Third page VI

A new week has come. This is my most important week of the year: it will be my son’s birthday.  Everything makes sense and whatever effort has not been hard enough when it comes to him. I just hope to improve it in time. Actually I expect it so. Let’s see what comes along with it next week. For now, let’s just think and enjoy. I want chocolate.  There’s a candy bar machine across the room but I don’t really feel like having anything from there. I’m just waiting for this break to end while these words find themselves a place for this paragraph. I’m at home now. Again, holding a glass of wine, indoors. Hearing the complaints of the house, hearing them like they were said in some foreign language I don’t know.  I just consent with my head pretending I’m paying any sort of attention.  From time to time, I make a little smile. I open up my eyes in an attempt of surprise. Anything that works for looking like I’m following it. Balcony minutes. Not enough. Never enough. I’ve lost space over the smoke. It kind of makes me sad but I can forget it a little bit with every taste of wine, with every kiss on the glass. No glass kisses for a long time, by the way. That’s how a life with debts looks like. Worries comes first, I guess. I guess wrong. No sunset for these eyes today. Next business day, like the invoices. Still dark. Foggy. Less hot than yesterday. Now that I look at the watch, it's time to get indoors. Forgive me the rest of the bands but in Spanish,  Soda Stereo is just the best of the best… the GOAT, like I’ve heard here. I’m listening to them just now. A pleasure for my soul. At least. At last. “Es un delirio de condenados”. Yes indeed. “Encendió mi conciencia con sus demonios”, definitely.  And now that my consciousness is on, I can state, as a figure of speech,  that depression is more a luxury when we come from the underdevelopment. I mean, look where we come from. Seriously? Can we afford to get depressed? It’s an interesting thing to write and argue about. A next day. A hangover next day. Surprisingly, no work today. I asked for a few days off since I thought I was going on a trip. That’s the thing when planning so early. No trip but I still keep the days. I would like to say I’m going to take advantage of it,  and use them wisely, but I know it won’t be so. A procrastinating life, breathing depression from the air and halfway broke, is, is a, is not a, not a promising picture indeed but, I have colors in the sky as a gift from the sun. Let there be sun then. Sunrise is written in English almost like smile is in Spanish: sonrisas then. Let’s go. Let’s hope. Why not, right? Cortisol: what am I going to do with you? Chocolate, I guess. There is a little tiny black spot at the ceiling. It might be a mosquito. It looks smaller than a fly. I guess it is there to get fed from my blood. It is still there. I can see it from we are I am. The thing is that I’m feeling itchy already just because I know it is there, and I find the whole thing a bit funny. Body is already suffering not knowing if ever get to happen. Mind does that. Everything we sense is pretty much perception coded through that we've been storing in our head. What have we stored so far? What have we coded in that space we relate with love? Have we stored suffering there? Now we know why love hurts, right? How about buying food, pizza, for example? We understand that the way we’ve been storing moments, and the feeling we relate them with, somehow determines our character, and by our character, our attitude.  What's the difference between them, by the way?

 

A new Friday afternoon has come. I had a great end of August.  Actually the last day of August is the most important day in my life, and, for the record, it was just perfect. That was yesterday,  just like the song. No work today, no work tomorrow, and not on Monday either. In this country that means no money as well. My worries are now manifesting themselves as boils in my face. I have one on my nose now. That one could mean the rent, for example.  I got an infection in one ear, probably because some other debt I must honor by next week. So stoicism hasn’t worked out pretty much at the end. Today, I drink. What else? Nothing to get profit from, right now. I’m waiting for tomorrow,  for a brighter tomorrow.  Let’s see. Sun is still shining, so we can smile and remember. I was thinking about victimism, and it turns out that it is exactly as the Spanish interpretation:  blame others for your own misfortunes. How should we understand a misfortune in the first place? I mean, is it something derived,  kind of like a consequence,  from any chain of events? Is it just shit happening and that’s it? Or maybe it’s  something we could blame someone for? Let’s assume we could actually blame someone for that thing is happening to us. Then what? How come blaming solves anyhow whatever problem we have to face? The need of not being accountable is stronger that the acknowledgement of the self on it. And perhaps that is because guilt weights more than taking any responsibility. That could explain procrastination. Avoid is an interesting word, also the words that we read from it… avoid a void, indeed! The balcony. I feel like I’m losing it. You see, I don’t live alone. I understand I have to share it, but it sort of bothers me this fact that I feel, it is not being equally shared: victimism again talking through my words. Who cares! Does it matter at all? I don’t think so. I believe I just need a better income, to be honest. I think the rest is just hanging in there, precisely for not being stable enough to purchase anything that helps you forget. I write because I can’t take my car to go out with no explanation. I can’t even have any alcohol outdoors because I’m always the driver. I can’t take the fucking balcony for myself because I’m not the smoker. See. I just need a better income to bear my so made up problems, and not playing victim again anymore. Sorry for taking you here and make you witness an average forty four old man complaining for a life he chose, and trying to blame anyone else for it. Diapers. I’ve changed some. I may have to change a symbolic diaper for my mind. It’s time. I have to talk to the administration office, and tell them I can’t pay the rent now. Let’s see how it works for me… 

