Second Page

A first break. A break that goes  fast and only with coffee. No food. This is the moment in which I should contemplate and place some thoughts. I kind of feel inspired by some of my workmates.  The way they keep joy and enthusiasm despite the routine is admirable.  I'm not like them but the truth is that somehow they make me forget about my situation for a while. I came up with this because I kind of forgot what I was going to write about. People need to deal with problems everyday; I believe that half of those problems come as a consequence from pretending, to a  certain point, something we are not. The other half tend to be more about knowledge or experience on certain situations.  For example,  many people confuse arrogance with honesty, claiming that they act like that because they are too honest and therefore they can’t lie. This, let’s say, type of  honesty, is hypocrisy. When someone approaches claiming that those hard words he said were meant to be out of honesty, it's not. It's just an ignorant ego stealing space and time with a poor justification, the thing is the conviction,  the one making you stick with that idea of some righteousness learned from an old movie, the kind of movie in which the main character can take a whole city to the ground just to prove that the villain is wrong. I guess the mind works kind of like: when something is missing, a word, a concept, a place, even a feeling, the brain takes whatever closest it can get. Pretend, yes. There is always something we take for granted based on those things we ignore. However what I want to bring up is if we ignore it accidentally or we choose to ignore it.  What in us might determine it? I guess it's our will... But what if I say that those drags of smoke might be what brings faith and will to the same thought,  to the same reflection?  We should acknowledge it: every promise falls into our convictions and we carry it through the smoke. Maybe that's why it fades; because of the anxiety.  Yellow teeth resembles so many promises that couldn't be kept. So the fingers. Specially our hands. How far has this metaphor changed from its meaning. In my hands, in my arms.

 
We keep the faith, and the will, somewhere in the air, in this room, and at this time.  How about health? Health seems to be more like a concept rather than a name. It varies over the years and the places. Covid-19 has clarified that pretty well. In fact, Covid-19 has shown the world that religions don't have the exclusive on closed-minded fanatics. We have always put science in a higher place over any other form of thinking, so these times have brought more angles and perspectives on that. Due to my age, I have had the chance to see the establishment of the cell phone in our society.  I remember when SMS messages came up for the first time and how was, from my angle, their impact back then. I remember it started out kind of like Twitter did: with a limited number of characters and no symbols such as emoticons or gif files at all. It was about the plane text. Sometimes I think about it and wonder whether inventors (tech inventors, I mean) hoped that society would get communicated by the establishment of the text message. Did any of them ever consider the grammatical implications? There is this uncomfortable thing with the information as well: I mean, first, this sort of no-grammatical-considerations veil to cover indeed this another veil which is the veracity of the information. I believe it started with the email, sure,  but when I try to set my own block of thoughts, I might see a pattern,  a route, a path for the information to get deconstructed in data, so thoughts may lose purpose afterward being conducted on a wave of post-truth.  What are thoughts without grammar? Words, words served for multiple puzzles. Do you know the puzzle you’re solving through your words? 

First page VI

Another toilet morning. A holiday’s next day has begun. Today It’s a holiday in Venezuela. Some noises come through the walls as they had their own language. It’s like If there was a kid playing with his blocks and they were the building we live in. Building is a fine word for describing these type of structures. A few days have gone by. I saw something good on social media: the four missing kids in Colombia were found alive. The reported was about to cry while giving the news and I just cried myself while watching. That was a couple of weeks ago. A month, perhaps. Good news to bring up. It's like the reporter then said: this is full of hope, and I agree with her. God bless those children! I wanted to phrase a little bit about faith again; Smoke Faith, as I've named it. It occurs to me that if I'm going public with these words I should go back with this idea and deal with it over and over until I have pleased myself out of explanation. Supposing it makes any sense at all. So here it goes: I kind of forgot what I've written so far about it, but I'm pretty sure I'm not getting far from the idea. Smoke Faith: I hate the smell of the smoke. I used to love it. I mean, there was a time in which I related that smell with having a good time in so many ways. Now I feel different about it. It's not that I really hate it. It's just that it now recalls worries and I think I’m some fed up with that. Push. Someone pushes for whatever reason his ego demands, and when such a push comes dressed up as faith, it could be hard to get a better perspective. The thing is that it normally fades but does not fade away. Something remains and it can grow again, like the smoke. After all, we're made out of dust. Dust. Dusty. What is the substance of my beliefs? Time is sand in my hands, Cerati sings in my head. I'm not even listening to the music I used to. I used to be this kind of person who recorded tapes from a selection of different albums. That implied, if you guys can recall, taking the time for each and every song and listening to them completely while being recorded. I guess that's why listening to such self selections hasn't been something that people who work a lot could do. I guess that's how the remote control got its reign, a reign now conquered by social media. I guess that's why I've become one those. I've been conquered too.

