Third page II

 

Sunrise got from a red paint to a blueish yellow. It’s time to go but here I am: sitting in this balcony and contemplating along with my thoughts.  I haven’t enjoyed it enough, I often  tell myself. There’s always something, someone, which I’m supposed to share it with. Share is a nice thing to write about. Moments to share, for evocation, as needed, of reflection,  with you, without them, under this sky, above the hardest times, inside each other, and moments we just don’t want to share. A few changes inside the house, some magic act on TV. There is this novel about a guy who fights his TV and goes crazy systematically as the novel passes. It is a Venezuelan writer. The name of the book is The Wizard of the Glass Face. A nice souvenir if ever want a piece of my country.  I believe that if you want to, let’s say,  know about some place’s culture, a fine way to do so could be through their voices; writers tend to be the most prominent ones at it. Musicians and moviemakers too, but there is this personal statement that writers know best, specially when it comes to send a message or tell something. For instance I don’t think any Reggaeton artist will ever define the culture wherever they come from. I don’t see them as musicians at all. Unfortunately, I have to acknowledge that their impact over our society is solid, to a point that any friend or relative may easily know, and like, some of them. There’s this paradox: they call themselves urban artists, so many of us unavoidably think of them when bringing up such a definition. As urban artists, and along with a massive market strategy,  they’ve been placed side by side with actual musicians, which meant with time that regardless my denial and many others’ who feel me, because what they do is not music, they’ve come to establish that as a new genre, making themselves a room in the music industry. This urban style have made a perfect fit to a generation now used to phone apps and social media for stimulation. That occurs because of the growing rejection of long-term processes.

 

How about my generation on long-term processes? Many of us couldn’t finish a book anymore. Sunrise starts getting late. There are no color combinations I can taste from where I stand.  I sense fog instead. Not the kind that won’t let see what’s next but the kind that makes the sky looks blurry. What I do sense and taste is the coffee on my side. I made it strong; bold, I believe is the appropriate word to describe it. In our perception,  we would use thick to replace bold for this strong coffee. As I understand it, in our case, the metaphor goes more on the texture, despite we’re talking about a liquid. And that is something we could highlight to understand our culture. We may say we kind of need to touch, or have a sense of the matter at least, over the majority of the things we talk, or think about. That could explain why we need our hands to talk. We talk about the sky, and the impulse of putting our hand up high to draw a figure, somehow related to the talking, comes out immediately.  So my commas, now that see. Long-term endeavors. Yes. Isn’t my generation as affected as millennial, or even as the younger ones? Everything looks like a big interest reprise: the same joke over and over on each platform.  Countless hours with the eyes lost on cell screens. Myself included. I don’t even know where I’m going with this. Sorry, I remembered.  It works for practicing, after all. 

 

