First page V

Again,  What if this has always been like That? I think I can remember a couple of movies with such a topic. I am pretty sure I might have read something from Phillip Dick or Asimov suggesting it so. It think my English might not be enough to convey this but you guys will understand I kind of need to practice.  Warehouses are no place for that. The language of the obedience is something we all might know even when we don't want to but the language of the questioning is something that immigrants don't do too often. Perhaps  for catharsis, and not in front of  anyone. In fact that is why I have to write it, because few people I know may have some insights about it. We mostly get comfortable at the following two choices: deny it or reduce it to a joke. Venezuelans are good at this. Satirizing might be a word for this case.

Satirizing obeys to a need we have when we are in pain due to a situation we simply cannot solve. For instance the political situation of our country: we try to reduce the tyrants to puppets so we can laugh at them and get some sort of relieve to keep bearing the fact we left a life we might not get back ever again. In my case, this new life gave me a purpose,  and there's nothing better to keep going than having a purpose. My purpose are my children: the one I have and the one coming up within 8 or 9 months from these words. So let's keep going. However I feel my fellow countrymen. Despite there are a couple of things I find hard to get, I can understand that sometimes all this attitude follows a sort of let go sentiment and that is just a way to carry on. Sometimes I wonder if it is the same impulse that has me over thinking to a point of creating this parallel reality, in which I no longer owe money and finally enjoy with my family. Expectations changes big over the years. I used to dream a lot with stages and big crowds while performing. Now those moments that never occurred,  by the way, are more like spread in the air from an exhalation that came with someone’s drag: smoke faith fade; and fades….

A summer morning. One of those where sun rises at 5:20 AM. We don’t have that, we’re more like an hour later. Seasons are not felt the same way. We’re used to different weathers…  Denial. It is not happening to me, I guess. Maybe these words are my denial. I’m not sure anymore. I keep thinking about the futility of my efforts. Let’s go back with my fellows and what they do. What we do, indeed.  We still gather and drink and talk about how good our lives used to be in a time of a progress so announced and expected. Did it come? An illusion came, an illusion. Yes, there were better moments then, but I have come to think that those past glories, counted as such, lies more in this cultural fact about salary, about college education. The Venezuelan system got a new law for labor enforcement, that was, if I’m not wrong, right after Chávez proclamation, at least not so many months later. 

There’s no point in finding the exact date. In our culture,  people, public employees mostly, get paid despite their attendance. We got used to get paid to belong and not for the work done, which means, among a variety of insights,  that features such as physical appearance,  political beliefs, social status, and several others,  were the primary ones taken in consideration when hiring someone, rather than his curriculum,  or even the experience. Even the expertise was a  secondary feature, and we are talking about a whole cultural system. So you could come late, leave early, take more time to lunch, and in some cases, prioritize your social media accounts over the things you are supposed to do at work. Imagine the strength of the impact, now that we crossed through the window of cultures to the rest of the world. Imagine those fellows realizing of the difference: maybe that's why we stick to past times in present tense on every other memory. It's is kind of like we fuel ourselves with it, so we need it to load us up and keep going with the life we've chosen. Did we choose it or we’ve been forced to? I assume it was our choice, but for some reason it  bothers me. I'm aware it is not my problem, and that I may be projecting something within towards such an attitude, but I can't help it. You see, as a species we evolve to survive, and the fact that these people keep popping up this sort of pose, trying to look like some cool, somehow made me feel lost.  We all know that it might not have been so, because otherwise we wouldn't be here trying to get a supervisor's order right, with the English we should have learned by now, given the time we've been in here. It is a process,  we all need to learn, but there’s still something I can’t get right.

First page IV

Loans, from another angle, bring balance to work and society relationships, I guess. I guess I have too much balance of that kind. I've been trying to deal with this balanced world which is my current situation. I quit smoking a few years ago. I thought it was no good for balance. Nevertheless, I'm still surrounded by the smoke, smoke in the air, smoke on my door, in my bed, over my plans for life, surrounding my faith. I guess I finally got the purpose of these words: This is faith based on smoke. That's how many of us get to believe in anything, and maybe that's why believing is so hard on our eyes, because of the smoke. Good business for dentists and for dental plans. Smoke trust, smoke faith; everything is blurry: ashes, ashes on my fingertips, on hers, on everyone's. Let's just wish for the day to end. Too much breathing in closed spaces, too many doors shut and too thick feelings from this smell of smoke. It's hard to keep the faith, I would have to get back to smoking... I didn't, I'm not, I wouldn't really do so but I think I will keep pushing thoughts as they were the drags I may be smoking in every break I take, just as long as you're still with me on this.

