Fifth page II

 

Time for bed. Not really sleepy, but old enough to get some sleep just by laying down on the bed. That’s kind of like a superpower; the working class superpower: postpone the tiredness until reaching bed time. See you soon, maybe tomorrow. It rained. It looks like it rained last night. Not when I was writing, but it definitely rained. The sunshine is making its way through the clouds. The yellow  and the light blue are trying to put the gray behind,  the white is helping. We could say the sky is dancing, the sky is dancing the song of the birds. Saturday morning. The balcony,  the coffee, this time a little sweet because of the other creamer. I love it, and I can’t help it. Time for a couple of duties. Somehow the sun touches in a gently way the window when it’s shining. Now I can see it. I hadn’t seen it before. Actually I can’t remember myself at home in the living room at this time to acknowledge it. I could say it is something new for me. Led lights are like, making us forget the yellow times; television included. Most of the lights now tend to be white. Late. When we’re late, everything falls apart. What we have left is to make it up for the rest of the day. That’s some sort of a lifestyle. Elvis has left the building. Making it up for rest of the day. A constant improvisation. Monday, Monday. Dark and cold. Autumn is here. Balcony times will be left for memories,  or some other moments during daylight.  Not now. I don’t see it like a spot for writing at this hour, so I’m back to the living room. Indoors,  carpeted, among the mix between some yellow and the white lights. This month is working out, November doesn’t seem too cruel either.  I guess hope is doing its job, at least emotionally, and that’s fine for now. War news are back again. I used to read and think much more about these themes back in Venezuela.  I felt something like: a man of my standards, should know about these things. Geopolitics,  some people call it. Now my standards are others, so I just think about it and smile, not at the war; that’s terrible, at that ten years ago me who’s should be gone by now, or perhaps confided to my memories, and for evocation purposes only. This could work out as some interesting story title: for evocation purposes only. It could actually be an immigrant slogan. At the end of the day, at the end of the shift, that’s what we normally bring up to a conversation: our past life, for evocation purposes indeed. Sighs after that as needed. There’s some irony, and it's kind of like a metaphor came true, the fact that these words take place while I’m about to wipe myself up, I mean, I have to stop talking (writing) about evocation and sighs to clean my ass. This is a very loud and clear message from Life and it’s time to go to work too, by the way. Here I am, enjoying my horizontal projection; that means: same salary, different work. I’m back to that where I can listen to music out loud but there’s no signal for losing myself over social media. Maybe I will be able to write more, I may even try to read some. I have a book in my bag, we’ll see. I’m a little over the thirty thousand words; a bit more, surely.  I went public. Nothing happened,  as I expected. Why would anyone read it? Reading is a very selective thing to do. Those who normally do it, don’t read just anything. There must have been some recommendations beforehand  at least. This is just left to chance, I guess. If something happens to me, the story won’t be complete. It’s a  bit of a dilemma. A no worth dilemma,  but a dilemma whatsoever and after all. A delusion. A delusion I intend to keep, to embrace. There are much more words to add. So let’s keep going.  I just had a great lunch. I love when my wife cooks for me. Now I’m here, listening to Corazón Delator, and getting a nice vibe when he says Los vestigios de una hoguera, because there was fire in that passion, and there they are: the vestiges, denouncing a heart aching, burning, for a love gone. I don’t think a love gone would be a subject during this story. I don’t know.  This immigration wave pours some spice tragedy-comedy sense on it. I was talking to my wife about it. We do suffer, we’re all genuinely in pain for what we left and who we left. It’s just this south-american way of ours, that we must make up a joke out of any disgrace, and therefore get a laughter instead of sympathy. Nevertheless, I don’t think it is sympathy what we’re trying to get from the rest, so maybe the this humor of ours, is not just part of the way we are but more, more than that.

 

Indoors. Bathroom. Weather doesn’t seem to be as cold as yesterday but our mood seems to be bitter nevertheless. This is the kind of town, and routine,  where you need a car for everything,  for anything.  This is not the kind of town where you can take a walk to the bus stop and wait for a few minutes, and perhaps coincide with someone a few times during the month, so you’re able to start a conversation and eventually, get to know each other and finally, stop feeling alone. This is not that place. This is the place where you enter in a seemingly endless loop, by doing the same thing over and over to a point of losing track,  any sort of track. Whichever that may come first. For instance, losing track of memories: ask the same question every time, because you just forgot about it, for an unknown reason, by following this loop I’m talking, of course, you just forgot any of the answers, so you ask and ask like an ever repeated song. Track of time, lost too, prompted to lose it at first, by the way. As it happens, it turns out that you remember what you asked, only not when you did it, so the same words come and go throughout your head; your being, and we start using the same, even for opposite things, and laugh or yell because,  just as toddlers do, we don’t know other words. I heard something about the brain and its condition of use it or lose it, and, we might be losing it. A rolling belt, in a way, very much like those in airports that carry people’s baggage from one place to another. An old rolling belt and its continuous sound. A sound of movement and going nowhere. A sound that comes back where it starts. A cycling sound, a cycling song for the bored and the tired. I’m hidden among the boxes; watching, listening. It’s break time but I’m not hungry. Let’s go down and see the others eat. The day just went by. Wine checked. Good news on one side and some hesitation on the other. That’s how life is. Bed time. Not sleepy. Let’s see. There’s a promise. A promise of progress,  of commitment. Hope finding its way but trust is losing its track. What’s the track of trust, anyway? We get used accept.  But there’s the promise, the wonder. Elvis would say The wonder of you. Who is that you? Is it really you? You may be someone else. Wonder has several approaches. Let’s wonder why. Let’s be wondered by. Now in bed, I want to evocate, I want to imagine, to imagine and touch.  Is it true? Are you for real? Will you wait? Will you miss me? Who knows. Delusion has several faces. Wine is gone by now. Noises. Noises from silence, from the night. From my will for sex. Sex is absorbed by wine sips. Several  glasses for reflection. Am I going to be touched? Good night if not. The garbage truck and its solo under a rainy day. Still dark. Obviously indoors. Only hearing and having this sort of hangover. Things seem to work out. Two love stories came to my understanding. The first one is about a couple, that in order to remain legal, they must join a third party, so to speak. I guess it is the real life version of Sandra Bullock’s romantic comedy: in this case certainly not romantic, nor funny, but a comedy hereinafter. Again, we’re looking for laughter rather than sympathy. The second one, the second couple. This couple got together again in Venezuela after being away from each other for a little while. Only that they went through different things after that while abroad.  Now they are back when they started, surely with a way different mind. This is more a tragedy but it won’t be taken seriously,  so it will become a comedy,  for the amusement of who they left behind at least. Home. Shining afternoon.  Let’s take a nap and get good vibes. We did. We ate out. 

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.