Next Day

Being forced to abide or being able to complain, that’s the new dilemma, I guess. How much time do you think you need to contemplate your feelings toward your worries? I heard this is a design, an upper further design. Would it be true after all? Some people claimed they had foreseen some of it, and it seems to be happening all around the world. 2026 has been a special year. For a writer, it would be surreal to come up with all this happening, but they are and have; indeed, the happenings, not sure about the writers, really. Venezuela commemorates The Battle of Carabobo every 24^th of June. Yesterday, there were two rare earthquakes near Caracas and part of the city fell apart. People started feeling them when frames and platery began to crash towards the floor. We decided to take a walk. Nothing was close. Two big avenues with two very narrow sidewalks. Everything with a big parking lot. It took me some time to realize it: this is a motor town (Motown). So I decided to have a look at it. I was trying to frame this concept within the boundaries of my footsteps, and that’s where my body started resisting and my head started aching. This is how it feels when going out, when getting informed about family from home.  

 

Today, social media is a redux of feelings. I guess no one cares in real life, I don’t know. Maybe it’s more like a lost space. We feel in combos of time and news driven through our phones. We can’t blame ourselves; we did not get here without a push. What do we do when we see our walls cracking? I panic, and panic will freeze me out. Would it be possible that the daily work nonsenses we heard are, somehow, an encrypted language that makes these doings turn into feelings, to be prepared for whatever is coming up? Is that a crazy thought at all?  It was a long night. Many people know that it will be very hard to recover from this disaster, given the circumstances the country has been through in the last twenty years. Roads flow with the English language. This disaster was felt in Spanish. That explains why straight follows ahead, and right may follow there or here; right now, and right away too. I guess the communication is like driving a vehicle; ideas go, stop, park, and make it to the left or right, politically, and economically; certainly, and absolutely. It’s hard to remain focused these days. We hold on to people’s lives. Life is what matters the most, and this is true; it’s just that our homeland and our people have gone through a lot already. I guess we all wonder what now!

 

Horror movies have always shown us that the unknown entities' approach starts when the platery and the frames hung on the walls begin to fall.  These words are taking place the next day, the day after, but I don’t think they will come out anytime soon. As we’ve learned with our moving out, hometown feelings and thoughts must be put on hold since current obligations hardly allow them to gravitate on shift time. I guess we’ll get to the point when we’ll schedule some time off to feel and acknowledge but how long would that be? Never mind, it’s just a thought lost in the need of context. I think I will make it after all. Why is " platery " a wrong word, by the way? How is it supposed to be called? Now they have to return to their homes, not knowing if it’s safe or right, because there’s nowhere else to go for many, and we’re here, watching and aching, all because of a few who made decisions for many. Let’s see how they’re doing. Let’s send some support! 

Now anger is all around

I was feeling guilty because I went out twice in the same week for a lunch. What does that mean? During the days of strongest protests restaurants and discos were open, with customers, and you don´t need to know someone who may have been at, you don’t. You just need to check for a while your social network accounts: people praising the dissidence during the day and shaking drinks when the sun leaves it. 

I didn’t bring this up to expose those people for a judgment, I’m saying this because it is important to understand that such things happens because we simply are not used to be involved – consciously – in politics. Now we are. Some might say we’ve been since Chavez got elected, but I refuse to it because we were able to spend a partition of dollars per year and with that people went abroad and came even with more bolívares than before. So while this was happening, while the airport were full and shopping centers got crowded, the political conscience was more like the taste for music… but not everyone. Everything that implies disagreement with the government laid on the middle class mostly, and the middle class isn´t growing anymore.

We became the newly poor, like some chavistas are newly rich, especially those with access to preferential dollars. What’s that? The dollar controlled by the government which exchange rate is the lowest and privileged too, but it is practically forbidden for regular people, especially for newly poor. So new poverty is like a complain feast, everyone has a daily story of how extraordinary it is to do something normal. Like the magical realism of literature: finding bread in a bakery, medicines in a drugstore, getting money from an ATM in ten minutes, and so on. Little by little Venezuelans will be the only ones who understand such an exceptional normality.

But not every poor person is actually newly poor. This is important, many people were already poor before the twenty first century socialism and, yes, a very significant group of those gives all support to Maduro because he’s supposed to keep going on with the Chavez legacy. At least that’s what the propaganda wants you to believe. So you have to be poor to actually understand it, and it is a problem for the government: there are more poverty, yes, but also more hate…

You see, if you used to be middle class you don’t take nicely, nor peacefully, the fact that bread became unaffordable with current salaries, and the only chance to get it it´s by doing a two hours line to get the special poor edition of the bread, which is normally called: regulated.  It is a real issue for the newly poor, but let’s talk a little about the other poor: not all of them feel bad at this situation, many of them actually enjoy it even make it profitable.

Old school poor spent decades collecting resentment due to their status. Let’s take an example: a credit card used to be a middle class instrument; forbidden to the poor. Restaurants: owners kept the right whether or not let someone in. Private schools, which continue being very popular: personnel analyzed the parents’ jobs to see if the kid could be in; not because of the money entirely, but the position. Besides that; services: no cable, no phone, no electricity, different food, different brands for product, a whole social class separation… until the revolution arrived and empowered them… spiritually at least and it was almost enough. Everything started to change but not for the poor, but the middle class as I said at the beginning.

Now anger is all around