Third page IV

 

An indoors contemplation.  No balcony today. Unappreciated comes to my mind. What is appreciation anyway? Until what point do we expect appreciation when we do something? Is it something we start expecting or is it expected when we start  something? I wonder because I would like to point out, if possible,  what could it be when you stop doing something out of your own personal motivation, rather than for external appreciation, or acknowledgement purposes.  Can we? Or is it all implied? I woke up thinking about it, but moreover; I woke up trying to leave it written in English words. I’m trying here: a guy goes to work. Let’s say he’s not the smartest kind. Actually he has – I could tell – this sort of thing I want to call Lack of attention. The guy seems he can’t focus, so he makes a lot of mistakes while doing his job, which is pick a certain number of packages by request and drop them on a belt for shipping. There was a jam on the belt. It was not his fault. We tend to have some predisposition towards him because he miscounts too often, but with the jam I can say it was not on him. He got hurt in the attempt of clearing it. He got hurt because he tried hard. Where shall we meet appreciation here? Shall his boss acknowledge of his effort? Did he actually do it pursuing such a thing? I wonder. I’m wondering about it. I want to say that what happened to him meant something… to anyone,  or anything, but it didn’t. If we take his case as an example, his effort was not in search of recognition.  He just felt like he could, maybe, that he had to, and if someone appreciated it, that was by chance, not as an acknowledgement of his attempt. In conclusion; appreciation comes out of chance. Prove me wrong! Let’s bring another word: resentment.  Are we resentful? It comes and go, to be honest. Of course,  I’m taking about myself. It comes from time to time because it’s hard to unlearn values you were taught since childhood and for long periods as well. I am too immersed in believing that merit is something we deserve by nature, and that it is actually derived from our efforts. That’s my culture talking. Even now that I know it was made up by politicians of my region, but still, it’s a bad habit,  like smoking, like finding cheap dopamine on my cell phone. I can’t help it. I think I deserve better. Sorry but not sorry!

 

It feels weird not to be working right now. It’s Sunday afternoon, why would I? Because of the bills. Yes, the bills… and the loans! Guilt is something special but why do I feel guilty? I’m supposed to feel relaxed. I’m trying. Actually I’m holding a glass of wine and seeing if the truth of the enlightenment comes in through a sip. You know: in vino veritas. But so far nothing has arrived yet. And after a while, the only thing that has come is the perception.  The perception is, according to something I’ve read,  a projection our eyes take to our brain, so this one can give it a meaning. Therefore what we see may not be exactly the same thing in each head, and that is because, let’s say,  the way we interpret is unique. Unless,  of course, we were one of those into social media, which means zero discernment, and with that being said, written in this case, we may have an idea of where social media is heading us, and what we might be at the end of this story. What’s your story about anyway? Do we have a story in the first place? Of course we do. Is it important? It might be to some, and those some could see us, so let’s be seen through words and be read instead. We would become words, and words can be used in any message. We’ll be messages at the end of any attempt.  Let’s be one of hope, of faith,  and not one that fades into smoke. Let’s be hard to drag but nice to digest. Let’s be more like a dessert. Why? We must be what we want to be. Are we sure of that? Not me. But wine made its work and now I need to sleep. 

 

