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. 

Thirteenth Page (and last)

 

Cynicism has found shelter here too. Those who already knew this was coming and think themselves wiser for not having hope. All posers to me, to be honest. Believing is not a weakness… The banality of a disgrace. The need to see, post and comment on social media, and think you’re part of the solution by doing it. It must be some sort of celebrity-like effect: My opinion and angle must be posted too, or something like that. Also the criticism on others for what they are not saying. Everything is a matter of style now, even disappointments out of elections results. This is not the end. Venezuela is on its way to write more promising pages and it doesn’t have to me. In fact I can’t feel anything but respect and admiration for those who stay there and don’t give up. I am here, hoping, having faith and praying. It’s the only thing I can do now. Poor habits, poor stuffs! Wine is gone. Monday evening.  No money until next payday,  which is within eleven days. I have to work tomorrow,  and I have a lot to do. See you! You know what? Nothing. I forgot what I wanted to say. The opinion rally has begun. Everyone needs to say something,  Everyone needs to see something from Everyone else. Silence is confused with complicity. Everyone is a judge during these days.  I’m actually enjoying what the people are doing with Chavez statues all over the country. It feels like fresh air touching your face to get a smile from you. Why did they put them in the first place? I mean, I could get if there were something,  anything to hold on to, but there’s nothing, nothing but a split nation, nothing but separated families. This government has to fall…

 

Tuesday night. Time for bed. I’m thinking about my car’s leak. There’s always something going on to be busy besides work. I was going to take my boy to the dentist and I couldn’t.  It was a lose-lose day. Now I have to take care of this, but now will be tomorrow.  I have to get some sleep first. Wednesday morning. There is this thing I find it confusing: it is known that the taxi service is long gone, that we rely on apps for it. There are several options when it comes to pick a ride on these apps: comfort, time, pet friendly,  but no car seats. We are not from here. We have no friends, I asked everyone I know how do we get a ride with an infant, considering that there is a fine for not having the child on a car seat and, yes, nobody knows. An error in this matrix. An edition mistake in this movie. So the child has to stay while I figure out what I’m going to do with the car, because I can’t just go to the avenue with my boy, and pick a taxi to make the day easier. It seems that not having a car is another problem here…

 

There is a bus stop but I have never used it. Trying it didn’t come to my mind because even in circumstances like this one, we have this tendency of trying to beat time, when time is the only beating. Lapsus. Intelligence voids set up like tramps for this sort of feud between think and feel when it comes to act.  So we act wrong and realize it later.

 

The end is close and we will not have any outcome; nor for Venezuela, nor for our immigration living. The end is the routine, right when we become adults, right there, when we realize that we’ll be working until we can’t do it anymore, hoping our kids to be grown up enough, so they don’t have to depend on us. This is a parenthesis in any life, in any life as an immigrant: a suitcase with hope, and a routine to fade away into. Our thoughts become smoke in the air every time we sigh our despair, our sadness. To my people: keep the faith, to all of you: this is not the end. Viva Venezuela Libre!  Now It’s time to come bac to work. I haven’t been called yet about the car. Rats is sounding in my ear, that’s what Maduro and his acolytes are. Faith is sounding now while I finish this chapter,  finish this story.  

 

The night has come. It’s hot. We keep looking at the phone trying to get with the right answer, that the democracy has been restored after so long. A twenty years old Venezuelan doesn’t know what democracy is like, what diversity is like. I feel for them. I grew up in the eighties and, forgive me for what I’m going to state, but in my opinion, of the last fifty years of history,  the eighties were the best. At least in Venezuela.  That’s what my peers want to have back again. That’s why my peers want it back again. In the meantime,  I go back to my phone and keep spending my time looking who is saying what, and what it’s being said of whom! Coffee morning. I haven’t contemplated it for a while, I mean acknowledge it; taking some time to think while the sweet steam perfumes my face. One more Thursday, one more day. I wonder what have we learned, perhaps nothing, just perspective. I think we need to look ourselves into a mirror or words once in a while, at least to see the names and the sentences that floats around when we do it. Someone may need it for a new block chain, or for a new chain of blocks. I’m going to miss you all…

 

 

Twelfth page VI

 

Do you remember the smoke faith? Well, it has been here all the time. Now it’s worse, because it’s smoke combined with social networking, and perhaps things that I better not know for my own sake. Living and bearing. I’m tired. I’ve said it before. We rest when we are working, so we can stop thinking about those disappointments that we haven’t had time – and we’ll never will, by the way – to process, to understand,  and learn from them to carry on, and see what next. Next is an improvisation when we’re poor. We can see it as an endless adventure  but a boring one. Movies are not about real poor. When they are about poor, the poor are somehow successful at the end of the movie. We know that won’t be our end. If we’ll make it to the end, we’ll remain poor, or old. Old enough not to enjoy it, only to remember it, and tell others about when waiting at the hospital for a new prescription.  I’m close… of that life and of the eighty thousand words. My silent achievement… Good for me, I guess.

