Powerless

 

There comes a time when you realized how lonely it is getting by the sound of someone else´s chatting phone. That´s the sound of loneliness. The sound that reminds you such a conversation doesn´t include you. This feeling is not coming up when walking or working, and it hardly ever comes up when you´re alone. Instead, it shows up like a spooky ghost when you are with someone, and that someone is clearly not with you. That´s why the phone gets noisy. So, you start wondering and it is right there when wondering finds you things it should not.

 

There have been almost two weeks since I was told not to go to work due to some system situation. It has been much more since the last time I kept up on writing. I wrote some a few days ago, but it is not something I do very often anymore. Sometimes I get angry with myself for it, but I pay no further attention to that since I always have some bigger situation to worry about. I started by reading some of the things I´ve done so far and they are not like; very good, now that I go back to them. The thing is that this is somehow therapeutical, so it helps me worry less about what I do now. Nevertheless, I´m getting sleepy and I´m kind of losing what it was that I wanted to say. One of those things was about this lockdown; I mean, haven´t we always been so? At least from the last five years maybe? The fact we take pictures of any daily basis activity, or this sort of impulse we´ve developed of framing any of our responses in one of these already made images; with some prank on it - those we call “memes” in my country, or “stickers” in our prominent social media.- I mean, we´ve already given away some feelings in order to fit with the mass criteria, joining a bigger virtual group  that apparently makes us look cool. Fine, to whom, I ask. That´s one of the things I wanted to say. Who do we act or behave for? And yes, this has more to do with someone than something. Purposes have lost touch with what we want to be. Rather than it, we focus on fitting with someone´s archetype. That´s how I comprehend this need of showing anything, especially when this anything turns out everything. So, the lockdown is not changing us that much over such aspects. Lockdown has been affecting us on some other things, for instance, jobs, supplies, and perhaps those things many forget they can´t be done from home. What would happen if such companies be forced to close, in order to comply with some new politics? What would happen to all the people who need to go to work every day?

 

I started reading something and suddenly remembered my people, my country. How did we get so far? I think there are many who actually believe they know the answer, but the moment they start opposing each other´s statements, we can tell right away we´re more filled up with doubts rather than certainties. There is some consensus of course: Maduro is an evil piece of a dictator, one of the worst kinds. Everyone agrees but I mean, how; how did it happen? This is what I think. Before Chavez's era, the Government still controlled the economy, and people from the academy were left behind already. The idea of balance sounded like a melody of hope among all those people with no privileges in that society. They managed to sell that Chavez was just like the most; and that meant poor, low class, and his people got such an achievement without visiting so many barrios like old politics demanded by then. So, yes, a tv candidate, an idea supported by a few rich and several intellectuals, along with some promising and unprecedented alliances, made him the president who managed to change the Constitution. A Constitution they had to edit later again but the damage was already done by that time. I´m pretty sure people of my age don´t know anything else, so we got used to putting our trust in politicians and that became a habit, a habit created by the old politics, and that could be why so many people are positive over the fact that Chavez won the elections because of the poor, those mistakenly called ignorant, and if there is some certainty over this all, it is precise that the poor don´t, and of course didn´t then, have the chance to choose. I guess this is what power looks like after all.

 

And there is the sound of loneliness again, freaking out, reminding, always reminding, among other things, that I have to get back to write not to be this uneasy. That´s what I´m trying here, and speaking about it, that´s what lockdown means in the end, an exercise of power, I mean when politicians enable themselves to do so. In other words, Power being Power. And I remembered the Linkin´ Park song, not because of what it says but of its name: Powerless…

 

Powerless is how you feel when you want to know but you can´t because knowing is not up to yourself, so we have to accept so many lies as the truth that we feel we need to escape. Where do we escape in times of pandemic?