First page VI

Another toilet morning. A holiday’s next day has begun. Today It’s a holiday in Venezuela. Some noises come through the walls as they had their own language. It’s like If there was a kid playing with his blocks and they were the building we live in. Building is a fine word for describing these type of structures. A few days have gone by. I saw something good on social media: the four missing kids in Colombia were found alive. The reported was about to cry while giving the news and I just cried myself while watching. That was a couple of weeks ago. A month, perhaps. Good news to bring up. It's like the reporter then said: this is full of hope, and I agree with her. God bless those children! I wanted to phrase a little bit about faith again; Smoke Faith, as I've named it. It occurs to me that if I'm going public with these words I should go back with this idea and deal with it over and over until I have pleased myself out of explanation. Supposing it makes any sense at all. So here it goes: I kind of forgot what I've written so far about it, but I'm pretty sure I'm not getting far from the idea. Smoke Faith: I hate the smell of the smoke. I used to love it. I mean, there was a time in which I related that smell with having a good time in so many ways. Now I feel different about it. It's not that I really hate it. It's just that it now recalls worries and I think I’m some fed up with that. Push. Someone pushes for whatever reason his ego demands, and when such a push comes dressed up as faith, it could be hard to get a better perspective. The thing is that it normally fades but does not fade away. Something remains and it can grow again, like the smoke. After all, we're made out of dust. Dust. Dusty. What is the substance of my beliefs? Time is sand in my hands, Cerati sings in my head. I'm not even listening to the music I used to. I used to be this kind of person who recorded tapes from a selection of different albums. That implied, if you guys can recall, taking the time for each and every song and listening to them completely while being recorded. I guess that's why listening to such self selections hasn't been something that people who work a lot could do. I guess that's how the remote control got its reign, a reign now conquered by social media. I guess that's why I've become one those. I've been conquered too.

Now it's the time for short answers: now the self selection is more like; a bunch of yes and noes along with this frustration that comes from not choosing properly when to accept or refuse. Overtime. Overtime? Yes. Sundays? Yes. Night shift? Yes. Do you actually get some rest in the morning? No. Mail. Letters. Letters asking for payments you didn't know you had. Dates due, of course. You must call, and then rest. Can you? And yet you just keep thinking about that song, the one that makes you remember and evoke. Technology paid back al least with that. By letting us Nostalgia. Close your eyes. There's no time to listen to it entirely; live version has this solo but you just get interrupted: some message, something you forgot besides the debt. Now they are two calls and your English is not good enough to complain properly, so it will be more of short answers, and in the end you couldn’t get any rest. Is that too often? To my taste, yes!

Thus a new day comes and go by immersed in the routine. A bath, a shower, a sunset without a view. The worries that visit and don’t want to go. I've managed to listen to a couple of songs, awesomely, and by accident; I listened to them both entirely. Now I feel guilty about it. Why? Why sometimes giving yourself a little pleasure feels like you're doing something you shouldn't? Time to clock in. “When the doves cry” from Prince is playing in my earbuds. Let's walk. Music down. We're not allowed to play music on equipment nor using the cell phone. Breaks: one and two. What is this tiredness? Is it something mind-over-body thing?? It could be the smoke; the faith fading into a smell all over our clothes. We breathe it, so we feel it even when we are naked. Naked we want to be. Naked of prejudices to obey peacefully and get through with this we have. What do we have, I wonder? We have debts for balance, but we never get Naked from it. That's why the faith is just smoke. Let's drag us out. I was in this endless wondering every time it comes to talk about our life in Venezuela: this bittersweet taste for memories. What we're longing; feeling nostalgic for, and immediately after, the reasons that made us move out. I guess this is what being an immigrant is about: never stop missing and never stop resenting. Will my kids get this in the future? Who knows!

