Second page V

 

A warm afternoon is going by from where I stand. The break room is quiet. I should try this talking feature. Not now, of course, but thus I can see if my pronunciation in English is going somewhat acceptable.  Perhaps that’s why I haven’t got a better a job. What is a better job, anyway? A higher pay? I often compare what I think I deserve to earn with the kind of jobs that actually pay it so, and realize why anyone should give me a chance. I mean, I know I have potential  but how can anyone tell? Actually, how do you prove nowadays such skills?  Scrolling. Scrolling life. Time goes by as I blink. An eight millimeters view, sight. We see the stripes as we live, as we breathe, an interruption that is constantly conquering our focus. Like a light bulb about to go down. Flashes. Flashes of wisdom.  We blink. It’s blurry. We blink again. Characters are others. Is this a film? Is it happening over again? Accents. Words we pick from an attitude. This attitude I kind of hate. We’re all tired. Words turn into sentences but they are not really telling. They are making you remember instead. We want to forget; to pretend, to put our culture over this one. We want to take these memories out so everyone can see them; hear them. What for? For a time to consume. Memories are drags we smoke from Time, and time takes us back to long, to long and miss, so we let sadness out, or anger. At the end, there’s something available, and affordable if split the total amount,  to purchase in the market. Thus we allow ourselves to mitigate unwanted feelings. A trend on social media will work out. At least to trade what we’ve got with what they think we should get, or how, or when. “When” plays impressive roles. Specially in this post-truth era.

Heat. Hot. It’s hard on pants to go off and on. The sound of the machines got this point of synchronicity that it feels like it was a rhythm, a rhythm I accompany by blowing my horn. And with this sort of parade music, I smile at the day. Accents again. Diversity.  A few hours more and that’s it. Many people have come during the last 3 years. Hope is cruel sometimes. Faith fading, or spacing around with every breath. When to expect? What are we trying to accomplish? If we go home, what would we take with us? Children.  Children are the answer.  Children are hope, faith, faith that grows,  faith that gives power, strength.  So we bear this for them. I do, I am, and I always will. For them, for my children. I love when I'm at home and see a toy car in the living room, or a little ball in the corner. That presence is the best decoration, without mentioning all those tiny clothes that just make my day better.

Where should I start? Is it our story something we feel like telling? I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to tell mine,  despite of whatever I may have written earlier, but what I think I’m going to do is giving some examples of several stories. Lines back, I tried to explain what made us move. Now, let’s try to summarize what’s going on once here. Before that, two words popped up in mind: cartoon and plastic; for people, both of them. The first one stands, as I get it, for unproportioned gestures and reactions when it comes to self expression. The second one, to me, is more intriguing.  The second one goes by insincerity, fake. I’ve come to think that being plastic, and being cartoon, have some to do with posing, pretending, have something to do with the pursuit of an archetype. I am a plastic person because plastic people do these kinds of things I want to be involved in. I force myself to it whatsoever. I push myself  hard, and for long,  because the need to belong is stronger than the self understanding. My story has to fit in. I have to fit in. Too many unique people looking like too many more. Perhaps that’s why it gets difficult when bringing a story filled up with some plastic and cartoon to bear. I’m involved as well, why deny it? It is because of my own search that I’ve come to see it this way. So let’s see: two people have just come from Venezuela. This was four years ago. They had to sell all personal belongings: jewelry,  cars, collectibles that were once a sign of pride, since these things were (or used to be) the kind of hobby nice people did for years. Years that went to the void, to the sad section ever made for memories.  A section nowadays so full that they must borrow space from joy. Maybe that’s why every time I bring a good memory,  I feel like I want to cry, who knows! These two people had to sell almost everything because there was no way they could afford an airplane ticket with the money they made. They asked for help. Only few replied. They came to a room. They got help of another kind at first. They felt like they were kids again: so needed for guidance, so lonely. They were supported,  not for much, but they were indeed; to settle, let’s say. I tend to believe many stories begin with the same situation. They got jobs they didn’t like and this is when the process of adaptation starts: what to expect from jobs when you are new arrived in town? These people came from a culture where college is a must. Parents do all kinds of things to have their children graduated.  Venezuela has a very high index of college population.  It is hard for any of them to, let’s say, break the bubble and come out to a world, where such a culture won’t be embraced as a big endeavor, or as an achievement of something to acknowledge, specially when there are a lot of people who don’t even know that Venezuela is not a part of México. But let’s be honest.  Why would they have to, right? The fact that we are making a cultural encounter implies understanding these things and learn to live with them. The challenge here is how to get through it. How to find the best way for it. Most fellow countrymen complain about this. We must understand, like one famous man said, one thing is tourism,  and another one is immigration. We were used to come as tourists; the impact is big. The things we did, and the things we do now,  to get money in our bank accounts,  states a wide difference between them. We’re teaching our brain and heart how to move things from one place to another. When we move out, it’s not just physically.  Back to the couple, they kept working. Started paying back all that money they had to borrow to come. A couple who came from living with each of their parents, to try to build a home which was partial, given the conditions of their country back then. They came with the hope of building it now and, we may say they made it, but it wasn’t easy. They started by renting a room. They started by putting themselves behind the other couple, the one who was renting the room. Good months and bad months went by, So Covid, alongside with all the ignorance that erupted from social media. Mask off, mask on, 6 feet, glasses to divide work stations, curfew, and all that wave of theories and recommendations. We survived it. They survived it too. They made it to their own rented apartment. No more bully, no more critics from a position of power. A new home in progress. A baby who came a year later. Hope. Thick faith that doesn’t fade. Not a drag, not a smoke. 

