Thirteenth Page (and last)

 

Cynicism has found shelter here too. Those who already knew this was coming and think themselves wiser for not having hope. All posers to me, to be honest. Believing is not a weakness… The banality of a disgrace. The need to see, post and comment on social media, and think you’re part of the solution by doing it. It must be some sort of celebrity-like effect: My opinion and angle must be posted too, or something like that. Also the criticism on others for what they are not saying. Everything is a matter of style now, even disappointments out of elections results. This is not the end. Venezuela is on its way to write more promising pages and it doesn’t have to me. In fact I can’t feel anything but respect and admiration for those who stay there and don’t give up. I am here, hoping, having faith and praying. It’s the only thing I can do now. Poor habits, poor stuffs! Wine is gone. Monday evening.  No money until next payday,  which is within eleven days. I have to work tomorrow,  and I have a lot to do. See you! You know what? Nothing. I forgot what I wanted to say. The opinion rally has begun. Everyone needs to say something,  Everyone needs to see something from Everyone else. Silence is confused with complicity. Everyone is a judge during these days.  I’m actually enjoying what the people are doing with Chavez statues all over the country. It feels like fresh air touching your face to get a smile from you. Why did they put them in the first place? I mean, I could get if there were something,  anything to hold on to, but there’s nothing, nothing but a split nation, nothing but separated families. This government has to fall…

 

Tuesday night. Time for bed. I’m thinking about my car’s leak. There’s always something going on to be busy besides work. I was going to take my boy to the dentist and I couldn’t.  It was a lose-lose day. Now I have to take care of this, but now will be tomorrow.  I have to get some sleep first. Wednesday morning. There is this thing I find it confusing: it is known that the taxi service is long gone, that we rely on apps for it. There are several options when it comes to pick a ride on these apps: comfort, time, pet friendly,  but no car seats. We are not from here. We have no friends, I asked everyone I know how do we get a ride with an infant, considering that there is a fine for not having the child on a car seat and, yes, nobody knows. An error in this matrix. An edition mistake in this movie. So the child has to stay while I figure out what I’m going to do with the car, because I can’t just go to the avenue with my boy, and pick a taxi to make the day easier. It seems that not having a car is another problem here…

 

There is a bus stop but I have never used it. Trying it didn’t come to my mind because even in circumstances like this one, we have this tendency of trying to beat time, when time is the only beating. Lapsus. Intelligence voids set up like tramps for this sort of feud between think and feel when it comes to act.  So we act wrong and realize it later.

 

The end is close and we will not have any outcome; nor for Venezuela, nor for our immigration living. The end is the routine, right when we become adults, right there, when we realize that we’ll be working until we can’t do it anymore, hoping our kids to be grown up enough, so they don’t have to depend on us. This is a parenthesis in any life, in any life as an immigrant: a suitcase with hope, and a routine to fade away into. Our thoughts become smoke in the air every time we sigh our despair, our sadness. To my people: keep the faith, to all of you: this is not the end. Viva Venezuela Libre!  Now It’s time to come bac to work. I haven’t been called yet about the car. Rats is sounding in my ear, that’s what Maduro and his acolytes are. Faith is sounding now while I finish this chapter,  finish this story.  

 

The night has come. It’s hot. We keep looking at the phone trying to get with the right answer, that the democracy has been restored after so long. A twenty years old Venezuelan doesn’t know what democracy is like, what diversity is like. I feel for them. I grew up in the eighties and, forgive me for what I’m going to state, but in my opinion, of the last fifty years of history,  the eighties were the best. At least in Venezuela.  That’s what my peers want to have back again. That’s why my peers want it back again. In the meantime,  I go back to my phone and keep spending my time looking who is saying what, and what it’s being said of whom! Coffee morning. I haven’t contemplated it for a while, I mean acknowledge it; taking some time to think while the sweet steam perfumes my face. One more Thursday, one more day. I wonder what have we learned, perhaps nothing, just perspective. I think we need to look ourselves into a mirror or words once in a while, at least to see the names and the sentences that floats around when we do it. Someone may need it for a new block chain, or for a new chain of blocks. I’m going to miss you all…

 

 

Twelfth page VI

 

Do you remember the smoke faith? Well, it has been here all the time. Now it’s worse, because it’s smoke combined with social networking, and perhaps things that I better not know for my own sake. Living and bearing. I’m tired. I’ve said it before. We rest when we are working, so we can stop thinking about those disappointments that we haven’t had time – and we’ll never will, by the way – to process, to understand,  and learn from them to carry on, and see what next. Next is an improvisation when we’re poor. We can see it as an endless adventure  but a boring one. Movies are not about real poor. When they are about poor, the poor are somehow successful at the end of the movie. We know that won’t be our end. If we’ll make it to the end, we’ll remain poor, or old. Old enough not to enjoy it, only to remember it, and tell others about when waiting at the hospital for a new prescription.  I’m close… of that life and of the eighty thousand words. My silent achievement… Good for me, I guess.