A new week. Dark still. Machine noise-like. Some air conditioning,  perhaps.  I can’t see the words I’m writing.  It might be the stress. There’s always something failing. Who might we be giving our energy? Our vitality? Someone must get fed on it. We get tired for those people. A life full of must and shouldn’t definitely has to be out of someone else’s need and such need… on us. I want to go to bed, for an hour at least but I have to go back to work. I’m back to my old job, by the way. I just miss the music but for the rest of the things, I’m better here now. I have another job: typical. I belong – not sure if proudly, but I do, I am one of those – to this sort of group of men, who were raised with this belief, that man should do what he must because he’s a man. A sort of burden-carrier-type with no complaints, and only silence and hard work. Am I comfortable at it? Hardly ever. Am I going to change? Not likely.  Writing is pretty much my therapy. I’m trying. I’ve said it before. The thing is that, giving the nature of my being, I have a second job. It’s not hard at all. If I place anything against it, it would be just drama for this comedy. What I want to say is that I am poorly rated at that job, and I think it affects my chances for getting good deals. I do deliveries. The other bad thing is having less time to spend with my son. It is what it is, people say here. I always try to find some minutes to hold him, to tell him that I love him. To let him know he is my world. And someday soon, I expect to find much more time to be with him. I cry of joy when he  laughs. I know what being in love really is because of him. Dark again in the balcony.  A car passes by and some other apartment’s engine has just turned on.  The beginning of a song led by the garbage compactor. The sound I make with every sip of coffee add some too, probably. No butterflies. Break time. A few voices kind of like a bass line. I’m sitting with two fellow countrymen as these words are taking place. I can tell one of them wants to talk. I can see him looking at me but he stays quiet and go back to his phone, pretty often, but not for long. That’s how we are nowadays: choosing worlds; in or out of the screen. I’m on the screen now right after finishing my second job. Again, not a good day. I already wrote a little bit about it, but it came to my mind again: burden-carrier-type… what should I do? How could I embrace it? I’m not making enough on my own, so what am I supposed to do? Now I’m just complaining but tomorrow it will be a new day and due dates are coming: they don’t ask how am I doing. They just come and take whatever we’ve worked hard for, including  the metaphorically speaking: plans, dreams, peace, will; mostly will. 

Third page III

 

Friday afternoon.  That used to mean something but not now, not anymore. There’s work tomorrow so Friday could be any Monday. I’m trying to bring up a time where days of week mattered for doing any specific thing. I don’t. I can’t.  I believe I’m jut going to take my son for a little walk. Let’s see If I can gather a couple of sentences to serve after that. See you then. Then is now. Not much to write about. Daylight is still painting the sky with its typical blue. Colors. 10 hours shift. Mosquitoes. The balcony is not welcoming as expected. I got wine, I guess I just need add some to my mind,  so I can at least forget for a while and bear the news stoically, which is the most accurate way to face it. I was watching a guy exposing that we should stop complaining immediately. Complaining is a bad habit kind of like smoking. You just get addicted to it. If you don’t like something,  change it, if you can’t change it, discard it, if you can’t discard it, start any sort of movement against it; a campaign, a counterstrike, but please stop complaining.  I was thinking about it. This is pretty much a complaining, and I’m doing it through written words because I feel I don’t have the voice up for it. I’m sticking with this guy’s speech about complaining because I saw it convenient for me. I just quit complaining. Yes. Yes, but. Yes, but what about these words? This is my therapy,  hoping to get a least a faster English writing, or a less mistaken one, if possible.  It is still dark. There’s a little light on the back announcing a new day comes. It is quiet. No birds singing,  no wind melodies, maybe a few bugs making their way. An intro, an overture. Some vestiges from last night wine. Yeah. More for worse than for better but it sort of put a smile on my face. Face is a fine word. In our Spanish, most of the meanings derived from facing goes on the forehead. We forehead the truth rather than face it. Let’s forehead this life. Beer in hand. Saturday evening.  Nothing to write about. I was thinking about the disappointment. Why will it be that we hold on hope when we know we’re going to be laid down? I’ll stop smoking.  I will stop smoking next Sunday.  Next Sunday is tomorrow.  Why do we believe? We only get the chance to love our children as they see us great, and that is pretty much it. The rest will only keep disappointing us. We are going to let someone down too. This world is, in the end, a result of some mixture from all those things done out of a chain of disappointments. Whatever we can make up from it. Wherever we can go on from it.

