Tenth page VIII

 

The argument.  I’m not sure what I should have done. I have mastered the art of remain quiet but I spoke my mind and now I regret it, but the damage is done. I have to listen to the same unsolved (and unsolvable) problem from the past again and again for I don’t know how long. I have a beer now. I’m in mood for this, I guess. Sometimes I just to throw it all away and leave, but it’s not true. I’ve have taken a lot more. I’m a bearer. I was raised a bearer. I can’t undo it. This is my life. More beer, please!

 

Sun is leaving.  Warm weather wants to stay more. Too many fruit mosquitoes around. They like beer too, I guess.  They seem to like the screen of the phone too.  Music is on, but it’s kind of late to enjoy. I can use the company nonetheless. Coffee morning. Too early but it’s fine, I mean. I love these moments.  Let’s just watch TV and have some fun with the magnetic tiles. The day is joyful. It feels that way from the window and with the air conditioning at maximum. Diaper change time, literally and figuratively. We were talking about luck, coincidence or that it's just not for us. I wonder, we always wonder. Accepting it is not going to happen soon or easily.  It’s too hard not to compare. Immigrants are just very prone to it: if it’s working for them, why not for us? It’s unavoidable.  Viral. I want to talk a little bit about things gone viral, or so we say when people we know see the same post and we get this sense it might be worldwide or something like that. Let’s try to break it down. An Instagram profile, video, post; why do we say that any of them has gone viral? I want to start by bringing up that, maybe, we call it that way as some sort of evolved term derived from old school press, TV and Radio commercials, and the concept of spread (which is more related to viral) give us this sense of unstoppable success, because everybody wants to be somehow in, because everyone is infected, right? I lost such an illusion when I was nineteen; I was playing in a band and we have this song we believed it might be a hit. After meeting with I don’t know how many people, we got the chance to talk to a sort of executive,  who told us, just like that, that to play the song a number of times a day, we had to pay a certain amount of money,  money we didn’t have, money we never had. That was in the late nineties,  almost thirty years from these words. I understood since then, that the outbreak of a virus – and now I can add; of any kind – is just produced, made up, generated, or whatever other applicable verb, by an interested part. The viral maker, or some shit. So, nowadays, when we scroll for about an hour, watching videos and photos of guys dressing like girls, or these so called nutrition coaches; telling you not to drink soda or eat flour, or hot women dancing, or quotes with unknown or unverified sources. All of that. The Reggaeton,  especially the Reggaeton: these things go viral by someone with resources, and it would be interesting to understand why such material is pushed to occupy space and time in people’s mind. I mean, this has got to a point where many of us know more about that than about our own history,  for example.  I understand late, but at least I got it, that time is an asset, a valuable asset, but I’m not sure how valuable it could be to the guy who funds these healthy lifestyle coaches. How profitable can my time be to it, to them, to him? I’m not sure. I lost track. I lost perspective too. Viral it is, viral it is what they say and do.

 

Monday.  Holiday.  Morning. Sugar levels are fine. The ear is fine. We’re fine. Only the clouds are showing themselves gray. It looks like they want to rain. They did it for a while last night. Laundry day. Soup day. Let’s find something useful to do. As a matter of fact I did. It’s beer time now. The long weekend is gone. Work tomorrow.  Let’s just hope again. I have the music, the mood. I found more new songs to enjoy. I could play all these days with my boy. I can see his progress, his temper. I’m always marveled by the way I think he’ getting things: how he relates what he does with what he says. It’s just great. Sometimes I feel like crying. I’m so proud but I’m also amazed.  The phone is playing songs by itself. I wonder if it’s a virus. It doesn’t seem harmful anyway.  Time for bed. See you later. 

 

I Have jus read something about our image.  It says something like we care more about the image we project than our very selves. I got caught for a little while by the sentence. It had some judgmental vibe. Of course we care more about the image we project. We need to. The society has gone online in so many ways. We must be found or we don’t exist. We have to exist, and if we are going to tell a new story about us, of course it has to be one that pleases us, and we are hardly pleased by the truth of ourselves. Too many beers last night to wake up this early and go to work. I’m in a time wasting mode, or wasting time mode on. Slow movements. Good morning everyone!

 

The moon during the daylight has always seem to me as a good sign. A sign that the day will bring some sort of good news; good vibes at least. Car waiting and mirror looking. Let’s take a picture of it, of us. Today looks promising. Let’s preserve this feeling as a shelter, so we can be in during the storm. 

