The Lonely Years

The final decades of the dying century were lonely years.

There were tons of revolutions as well, inside and outside of people’s heads.

Poor things, most of them never knew what hit them.

Or maybe they were the lucky ones.

Those who did know, who saw through all the smoke curtains and the turmoil of disease, they were forced to pact with the devil, the little red devil that lived within themselves.

I see them today, in videos, in pictures, so far away from those days, so far from their atmosphere… and I shiver.

They were the brave ones.

Today is all about exploration, gaining knowledge of things yet unknown, being at the same time aware that the cycle will never end. Everyone knows, it’s ok. We still set out to conquer. But back then, the brave ones who made the pact knew they were already dead; yet they walked and played.

And I love them for it.

D.  

Upset

I believe the main reason I dread December, is because I face the time for a personal balance. Never in my life have I worried about money. Even when I had to choose between having lunch or buying a pack of cigarettes, I had a paycheck I could count on. I chose cigarettes and thought ‘it’s all good, that way I will lose weight’. The truth is choosing cigarettes over lunch became a heavy health crisis over the years.

I’m not thirty yet, but I’m old enough to know that you have to think smart and think healthy in order to have a comfortable life. Smart is what causes most trouble for me. I don’t consider myself smart, even though so far I’ve handled people well enough to keep a steady job as well as personal clients.

How would one define thinking smart?

First, you need a goal. Mine is pretty simple, to live comfortably, no debts I can’t pay, no health problems which would drain me out of money, a nice place I can call home.

Ok, I have my goal. I will take a paragraph to rant.

As I write this, my partner is playing the Sims. I feel he is playing to make a house when he should be working in order to get one in real life, at least working to help me afford the rent, which is higher than my monthly income. I pay for two and earn for almost –almost- one.

People would say I’m stupid for putting up with this situation, my partner is out of work but he’s a good man I can trust to be there when needed. His family is very supportive too. I think he wants children as well, but not in the near future. As far as I’m concerned, my clock is ticking. I believe in the possibility of loving someone and keeping that someone next to you until you’re both old, cranky and full of wrinkles. I believe that love is important when it comes to making a family, and I love him, there’s nothing I can do about that.

I’m not that much of a practical thinker. I’m trusting life to keep me safe, it has done well so far. All harm that has come to me, I’ve caused it myself, and I know it hasn’t been as bad as it could have.

I’m upset, that’s all. After being upset, comes despair, and then I cry and cry and cry until there’s nothing left of me. That way I can start over. I’m pissed at myself.

But you shouldn’t, think I, because you’ve done what you could. You have flaws, D., you make mistakes, you break under pressure. You’re human.

You’re human.

All humans fear, all humans doubt. As usual, you start from scratch and take it from there. If you’re tired, you sleep. You’re in a better position than a lot of people, you should be thankful for that, always be thankful.

D.  

Of Plants, Torment and the Like

I like plants, they are peaceful and quiet. Their colors are richer than those on a screen. I like specially those that are edible; I often request permission before cutting them. Flowering buds are most pretentious and delicate. In some cases, you have to talk them into flowering. 

They, like us humans, don’t want to die. Flowers last so little…

What do you do with fear?

It gets in the way most unnecessarily…

It’s an inevitable emotion.

A Zen master would command me to embrace it. Any rocker would say I should fight it. Most women I know would say: don’t bother thinking about it…

All are interesting wording choices. But which is mine?

I dreamt of death in the shape of my grandmother. I couldn’t resist its call, even if I knew it was a monster. In previous nightmares, I used to fight. Why didn’t I fight last night? Did I feel like dying? I recall thinking that there was nothing left to interest me; that all that was left was the possibility of children, and death. That’s all I could hope for.

Why, I ask, have you lost your faith in life at 28 years of age? What has it ever done to you?

I blame it for all the awful pain I’m going through. I know it’s not its fault. It’s like yelling at one’s husband during painful childbirth.

Fault is irrelevant, anyways.

What do you do with anger?

Do I trust that my destiny is written? Do I write it myself? I do both, just in case, on a regular basis.

I fear there’s nothing left for me out there. I’ve been given so much so far. I can’t even imagine anything for the future… Everything I hope for, I fear I’ll never have, and then become angry at the possibility; after that all is lost, I need something to break the tension and give me a fresh start.

I’m sick of living like this.

Anger and fear… What do I do with you?

Why did I fall in love with someone who torments my head by his mere presence? Do all men torment women?

Is it even worth it? At least, I have to find out…

In an ideal scenario, where would you live? In a small house, with enough garden.