Second page IV

 

A busy Monday morning. How much from habits we convey to what we feel? To what we claim we feel? How strong is this we’re hoping that we don’t take it as just routine? Can we tell the difference? I confuse them more often that I admit it. It just occurs to me that one must follow the other one: I came here hoping, and  eventually I keep pushing as habit. I guess I remain a believer as a habit too. Evidence places my thoughts inside a void and I navigate from there, wondering, and understanding,  or getting, getting that this sadness could be some sort of Stop corner, from where you start over after trying to assimilate why you did what you’ve done. What have I done? How do we talk nowadays? Someone comes in during a Venezuelans' reunion. Who do you meet there? There will be always that political enthusiast who sees himself as a chairman if there were no dictatorship in the country. Obviously,  that person belongs to the ones who claim never voted for Chávez, and of course, he wouldn't let go unnoticed his pride at it in the same way that his judgmental attitude towards those who did.  You'll meet all kinds of college people, which is an interesting thing to bring up (and break down if possible) they will talk to you about how life was from their profession in a country allegedly prosperous in so many ways.

So many ways indeed. I listen to some of the music bands from Venezuela and you can find great pieces; great artists. If we take a closer look at the past, it wasn't so bad, after all.  We could say everything started to fall apart with the rise of he first government that came with the internet revolution.  I want to call it that way because it was with the use of internet that came this need for access in the palm of  the hand. Cell phone existed before that, so the Walkman and the palm computer, but they were not so eager to put them all in one device then. I believe that it didn't happen because creators then didn't feel like usurping moments proper from each activity.  I mean, who would want to interrupt the guitar solo of Comfortably numb to attend a phone call, or read a text message? The other thing that evolved in a very interesting way is the picture shut. I mean, this impulse for taking selfies and post them like it was something people needed to see, which it seems in fact that people do, and on top of that, the need for commenting about them as a significant duty. Even with the digital cameras on the market,  people tried more to capture a memory than showing a routine. I wonder if it has something to do with how people are interacting nowadays. The younger ones have developed this skill of being (being is so interesting in English language) on the screen of the phone, and at the same time, in a actual conversation beyond the phone,  switching from one to the other at their convenience. We, the ones in our forties, have been trying it in an attempt, I think, to still be cool, but it looks rude, awful. It doesn’t matter how hard and often we try that. The best we can do is put down the phone and look each other’s eyes when talking. 

Being. Spanish language breaks it in two different momentums: for a Spanish native speaker, to be something for a instance, for short period, or for lifetime, not always come with the same verb; to be loyal and to be tired don’t use the same “to be”. In other words; being where and being what are two different verbs in Spanish. The presence determines the existence. How do we understand presence? College people.  Does it mean the same everywhere we go? I know its worth varies from place to place. I found out that your worth as professional tends go rated by the potential connections you  may carry with when you get to be in the field. You can tell it when you have already spent years of study and time working as an apprentice. You realize you are not going to be as wealthy as you imagined when you have already given your best years of youth, and those years won't pay back. To some, it might happen that they fall in love during the process, so they graduate actually loving what they are going to do in their career.  Others were just raised believing that a major degree will change their income. To those, it is hard, and to this point, all that people want their revenge. Everyone is bitter up enough to star wondering of other people's life. Social Media creators got the perfect audience; the perfect population of content consumers: People who  relate jobs with failure because they don't love what they do as it were something everyone gets. But it can be worse, there are people who lie themselves by the affirmation of loving a job they don't only because of the trends that rule the mediaverse. Thinking is also deconstructed. The block chain of thoughts. Back to college. In my country, having a degree it's not only something for salary expectations. It is more like a status. In public administration, people call each other by the degree they have but it's not just something to point out: You sort of feel distinguished from those who don't have it. If you go to what it’s called "the country", meaning, not in the city, which it's funny, and pertinent, at the same time when joking about it, because despite of what I may be trying here, Venezuela kind of have just one city, which is Caracas. And yes, sorry for the rest but Caracas is the only metropolis. The other cities are more like towns that have grown with the years. Some of them great thanks to tourism or industry, but when you get to talk to someone who's not from Caracas,  you will definitely get what I say with this attempt. Of course that those people kind of get offended for this type of distinction, and yet, what can I say? I am from Caracas and spent a couple of years in El Tigre. I could say I know what I'm talking about.