Zero page II

 

Hello! It feels surreal to actually think you might be reading this. I still gravitate and wonder where all these thoughts go when I’m not thinking. You see, I find hard to get they are stored somewhere in my head like our mind features a type of hard disk. I find it hard because memories change, and they ended up attached to a feeling, a feeling that can turn into something else. For example, the anger linked to a moment can turn into resentment, or forgiveness, and so the memory. It’s almost impossible to keep it as it happened. Garcia Marquez said, or so I read, that life is not that one we lived but the one we remember, and how we remember it to tell others about it. I’m translating here. It might come out a little different, but you get me. Especially you! Yeah, the voices, but we’re not paying attention,  and I’m still hoping for the financial help. So how do we bring them up to context. That’s another one: context. Are we going to be understood soon?

 

Sunday night. Too much food. Too many beers. I feel like I can’t do what I must when sitting in the bathroom. The let go is not happening and there are things I have to do after. This is another episode of time discount. I’ve said already that the time spent while waiting in the car should be discounted. Well, this time Too. I’m going to stand up willing to come back again because I didn’t do it. I can wait a little longer, but I don’t know how much would it be.  It’s better to cut now and restart later, despite the hours of sleep. I will compromise them. There’s always something.  Something’s always wrong,  like the song. That’s so nineties,  right? Little problems germinated in our routines, so they can grow. We raise them, indeed. Somehow we are prone to keep them for a while before taking care of them. A problem is always a good topic to start a conversation, and when it is used for such purposes, it works out pretty well as catalyst to get people’s opinion and therefore judge them. Does she care about me? What was that she told me when I talked about my problem? It is time consuming and I’m not sure if we get any discount on it. I realized they are several the scenarios where we spend – waste – our time… and it won’t come back. I have this feeling that I could have spent it more wisely,  but then I check the phone and I read that I spend about ten hours weekly on social media. That’s enough evidence to understand why I’m getting dumber while I think I’m smarter.  It’s funny because in this case, our perception works as it does with a mirror: what you see is sort of beautified by idea of oneself in front of others. So we might not be as cute as we internally see ourselves, or even uglier, fatter, shorter, more repulsive than we actually think we are if that’s the case. Shall we be sad at it? Of course not. This is life and it shouldn’t be wasted through social media scrolling.  What if I’m repulsive? Try to understand why you are and before whom. There might be a chance you’re biased by the persistence of being accepted where you don’t belong, or feel related to. Am I biased? I have to discover it. Are these words biased? Absolutely. That’s why love writing.  Nobody cares about my thoughts but God, so I just write and write until I get rich or bored or both. In the meantime, poverty keeps me inside paragraphs of self acknowledgement. Learning how to look up while I’m down. I’ve been down for too long but I won’t complain. I know nothing else, and my concept of further is limited by my obligations,  so I just gravitate among the words I serve and the music I play for myself. Don’t get me wrong.  I have a lot of joy along with this. I have personal accomplishments and a beautiful family. So let’s keep this life going and provide whatever lies inside of me to tell about my people, and myself.  See you later.

 

A rainy morning.  Eggs are being cooked.  Coffee is brewing.  I haven’t been able to enjoy these magnesium nights. We’ll get to it. Back to 2023, the need to move was unavoidable.  This is forth place and we’ll probably keep going until we find the right one. Tuesday is on the move. I came early for work, I have just spent like forty minutes only on social media. I didn’t get anything from it: no news, no knowledge, no thoughts, just forty minutes away from my life. I’m hungry now. I was laughing at myself because every time I raise my arms the sweater I’m wearing goes up too and my belly gets exposed. This could be something when we’re chubby. We are always some sort ashamed for not having a better body. It is like social media, like smoking: we know what we have to do, only we don’t want to, and that opens up a variety of meanings. What do we want? We get this mix from our desires, our duties and the alienation of both. I need a coffee. Once again, I need another job. It would be great if it could be at writing but I’ve been bypassed too many times. I’ve been rejected more as a writer than as a lover, and I’ve been rejected at lot. So, back in here, back again to 2023. Winter was over and spring came full of hope. I was reading about the block chain technology. As many others, I also fell into the illusion of earning money without working too hard for it. I read about SEC and Tokens. To be honest, I have no clue. I still don’t understand it, but then it felt like wisdom granted from the Akhasic Records, everything looked so clear at that time. Now such knowledge seems to fade away like the smoke, like the faith. Like the money I earn from hard work.  This story won’t promise an end, perhaps closure; a closure of an era. We need to be able to look back and understand that we had to leave Venezuela. That despite how bad we miss Caracas, we had to tell her see you later, and later won’t be any soon. Let’s bring new music to our ears. Let’s contemplate our current surroundings.  There’s silence,  I can hear the fingers dancing on computer keyboards. Each cubicle is covered. A need for privacy. Someone doesn’t want to be seen nor head. The air-conditioning is fine. It’s raining outside. I can hear a few coughs from time to time. I close my eyes and go back… 

