First page II

Many flatter themselves through failure. Failure is a trend nowadays. Moreover, it is a challenge. People are filing their common grounds through these social networking apps. I get asked about mine (recorded failures) pretty often and, don't get me wrong, I may have some. I have tried myself to be part of the rest. It's just that it doesn't feel entirely normal. It is still weird to my sense of what social, or trend, or challenge, mean, and I know these words may be counted as one of those but at least it will take me longer, and I can call it endeavor for my own pleasure.  It is still weird to my senses watching people watching their phones: on a table, o a birthday party, on a walk in the park; yes, a walk in the park where the sounds of the nature, or something like that, is supposed to embrace our vibes and take us along with its frequency, so we may, to put it in some words; climb into a peaceful place a little away from routines.

A little away from routines doesn't seem to be a place where we can go. It's more like putting our attention on a social app. Perhaps this responds to a need we hadn't acknowledged for not having the platform to recognize it in the past. Kind of like fashion, and then we may talk about fashion feelings. Is it depressed a fashion feeling? I don't think so but there must be something of it around. We need to figure it out. We need to figure out why we feel like obeying some sort of deconstructed gathering through social media. A question might be, now that you all have come so far with me on this, that if this feeling is actually what all these profiles talk about, or it is just our ego in need for being part of that collective thing. And by being part of such a collective thing, I take this space to understand myself on this if possible. Right now, for example, I am trying to place a few thoughts that start fading as the break time comes to an end.

Yes, I work. I'm someone's employee. An immigrant who works for someone, for someone who may never take a glance at these words... These words. These words I try to put on a certain perspective to see if I get to come around but it is more a let go. Of what? Well. Let's bring it on: I came to this country at the beginning of my forties. I lived 40 years where I was born. I got married there. I planned my whole life there. Circumstances brought us - My wife and I - to start over, to see if we can make something different from what we had, and we did. We had a son, at least one by the moment these words have been written, so you people could guess we might like another one, why not? It is because I became a parent that I want to make sense with this text. I thought my boy should have something written from me, specially if I end up getting a recognition after all. It's not that I'm on the path to it; probably I've never been but, you know, I might not be around by the time he reads this... or yes, and we'll just laugh at this and carry on.

First page

A fan spinning from the ceiling, making this iterated sound like clicking, like a metronome, yes, a metronome providing me with some tempo to place my thoughts in some memory. A summer day: hot weather, the air conditioning at its maximum, the sense in my skin in between, hot outside cold inside, I've felt it before: coming back to the hotel room from the beach, or to an aunt house from the street in Barcelona, not Spain. It’s good to be back, in my mind, I know. The pain is too real to forget it, but I’m allowed to long for a time when remembering, so why not writing it down, right? I can whisper, catch my breath, and close my eyes while sensing my son sleeping by my side. I feel inspired by him. That’s why I don’t want to get up yet.

This is my first attempt. I guess sometimes it will be in English and some others in Spanish. Should I have started long ago? Perhaps, but this procrastinating-evasive culture has got me, along with a lot of people, so immersed that we just feel bored about the idea of a long-term endeavor.

And another long-term endeavor is down as you see. Every time someone is excited at a new project in his life, this one just vanishes as scrolling down on those touch screens which keep us away from the previous feeling with all these so-called trends. Why do we follow trends in the first place? I understand that in some other time, people consumed what was available in the market through street announcements, old school publicity. Then advertisements had some power based on their influence. Anyone might state that it is still the same but I'm not fully sure, I mean, there's something further. Perhaps it is how I heard it once: if you are not purchasing the product, it’s because the product is you.

There is always something further when it comes to what we call appetite. These short-laugh-meant-to-be videos and images with which we fill up our daily perception, undermines, in a certain way, I guess, our disposition for a challenge. The word challenge itself has been changed from what is supposed to mean to us. Challenge appears not to be personal anymore. I mean, what's the point of recording yourself doing something a million more do as well? It fades with the traffic. It’s becoming in a single dot of one giant colorful flag. We could say it has always been that way, that it is so it, that perhaps this is where you find the reason why there are so many people sticking to the same choices, hoping to find that sort of abstract uniqueness through which many flatter themselves, but not in my head. I feel like I want more. I feel like wishing for a jump back in time for reading a book again at least.

Powerless

 

There comes a time when you realized how lonely it is getting by the sound of someone else´s chatting phone. That´s the sound of loneliness. The sound that reminds you such a conversation doesn´t include you. This feeling is not coming up when walking or working, and it hardly ever comes up when you´re alone. Instead, it shows up like a spooky ghost when you are with someone, and that someone is clearly not with you. That´s why the phone gets noisy. So, you start wondering and it is right there when wondering finds you things it should not.

