Twelfth page III

 

Some people: not lawyers ones, tend to make these jokes about lawyers,  about how greedy they are and things like that. It sounds funny among lawyers with jobs and money, for those who remain poor and working on something else, it doesn’t make any sense.  I would like that greed for myself but I stand on the side of the ones with no money. So, jokes about lawyers, not on me. Sunday afternoon.  Soccer game: fútbol,  the way we call it. A beer in my hand, not now, of course. I a writing.  I have some headache and the pain in my ear is coming back again. I’m worried. I can’t help feeling worried. Let’s make a pause.

 

To please. How hard is to please! Perhaps it’s not hard, it’s more like subjective, changing. Pleasing has a lot to do with mood, and mood has some to do with money. We will end up complaining about lack of money in every single idea of this text. I’m trying to avoid it, but this comes from the heart, what can I do? I’m trying to keep it as organic as it can be, but organic is mostly monotonous, and truth is often boring rather than uncomfortable. We want it to be exciting,  outrageous,  but life is more a constant phase. Constancy is what we seek, even when thinking about adventures. We wish a place to find shelter in storming times. Safe scenarios to make opinions. We want our life to be a theme park, with unlimited time and turns for every attraction.

 

Life. How I remember it, Gabo, how am I telling everyone about it? My wife’s uncle said: every poor has a story to tell, only no one cares. So, here I am, serving this nonsense as an interesting story. I can’t hold my impulse back. I just put words as some sort of necessity.  Monday morning.  A little behind, from what I see. Enrollment blast. Blast off indeed. Problems are making me lose focus on my job. I need to drink. I need to drink to avoid this overthinking.  I’m nervous and the day hasn’t come yet. What if it does? It will come, what I don’t know is how soon. I need enlightenment,  enlightenment for the extra money that doesn’t come. Too much adrenaline for a quiet life. Oh son! I hope we can laugh together by the time you get to read these words. I hope to much. I’m a hamster in a cage; showing my desperation for others’ amusement.  Like a circus freak show. Sorrows to entertain. Sick time. Tim off. I have to cry this out. I need a moment alone. See you later!

 

Confessions from a toilet.  That should be the name of this text. Afternoon is going by. It’s still sunny and it’s quiet too. The noise lies within my head like wearing headphones. Nobody else can tell what I’m up to. I am just contemplating, thinking about women perfume and women skin. How my tongue wants to take a walk over your body. Caracas again. Tense news. What an English to describe things, right! I wonder how you guys will get this. We meet halfway, as at work. I say something and they take one part and discard the rest. Which rest, sometimes I wonder. I laugh. Let’s just take a bath.

 

Cancel culture,  not on Maduro. I mean,  who has accepted him as a legitimate president? According to the public opinion and particularly  on social media, he has no popularity at all. We have to remember that the only thing that made him a candidate was when Chávez said on that December, that if something happened to him (he died a few days later and was declared dead three month after that) followers should support  Maduro, and just like that, the man has been ruling the country for ten years so far.

 

Why the internet service is this expensive? Are those messages for me? I’m not sure if we’re changing platforms,  if we meet in another reality. I’m only conscious of this one; where La Vinotinto made it to quaters of final of this Copa América. It’s good to share this joy. It’s our symbol nowadays.  Who knows! Maybe we’ll see Venezuela on the next world cup. I mean, why not, right?  Thursday night. A night before getting paid. Let’s project something good. Faith is powerful,  Faith is beautiful, I just watch; contemplate. There’s nothing else but focus. Debate night. I don’t know. I’m still hungry. Let’s just get some rest. 

 

Sunday afternoon. Pasticho de berenjena for lunch. Home made meals gets me. That’s how I know I’m old. I was trying to come back and start correcting this and I couldn’t.  At first I felt bored since I realized that it’s too much work, and I have no choice but doing it. You might get lost or tired just trying to understand me. It’s not fair. Then I got scared. Scared of going back again to those words, to that world. The world of the back and forth, of the push and pull, of the in and out.

