Fifth Page

 

October. Another morning.  Indoors for now.  I haven’t gotten up early enough during this week yet. I still haven’t been able to serve few words for this text. I have carried enough weight. I have done it for quite a long time, I think.  I haven’t paid any attention to the sunrises, or the sunsets lately. I haven’t even placed my thoughts on a chain to at least understand them. I talked to a friend; that I did. I was trying to share my worries with him; he’s still in Caracas, with all that it could mean for us; for them, and for everyone somewhat attached to it. I was trying to get some perspective, and I think I did it after all. He made this point that the fact that I was one of those out of the country, for the ones who remain there, there wouldn’t be any sympathy towards us – at all, from what I see – on any of our concerns. Somehow leaving the country breaks something to a point in which we start sounding strange to them and the other way around as well. During that strangeness, we found out about  feelings we prefer we hadn’t had, now we see different,  we see each other different, and now that I’m writing it, I wonder if it’s something that just came out and burst because of the distance, or if it was always there; if it was there held by the courtesy of the hangouts, and the good times together. Third break. It’s late already. Low season, they call it. Time to go back. I got something to write and thus link a little bit all this. I hope not forgetting about it. Alright. I was talking to a guy from work. We were comparing our countries, the bad things, such as government,  culture,  underdevelopment things, third world things and, we got to a point in which we realized that, aside from certain places in Europe; where else in the american continent you live in a place in which more than three languages, all from different places, share the same neighborhood,  and actually can greet each other as neighbors, if not here, and moreover,  if such  diversity is well understood, and somehow accepted,  how come this government wouldn’t interfere in other countries’ affairs? We got this conclusion that mostly left-wing-like and halfway-informed people, tend to be the ones who despise this country over public opinion matters. Most of their claims are based on opinions and perspectives from centuries ago. It’s a petty that those are the kind of people who rule our countries, and convey such a resentful angle on schools. We become adults hating a system we haven’t yet understood.  So there’s this pride, born out of the failure, compelling us that our sorrows are not on us. And it could get more serious as we take it further. I mean, we develop hate as a feeling that can be indoctrinated, from politicians in power, through the educational system, and that embraces (or implies)  love as the logical immediate opposite, therefore it might be indoctrinated as well. This make the love-hate path a place that we can transit back and forth,  and back and forth we let our faith – and idiosyncrasy – grow. We become back and forth believers with back and forth foundations and thus our confidence, and thus our Morality. Unless you're one of those who had high class education, which I don’t know since it's not my area. Never was indeed. Friday afternoon.  Home. Indoors. I’m going to see if I can take a nap. It was great. Now I would like to come back to bed but my boy is like, so very awake. I guess I’m going to have to wait. Let’s see. Friday night. Wine is gone already. I got some complain about it. I just thought one bottle was enough. I still think so. But I accepted it. What else can I do! It’s coffee time now. I think it’s good after the wine. There’s no work tomorrow.  I need to do a lot of things but I keep procrastinating them. I’m glad I could talk with another friend; one who left Caracas too. I guess we are unavoidably picking sides over this undeclared feud. When I started this story, I was so convinced otherwise, now I feel like I have to take back on several things. The life abroad is affecting me, changing me, as these words take place over this sort of story. Our story. Our version, and conversion. I’m sure I have mentioned it before, but this is a cycle, a spiral through which we’ll have to step on the same thing over and over; kind of like Nietzsche’s eternal return, so let’s bring it on again: once you decide, by force or by choice, to become an immigrant,  you have to start from scratch; everyone knows that, but it also implies, and I want to emphasize it, for some narcissistic reason perhaps, but I feel this need to place it in words, that it implies start over being poor, even if you never were, a new immigrant is a new poor, and as a new poor you have to learn things from there. I have learned some, and I’m fine as poor until I get to talk to another Venezuelan; specially anyone who decided to stay.  