About Get. Get is an interesting word. Spanish language doesn't have it like that. For Hispanics the word get is expressed through several different words that, taking them closely, they may not mean get as it is English. So when you say: 'I got you' in so many talks, that is not exactly something we use in Spanish language. With that being said (written) I may not be getting this and you may be getting it different. However we meet halfway, and it turns out that it actually works pretty decent for both sides of the tale. So in my halfway message and your halfway eyes, I want to serve these words as a claim to this life we wonder if we ever chose but we now have to deal with. I'm not going to lie, I feel very lonely. This life as an immigrant has made me see through angles I would have liked not to meet. Sometimes the body may learn from theory and not by living the actual experience but I need to keep going. My son needs it, the upcoming one needs it. So let's face it. Let's fight another day. I am constantly wondering what is this thing that sort of controls me? I am sure that there is something out there that holds you back and make you refrain from letting yourself go and do what you know it's best for you: I think twice to check if what I'm about to say may be offensive to someone. I mean, why? Why am I programed this way? Who planted this need of considering everything? Am I someone's pet? If so, that person don't like me that much. During moments like this, my mind works on an attempt of putting pieces together: blocks of thoughts, parts o a certain memory; pieces from a past time or doubts born from the hesitation, from a blurry pictured future; pieces that I can switch when I come around, moving pieces from one place to another, in some way: decorating, something I remember I would have liked to do along with a short list of things I have to buy tomorrow, which is when I get paid: get, bringing back to an eyes closed vision that time in Paris, in Lisbon, and smile. I want to take my children there. Drums, drums playing. Everything comes with grooves and beats. I can’t function otherwise. I miss playing the drums, by the way.

First page V

Again,  What if this has always been like That? I think I can remember a couple of movies with such a topic. I am pretty sure I might have read something from Phillip Dick or Asimov suggesting it so. It think my English might not be enough to convey this but you guys will understand I kind of need to practice.  Warehouses are no place for that. The language of the obedience is something we all might know even when we don't want to but the language of the questioning is something that immigrants don't do too often. Perhaps  for catharsis, and not in front of  anyone. In fact that is why I have to write it, because few people I know may have some insights about it. We mostly get comfortable at the following two choices: deny it or reduce it to a joke. Venezuelans are good at this. Satirizing might be a word for this case.

Satirizing obeys to a need we have when we are in pain due to a situation we simply cannot solve. For instance the political situation of our country: we try to reduce the tyrants to puppets so we can laugh at them and get some sort of relieve to keep bearing the fact we left a life we might not get back ever again. In my case, this new life gave me a purpose,  and there's nothing better to keep going than having a purpose. My purpose are my children: the one I have and the one coming up within 8 or 9 months from these words. So let's keep going. However I feel my fellow countrymen. Despite there are a couple of things I find hard to get, I can understand that sometimes all this attitude follows a sort of let go sentiment and that is just a way to carry on. Sometimes I wonder if it is the same impulse that has me over thinking to a point of creating this parallel reality, in which I no longer owe money and finally enjoy with my family. Expectations changes big over the years. I used to dream a lot with stages and big crowds while performing. Now those moments that never occurred,  by the way, are more like spread in the air from an exhalation that came with someone’s drag: smoke faith fade; and fades….

A summer morning. One of those where sun rises at 5:20 AM. We don’t have that, we’re more like an hour later. Seasons are not felt the same way. We’re used to different weathers…  Denial. It is not happening to me, I guess. Maybe these words are my denial. I’m not sure anymore. I keep thinking about the futility of my efforts. Let’s go back with my fellows and what they do. What we do, indeed.  We still gather and drink and talk about how good our lives used to be in a time of a progress so announced and expected. Did it come? An illusion came, an illusion. Yes, there were better moments then, but I have come to think that those past glories, counted as such, lies more in this cultural fact about salary, about college education. The Venezuelan system got a new law for labor enforcement, that was, if I’m not wrong, right after Chávez proclamation, at least not so many months later. 

There’s no point in finding the exact date. In our culture,  people, public employees mostly, get paid despite their attendance. We got used to get paid to belong and not for the work done, which means, among a variety of insights,  that features such as physical appearance,  political beliefs, social status, and several others,  were the primary ones taken in consideration when hiring someone, rather than his curriculum,  or even the experience. Even the expertise was a  secondary feature, and we are talking about a whole cultural system. So you could come late, leave early, take more time to lunch, and in some cases, prioritize your social media accounts over the things you are supposed to do at work. Imagine the strength of the impact, now that we crossed through the window of cultures to the rest of the world. Imagine those fellows realizing of the difference: maybe that's why we stick to past times in present tense on every other memory. It's is kind of like we fuel ourselves with it, so we need it to load us up and keep going with the life we've chosen. Did we choose it or we’ve been forced to? I assume it was our choice, but for some reason it  bothers me. I'm aware it is not my problem, and that I may be projecting something within towards such an attitude, but I can't help it. You see, as a species we evolve to survive, and the fact that these people keep popping up this sort of pose, trying to look like some cool, somehow made me feel lost.  We all know that it might not have been so, because otherwise we wouldn't be here trying to get a supervisor's order right, with the English we should have learned by now, given the time we've been in here. It is a process,  we all need to learn, but there’s still something I can’t get right.