 

 

What is this I’ve just read? It feels like I just woke up from a miserable life tale. The only thing I enjoyed was the wine, and that’s a good reason to move out after all; one has to be in a place when we can drink. There’s no point to work – all kinds of work: work out, work in, work at, or work for – if there’s no drinking afterwards.  Thoughts and ideas need to gravitate,  to become part of the ether, and be there for whoever wants to grab such knowledge, and do something with it. That’s the purpose of any writing, in my opinion: be part of the future. Someone may need some, even these pathetic sort of confessions, anything will be useful,  a least as a reference, and to start flowing around, our body is going to need some fuel, and I don’t know what’s better than alcohol for such a purpose.  It’s Friday today, another reason to get a drink after these office hours. If I were in Venezuela, the Venezuela before Maduro era, I would be drinking right now and watching the Olympic Games, then I would be going to any social network to forget and keep drinking.  Those were the days, yes!  Actually the day didn’t end that bad. New versions from a live concert to amuse myself while listening. I also saw Celine Dion at the opening. It was great, just like these songs of Ghost.  Little victories to cheer me up. This story can’t be only a grief. It just can’t.

Saturday morning. I’m in the mood for an ice cream. Let’s see. Tomorrow it’s election day in Venezuela.  I wish us the best, we need the best to keep going, to know that we finally can consider a return. My hope is now there. I have been skeptical and cynical about it, just as many others, but the truth is that we are hoping for a change, our people need a change. Let’s at least have faith.  We all want our kids to at least have the chance to visit where their parents are from. The culture, the Caribbean culture. The mix, the fact that our skin comes from a variety of races and origins, that we are not just another Hispanic  community, and they need to get it first hand and not only from parents tales. Today is the day, by the way! Thousands of Venezuelans in the street trying this one last attempt to beat Maduro and mist of the chavismo off the government.  It’s election day. The only day the people believe – and are in fact, why not! – they can turn the path of the country by choosing different.  I know it has happened before,  and that the government is who does the count of the votes after all. I know that the forecast is not promising,  I know it has never been encouraging, but I choose to believe. I feel it different now. Perhaps because I’m far from my city, perhaps because Nostalgia grows stronger out if sadness,  I don’t know, but today I want to have faith my country will prevail. Our people will prevail. Venezuelans can’t have another period of darkness. It’s enough. It was enough since ten years ago.  It has to stop. We’ll see! Monday morning.  It’s raining. There’s a lot to do at work. I’m not sure if I know what they mean when they say close outs, but I have to do them, whatever they are. I thought this was going to be the happy ending of this tragedy,  that I could write some paragraphs of hope. I want to do it but I don’t feel like doing so. The government played with our faith once again, or perhaps they are trying one last move, who knows! The thing is that they have proclaimed themselves the winners of these elections. I mean Maduro won, according to them. One of the  most despised people alive, have been proclaimed a winner of a popularity based contest. No fiction tell more lies than these bunch of thugs. Truth is what power conquest, maybe, but they don’t have it enough to make the world believe them. Now they will waste the people’s hope in sustaining a lie. It’s kind of sadistic; mean and sadistic.  Whatever done on behalf of the equality, always turn out to be the most unfair. Now I have to rethink, we all have to rethink – and get back to work first, of course – Yes. I just forgot. Our sorrows always have to be delayed. Work comes first when you’re poor and needy. See you later!

 

 

Now the Orwellian forwarded allegedly news: I have a cousin, whose husband has a brother, whose father in law is in the army, and he said that there are rumors that many officers are displeased with such an attribution, that this is an insult to the people and to them, that a strike might be getting set, or even more, a coup from the inside of the army to take down the insolence of Maduro and have a free Venezuela at last. This is not a mock, and I’m not trying to make fun out of this tragedy. My country is grieving,  my people suffer, and these are the kind of news many are forwarding now. Since I read 1984, I started to believe all these rumors are made up from the very core of the government,  just to amuse their sadistic impulse, and see how faith is spread and fade into rumors, while they drink the finest whisky and sniff the highest quality of cocaine on earth. This must be happening now in a five star suite of one of those hotels they expropriated in the name of the greater good of the nation.