Fourth page V

Waiting is the hardest part. Meanwhile Instagram is firing me with all these debt relief programs. I am tempted,  I’m really tempted. Sometimes I fill out the whole application and then I regret and take it back. The cost of living is the cost of life. I’m overwhelmed by my thoughts; the things I could do if, if only, but just only if, but no, not so far at least.  I need to figure out why I have this sense of remorse for things I didn’t mean to. It is so tiring to explain myself over the intentions of whatever I’ve done. It weakens me. Explain my intentions feels like I did something wrong or bad and I must justify it. If it’s bad, it’s fine, someone needs an explanation,  but what about those things beyond control. I came to pick up someone and that someone is not ready yet, do I have to feel bad for this time I’m waiting? I know I don’t, but I do, and I need to understand this impulse for explanation. Nobody cares, it doesn’t matter. I have to put this in different perspectives.  Meanwhile I remain regretful for not knowing how I should have done this or that. I can’t have a problem everyday,  please. There’s wine waiting. I just wish to be at home already. Why wine forces people to say things they can’t keep as true statements. It gets boring. Annoying. I gave it all. It is amazing. I am sure, completely sure, I gave it all, and I gave it all for nothing.  It’s hard to accept it. It was for nothing, but let’s leave that for later. Now I’m just waiting to get some sleep, to find hope elsewhere, perhaps focus on my boy’s voice; my boy’s smile, and stick with it. Nothing else matters, I guess, and I remain poor; that’s important to bring up; when you are poor, daily things become a drama. Rich people convey their art through higher states and dimensions, the poor, on the contrary, they play like they reach such a high level by exposing their miseries. We feel this need to tell everyone how bad we want to feel understood, ad we want to do that in a world where nobody cares. A whole drama. What are we going to do about it? Drink and bear. Next day tends to be next in several ways. Who knows? It could be my lucky day. Saturday morning. Gray like rain is coming anytime. A bit chilly but nothing unboreable with a sweater on. Coffee, balcony and birds singing; louder than other days, by the way. I can hear a few steps around. I was given another chance, that’s how God works. I must honor such a trust vow somehow, and I need to find the wisdom for it. My thoughts are not wise, and my ideas are not profitable in any sense. These very words won’t give me nothing to bring to my table, and yet I still come here and write some for my own realization. I wonder where this impulse; the insistence, comes from, given the fact that I am not the pushing kind. I’m more like introvert, I have this sort of condition that hits me every time which is called – I looked at it – over-explaining, and it is actually a trauma. Apparently we develop this when we are constantly made feel a fault. So we grow up always in search for approval. I’m not totally sure if that’s my case, but now I know it is an issue, and as such, I must take a look at it at least. Nevertheless I just go on with my things and it seems that today (and tonight) there will be wine and eat out. And I will get sad again for sure: what a cycle! But we are not there just yet. Let’s rise ad shine despite the gray.

 

Still loving you is just an amazing song, just like Comfortably numb. The solos, both solos, accompanied with a glass of wine, to listen then Stairway to heaven, the live version from The Song remains the same; watching my boy playing with my mom’s phone. This is my hallmark. My wife is coming to add some love to this scene. Now it’s time for thoughts to fly across the oneiric world I may create for them to flourish, thrive, or burst, depending on the dream. Tomorrow will be another day. Another Sunday. Let’s see. Let’s see indeed. Sunny, a bit chilly and quiet, except of course for the birds, and an airplane, which is coming right away, followed by the sound of a car running slowly: this is the song for those already awake at this time. I’m starting to get the sound of the elliptical machine too, I think I have mentioned at some point. I have a coffee, creamy but not sweet. Not sweetener for the first one I’m trying to state, and it has worked out pretty well so far since I started it. These sort of rituals, now presented as routines, help me – us, I believe – understand a bit more every time about my space-time relation with the environment I’m surrounded by. Birds’ singing is fading, for example,  that means more people are coming out, and that the morning is on for everyone. Indoors time, coffee is not over yet. I got this cool Star Wars mug with light sabers design, which shows the sabers on while the liquid inside remains hot. It’s a pretty nice thing to have. It was a gift from a good friend last summer,  not the summer just over but the one from last year.  I met him during a trip. We had a great time. Back in the balcony. Quiet, as I’m not used to. Another coffee, same mug, it became my everyday mug at home ever since. The weather can’t be nicer: sunny but not hot. I think I’m just giving myself this time for contemplation, I actually have nothing to write about, I mean, I’m always wondering why and how on several things floating inside my head. Some of them I just don’t know how to let out, but it’s not something I want to write about just now, maybe later. Later is not just yet. Later could be now, but I remain wordless for my ideas to become Text. Farewells are hard. I’m still trying to serve something about it, but not just yet I think. I’m still in the process of understanding some moves from certain people. In the meantime I would like to wonder why the exchange of own time over work done has this tendency for unjust? How do people actually realize they are doing more than what they get paid for? What is that thing that triggers our perception and takes us there? Because once there, there’s no turning back. It is kind of cruel in its own way. But now wine has done some damage, to the point of dizziness  and will for confessing. There’s coffee, decaf, because of the hour, but enough to withhold this impulse on over talking. We call it ultra petita, in law school. Everyone is in their room, so there’s no audience for uncomfortable confessions based on wine. Let’s get quiet, tomorrow it will hard and we have to work too. The air conditioning is going crazy with this weather.  So I am. Let’s just go to bed. No balcony, too early, early Monday. A farewell is coming. We must be on time to stop by and keep going.  Things look slow at work. A tense calm followed by the uncertainty of what will happen in the next few days. Supervisors don’t say a word. There is this sound I can hear and, I might guess, it is someone mopping the floor, there is a bucket falling down from some stairs, or so I hear. Two guys laughing and telling each other a story, a story I don’t care, but I have to listen to it. We should close our  ears the way we close our eyes. Some things are just worthless to listen to and yet we have no choice for it.  It’s not like when we don’t want to see something. The Power, wearing any of its faces, takes advantage of that. Power tends to find the way to get to our ears and makes us listen to those things we don’t want, and does it as many times as necessary, until we assimilate it, and then be pushed to believe and accept,  because, eventually,  we all accept it. There are plenty of examples throughout history. It happens with music too. What people call music nowadays is incredible. Most of the music I like comes from a joint effort of minds working together in an attempt of expression, and that doesn’t mean they must say something in a song. Sometimes it has more to do with the way they play the instrument,  or that, plus the musician put in a specific part of the song. Having that, getting that, it’s just sublime, provocative,