Tenth page II

 

Here we are. This should go before but I don’t know.  I have just failed a grammar test. I guess I won’t get any job at this since it seems I’m not good at all. That doesn’t keep from continuing here, specially now, that I’m this alone. I don’t want to get distracted from my sadness. I have to make something good out of it. Whatever it may be. I pick my nose meanwhile. There’s too much to take out, from my mind, from the closets of the house, and from my nose, of course. The variants of what you said are now pushed into what you may have meant, aiming to open up a void of possibilities, enforced then by celebrities and mass media. So it’s not what happened anymore but what certain celebrity said it happened. Those are the our sources now, and that is the extend of our research. Don’t get me wrong. I may have fallen into that as well. Specially when I feel this I-don’t-how-to-call-it need to keep scrolling on social media apps, even when I don’t want to – specially when I don’t want to – it seems there is some place in my mind stating that I can’t contemplate what I think anymore but keep myself busy on something else the new media pulls up.  It’s kind of like an occupation, like a parasite: something lives inside a needs to be fed, fed out of social media. Even when going to the bathroom, or in bed, not only when waiting. I went for a walk once in a park nearby. There was a WI-FI zone, and there were like twenty,  perhaps more, gathered there with their phones just to keep up with their apps. They didn’t look like they were working the way we see people on laptops at coffee shops. They were standing and focus on their phones. The parasite wouldn’t let them do the walk, or whatever they first wanted to do there that day. So this is how we are now.

It's to early to wake up. It’s Sunday, and it’s raining. I need to go back to bed. Sun is there nonetheless. It’s been quiet but also fine. I wanted to find some more about catfishing or block chain mindset but I ended up laughing at sexist jokes and the ex boyfriends of Taylor Swift. That’s the relevance of my feeds from social media. The accuracy of the algorithm based on my interest. You know what? I think it may be a lie. I have this idea inoculated; that the internet apps have refine all my searches and feeds based on my interests. That’s what I’m supposed to believe.  So I have somehow get convinced that show business and celebrities gossiping is actually an interest for me. I don’t think so. I don’t want to accept it. I prefer to accept the simulation theory first. I prefer to embrace that we are programmed and controlled, but not this. So whoever controls me, please. You know I don’t care about those things. Don’t keep me away from wisdom. Wisdom is my big time quest, and you know it. Take advantage of me and make me wiser, not dumber, please! It’s enough already living as poor, don’t add stupidity too, I beg. Silence. Silence and whispers. Whispers of names and plans. Unmade plans. Plans turned into wishes, into merely desires drowned in a sip of wine, or thrown after a sigh of smoke. They go away. The get mixed with all those letters and messages floating in the air. They get confused with someone else’s.  Everyone has got plans thrown as desires: throw back Thursday,  throw again Monday: it may be why it get blue. I still got the blues, not only Gary… and my legs are getting numb from such a long time sitting in the restroom.  I feel like I’m going to be sick. I feel as I was wiping, as I was talking my pants on. I need a pill. I need money.  I’m tired of running after commitments. Salary vanishes as my once plans now desires. My imagination works hard on creating these parallel worlds. Worlds in which I’m successful and desired. I better get back to work. My second office, this is where I let go so many of my inside burden, either through my fingers or my ass. I was thinking about these posts status that only last twenty four hours, and how many hidden dedications they lie beneath. The fact that I post a message “randomly”, because what it says it worth the sharing, because this is what we do at the end: share. It just doesn’t match with our words, with our lives. But that’s how we want to be seen, to be understood,  as the living being that pledges and gets inside those words, those messages.  I don’t know what I’m looking for with this hurry over social apps. I first open them, and then nothing. What do I want to find? In case I do find something, it may not be good. Good things come unnoticed,  unexpected,  mostly.  Unless you had already worked for it, but that’s another story,  right? I expect to learn how to refrain from too much distraction and focus on what matters: my family,  my people. Those who I pretend to ignore. Conveniently, comfortably numb is in my ear, one, yes, I’m still working.  In fact, I shouldn’t be writing this now, but then when? Yeah, the drama and the dilemma. Our always picturesque sense and view of life…  I’m losing it. It’s hot but it’s not summer. In fact,  it’s going to rain soon, but it’s sunny now. Again, waiting in the car. Like I said it before, this has to be refunded from our lives. It’s just not fair to waste on waiting.  This should be rewarded somehow, someday, something good should happen. Alcohol can not always be the diluent of bad memories. There must be something more, else, further, along, and at least. Toddler’s shout out loud inside the car, while waiting. Only to make it funnier. Again: picturesque. I’ve got to go back!