In an ideal world, what skills would you have? Construction, I’d fix and remake my house forever and ever.

In an ideal world, what would you be doing right now? Exercising, running under the sun and sweating like a junky in rehab.

In an ideal world, how would you be remembered? As a creator of good fiction, and a pretty girl we all fell in love with.

Maybe, just maybe, I’d go the extra mile. I hope it’s in the right direction.

There is no direction in space, there is no ‘right one’, there is only yours.

Shut up, you kill me, really.

D.

On Cultivating Humans

It just ocurred to me that I live the ‘ifs’ with as much intensity as reality. When they have come dangerously close from becoming so, I elope towards my center. I wonder if it’s just me.

I thought about it while listening to Tears in the Rain, by Joe Satriani. This song was played to me by a dear friend of mine. He did dare to turn an idea into reality. I think I loved him because of that, but that’s way off point. That’s a thought to ponder.

It seems to me that I relate people to the things they give me, whether it be music, image or thought. Again, I wonder if it’s just me. I read life’s symbols and put two and two together to understand, people, not symbols. I’m pretty clear on symbols.

It’s probable and possible that people have nothing to do at all with the way I see them, in which case, I would be basing my assumptions on a very thin layer.

Are there any ways in which I can measure my assertions versus my misjudgments?

I believe it’s a matter of personal linguistics. The voices speaking in my head, the different voices of thought, use different terms for different things. Sometimes I think I know something using those words; sometimes I don’t need to use the words to know. I trust the latter.

A poet would say I trust silence.

A shrink would say that I have an issue with trust due to the particular aspects of my childhood. He’d probably be right, but it’s a fruitless thought once you know.

And who would go for something so prosaic?

I have the theory that human race had a before and after the concept of “mistake”. Animals make no mistakes, mishaps happen to them, like a branch braking, causing a monkey to fall while jumping from tree to tree. Mistake requires judgment. Judgment requires a preexisting sense of logic.

They say man shall be judged by his equals. It means, in discursive terms, by himself. In the same way that religions tell us that god made us in his image and likeness, and that translates into us studying the existence of god as to an important part of knowing ourselves, the divine in us; in this way a man our equal is ourselves.

Guilt is self imposed. It’s based also on our particular sense of logic. It means that, if I ever think I’m frowned upon by society when doing something, anything that society might frown upon, it’s actually a show of the superego.

I don’t pretend to go as far as assuming that society is only an expression of our unconscious. I believe reality exists because I can touch it, and because there is no other alternative (if I pull the plug on myself, the other side is blank, simply because, like god, it is completely out of my capacity).

So is society as well, so complex that it’s away from your capacity of understanding, society is also the expression of individuals in a macro level. We are not yet a globalized planet, we are only a planet the size of a country.

I have been studying about the concept of culture and the myriad of things that surround it. I can’t believe how this particular two teachers do the works. One of them is male, hard tempered. Judging (logic again) by the way he looks at me I can tell he doesn’t think much. That’s good, the other one can’t stop noticing me and that annoys me. He sees culture as a list, movies, books, paintings, architecture and such. He thinks the state must help but not interfere. Where I come from, you call that a bank. Help means money, equipment, personnel and/or permission. Artists have thrived in the places where Philanthropy has existed, in the shape of private parties or public leaders. In fewer words, if Homer hadn’t been entertained and cared for by a high member of society, the Iliad and the Odyssey would not have existed.

But that’s artists, not culture.

Culture thrives in self dependent societies, who move together in small environments. That is why we talk of urban culture and tribal culture. Things that are cultivated in the environment of cities and tribes.

That’s what culture means. I believe, and I would fight to prove, that all the other stupid socially challenged concepts for culture, which are utilitarian to the economic factors within the rising “culture market”, are a bit far off track.

In basic terms, that’s what I assume as culture.

What are the consequences of that assumption?

First, the numbers: what are the things that are cultivated in Venezuela? Chocolate, coffee, oil, (I don’t dare say women yet, that’s more profound) and small business.

I dare assume also, that artists can be cultivated too. Artists comprise music, plastic arts, words and body expression (must check if I missed out on any). So the correct policy, “cultural policy” at that, is to cultivate artists, in the same way that China has cultivated tea. How do you cultivate artists? Through education.

Sport is also a culture, if you don’t believe me, ask the Greeks. Can anyone tell me that the Olympics are not a cultural practice? How nice of them to have expanded out of their original location and settled profoundly east and west of the earth. It took money to cultivate them too.

To follow the planting paradigm, ideology injected into the cultivated area will depend on who holds control of the water tab.