 

By the way.  I believe I got my answer.  I’m not sure if that’s fine with you. My generation became adults following the propaganda of the uniqueness and originality. I’m not sure how good was that to the market, but it seems it worked out for the governments and political movements. Social media has been used to turn such conception back down, and they succeeded.  Nobody wants to be unique anymore. Nobody wants to set a path to go somewhere anymore. Everyone is eager for results. All my Venezuelans are hopeful thanks to La Vinotinto,  especially those who usually don’t watch the games. The sense of victory is more important than watching and believing a process of development.  If the team had lost, the comments would have been like: the same shit, the same disappointment,  but in none of the cases the support came from the beginning.  I’m fine with it. I’m not despising it. Popularity has a lot to do with it. What I want to say is that the concept of uniqueness is now shaped by social media insights (Some could claim TV used to be just like it). We talk about sports only if it’s trendy. We talk about jobs only if it’s happening on social media. The people don’t want to read but have read it already. That means, the process has lost its charm. Siddhartha might have no point in this era. Not even Coelho’s Alchemist. It seems there is no time for any attempt of a journey. Even advertisements aren’t as they were. Branding. We all want brand ourselves and become assets for how we look, or what we say, even for what we ignore, and we believe we might get paid for it since this wave of influencers all over. I don’t know any of them yet. I won’t change my mind until then. I guess if it's happens, I will have to rewrite this. So be it! But for now this is what it is. The kids aren’t alright in my ear. Simulation theory, go for it! Let’s get physical is Dua Lipa singing now. I agree, by the way. 

Twelfth page II

 

But there has to be a momentum when the idea can be embraced. That momentum may arrive when understanding the texture of the music; when we learn how to touch with words. The power, the political power, that power has imposed its way of recreation. There are people in Venezuela who still believe this is not Chávez fault. It wasn’t only his fault, but the political class of the country understood the extend of the then technological progress, and combined it with the complexity of the human mind, thus recreating a nonexistent stereotype that many took as pose and want-to-be-like, and by doing it so upset  the fact of our  history,  and putting personal views of the happenings, and unfortunately many people bought it. Some bought it for a while, some others still believe it. The thing is that it was done, and it was done because it could be done, and it could be done because power has always understood how malleable convictions are, to the point of adjusting them at will. Recreating from music, or poetry, or whatever source of inspiration,  equals our tiny little personal version of it. Let’s all agree on that.

 

Sex can’t be recreated by simple imagination.  We need the actual texture. I need the actual texture. Crisis affects sex as well. Sex is my favorite guests in my gatherings but in order to gather one must be a good host. Hosting became impossible in the Venezuela I left. New culture, new life. Hosting has changed. It has turned into something else. Sex is more like a roommate than a guest now. It has its moments.  Moments of glory, and I think of Scorpions. Night time.  Bed time. TV off.

 

A day before the holiday. A holiday with no money works out for getting  some  rest, instead of going out. A mind with no money can’t afford it.  Rest seems like a luxury for the wealthy. The poor are always thinking, and that’s the irony. That’s time being time: abstract, cynical, controller. Let’s call it Cronos, like the Greeks. Cronos imposes you that your portion of time will be attached to your thoughts, and life imposes you to attach such thoughts to your wallet. That’s why, when you get somewhat lucky, like, let’s say supposing you get a bonus at your job, for example. You don’t know what to do. You go out, eat in a restaurant,  buy some clothes, take a short trip. The money is gone in a single bit. You knew you could have done better, but your thoughts,  used to poverty, went crazy at the fact that you got some money you were not expecting.  We had such a feeling when we first came here. All those brands, milks, bread, coffee, eggs by size, eggs by color. Ham, cheese, meat, salmon; oh boy; salmon. Shrimps, not for me, I’m allergic but, the access, the access we stopped being used to. It was overwhelming.  It felt like going back when it was better then, when it was better there. That feeling stays inside you for a while, a long a while sometimes. Even when having an exhausting poorly paid job. The feeling is there, inside you, putting everything in perspective: I would be worse, or dead, if I had stayed.  It becomes a mantra eventually, the mantra you need to keep going everyday,  every morning. So we start talking to God, or end up an atheist. I chose God. Fuck existentialism.  I don’t care. God manifests through action your mind is so far able to understand.  The more, the better. Obviously,  the less, the more fictional. So, be careful thinking your atheism is knowledge.  It could be a variation of your ignorance.  Make sure you cynicism is based on  your own research and not on social media… please!

