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.  

Syllabus

There’s no sex in your violence.  I love it.  Isolation is starting to become bearable.  What the hell then!  If we ever get divided, please let’s group according to our music taste. Aren’t you tired of sharing with people you just can’t connect with? Music, not only music, but seriously; music is, and I do abide it, the most proficient catalyst for mind connecting.  Our words flows around as the songs we play. Play me forward then! Play me all over. Let us become a song and forget about anything else… whatever that might mean!  Silence Management and the expectation to be heard; understood. Eyes on the phone. Life scrolling out our time. Songs from a musical.  Songs in my head again.

  

A carpet. An opened window during summertime.  Air conditioning down. The day looks pretty.  The beginning of the end seems to come, at least we hope for it. Cartoons.  I like cartoons, specially this Asian Anime: their vision, the places they explore, the future they foresee, I love it! Somehow Venezuela is turning into a post apocalyptic drama which is often told as a comedy when trying (abusing, in my opinion) sarcasm as a defense mechanism.  Everybody needs to be cool. There has to be something cool to post, to read. I have to repeat what I’ve just read on social media, only that my bitterness doesn’t let me. I can’t lose myself into scrolling.  I try but I can’t, and it’s a lonely life these days.

 

I’m about to forget this: edit, edition. I was wondering if this social media life is all for, not only to pretend;  to make believe; but also to have the chance of edition. Let’s say I woke up this morning, got ready for work, drove my wife and son, and then just arriving to my office I realized I left my headphones at home; what if we can just edit that; not changing the past, not changing the decisions we made, or the facts we had to face, or go through,  no, it’s not that, it’s just an edition; everything would go as planned, mistakes would be made, nothing would affect anything,  it’s just a simple retouch. Kind of like those we do all the time on social media. I took the same picture several time until I get to the pose that makes me look better, attractive; attractive to that one who seems to want me but we have to disguise it as friendship. Or maybe it’s just me who want it, and I’m making this whole thing up because I get bored of the life I have, and want another life for some moments. It is so hard for a girl to be faithful to one guy all the time, specially when she’s talking to several male friends. The telephone puts everything in different perspectives.  How do we run away from it? Would it be enough if I just move out again? How can I convince my habits to let me do this for my own good? I can’t.  I just can’t.  This pursuit of an alpha-male-type archetype is exhausting, and it seems I won’t get it after all. We’ll see. Debts are overwhelming enough. Halloween is coming. Tomorrow is another day, and another day that becomes yesterday, a yesterday of my today, because today it’s when I’m writing, and I’m writing because I can’t talk, and I can’t talk because I have no one to talk to, so I keep it as written words, it’s kind of like a code, a code to nothing, because there will be another tomorrow, and so many whispers and sighs going along with it, to nowhere, to nobody, I’m just alone and nonsense right now. It is hard not to be so, but here we stand, I stand, hoping, we never know…  and hope answered,  by the way. I guess I’m not alone after all. 

 

There’s a leak; the bathtub faucet does not shut entirely.  Fourth note tempo, I can sense. My mind is trying to sync with it; English helps, Spanish is less diverse when it comes to one syllabus words:

I

Am

Up

To

Think

That

This

Beat

May

Take

Me

To

You,

For example.