So, are you still with me? There's always something good coming up. It's this preconception that good means wealth that is having us chasing goals. Goal is a very wide word. Goal gives shelter to so many situations. Perhaps it was this compulsion to set everything in goals, (and therefore talk about achievements) that has forced us take closer look to results rather than watching the development of a progress. Progress has been kidnapped by politicians, by the way. Progress and Goal went out one day and got lost from Faith. It could be Faith's fault when it decided to smoke itself in the air and in our thoughts. Our thoughts need to grow deep and clear to get dressed by perspectives properly, and not just impulsively since there are so many of it. We need to rescue our terms before the social media turns them entirely. Books haven't been burned down yet, so we might have some chance, otherwise we'll start conceiving failure by denying it, which will tend to be how we'll end up accepting everything.

Deny your failure by pointing someone else's, by mocking them. Schaffenfreunde! Voila! Success is kidnapped too. Is it Cosmo-vision for English as it is in Spanish? There are so many fellow countrymen in sorrow because of this ethnocentric meaning for the word “work”. It is a process, I guess. In a virtual society measured from Failure to Success through Goals (Whatever we call goals) Social Status made its entrance by redefinition. It's more about what I show than what I have. I have a son, and another one is coming as this is being written. I want to think these words might give them a glance of the world I would like to show them. A world of recorded tapes and VCRs. Nostalgia sold out! Not really. I want them to touch and see beyond the screens. I am going to play them as much rock music as I possibly can. I refuse to accept Reggaeton as a style of music. Not for me, neither for them. Words must be rescued. Cosmo-vision must be opened up to hold wider perceptions. To hold wider perceptions, we should read and travel. Books still beat up but Time is something else. Time and balance, balance as debts, of course. Time and Work: quite a couple! Spare time: yes!

Spare time and Social networking: I don't know what to say about this relationship. I come from a zapping time. I guess habits just get enhanced through newer adaptations. Vaping instead of smoking: Vaping faith: faith in fade. Human race evolved to make the palm of the hand not only a figurative place but an actual place indeed. Just like the pocket; the pocket now stores a big deal by storing you phone. Store your memories. So you can remember that it actually happened, that it wasn't just a pose for an empty picture. An empty picture full of trends. This is not meant to be trendy, by the way. But what if those pictures changed? Can you imagine it? Imagine that you went to a party, you had something to drink, to eat, you chatted with someone, you looked into his social media profile, and suddenly, when you feel like you want to remember it and take a look at the pictures you took, it turns out that they were not as you thought they were: another place, another person, a different food, a different date, a different you! Who are you anyway?

Futility is an interesting word. I know my purpose as a man now, but before that, I just saw myself as some sort vessel in which every person I have ever cared for, could download their issues. If Listening to complains were something like a well paid job, I think I would be some master at it, I would be a wealthy person. But nobody knows what may come with time, it might be something on demand in a near future. In ten years from now there will be more people with more issues thanks to these endless (and pointless) comparisons through social media. Through social media we got used to see and be seen. Let's not blow the candles until we get a good picture to upload!. What if this has always been like that? Perhaps this persona transfer we agreed to do with all these apps is just easing the means for those who actually take profit from this. Maybe we have always been somebody else's ants. Our cities might have been some kids' Legos, and if so, I could never imagine the kind of kid who got Caracas and Guarenas to play with.

First page III

My boy has redefined me entirely. I want to be better for him. I started trying to improve myself again thanks to him. Nevertheless I still work in a warehouse and place a few words from break to break. And from break to break indeed I've been placing these and, by placing them I try to simulate this block chain technology but with my thoughts. I'm not sure if I would ever get it but I've been trying to understand it with this sort of analogy: every time I have a chance, I write something on this, let's call it: composition. Every "block" I add may not mean anything by itself but, If you read the whole thing, you may get the point of the story or at least what I'm trying to say. I believe it is sort of that with the block chain technology as well, at least for a not-at-all tech person, which in the end it means that: we don't know yet where we will go with it but we know we're heading to somewhere, and every single block will play a part on it.

And every single block can hold a value. What sort of value could my blocks hold? Moreover, Who would buy a share and what for might that be? Interesting, isn't it? Isn't that what everyone wants from that excessive time on social media? To be somehow bought by someone? Did that person buy what you're selling? Was it a good trade? I wonder. Technology has brought a new perspective for exposure. We came from a moment of privacy to an environment where myself doesn’t need to be mine completely, that I can actually split it in a way to make it fit with what our world is allegedly heading. I wonder how and I wonder why, I heard several times. I wonder how debts work sometimes. Assuming we all work and, by work I mean being in a place you hardly want to be, doing something you hardly want to do, in exchange of an amount you may have never decided but certainly, you have accepted due to a situation that puts you in a place of a society you have no idea how it came up. But it's not only that. It turns out that such amount won't be enough for the things you want to have and, on another side, there is a whole system; a social system, of course, compelling you to buy those things you didn't know you needed and now that you do, you feel miserable for not having them yet. That could make you feel trapped from a certain point of view. You might even see yourself as somebody’s hamster but there are solutions for that. There are institutions that lend you money to solve your made up immediate problems. So you go ahead and ask for a loan.

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.