 

There have been almost two weeks since I was told not to go to work due to some system situation. It has been much more since the last time I kept up on writing. I wrote some a few days ago, but it is not something I do very often anymore. Sometimes I get angry with myself for it, but I pay no further attention to that since I always have some bigger situation to worry about. I started by reading some of the things I´ve done so far and they are not like; very good, now that I go back to them. The thing is that this is somehow therapeutical, so it helps me worry less about what I do now. Nevertheless, I´m getting sleepy and I´m kind of losing what it was that I wanted to say. One of those things was about this lockdown; I mean, haven´t we always been so? At least from the last five years maybe? The fact we take pictures of any daily basis activity, or this sort of impulse we´ve developed of framing any of our responses in one of these already made images; with some prank on it - those we call “memes” in my country, or “stickers” in our prominent social media.- I mean, we´ve already given away some feelings in order to fit with the mass criteria, joining a bigger virtual group  that apparently makes us look cool. Fine, to whom, I ask. That´s one of the things I wanted to say. Who do we act or behave for? And yes, this has more to do with someone than something. Purposes have lost touch with what we want to be. Rather than it, we focus on fitting with someone´s archetype. That´s how I comprehend this need of showing anything, especially when this anything turns out everything. So, the lockdown is not changing us that much over such aspects. Lockdown has been affecting us on some other things, for instance, jobs, supplies, and perhaps those things many forget they can´t be done from home. What would happen if such companies be forced to close, in order to comply with some new politics? What would happen to all the people who need to go to work every day?

 

I started reading something and suddenly remembered my people, my country. How did we get so far? I think there are many who actually believe they know the answer, but the moment they start opposing each other´s statements, we can tell right away we´re more filled up with doubts rather than certainties. There is some consensus of course: Maduro is an evil piece of a dictator, one of the worst kinds. Everyone agrees but I mean, how; how did it happen? This is what I think. Before Chavez's era, the Government still controlled the economy, and people from the academy were left behind already. The idea of balance sounded like a melody of hope among all those people with no privileges in that society. They managed to sell that Chavez was just like the most; and that meant poor, low class, and his people got such an achievement without visiting so many barrios like old politics demanded by then. So, yes, a tv candidate, an idea supported by a few rich and several intellectuals, along with some promising and unprecedented alliances, made him the president who managed to change the Constitution. A Constitution they had to edit later again but the damage was already done by that time. I´m pretty sure people of my age don´t know anything else, so we got used to putting our trust in politicians and that became a habit, a habit created by the old politics, and that could be why so many people are positive over the fact that Chavez won the elections because of the poor, those mistakenly called ignorant, and if there is some certainty over this all, it is precise that the poor don´t, and of course didn´t then, have the chance to choose. I guess this is what power looks like after all.

 

And there is the sound of loneliness again, freaking out, reminding, always reminding, among other things, that I have to get back to write not to be this uneasy. That´s what I´m trying here, and speaking about it, that´s what lockdown means in the end, an exercise of power, I mean when politicians enable themselves to do so. In other words, Power being Power. And I remembered the Linkin´ Park song, not because of what it says but of its name: Powerless…

 

Powerless is how you feel when you want to know but you can´t because knowing is not up to yourself, so we have to accept so many lies as the truth that we feel we need to escape. Where do we escape in times of pandemic?

Wasted Time

 

Todavía Ciudad Banesco era Maxis; o Maxi’s. El tema con los apóstrofes sin pocesivos fue una moda que quizàs la globalización se encargó de aclarar. Pero estamos a mitad de los 90, por ahí; en un momento en el que se remataban los vinilos por un tema de espacio y/o de tecnología. Un pana me llama; llégate, los LP – así se le dacía al vinilo entonces – los están rematando a 100. Para ponerlo en perspectiva, un CD podía costar casi los dos mil bolívares, por lo que con el precio de uno, te comprabas hasta veinte vinilos. Quedaban pocos, sin embargo la sección de rock nunca decepcionaba: por alguna razón en mi país la gente es más propensa a otros estilos, afortunadamente para mí en ese momento. Ahí lo veo: Skid Row, Slave to The Grind. Ni idea qué tocaban, yo venía apenas de un ritual de iniciación con Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana y Metallica… ah, y Megadeth, por lo que no sé por qué tanta ridiculez hoy en día con ellos, o con él, más bien.  Me gustó la portada; tenía un no sé qué que no me dejaba seguir mirando, y a 100 bolos apenas, me lo llevé. Lo puse, iba bien, normal, yo no estaba muy ducho con el estilo, tendría unos trece o catorce años a lo sumo. La cronología de este evento puede que se ubique entre el golpe fallido y el suicidio de Cobain. Llegué a este tema que se llama In A Darkened Room. Ahí me detuve. Ahí empecé a disfrutarlo: el solo, el ritmo, el grito de Sebastian. Para mí; un temazo… y pues nada, solo quería servir unas cuantas palabras en su honor. Para una época en la que ya no se graban casettes y que la casualidad depende más de un algoritmo, me provocó recordarlos. Y ahora que vuelvo a escuchar el disco, me quedo también con Wasted Time, sobre todo con este verso: “Can you live with yourself when you think of what you've left behind?”. Se me ocurrió pensar en eso y en Federico, ¿saben? Por aquello de, tratando de parafrasearlo y no de recurrir al copia y pega: qué va a saber de amor quien no ha despreciado lo que amaba. Por ahí andaba, y bueno pues, he ahí la canción. ¿Será todo sólo tiempo perdido?

 

Saludos en letras…

 

 

Aclaratoria: la imagen es referencia.