 

 

What is this I’ve just read? It feels like I just woke up from a miserable life tale. The only thing I enjoyed was the wine, and that’s a good reason to move out after all; one has to be in a place when we can drink. There’s no point to work – all kinds of work: work out, work in, work at, or work for – if there’s no drinking afterwards.  Thoughts and ideas need to gravitate,  to become part of the ether, and be there for whoever wants to grab such knowledge, and do something with it. That’s the purpose of any writing, in my opinion: be part of the future. Someone may need some, even these pathetic sort of confessions, anything will be useful,  a least as a reference, and to start flowing around, our body is going to need some fuel, and I don’t know what’s better than alcohol for such a purpose.  It’s Friday today, another reason to get a drink after these office hours. If I were in Venezuela, the Venezuela before Maduro era, I would be drinking right now and watching the Olympic Games, then I would be going to any social network to forget and keep drinking.  Those were the days, yes!  Actually the day didn’t end that bad. New versions from a live concert to amuse myself while listening. I also saw Celine Dion at the opening. It was great, just like these songs of Ghost.  Little victories to cheer me up. This story can’t be only a grief. It just can’t.

Saturday morning. I’m in the mood for an ice cream. Let’s see. Tomorrow it’s election day in Venezuela.  I wish us the best, we need the best to keep going, to know that we finally can consider a return. My hope is now there. I have been skeptical and cynical about it, just as many others, but the truth is that we are hoping for a change, our people need a change. Let’s at least have faith.  We all want our kids to at least have the chance to visit where their parents are from. The culture, the Caribbean culture. The mix, the fact that our skin comes from a variety of races and origins, that we are not just another Hispanic  community, and they need to get it first hand and not only from parents tales. Today is the day, by the way! Thousands of Venezuelans in the street trying this one last attempt to beat Maduro and mist of the chavismo off the government.  It’s election day. The only day the people believe – and are in fact, why not! – they can turn the path of the country by choosing different.  I know it has happened before,  and that the government is who does the count of the votes after all. I know that the forecast is not promising,  I know it has never been encouraging, but I choose to believe. I feel it different now. Perhaps because I’m far from my city, perhaps because Nostalgia grows stronger out if sadness,  I don’t know, but today I want to have faith my country will prevail. Our people will prevail. Venezuelans can’t have another period of darkness. It’s enough. It was enough since ten years ago.  It has to stop. We’ll see! Monday morning.  It’s raining. There’s a lot to do at work. I’m not sure if I know what they mean when they say close outs, but I have to do them, whatever they are. I thought this was going to be the happy ending of this tragedy,  that I could write some paragraphs of hope. I want to do it but I don’t feel like doing so. The government played with our faith once again, or perhaps they are trying one last move, who knows! The thing is that they have proclaimed themselves the winners of these elections. I mean Maduro won, according to them. One of the  most despised people alive, have been proclaimed a winner of a popularity based contest. No fiction tell more lies than these bunch of thugs. Truth is what power conquest, maybe, but they don’t have it enough to make the world believe them. Now they will waste the people’s hope in sustaining a lie. It’s kind of sadistic; mean and sadistic.  Whatever done on behalf of the equality, always turn out to be the most unfair. Now I have to rethink, we all have to rethink – and get back to work first, of course – Yes. I just forgot. Our sorrows always have to be delayed. Work comes first when you’re poor and needy. See you later!

 

 

Now the Orwellian forwarded allegedly news: I have a cousin, whose husband has a brother, whose father in law is in the army, and he said that there are rumors that many officers are displeased with such an attribution, that this is an insult to the people and to them, that a strike might be getting set, or even more, a coup from the inside of the army to take down the insolence of Maduro and have a free Venezuela at last. This is not a mock, and I’m not trying to make fun out of this tragedy. My country is grieving,  my people suffer, and these are the kind of news many are forwarding now. Since I read 1984, I started to believe all these rumors are made up from the very core of the government,  just to amuse their sadistic impulse, and see how faith is spread and fade into rumors, while they drink the finest whisky and sniff the highest quality of cocaine on earth. This must be happening now in a five star suite of one of those hotels they expropriated in the name of the greater good of the nation. 