It's not blurry today. I also hear a bird trying to give orders through its singing,  or at least that’s how it feels like from where I’m sitting. I can’t take my rejection off the cigarettes. I go to bed and wake up almost everyday with the same thought. I’m putting it in perspective to see if I can figure it out, but I can’t,  I haven’t been able to, I still wonder why smoking is so disappointing to me. That’s everyone’s life. It’s not my problem.  It shouldn’t be, but it does; it does bother me. I hope someday soon I manage to get over it, otherwise I’m going to start having problems at home. Anyway,  there are good things to think about. Music songs, for example. I wish I could live from this. Real writers have a place, a moment,  a routine, a Cábala; which is a word we sometimes use for special rituals,  when it comes to do something out of our inspiration. I only have the times when I go to the toilet and the few minutes of morning I grant myself in the balcony. Franco de Vita has a song; Louis. It’s about a Taxi driver who wants to be a rock star. I’m bringing it up because there is a moment in the song it says: “y sueña con escenarios, mientras le cambia la luz. Del rojo al verde no hay mucho tiempo para soñar”. I feel this part so deep because I live my life dreaming, using the same metaphor, from red light to green, and it is just like the song goes: there’s not much time for dreaming. I look into the mirror and I realize how easily my once achievements can be forgotten, or replaced, or put aside pursuing a near future that never comes present. The one true thing I can rescue,  and pick from the rest of this present, is fatherhood:  that’s an incredible journey; the only one that keeps me going. My faith vanishes in the air just as an exhalation from smoking a cigarette. A faith that smells, that stays in your clothes, in your mouth, in your yellow teeth and yellow fingers… a faith hard to gather, to get it all together. It's there, it’s here, you feel it but you just can’t hold on to it. We’re talking about a nominal faith, it only works for words to give, to serve on a page and read it, perhaps smile while reading it. That’s it. Let see if I can enjoy the afternoon. Rosé wine for me. It kind of match with the sky before evening.  Tough moves. Tough news. A weekend to come and see. I thought of a path, a path with obstacles. I was bear foot but I wasn’t getting hurt. I was just going on my own pace. I saw sentences hiding behind the ads. Yes, I saw some ads. Ads are even in my thoughts. The government of my country tried to get rid of them. To make it happen, they had to burn the whole country to the ground,  and even so they couldn’t wipe them up entirely.  Ads resisted. More than people. I saw words coming up, leaving messages.  Is there anyone behind them? Probably not. It is just this algorithm that takes whatever interest I’ve been navigating around, and link it with some advertising something, to then put it on every feed from any app; and search, and gives you this sensation of being watched. I took that to my oneiric world, it’s unavoidable. I took that to my thoughts. It is the consequence of using these apps too often.  I heard someone claim it is world we live in but the world we live in still has the other things. What are those other things, anyway? It has more to do with time and distance than any other repercussion. The fact that we have it all on the palm of our hand, makes this carelessness for the outside very much present. But it is a selfish approach,  what about those places not into technology at all? There are a lot of places where people can’t afford a smart phone. Having a smartphone in my land is a social matter. It is not something for everyone. You could get robbed if you’re seen walking around with your eyes on the screen of the phone. People there just can’t do as I’ve seen it here; that you go to a public garden and you see a group  of people gathering where they can focus on their devices. 

Third Page

 

Pain. Pain is something we use when we need to learn, and along with Art, they both embrace suffering as some sort of vehicle. There has to be pain so I can feel what needs to be done to achieve it. What? Whatever you want the pain to get you for. This is a hot afternoon,  full of commitment. A promise I need to keep, to suffer, to let the pain walk me through.  I am tired but I have my motivation.  Time is not so friendly but it never was, to be honest.  God’s time is perfect; many people state. I want to take some advantage of the language and propose instead: God’s tempo is perfect. Tempo rules the rhythm,  the speed you do what you do. So tempo, as it is interpreted in English, sounds to me more like something it may happen when, let’s say, the right time comes. When is that? God only knows. That’s the point and that is what The Say wants to imply. Another morning. I can be a witness. I can join the audience for whom this show we call sunrise is being performed. I see. I feel. I close my eyes and think: there might be a chance. We might make it. This could be a hard step we had to take. The reward is the fact that we know why we are doing it. I think not everyone knows. That’s why the need for distraction on the phone comes out so often. Slow cook. Baby steps. My stomach is talking. A few hours later, I’m finally home. A beer in my hand. It was a productive day. Empanadas for dinner. Nowadays homemade ones. I wish I could explain it better, but I’m not so sure if You can feel me when I’m saying how great is having Empanadas as meal. The texture on the first bite, the flavor as is being swallowed. It is just something else. Else, else is not well defined in Spanish. I mean “else” tends to play as “more”, so there is no big difference when saying: something more or something else. The way I see it, that places a desire in a different state of intensity, of deepness, of abstraction. Then abstraction can fluctuate depending on the language, thus our capability to picture a scenario, is, in a certain way, affected by the syntax of the language we speak. These very words I have just written, the commas I have just placed. They came out from a Spanish mind thinking,  pretending to send a message in English. I said it before: we meet halfway, so halfway will be good after all.

