like they don’t care, like it is what it is. Another day comes by.

 

Costumer care, sometimes an empty definition. If it’s in person, you have to wait on a large line and spend a time you don’t have just make a point that, perhaps,  it won’t be considered. So you call, and the waiting is even worse. Then you have the reviews,  so you let go your frustration to no one, and then you get an empty answer like: so sorry to hear that. It is happening in every level, in every field. The illusion of not being alone tend to get a serious strike when you actually have to use social media for a real personal matter. In other words, if your problem is not part of a trend, then it won’t get any attention, so you better find a trendy concern to make opinions, or else you better remain quiet and take your frustration on any other thing that has nothing to do with your problem. This is our world now: Parking services. They don’t serve me at least.