Twelfth page V

 

Thursday, don’t throw me back again, please!  Saturday morning: nothing in my bank accounts… the hell with it, it's Sunday morning now. I couldn’t postpone the wills to sit on the water. Duty called. Cartoons are on, so I expect to finish what I started. I’m hearing some complaints. I guess I have to cut. I have to cut in some many ways; either literally and figuratively. Let’s start with this literal one first.  Hold the line, selected by me. It was rainy all day long.  Boundaries testing and its nonstop actions.  I’m alone now. I saw a couple of pictures, a couple of a set of pictures; both of them of vacation time; two different families, both living here, both Venezuelans. I’m not sure if this is just pure envy, or if I ever have a point, but it seemed kind of a show off, and up to this point, a show off is just vulgar. Only that vulgar provokes. Vulgar always provokes. So I’m not immune to other’s good times, and I have worked a lot not to be so. I am talking from my podium of poverty,  as usual of course. Poor envy although vulgar, specially when it’s vulgar. I want to be vulgar too, I just can’t afford it, and I haven’t been able to since so many years. I want to taste, we all do. Only that we can’t,  so we have to drown this feeling with wine and words, and a new chapter of House Of The Dragon. It’s Sunday night after all, but it’s hasn’t been easy, there’s so much going on, but this is always,  every time, anything is something to worry about, to think of, and to probable turn into something we will postpone to live one more day. It’s exhausting, and nobody cares.

 

Another week. I need to get the Alprazolam.  I’m worried.  It’s in moments of sudden that we feel we don’t belong, that we are forcing something is not meant to be, that we will never fit in. I guess it happens to all of us. I have to be better, to get equal treatment.  Did we know it before we came? May be we did, but verbs feels different in first person. The fiction is over, I have to get back to the reality and go to bed. Financial blessing,  I’m still waiting for you.  Only child syndrome for writing and only child syndrome for thinking. Well, not really. Perhaps for writing. I come here when I feel alone. The TV is on. I’m waiting for the CBD to replace the Alprazolam.  Nothing has happened yet. Yesterday was different,  I boosted it with wine. I even forgot about my debts for a while. The CPR course was fine. It was better than expected.  I really thought I was going to blow it. I should trust myself a little more. I would like to, it’s just that repercussions have been coming up and showing off, so now I realized they were all mistakes; missteps, wrong moves I made thinking they were going to bring me back to stability, and I can’t be more disappointed from these results. At least I can lecture myself through words.

 

Home made meat loaf, I love it. Wine is waiting for me, I need a partner in crime, my partner in crime. I don’t feel like taking a shower. Desire is suffering,  I just read.  What if you don’t like what you see? What about it? Coexist is paramount when lacking resources, specially when you just want to be left alone. It’s a space not everyone can afford. So Time then it’s not the greatest asset but Space as well.  Wednesday.  Wednesday I’m in love. Let’s see for how long.  It’s Thursday now,  both countdowns have started; the first one will reach zero next Sunday.  The election day. A good part of the diaspora remains skeptical, specially those who have made a family abroad already, those no longer work  in factories or production lines. Those ones who are not waiting for an asylum interview or a court hearing anymore. Those ones have moved on, or so we can presume. The hearts have their own reason, so nothing is settled yet, but what I do presume is that the skeptical ones are not the majority.  The majority is waiting, expecting,  and basing their next moves upon election’s results. My heart is beating harder every time I think about it. We have one month left. That’s the drama of us; the uncertainty of the next encounters. When? Where? How? And ‘if’, especially if…  If and Why with a bunch of becauses; becauses with no solid reasons. I only followed my heart, and my heart likes to play. I don’t.  Not when it comes to feelings. So I guess that either you play or be played.  I need more wine. Not really, I’m just tired, and I will never get when people drown themselves inside the phone. I’m tired of being this way alone. Something is broken. I don’t know what. I’m just tired and tiredness makes you make up things to keep yourself uncomfortable.  I am uncomfortable, and tomorrow I have to work.  The future is a foreign land. What a title, Ghost! You really got me. Sadness needs space and time; two assets in this life. Two assets not everyone can afford, so being sad can be kind of a luxury sometimes, this time at least, and even more than being happy. Happiness can be found sometimes,  sadness needs a momentum to acknowledge it. I’m not in the mood to acknowledge.  I want to have Sex and forget, but even sex needs time, space, and an interested partner: interesting,  indeed. 

 

I would like your opinion, but you wouldn’t dare. Maybe I wouldn’t dare. I just want to get the hell out and move on with all my complexes. The air conditioning is off. The bill was extremely high. Poor happenings, as usual. When will this stop? I don’t know. Bearing: a verb for the poor. I hate this sort of poverty.  Maybe I hate the company,  who knows! I don’t even know myself anymore.  I just want to keep on drinking. I’m getting  close… despite of the routine, despite of all these disappointments. Disappointment is not for poor either. We have to keep going. Our survival depends on that. So why do we want to survive? That’s a good question, as a matter of fact. How do we say in English when a fruit is not ripe? I don’t know  in Spanish we say verde, yes, green, and maduro, or madura, when it's ripe. In Spanish fruits have gender, the mongo is male, for example, the banana (in Venezuela; cambur, and only in Venezuela) is male too.  The strawberry is female, and we use it when it comes to pretty girls. Again, only in Venezuela,  as far as I know.