 

Zero Page

 

Where are we? Yes. Cruz Diez. I never took that picture. I always thought I was coming back. A half empty suitcase. I’m going to work hard, save some and start better this time. I guess thus is what many of us have in mind when it comes to this. An ambulance is passing by.  I hear it from the kitchen.  I’m cooking. A black coffee with no sugar so I don’t break the fasting I planned to complete last night. I broke it; free breakfast on the house. On the agency in this case. We can’t help the impulse of seizing whatever available for free. It’s in our nature. It doesn’t matter if you were born poor or middle class (by the way, now I know our middle class has more to do with other things aside from money, and that’s why, although poor as well, this middle class is still looking above the shoulder) as Venezuelans, when something is free. We must take it, and we must take it first. There are plenty of stories of pride and joy after seizing anything some other may have paid for. Even if it’s not true. The mood of the advantage must prevail at all cost. Nobody wants to tell a story where a potential spoil was not seized at its best. I could say that’s not in our culture. We seized when we can and when we can not, we make it happen then. We got in the plane. Some candies to share when we land. Miami first. After a short stop at Dominican Republic. We spent the night at the airport. Next flight was too early in the morning so it was not worthy the hotel room. North Carolina.  So different from Miami. Our temporary home,  or so we thought.  The excitement of the first visit, of being new at everything,  at anything. Almost five years of that day and almost five years of so many things that never came back, and never will. We didn’t know then several goodbyes were going to be forever.  Fue is now sounding in my ear. You think this is coincidence? I think it’s not. We’re living a movie someone already watched, the soundtrack is proving it. The eternal return. We play the song and play ourselves over and over, aiming to spot the detail we once missed. Then we laugh, smile, or cry. Cry is good, it’s sort of clean up from within.

 

It was March, I remember,  March the seventh, the power supply had gone, gone for almost four days. That’s how I remember it. Fourth days in Caracas not knowing about anyone. There we were; living a post-apocalyptic movie in our body. I think it was that what triggered our thoughts.  We've got to do something.  2019 was a terrible year. 2020 was Covid. Covid took us abroad, took us here, trying to figure out that this was a new life and not a time off from the crisis. Quite a word: crisis. It’s more like a burden, a burden that floats right behind you. Wherever you go, the burden goes as well. It’s kind of like a signature that certifies we come from the underdevelopment,  that it's what we are, what we know, and specially,  that we survived it. Now we are in spiritual and conceptual reset. Learning to live again. Times like these on my mind as I’m writing this.

 

We ran away. We had to, we had a story to share, we had threats to dodge, and a new life to take care of, to give our lives away for. I came out from the office and got some wine to sit and write. I was thinking how, and where this sort of tale should start. Let’s go to 2022, where Venezuelans were granted the chance to bring family. 2023 was a year of reunions, so many mothers holding their children again for the first time in years. Some others are still waiting for that to happen, wondering if they did something wrong and that’s why they haven’t been blessed that way.

Parents started coming and a new phenomenon rose: the new beginning of the new beginning.  It’s a bit like people’s age crisis, but with families. Another turn in their lives. Now it’s more evident who came here to start over, those who ran away from oppression, and who came here with money, disguised as runaways. Anything massive brings a lot of surprises.  It’s unavoidable.  It’s not our fault, it’s no one’s, actually.  The turned tables in politics are reflected in people’s steps.  Social media has a lot to do with it. Not mentioning all these series of influencers showing a lifestyle hard to believe it's based on publicity. I find it hard to believe.

 

A professor of the UCV was fined with four thousand something for the alteration of a building in the university to park his Ferrari.  Obviously such a news didn’t go unnoticed. How do we explain that to the world? How do we talk about inequity and this is in every front page when it comes to Venezuela? It’s a process. It’s like those times when the gas was unexplainably cheap. I bring this up because somehow I get that we don’t get it. This sort of news represents the dimension of a void we fall in when it comes to understand why we start over. Why we are this surreal. Yes, we are surreal, and surreal are our thoughts. Thoughts I want to chain and put them in some order so I can express myself through foreign words. This is my attempt to it. I have to go the bank first. It’s Thursday,  a Thursday to throw back and forth, of course. But it also feels like Friday. Or it’s just me that I didn’t get it well and I’m just pullulating around like nothing happened.  I’m afraid to ask. Let’s go to the bank first. It seems nothing happened indeed. So, 2023, another new beginning.  The relativism of the beliefs.  The deconstruction of the costumes; of our previous tryouts. New rehearsals and therefore new details spotted. New debts; debts over older debts. Existence dressed as survival – again – and some of that was what made us move. There you are, crisis. Let’s serve some words. Let’s find some context to at least try. Memory serves, I remember.