Tenth page VII

 

May 23^rd 2019. Last birthday together. I wondered then and I wonder now why that much unnecessary pain. We should only suffer for love and repent and nothing else. It’s not fair to leave this world in agony. It feels like next life is already started with the burden of this one. Something is no working out here. We have made up our minds already but it wasn’t until the end of that year that we made it, did it. The permanent goodbyes. Let’s go some years later. I think about it. My memory is loaded up. Too many worries to afford sadness and saudade moments. Longing, in time, becomes some kind of luxury. You’ll get to it. I guarantee that. Especially for us that our once happy places are so far from here. So far indeed. I thought I was going to write something beautiful in your honor, but it was just like I said: my routine keeps me busy from longing, from missing. My bitterness is taking me over. I’m now repeating everyone’s upset mantra: I work too much to live such a life. I’m tired of being almost and not sufficient in full. I try to wake up in good mood but at the end of the day every mirror face I find is telling me the same over and over: we need more and we don’t have it, and it’s exhausting not to have it. My body still hurts from the moving, and I got nothing, I saved nothing.  That’s the poor paradox: the harder the effort to safe, the more expensive it will be. Throw me back, Thursday  and take me to a better Friday.  I hope God is taking goo care of you both. I hope you three take good care of my own here. That’s my consolation. I want more dessert but I had enough, and sweets are not made for this kind of bitter. So I drink instead. Drink an laugh at these words and at myself. What a waste! Let’s see. We never know, there must be some good news tomorrow, who knows! More work for me. I would like to cry but I can’t afford it.  I’m just a vessel for others’ complaints. That’s my use nowadays.  What a skill! Friday. The signs of the universe and how to read them. I served some coffee to sit in the bathroom and think. Why not! It was dark and I let myself guide by instinct. I place the mug of coffee where I thought I was the hands washer to close the door with both hands. It took less than a second; the mug fell into the basin and broke. There’s no coffee – I have to serve me another cup – and there’s no mug – which was a gift my brother brought me from Spain – How should I interpret this? I mean, is this a bad sing or what! Yesterday it was not that bad at the end but there’s still this bitter feeling around me. The ear I better. I hope it stays that way. No honor as I would have liked but I had some wine and some time by myself. Middle age pleasures.

 

Middle age pleasures indeed. Like watching this beautiful girl smile and that other beautiful girl talk. I got my own beautiful girl. I’m just saying. The black mirror every several minutes. The background image: always a natural heavenly landscape untypical on working people. How many times a year can we actually enjoy such a thing. I am hardly alone for about an hour, and that’s a lot. We love these fantasies. Fantasies take some good time to come up and make your day somewhat worthwhile.  Despite the illusion. So we fantasize and get there, at a special place. The special place, and the screen went black again. Long weekend,  beer time.  I taste it. It’s sunny. I’m kind of sleepy.  The turned out to be a decent one. Let’s enjoy the silence and drink: all ever wanted, all ever needed is here… I can’t think now.  I think I got it, finally.  We need a problem, a resentment to keep as a resource; as an excuse,  we need it to strike back when we feel threatened. Nobody would keep it up that way.  I was in the downtown,  there, not here. I was coming out from Capitolio: that exit in front of La Asamblea, the one when turning left, and right at the next corner, gets you to the entrance of La Plaza Bolívar.  I didn’t get there. I turned to the right again because I wanted to get back to El Metro, our subway, but I couldn’t find the gate where I just came out, so I started walking faster; the same route,  over and over, circling La Asamblea,  our legislative palace, or what’s left of it. I don’t remember how many times I did that walk, I just remember that I woke up pissed on my bed. I guess that I was trying to find the bathroom when I was dreaming… and I failed.  Cleaning Saturday.  Sunny, beautiful weather,  but I have to solve this mess.

 

Expensive Chinese food.  I don’t know. It has turned quite metaphorical today: the money, the pissed, the argument brought it back, the lack of enthusiasm, along with the lack of money, of course. That’s more like a constant,  an explicit constant. Money has never needed interpretation. Money is more like fuel and we know we can’t go too far without it.  So, talking about interpretation; let’s see: the enthusiasm is directly affected by the lack of money, and the body responds accordingly.  We’re sleepy now. We chose to take a nap over a time outdoors. The drinking is affected as well: we had more. Somehow these thoughts of despair need to be drowned for a while, at least to have a proper erection, or just a smile with sincerity while listening to a conversation.  The argument,  - of course, always. - any unfinished fight is good for a let go moment: don’t preach me, I got a lot stored in my head just for you. Lack of money is a trigger of past bitterness.  Perhaps more a preserver of such thoughts. Talking becomes a mined field: watch the steps.  The pissed. Obviously.  Lack of money is a tragedy,  but for the poor is also picturesque, which means, more or less, that this misfortune could be amusing,  even a joke, to others; to you, perhaps. That is sad too, but we have to smile… or drink more!