 

Dark blue Monday. Dark because it’s early. Blue because sunrise is coming in a hour. Stars are still floating in the sky. I can see many, actually. I’ve never been a star reader. I don’t know what do they mean or if they do mean something at all. I see them more like little windows that let pass a bigger light from the other side. Of course, that is nonsense, right? Supposing that these surroundings were not as infinite as science claims they are. The thing is how science is so convincing on showing the magnitude of the untouchable, but when it comes to human soul, everything is reduced to superstition.  I haven’t found anything about it yet but the truth is I’m not really looking for it either. It is just that there are  people, specially these coffee shop pseudo-intellectuals, that claim, assure and deny, with this confidence so derived from a total absent corroboration, that precision is met only through science, and superstition, which means everything else, is typical of ignorants, and by ignorants they often mean the people who didn’t go to college. Going to college in my country is seen as some sort of important, and significant, step towards self realization.  Understanding self realization as an elevated social state (or status) of the person itself.

 

It is hard for a society to grow surrounded by people who claim that bare knowledge holds a market value for which the government,  by any means, must pay, and I say government because who else will pay for hiring someone whose expertise is not required? I won’t hire a lawyer to fix my pipes, right? And If it happens that the piper is a lawyer, because he went to law school, I would be hiring him as piper, not as a lawyer. It seems obvious but obvious stands by the culture who proclaims it so. That is one of the things we learn when we leave home. We come with this,  I've read it’s called: Cultural baggage, and it’s hard to unpack it and let it get along with the soil that is holding you now. Besides that,  there are these daily basis little undoings, which add a bit of frustration to any attempt of conviction I try to build. Another day comes. It's darker than yesterday. There are these butterflies trying to remind me of something.  We are in the afternoon now, inside the company’s property, feeling the heat, the sweat; the sticky sensation when taking the pants off and on, the march of the equipment; machines keeping up the beat of the must, of the duty, of the programmed schedule to meet the goals. Not my goals, of course. Not anyone sweating or lifting weight either.  Chaplin’s Modern Times pops up in my head. Block chain technology,  only the human type. Dark again, darker, also earlier and no butterflies. It’s is now when I can write. It is not now when I would like to put a thought into words. I hear a car passing by. Another person going to work, I presume. I feel tired already but at least I can listen to music I actually choose. It is strange how the things I enjoy find, and hide from myself; depending on the case, a certain path for not being completely absent in this very case. Despite of everything,  here a I am listening to music. Boxes are coming up: “Dame tu amor, sólo tu amor, sólo dame tu amor”. Let’s see if good news come in too. Let’s see if good news come in too. “You get what you deserve”; what do I deserve? Do we really live under a system of deserving anything at all? That works for music songs, yes, but music songs move you, move me, move us. We bear big things thanks to music songs. Thanks to art in general. Lunch time. A cat. I used to see cats and dogs on the streets of Caracas all the time. Not here. Not common. I may write something about it, but I understand every place has its own procedures when it comes to animals. I’ve seen some deer here, they are just cute. They make my day every time. There’s a red window in the apartment across the street. We’re pretty close. It’s more like a red reflex from what is inside. I guess it is because of the curtain, it must be red. The color and the light, along with this darkness, makes it special, makes me wonder; imagine, think of the shape of a woman’s body taking her clothes on. She got up naked, I think, and naked is why I can sense the details from where I stand. My coffee gets cold, my attention is on my eyes, but it’s not my eyes really. It’s more what I’m thinking of. The woman dances, yes, dances while getting dress, I become her audience: this is a show. Is she aware of me? Who knows! I take my imagination inside my house. It’s time to get ready for work. It was a rough day. I have this sense of satisfaction because I was up the task even though I tend to see myself kind of old for things like that. I thought about a glass of wine but I decided to postpone it until tomorrow.  I am going to see Sum 41 and The Offspring. The first one has a song named We’re all to Blame. I hope to get the chance to listen to it. Tomorrow will be a day not to think about debts or worries. I’ll see my sorrows on Saturday. Hopefully I may have some time to let myself go and worry back again. It was good. I had a great time. I went back to teen years. I was unavoidably comparing the difference. It was great. 

