Fifth page III

 

Friday.  The black mirror in front of me. I don’t get to see me. I’m below its reflection.  I can see the painting on the wall and the lamp. A mirror is always good for putting thoughts in perspective.  You see, the painting and the lamp are actually on my back, but I can see them on the screen of the TV set now that is off. In a way, this might tell us that there could be anything behind us, either by chance, or by choice, and make it reflected right in our front, so we can take a look at it, stand up (and for, or against, why not) and see ourselves in it as well. Thus we can think again,  think again but not overthink, overthink is more like a condition,  and it triggers our neurosis,  which it’s already there, I know, specially on people used to the chaos, used to crisis, shortages, or whatever not-good-at-all sudden thing out of our foresight. I’m relaxed now. I have to go to work but I’m still on time for it. My neurosis levels are low for the moment,  unlike my hope; which is up high and I’m smiling while writing it down. First break. Everyone on their screens. To be honest, what else can we do? We kind of feel some pressure on being more social but there’s this endless carrousel of media material that keeps us looking nowhere else. Today, there’s no point on debating it. It is what it is. Break time has ended. We’re leaving early today. No payment for those hours. Let’s go back. A little something about our neurosis: we have this urge for an answer every time we send a message. It’s this tiny emperor-like pose we tend to adopt on waiting. We just can’t wait anymore. This has flourish in some way, I guess, because of the constant scrolling. For instance, I usually leave at 3:00 PM, not today, but the rest of the days I do so. Right at 3:0l PM I’m sending my wife the first message asking her how close she is from picking me up. That’s how we work on waiting these days. However,  when it comes to answer, that’s a whole different story: we want to be understood,  we want that the fact we might be busy stays implicit over the waiting time. Only that we feel impaired for switching roles, therefore no sympathy for anyone, on anything,  specially when scrolling on the screen of the phone. This is the society model nowadays. Many of our memories will just be left to an app feed, and some of them will just fade as the thump moves down, all that in no more than two, three seconds. I’m getting used to watching people looking at their screens.  It’s a terrible feeling: knowing you’re alone among people.  Loneliness has changed. Saturday afternoon.  Sunny after a rainy morning.  A few airplanes have gone by. I could tell for their sound. Long naps are plan killers. Don’t ever plan anything before taking a nap. There’s the balcony, for myself, but there’s a stronger force having me indoors: the power of the hesitation. I could grab something and prepare it for dinner, but I guess I rather hesitate and let time burn over the uncertainty.  Everyone else is still sleeping.  That’s why. The TV is on but there’s actually nothing running since it is an app for streaming.  There are just some figures moving back and forth and that’s it. Hangover: interesting word when it comes to translation. I mean, hang, as in hanging,  and over, as in entirely, it is like floating on your own after being drunk.  It’s an interesting way to see it. In my country we call it mouse, like Mickey,  and everyone understands it. It is actually a verb, so to make it somewhat possible in English, it would go like I am enmoused, or I have mouse, like I have fever. I don’t know where it may come from. The thing is I feel like I am enmoused still, or I’m still having this hangover, and I have to go to work. As a matter of fact,  I’m ready to be taken there, carrying all this bad disposition and headache, Wine was on Saturday,  it’s Monday but  I just had too much. Let’s say I had enough to spend the whole Sunday on recovery, but Sunday didn’t last enough for it. I had my first break already. I still feel a bit bad. I would say I won’t drink like that again but we never know, at least I can tell myself I hope not to since I’m wasting beautiful time. Let’s take out the garbage and take a shower. I’m home. It’s fine now, and cold too. I read a good article about the decay of the so called Venezuela se arregló. In order to bring up some context, it was a slogan promoted from the government, through its network of allegedly social media influencers and presumably famous people, who still live (and work, doing I don’t know what) there. The government,  let’s say, understood that whatever illusion we may fall into, must come from social media. Thus they made a whole world inside of it, and they made it so deep, that people abroad, specially young people, including people of my generation too, have started to believe it. Nostalgia pays great deal, I have no doubt about it, and,  added to Hope  both combined, it’s more a kind of strong drug, a drug many Venezuelans are getting addicted to. And just like that, there are many spellbound through their phones getting the latest news of this cool Venezuela nobody got to see back in the day.

 

Don’t get me wrong, we’ve seen and had a lot great things; great times, things that, obviously,  trigger our Nostalgia,  otherwise resentment would have swept it all, and I thought it did. I mean, when I was still there, there were a lot who ran away already, and the common grounds for most of them used to be hatred.  An annoying hatred,  to be honest. At that time, I felt more like: go live your life and leave us alone. Now I kind of understand it. I still have my doubts, but certainly it is a process of several and diverse steps. After a while, I became part of those who left as well, and I deal with the pain that what, and who, I missed and left constantly cause me, but also the joy, the joy of being away, of starting over, of a another chance; because there’s joy after those complaints, and a new life ahead too. Only that there’s also a lot of sensitivity, sensitivity born out of such runaways. New resentments have been coming up towards this make believe the government managed to establish… only for a while, That’s what the article was about: that the illusion is fading, like the smoke. Yes. Nevertheless, there must be something going on. It is too much coincidence that this kind of news were brought up in a moment of important political decisions, but on the other hand,  we’ve been fed up for more than twenty years with important political decisions, and here we are, still waiting, with our smoke faith with nothing but disappointment to recall. Third  break, ninety more minutes, and that’s it for the day. There’s a lot going on these days. Some voices are blurring me, and I can’t focus on these words I’m writing about. The room got quiet again. I can think and evocate, close my eyes a little bit and pretend I’m resting wonderfully.  I let my hand go over my neck in an attempt to get some relief but I can’t just let myself go since I may fall asleep and we’re here to work. The vision, my vision, gets blurry. Voices are rising loud again. I want to go home. I hope I can get some rest when I get there. I’m going to need it. Big day tomorrow. Several duties only for a day. I’m still at work, half of an hour to go but it is not now yet. I should use this time more wisely,  but I can’t.  Inspiration doesn’t work that way but at least it will find me working. I believe Picasso said that. We need to keep breaking down our process until we get to that point where we can state, once and for all, that from here – the place once found, whenever that may be – it’s where we can start over, thus help each other, and grow strong as a community. Sometimes I think it won’t be something from our generation. So let’s just help the next ones. I hope this sort written confession statement diary fiction story helps someday, sometimes, at some point. Meanwhile,  let’s keep on letting it go. Time to get a broom and sweep, not fly,  I’m not a witch. I’m home now. I hope I can get some rest right now. 

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.