Now it's the time for short answers: now the self selection is more like; a bunch of yes and noes along with this frustration that comes from not choosing properly when to accept or refuse. Overtime. Overtime? Yes. Sundays? Yes. Night shift? Yes. Do you actually get some rest in the morning? No. Mail. Letters. Letters asking for payments you didn't know you had. Dates due, of course. You must call, and then rest. Can you? And yet you just keep thinking about that song, the one that makes you remember and evoke. Technology paid back al least with that. By letting us Nostalgia. Close your eyes. There's no time to listen to it entirely; live version has this solo but you just get interrupted: some message, something you forgot besides the debt. Now they are two calls and your English is not good enough to complain properly, so it will be more of short answers, and in the end you couldn’t get any rest. Is that too often? To my taste, yes!

Thus a new day comes and go by immersed in the routine. A bath, a shower, a sunset without a view. The worries that visit and don’t want to go. I've managed to listen to a couple of songs, awesomely, and by accident; I listened to them both entirely. Now I feel guilty about it. Why? Why sometimes giving yourself a little pleasure feels like you're doing something you shouldn't? Time to clock in. “When the doves cry” from Prince is playing in my earbuds. Let's walk. Music down. We're not allowed to play music on equipment nor using the cell phone. Breaks: one and two. What is this tiredness? Is it something mind-over-body thing?? It could be the smoke; the faith fading into a smell all over our clothes. We breathe it, so we feel it even when we are naked. Naked we want to be. Naked of prejudices to obey peacefully and get through with this we have. What do we have, I wonder? We have debts for balance, but we never get Naked from it. That's why the faith is just smoke. Let's drag us out. I was in this endless wondering every time it comes to talk about our life in Venezuela: this bittersweet taste for memories. What we're longing; feeling nostalgic for, and immediately after, the reasons that made us move out. I guess this is what being an immigrant is about: never stop missing and never stop resenting. Will my kids get this in the future? Who knows!

About Get. Get is an interesting word. Spanish language doesn't have it like that. For Hispanics the word get is expressed through several different words that, taking them closely, they may not mean get as it is English. So when you say: 'I got you' in so many talks, that is not exactly something we use in Spanish language. With that being said (written) I may not be getting this and you may be getting it different. However we meet halfway, and it turns out that it actually works pretty decent for both sides of the tale. So in my halfway message and your halfway eyes, I want to serve these words as a claim to this life we wonder if we ever chose but we now have to deal with. I'm not going to lie, I feel very lonely. This life as an immigrant has made me see through angles I would have liked not to meet. Sometimes the body may learn from theory and not by living the actual experience but I need to keep going. My son needs it, the upcoming one needs it. So let's face it. Let's fight another day. I am constantly wondering what is this thing that sort of controls me? I am sure that there is something out there that holds you back and make you refrain from letting yourself go and do what you know it's best for you: I think twice to check if what I'm about to say may be offensive to someone. I mean, why? Why am I programed this way? Who planted this need of considering everything? Am I someone's pet? If so, that person don't like me that much. During moments like this, my mind works on an attempt of putting pieces together: blocks of thoughts, parts o a certain memory; pieces from a past time or doubts born from the hesitation, from a blurry pictured future; pieces that I can switch when I come around, moving pieces from one place to another, in some way: decorating, something I remember I would have liked to do along with a short list of things I have to buy tomorrow, which is when I get paid: get, bringing back to an eyes closed vision that time in Paris, in Lisbon, and smile. I want to take my children there. Drums, drums playing. Everything comes with grooves and beats. I can’t function otherwise. I miss playing the drums, by the way.

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.