Third page II

 

Sunrise got from a red paint to a blueish yellow. It’s time to go but here I am: sitting in this balcony and contemplating along with my thoughts.  I haven’t enjoyed it enough, I often  tell myself. There’s always something, someone, which I’m supposed to share it with. Share is a nice thing to write about. Moments to share, for evocation, as needed, of reflection,  with you, without them, under this sky, above the hardest times, inside each other, and moments we just don’t want to share. A few changes inside the house, some magic act on TV. There is this novel about a guy who fights his TV and goes crazy systematically as the novel passes. It is a Venezuelan writer. The name of the book is The Wizard of the Glass Face. A nice souvenir if ever want a piece of my country.  I believe that if you want to, let’s say,  know about some place’s culture, a fine way to do so could be through their voices; writers tend to be the most prominent ones at it. Musicians and moviemakers too, but there is this personal statement that writers know best, specially when it comes to send a message or tell something. For instance I don’t think any Reggaeton artist will ever define the culture wherever they come from. I don’t see them as musicians at all. Unfortunately, I have to acknowledge that their impact over our society is solid, to a point that any friend or relative may easily know, and like, some of them. There’s this paradox: they call themselves urban artists, so many of us unavoidably think of them when bringing up such a definition. As urban artists, and along with a massive market strategy,  they’ve been placed side by side with actual musicians, which meant with time that regardless my denial and many others’ who feel me, because what they do is not music, they’ve come to establish that as a new genre, making themselves a room in the music industry. This urban style have made a perfect fit to a generation now used to phone apps and social media for stimulation. That occurs because of the growing rejection of long-term processes.

 

How about my generation on long-term processes? Many of us couldn’t finish a book anymore. Sunrise starts getting late. There are no color combinations I can taste from where I stand.  I sense fog instead. Not the kind that won’t let see what’s next but the kind that makes the sky looks blurry. What I do sense and taste is the coffee on my side. I made it strong; bold, I believe is the appropriate word to describe it. In our perception,  we would use thick to replace bold for this strong coffee. As I understand it, in our case, the metaphor goes more on the texture, despite we’re talking about a liquid. And that is something we could highlight to understand our culture. We may say we kind of need to touch, or have a sense of the matter at least, over the majority of the things we talk, or think about. That could explain why we need our hands to talk. We talk about the sky, and the impulse of putting our hand up high to draw a figure, somehow related to the talking, comes out immediately.  So my commas, now that see. Long-term endeavors. Yes. Isn’t my generation as affected as millennial, or even as the younger ones? Everything looks like a big interest reprise: the same joke over and over on each platform.  Countless hours with the eyes lost on cell screens. Myself included. I don’t even know where I’m going with this. Sorry, I remembered.  It works for practicing, after all. 

 