There is of course the need for “diffusion”, but it’s not as if we had to spend all the money there. That is actually the cheapest part of the process. Having good content on the TV, a few websites, banners, flags, street expositions, communal museums, communal art galleries, radio shows… That’s easy.

And then there is the keyword: appropriation. It means in colloquial terms, god creates them and then they pair. You don’t really know what’s gonna happen. However, it is logical and right.

So if I ever publish this, and its read, and thought correct, I’d smile, wherever I am.

Which brings me to my next point. What should we cultivate?

Maybe Utopia is where we go when we die. We go to the world of ideas, and the ideas that exist, for me, are the ones that I know.

If a person doesn’t work into producing his ideas while he lives, he will probably feel a sense of loss when he dies. I rather feel a sense of gain.

You don’t need to read too much philosophy to understand what its conclusion has been and continues to be; the same one Socrates reached a couple of centuries ago, we know nothing, except whatever knowledge natural laws have provided for us, the rules of reality, things fall downwards.

I don’t go as far as to agree with Erich Fromm and his theory on social pathology, I believe society is not sick, but there is an artificial, unnatural, growth on it that makes her dysfunctional. Much like cancer, it can be cured or prevented by the simple principle of do not harm, and through the belief that the human body can heal itself, as well as society can. There are only so many eyes Talion can claim for himself before people stop paying tribute.

Since we are at this, I also believe that men and women may not have the same way of thinking, but they are the same being, in two different expressions which complement each other. Both have equal rights to be free, that’s why I find it stupid when someone blurts out that women should be treated equally by men, or that women should be strong and work, mind the house, mind the children and look healthy and thriving during the whole time. If you wish to, by all means do it. But if no one is out there saying that men should be strong, and that men should be excellent in bed as well as intelligent, sensitive, caring, funny and interesting and mysterious and challenging and… Breathe…

No, the answer is no. Neither men nor women should be anything other than what they wish to be. And by wish I don’t mean “I wish to be an astronaut when I grow up”. That concept is made of the silences I speak of, the fulfillment of self that needs no word to be accomplished within my person. One thing is to desire to become a person who heals animals and another one is to wish to be a veterinary, simply because bureaucracy has turned it into a nine-to-five job with paperwork and a fake sense of obligation.

When I was little I wished to be a philosopher, just for the echo it made in my head. Then I wanted to be an archeologist, because I wanted to dig and find treasures. At some point I wanted to be a journalist, because I wanted to go places and show the world what was going on there. None of these desires has anything to do with the real experience in the day to day practice. 

Maybe I think too fast? I just swallowed whole a book on philosophy; I felt the need to catch up on something. I have been meeting people from too many different places and trains of thought, my values have been questioned over and over. I needed some base.

I wanted to be a lawyer because it seemed wide enough a field for me to move around. I was proved right. It’s so wide I have no idea where to land. Maybe I don’t want to land on anything? I’m afraid that, in the process of one thing leading to another, I’ll end up believing that aliens speak to me and tell me to burn things. (They don't).

If I dare go spiritual, I must base my thoughts on Credo Quia Absurdum. If I try to understand divinity through reason I’d be shooting in the wrong direction. Divinity is personal, kudos to philosophy on teaching us that; kudos to religion for teaching us the discipline and keeping the spirit.

We must speak in order to know ourselves, but we must be careful with words, they are deceitful. Sounds, however, are not, neither are silences. They cannot be tainted by the colors of languages, however beautiful they may be.

Then there is the question of relevance. What do we talk about?

I feel guilty, for example, because I let myself go around certain feelings and emotions. But I’m only human, and human means I am subject to certain aspects of my personality. I do not wish to change it, not all of it, only the things I don’t like, and even then I tremble at the consequences. I restrain myself from listening to music or reading books, because I believe it can lead me through dangerous paths. But sometimes I just can’t help it. I’m weak when it comes to certain things, aren’t we all? I don’t believe it to be wrong, I believe it to be human.

Greek gods sprung from within the earth, for the regular people. Zeus only helped the strongest, the common citizen is not so, he is only equal to everyone in Hades, Demeter and Poseidon, in Orpheus and Persephone.

Christianity then erased the subtle differences among men, and through the middle ages people gave cult to the devil.

I believe that my random steps are being guided, they are only random to my limited understanding. I sense a bigger picture, even though I cannot see it. Sensing goes beyond the five senses and into the infinite silence that fills the universe.      

 

D.