 

Grill time. It was good. Tasty.  Now it’s time to remember and wonder but I should take a shower first. Duty calls. Let’s hope for a better tomorrow meanwhile. Purpose. Is this a purpose? I was thinking about it. I heard someone claim that there are people who still choose to stay in Venezuela as it is now, even after traveling outside.  The claim surges after a statement of a person who said in an interview, that those who remain in Venezuela don’t know anything else, and that’s why they hold on to it. Maybe, they are both right. I think that people who have chosen to leave, did it because of personal (and life-threatening) reasons. Only politicians want to make us believe there are other reasons such as better quality of life,  or things like that. We have broken this down more than once already during this journey.  Financial blessing: yeah! That’s what we are hoping for. I’m trying to figure out if the need to deserve it obeys to the way we were raised. I mean, as children, we believed that studying hard, and get some good grades, had to be somehow rewarded. Whose idea was that, whose ideal was that? Now we are almost eight million people around the world, thinking we should get more, because of all that effort we put in the past. Past is gone. Gone we will be someday.

 

Thursday to throw but I need to work. It’s Friday now. Not a word from yesterday,  from yesterdays. Rosy retrospection, idyllic retrospection. I wonder now how much of that is written in history, news and printed in our memories, to come up here and  spit it out, cray for it, yell because of it and even laugh at it. We gather to enhance it, to selectively agree and state, and even feel the illusion of belonging, by what I think it may be a fictional narrative: mostly professionals, let’s be proud of… and great jobs still not found.  I found one. Yeah! But it won’t get me out of my situation. Why? Because that’s the way it is. Let’s think about those who made it, what do they all have in common? Help. Financial blessings. I’m having financial curses. I will never forget all this budget full of hope and expectations I based it on an extra work that – oh, boy! – it was taken away for almost two years. Two years falling down expecting to climb up.  I’m older and tired now. I had to reject the second job I found. What am I going to do? I’m your private dancer in my ear. Testosterone levels fighting to survive. Let’s get back to work.

 

Saturday morning. Dirty clothes all over the floor. It’s laundry time. Seven days left to get paid. Days to suffer. To pray for nothing bad to happen, for nothing unexpected.  Let’s see. We survived it. It’s Sunday now. La Vinotinto won yesterday. I checked on some pictures of myself; I’m not only fat, estoy pure también.  Financial blessing,  please come now! I have to do some work on the computer, obviously,  unpaid. Wealthy people get money from anything they do, sometimes even from spending.  We have to spend money even by trying to save it. What a system! Revenue is the wrong word for such offices.

 

Today is The Day of the Lawyer in Venezuela.  We are a lot, as a matter of fact. We are so many that even in our less worse time, there never were enough jobs for all of us. Many lawyers in Venezuela ended up working in a different field and that was then, now it’s even worse. Laws have been subjected to change as dictator’s desires. It’s actually ironic that he has passed a lot of bills that he has to change later because in time, the laws don’t work out for his plans. I have said more than once that we were raised convinced that self realization passes through the academy, which is why a day like today glorifies the effort – despite the crossed feelings I may have for it – of getting a college degree. In a population of almost eight million Venezuelans spread all over the world, probably half of them have a degree, and probably the majority of those have gone to law school.  So, happy lawyers day, I guess!