Third page V

 

A new today. Same worries. Why did I get those loans? Why did I move to an apartment I can’t afford? Now that I’m putting it in perspective,  it sort of makes no sense. If I knew I wouldn’t, then why I did it, right? There it is: did I know it? Did I really know it? Now it is popping up: we never knew it! We have a sense of knowing it and, by that sense, we have taken most of the chances we now have to pay for. I’m just catching my consciousness: we figure a landscape we see as future, and since we are the painters, we hold every single brush we are going to need; then time goes by and we don’t see any painting. The switch between tangible and figurative is in our head. Our mind simply decides what to believe. I just thought it tangible. As a matter of fact, I replaced If with When, and when never got to exist because, as long as something is conditioned; subjected to, time is relative, and relativeness in time could take a whole life. Now such whole is empty, like a true hole, a void. An existential void we better overcome for our children. Let’s get delusional a little: we feel this whole out of the abstraction, and, perhaps emptiness out of these small concretes we’ve been picking as problems. If we assume that it is so, problems are just part of the big abstract, therefore our being should not be defined by those picks. Let’s call them picks from now on. Evening is coming. A bottle of wine is waiting at home. I’m not working right now. I’m just waiting for someone to go home. No wine yet. I don’t know why my mind is so tired. It’s raining.  Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to sit on the balcony.  Contemplation is important for thoughts.  I need some music. Not too dark. Not too early either. A new day to wonder. I pushed myself to spend a few unnecessary minutes scrolling on the screen. I guess it’s because of the need to it. How could I help someone if I can’t even refrain from it. I need to read more about it. Meanwhile, wine awaits. Perhaps today paints better but it’s not. Not at all. Here I am, trying to serve a few words holding a glass of Cabernet. Sunrise at last. No work today and I’m worried already but, since I can’t do anything about it,  I’m going to watch the view for the first time again since some ago. It's curious that when reread oneself, days are mixed in the same paragraph. This one is an example.  It adds a bit of neurosis to the statement,  it kind of makes  narrative look like someone who wants a cigarettes so bad but there isn’t any around. The point is, if that is actually how this is perceived,  then this tale going somewhere despite of everything. 

 

I have to take advantage of this moment.  I never have this chance but I really need to get indoors and go to the bathroom, unfortunately.  I’m sure, or at least I want to believe, that I’m not alone when it comes to tell moments like these. There’s always something we have to cut out of the sudden. Including scrolling,  and yes, it is ironic. An uncommon afternoon for contemplation. Worries come and go. I feel like I want to get something to drink but I haven’t made up my mind. For some reason I totally ignore, it seems like I need a sort of approval for everyone here at home, but wait, don’t get the wrong idea, I just don’t want to go out, knowing I may have something else to bring. So here I am, waiting, waiting to ask while thinking about writing. I want to let go something but I’m not sure what it could be. I saw a person at the supermarket. I went to the supermarket yesterday and I, I met a woman, that woman was from the same country I am. It was an interesting encounter because she told me that there was a Venezuelan community near by. I felt like: why? I mean, yes, it's good to know people from your same country, because we can share impressions since we have the same culture. It would be good, it would be fine, it would be… it would make you feel better but, it doesn’t mean that we are going to become friends instantly,  and that is the thing that I want to talk about; that’s what I want to put here in words: we are a very new community, so we have never done this before. Moving out is not in our culture. I’ve said it more than once. I’ve written about it more than once, the fact that we are a new community of immigrants, pushes us – or so we think – to  be like the rest of the communities, and we don’t have to push ourselves to it. I mean, other communities are better organized because they have been doing it for years; for a long time. We might just learn our own process, but this need to keep up grows strong, so strong, that we feel the impulse to compete like this were some sort finals and like there were a price we must win at any cost. No. I don’t think so. I acknowledge the effort but it is a bit rushed.  Time will tell. It is a slow process: another long-term endeavor. And my guess is that, again, this rush could be due to social media: you see, we look ourselves into any mirror, and that reflect we see, despite of any depression, anger, low self esteem, shyness, megalomania,  anything,  despite of anything we see, it's less ugly, or more beautiful; depending on the case, version of ourselves, and that perception fuels somehow our soul, so we keep going, or at least feel like doing it, the problem is when that perception starts facing the outside. It tends to fade in many cases. A way to keep it could be through a plan, a long-term endeavor. And there is our struggle: the now versus the later, the already versus the yet, the present continuous versus the future simple. The screen scrolling  versus the page turning. Where to be at? How often to be on? Which one shall we choose? I choose wine.