It's not blurry today. I also hear a bird trying to give orders through its singing,  or at least that’s how it feels like from where I’m sitting. I can’t take my rejection off the cigarettes. I go to bed and wake up almost everyday with the same thought. I’m putting it in perspective to see if I can figure it out, but I can’t,  I haven’t been able to, I still wonder why smoking is so disappointing to me. That’s everyone’s life. It’s not my problem.  It shouldn’t be, but it does; it does bother me. I hope someday soon I manage to get over it, otherwise I’m going to start having problems at home. Anyway,  there are good things to think about. Music songs, for example. I wish I could live from this. Real writers have a place, a moment,  a routine, a Cábala; which is a word we sometimes use for special rituals,  when it comes to do something out of our inspiration. I only have the times when I go to the toilet and the few minutes of morning I grant myself in the balcony. Franco de Vita has a song; Louis. It’s about a Taxi driver who wants to be a rock star. I’m bringing it up because there is a moment in the song it says: “y sueña con escenarios, mientras le cambia la luz. Del rojo al verde no hay mucho tiempo para soñar”. I feel this part so deep because I live my life dreaming, using the same metaphor, from red light to green, and it is just like the song goes: there’s not much time for dreaming. I look into the mirror and I realize how easily my once achievements can be forgotten, or replaced, or put aside pursuing a near future that never comes present. The one true thing I can rescue,  and pick from the rest of this present, is fatherhood:  that’s an incredible journey; the only one that keeps me going. My faith vanishes in the air just as an exhalation from smoking a cigarette. A faith that smells, that stays in your clothes, in your mouth, in your yellow teeth and yellow fingers… a faith hard to gather, to get it all together. It's there, it’s here, you feel it but you just can’t hold on to it. We’re talking about a nominal faith, it only works for words to give, to serve on a page and read it, perhaps smile while reading it. That’s it. Let see if I can enjoy the afternoon. Rosé wine for me. It kind of match with the sky before evening.  Tough moves. Tough news. A weekend to come and see. I thought of a path, a path with obstacles. I was bear foot but I wasn’t getting hurt. I was just going on my own pace. I saw sentences hiding behind the ads. Yes, I saw some ads. Ads are even in my thoughts. The government of my country tried to get rid of them. To make it happen, they had to burn the whole country to the ground,  and even so they couldn’t wipe them up entirely.  Ads resisted. More than people. I saw words coming up, leaving messages.  Is there anyone behind them? Probably not. It is just this algorithm that takes whatever interest I’ve been navigating around, and link it with some advertising something, to then put it on every feed from any app; and search, and gives you this sensation of being watched. I took that to my oneiric world, it’s unavoidable. I took that to my thoughts. It is the consequence of using these apps too often.  I heard someone claim it is world we live in but the world we live in still has the other things. What are those other things, anyway? It has more to do with time and distance than any other repercussion. The fact that we have it all on the palm of our hand, makes this carelessness for the outside very much present. But it is a selfish approach,  what about those places not into technology at all? There are a lot of places where people can’t afford a smart phone. Having a smartphone in my land is a social matter. It is not something for everyone. You could get robbed if you’re seen walking around with your eyes on the screen of the phone. People there just can’t do as I’ve seen it here; that you go to a public garden and you see a group  of people gathering where they can focus on their devices. 

Third Page

 

Pain. Pain is something we use when we need to learn, and along with Art, they both embrace suffering as some sort of vehicle. There has to be pain so I can feel what needs to be done to achieve it. What? Whatever you want the pain to get you for. This is a hot afternoon,  full of commitment. A promise I need to keep, to suffer, to let the pain walk me through.  I am tired but I have my motivation.  Time is not so friendly but it never was, to be honest.  God’s time is perfect; many people state. I want to take some advantage of the language and propose instead: God’s tempo is perfect. Tempo rules the rhythm,  the speed you do what you do. So tempo, as it is interpreted in English, sounds to me more like something it may happen when, let’s say, the right time comes. When is that? God only knows. That’s the point and that is what The Say wants to imply. Another morning. I can be a witness. I can join the audience for whom this show we call sunrise is being performed. I see. I feel. I close my eyes and think: there might be a chance. We might make it. This could be a hard step we had to take. The reward is the fact that we know why we are doing it. I think not everyone knows. That’s why the need for distraction on the phone comes out so often. Slow cook. Baby steps. My stomach is talking. A few hours later, I’m finally home. A beer in my hand. It was a productive day. Empanadas for dinner. Nowadays homemade ones. I wish I could explain it better, but I’m not so sure if You can feel me when I’m saying how great is having Empanadas as meal. The texture on the first bite, the flavor as is being swallowed. It is just something else. Else, else is not well defined in Spanish. I mean “else” tends to play as “more”, so there is no big difference when saying: something more or something else. The way I see it, that places a desire in a different state of intensity, of deepness, of abstraction. Then abstraction can fluctuate depending on the language, thus our capability to picture a scenario, is, in a certain way, affected by the syntax of the language we speak. These very words I have just written, the commas I have just placed. They came out from a Spanish mind thinking,  pretending to send a message in English. I said it before: we meet halfway, so halfway will be good after all.

