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.  

Mindset brainstorm

I need focus.  I have spent too much time on social media. Time that won’t come back. Time I have just wasted. What will those apps do with that? It’s clear that we’re taken our time. Time we weren’t going to turn into money, to be honest, but now that I think about it, perhaps they do, I mean they can. They can get fueled up from our time and convert it into money. So when they say feed, that’s means we feed them. We feed the system with our time. I can’t remember last time I allowed myself to get lost in a book store,  in a library,  I’m actually forgetting the things I have read. I was trying to explain my brother what it’s going to happen with House Of The Dragon, since I have read Fire and Blood, but I just couldn’t, I remember nothing, only a couple of things.

 

What is happening to my memory? Am I not only giving my time away but my memory too? I have to think a lot about this. I hope you all help me out.

 

We need a character for this question. I have to come here. There’s no one to talk to, and I spend too much time on social media trying to get an unwanted answer that never comes. I haven’t found my way out. I guess I need to redirect my own attention. This time should not be wasted on people who don’t give a damn about me. I’m tired. I should take a little walk, or get a book, I guess. This spend-and-pose type of life is consuming me, and don’t even have to cut my hair. Let’s redirect.

 

The voice of my silence. The words that can’t say out loud. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. I’m sorry couldn’t do better. You were a gift from God. Your presence. Now I’m going to be alone again. Alone again between the social media and the smoke. That’s how we start to fade. That’s how we join the oblivion. Me and my memories. Me and my silent desires, watching how fat I look into the black mirror and the white screen; feeding myself with fantasies and vestiges of past glories.  Happy Halloween the whole year, the only good thing. Challenging,  but good. Good and worthy, like a glass of wine on a Monday night with no occasion,  with the voice that can’t be heard.

 

Those little light bulbs on electric devices, the ones that remain on and bright to let know the machine is off but also plugged, and plugged means it can be turned on at any time, at will. That’s how expectations decorate a living room nowadays; plugged machines on off, expecting to be used. Am I expecting to be used as well? I want something else. I want you!

 

We’re more everyday.  I’m not sure if that is actually a good thing. There is this dilemma: we don’t want to be alone but we want to feel ourselves exclusive.  We want to be more but we don’t want to tell any other story but ours. It’s kind of hard. It could be some sort of dialectical. The Venezuelan dialectical; we want to increase in population but without stop being the only Venezuelans in town. It’s not easy, we all feel it. Why can’t I stop eating for Christ sake!  

 

Maybe I’m tired of watching children videos. Not really.  It is what it is. The day has finally arrived. We cried. I cried. I cry every time I step into something; anything, that she use in the house. We’ll be missing her terribly.  I want to call this challenges from the poor; or poverty.  I’m not sure which one conveys the message I’m trying to send. So, poverty challenges: forced farewells among them, why? Because we never know when we’ll get to able and afford. Affordability is an issue, for sure. So, see you someday, when faith empowers us and not only over mindsets, but over pay capability as well.  

 

A new week comes, and it comes with the routines: the meetings, the documentation, the early breakfast, so we don’t have to spend on it. A new promise, a new expectations awaits…

Nothing awaits. It is just our need for illusions that tries hard to keep expectations,  so we think something must come up, or soon. We vow for a good surprise, for a blessing.  Only that the bless seems to be cursed.

 

I was waiting for the red light to turn green and pass but I opened my eyes and found myself watching tv with the baby on my side. I’m sleepy. Tomorrow it has to be great. Let the music flow around. It worked out, just for day, but it worked out. Now I have to get some rest and postpone this anxiety for having sex.  

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?

and the slogan becomes a song…

I was having a little chat with some coworkers. One was saying about English importance: the treaties, the way to get in touch with the world, the advantages and, in general; all those things we’ve been always told but not so many cared. The interesting thing was what the other one said:  why English? That’s a language I won’t be submitted (and it won’t be necessary to write what else he said)

I pictured some scenarios in my head: let’s take this guy and sit him over a chair with power, let’s say he will be named a minister or a director: what kind of management would it be his? The possible answers of this question actually remove you from any doubt. It would be nefarious, just as it is Venezuela nowadays.

We’ve been living the time of free market and globalization; something opposing will hardly reach a common good. The only way a government controlled market may work is by sponsoring perceptions through alms; you see: I set up an insult, something that makes minds feel rather than understand, so perceptions get open through this sort of offensive feeling via, which also make them get eager, eager for an explanation, and the explanation comes, an archetype: there must be someone, someone evil, evil from abroad; and now I get why I’ve been poor, why wealth is a concept for frustration, then I start summarizing: what do I really want, or need? What the government gives: a box with several products so you don’t get hungry, but remember, this is not just to solve hunger, it isn’t. This is a struggle against the enemy, an enemy who imposed English and a wrong concept of wealth. I don´t know what’s wealth anymore. Wealth is what government tells, so you better start paying attention to its words, so its words become a slogan, and the slogan becomes a song…

What about now? Alms have been reduced because Oil price crumbled. Now the song is about production: what such a thing could be if you first told me I wasn´t responsible for who I’ve been? 

Now that I’m aware my ignorance was planted by the enemy… I just wait for my box of food.

Power is power, Cercei said.

You get convinced by getting confused…

Isn't it ironic, don't you think. Alanis sings and I thought so; the fact of living in a country where people can’t even access to their own cash, an insufficient own cash by the way, and on the other hand top manipulating skills are used as media weapon so effectively that people are actually rethinking of themselves. Maybe it’s not ironic: it is amazing.

According to an article I eyed Post-truth was named the word of the year in 2016. I read some of the explanation and I smiled (better than crying, I guess) because we’ve been living an era of post-truth minded subjection for practically twenty years. This is how politicians have been getting into people’s thoughts.

Poor were told that poverty was a consequence and that the guilt came from abroad, thus shame became pride and slogans became mantras. The taste for dressing was no longer a taste but an imposition, coming – of course – from abroad, (Yes, the enemy has to be an entity out of Venezuela. It is mandatory to justify everything this way) therefore, instead of letting people wear what they wanted and how they wanted it, just to bring up an example, the media – the official one – told people such a way were not ours, that it was an inflected idea of consuming and, that way, people actually were permitting the enemy inside… Nobody bought it at first. The argument was too hollow and of course, many could see the resentment talking rather than the bare fact. The thing begins with affordability, when access started leaving and doubts started coming: is it true? Is it really an invention of the capitalism? They have always seen us as their backyard so they send us the leftovers, and such… Questioning is a gate for perception, and if it’s open you may let a doubt in when you were trying to take some out. You get convinced by getting confused… So the truth became post-truth and a simple news hearing works like a limbo; it seems people need to actually wait until the post-truth media explains so, otherwise messages fade away like it were no news at all, and it happens, a lot, and people act like they’ve just heard a gossip; a rumor. So rumor is no rumor anymore, and it’s a shame because nowadays real rumors are gotten as forbidden info, especially if they’re against the government: it’s just post-truth to me too, just like the official information…

Best Regards