 

I believe the word is steam. The steam comes out from a hot mug of coffee; always a strong one. That steam comes out making shapes, shapes for my mind, for my thoughts. Those shapes shows up following a rhythm,  maybe from the birds, from the morning. It is a slow movement, anyway. The thing is that it seems like it also has its own language, a kind of language that dances with my silence. Debts invades, always invades. This search for balance is tiring.  I feel tired already. No money for anything when getting paid. That certainty overwhelms harder than any other existential crisis. For this era, money is the one true catalyst for almost every form of thought, idea, wish, whatever comes to mind. Sometimes I dream and think that these words somehow might become any sort of money, and that I could finally get the basic decent life I’ve been working so hard for. I had thought about it already: when I get to a certain number of words, I will go public, posted, published, the method that serves better for any money collect. Then I think twice, I think of a song, and then of a debt, debt invades, always. Debts are the noise of any form of silence. I think again,  like I said, and realize that it is a nice dream, a noble sort of hope, but it is not likely.  Now likely is a nice word, a polite kind to me. It is not likely that I can get a better income anytime soon by only showing my curriculum, and  hoping that somebody out there, in fact give me any chance because he saw something like potential to join me in whatever he is recruiting for. Not likely at all. I was collecting some extra money by working with my car and, today, my car is down. There is Say from my country stating  that when the poor do the laundry,  it rains. It is raining over my hope, over my will, over my self esteem. So I grab a beer from the fridge and stop thinking. They were more than one, indeed. I would like to confess that I’m not sure where this writing is going. I don’t even know if it’s going somewhere. I’m just placing words as a pointless attempt to see myself in them, so I can actually figure out what’s going on with me, and start solving it.

 

Up to this point, everything lies on money I can’t get, despite this sort of double shift I’m having. I want to cry. Cry feels good when I’m like this, but I want to do it alone. I don’t want to explain anything, I’m writing it precisely because of it. One more morning. A cold one. A summer August chill morning. I don’t remember it like that last year at least. I woke up with the same problem I went to bed: the car. It’s very cloudy. It may start raining at some point of the day. I often think about this Guns and Roses song; Estranged.  I tend to see my life as a movie.  I even think about songs at inappropriate situations; in this case, I was just remembering that the song starts by saying: “When you’re talking to yourself and nobody is home”.  I talk to myself pretty often. More often than I want to admit. In a couple of times, someone has asked me something like: who are you talking to? Or You’re getting old, you’re speaking alone already! And that tells me I can’t even control it. So my need for reflection is stronger than my will to appear before others. I can simplify it by confessing I am just getting crazy, but it’s not true, I mean, I am alone. I feel lonely.  I have no one I can try these thoughts and not coming up with those types of answers, the kind I’d rather not listen to such as: don’t worry! It’s not big deal! Like we say in my land (this is the worst) “You are drowning in a glass of water”. I prefer to speak alone then, and I don’t think it makes me a crazy person. Have you ever listened to this Foo Fighters song: I should have known?  It is something else. I never get tired of it. Anyway. Work time went by with a tiny victory.  Let’s see what’s next. Next is now, and now was yesterday, indeed. Today is the tomorrow of that time, a past tomorrow then. A past tomorrow that  tastes some bitter despite the short nice time we had. Time to get ready to go to work.  I’ve been thinking about Deserve, and the impact it has on my people; many of then, or many of us, go around assuming that we deserve better. Why? I mean: why are we still thinking our efforts should be compensated  by some high power, just because we’ve been working hard? We’ve been working hard to get the payment we previously agreed to, and with such payment, we should make ends meet, or stay tight and bear it. Only we don’t want that. We want, like a Say we have; “to shit upper than the ass” (or higher; not sure which one suits better)