 

I believe the word is steam. The steam comes out from a hot mug of coffee; always a strong one. That steam comes out making shapes, shapes for my mind, for my thoughts. Those shapes shows up following a rhythm,  maybe from the birds, from the morning. It is a slow movement, anyway. The thing is that it seems like it also has its own language, a kind of language that dances with my silence. Debts invades, always invades. This search for balance is tiring.  I feel tired already. No money for anything when getting paid. That certainty overwhelms harder than any other existential crisis. For this era, money is the one true catalyst for almost every form of thought, idea, wish, whatever comes to mind. Sometimes I dream and think that these words somehow might become any sort of money, and that I could finally get the basic decent life I’ve been working so hard for. I had thought about it already: when I get to a certain number of words, I will go public, posted, published, the method that serves better for any money collect. Then I think twice, I think of a song, and then of a debt, debt invades, always. Debts are the noise of any form of silence. I think again,  like I said, and realize that it is a nice dream, a noble sort of hope, but it is not likely.  Now likely is a nice word, a polite kind to me. It is not likely that I can get a better income anytime soon by only showing my curriculum, and  hoping that somebody out there, in fact give me any chance because he saw something like potential to join me in whatever he is recruiting for. Not likely at all. I was collecting some extra money by working with my car and, today, my car is down. There is Say from my country stating  that when the poor do the laundry,  it rains. It is raining over my hope, over my will, over my self esteem. So I grab a beer from the fridge and stop thinking. They were more than one, indeed. I would like to confess that I’m not sure where this writing is going. I don’t even know if it’s going somewhere. I’m just placing words as a pointless attempt to see myself in them, so I can actually figure out what’s going on with me, and start solving it.

 

Up to this point, everything lies on money I can’t get, despite this sort of double shift I’m having. I want to cry. Cry feels good when I’m like this, but I want to do it alone. I don’t want to explain anything, I’m writing it precisely because of it. One more morning. A cold one. A summer August chill morning. I don’t remember it like that last year at least. I woke up with the same problem I went to bed: the car. It’s very cloudy. It may start raining at some point of the day. I often think about this Guns and Roses song; Estranged.  I tend to see my life as a movie.  I even think about songs at inappropriate situations; in this case, I was just remembering that the song starts by saying: “When you’re talking to yourself and nobody is home”.  I talk to myself pretty often. More often than I want to admit. In a couple of times, someone has asked me something like: who are you talking to? Or You’re getting old, you’re speaking alone already! And that tells me I can’t even control it. So my need for reflection is stronger than my will to appear before others. I can simplify it by confessing I am just getting crazy, but it’s not true, I mean, I am alone. I feel lonely.  I have no one I can try these thoughts and not coming up with those types of answers, the kind I’d rather not listen to such as: don’t worry! It’s not big deal! Like we say in my land (this is the worst) “You are drowning in a glass of water”. I prefer to speak alone then, and I don’t think it makes me a crazy person. Have you ever listened to this Foo Fighters song: I should have known?  It is something else. I never get tired of it. Anyway. Work time went by with a tiny victory.  Let’s see what’s next. Next is now, and now was yesterday, indeed. Today is the tomorrow of that time, a past tomorrow then. A past tomorrow that  tastes some bitter despite the short nice time we had. Time to get ready to go to work.  I’ve been thinking about Deserve, and the impact it has on my people; many of then, or many of us, go around assuming that we deserve better. Why? I mean: why are we still thinking our efforts should be compensated  by some high power, just because we’ve been working hard? We’ve been working hard to get the payment we previously agreed to, and with such payment, we should make ends meet, or stay tight and bear it. Only we don’t want that. We want, like a Say we have; “to shit upper than the ass” (or higher; not sure which one suits better)