     

Change Pt. 1

The funerary was packed. In fact. Ser you  , there were three of them in that block, all of which were bursting with people, both living and dead. Groups of four and five chat bellow the sycamores, tiny yellow leaves falling inside plastic cups full of black coffee. Their tones are over excited.

A middle aged man sits inside the stifling mourning room. Dark flocks of women walk around him. He stares blankly at the front page of a folded newspaper, dated three days earlier. Inside the room rest six coffins, with only enough space between them for a thin relative to approach and pay their last respects. The plastic chairs aligned on every wall were crammed with sweaty people wearing black tuxedoes and dresses. Paper fans clap rhythmically.

The man lights a cigarette, allows ash to fall on his blue jeans. Sullen faces around him turn towards the rising smoke, and grimace. The young woman sitting next to him twitches and calls him, ‘sir?’

‘What?’

‘May I have one?’

‘… Sure’.

He lit it for her, flicking a stainless silver zippo. Conversations inside the room died out a little bit.

‘Who died for you?’ asked the woman.

‘My brother’ he answered. ‘You?’

‘My mom’.

The man shrugged and snorted. ‘Shit, I’m sorry’.

‘Yeah, me too. If I’d lost my brother I’d be devastated’.

‘That’s nothin’; a man I work with lost three, boom’ he pointed a fictional gun at his temple, ‘all at once, like they had rehearsed it, or somethin’… How did she, uh…’

‘I don’t want to talk about it’, she replied curtly.

‘Sure…’

‘I’m ok, though. My brother’s torn to pieces’.

‘He younger than you?’

‘Yes, and he was always a mama’s boy.’

As they spoke, six people carried a coffin through the main hallway, led by a man of the cloth who held a can with burning incense. They chanted a tune in an undertone.

‘I don’t live here, you know?’ she continued. ‘I don’t know town very well, and my brother is too young to know either. Hell, he only knows how to get to the mall. Where would you recommend to go to find a well paying job?’

‘Nah, can’t help you with that’ He let his cigarette fall and crushed it with the heel of his boots.

‘Oh, it’s ok.’

‘I wonder why it happened’ he said, staring blankly at the five remaining coffins.

‘I’m just pissed off at the way media dealt with the whole thing…’ she replied, raising her tone. ‘I mean…’ she hit the edge of the newspaper. ‘’Massive Mass Suicide’, god! It’s not even… correct, you know?’

‘You know they took statistics?’ he asked in his turn, lighting another cigarette. ‘Everyone was between thirty and fifty, give or take…’

‘Yeah, and they were all drug consumers…’ she retorted.

‘That’s got nothing to do with it.’

‘I doubt it’

‘Listen, kid, I’m forty five. I’ve used drugs since I was twelve. Cigarettes, coffee, alcohol, cocaine, LSD, pot… you name it. I don’t have a job, I live in my late mother's house, in the same room I was born in… I didn’t do it. Why?’

‘Maybe you are just naturally a happier person’ she ventured.

‘Nah… I doubt it’.

A clerk approached them and asked in a kind tone ‘Would you mind smoking in the garden?’.

‘Sure, man, I’m sorry’ said the man. 

‘Want a cup of coffee?’ he asked the woman.

‘Why not? Let me tell my brother. See you outside'

They parted. The man went through the crowd, holding the cigarette above his head and engaged in conversation with a group of men around his own age somewhere near the front gates.

The woman exited the funerary accompanied by a sullen looking, skinny teenage boy. The three of them walked in silence until they entered an equally packed coffee shop two blocks away.

‘How do you take it?’

‘Brown’.

‘You?’

‘He doesn’t drink coffee, he’s sixteen’.

‘I want a double’ said the brother.

They sat at a table under a TV set. ‘What was he doing?’ asked the boy.

‘Sorry?’

‘Your brother…’

The man measured him. ‘He had a prostitute over’ he said finally, ‘She killed herself, too’.

‘Mom was doing the laundry’ said the woman. ‘She drank the detergents… All of them’.

‘Why did they do it?’ asked the brother with a reddening face.

‘They said in the paper they’d put up a free shrink service’ replied the girl.

‘That’s a sugar pill’ replied the man. ‘Most people will forget, like a bad Christmas. Is people like your brother who’re really fucked. It’ll drill into their heads forever’.

‘Did you hear it?’ asks the woman, blowing on the steamy cup.

‘Yeh…’

She smiled. ‘Why didn’t you do it, then?’

‘No idea…’

‘I just thought… what for? You know? I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t know what I was hearing. Why would I go and do as something unknown tells me to? I felt it was uncalled for…’

The man drank his drink to the bottom, the cup still steamed when he set it on the table. ‘I guess they really wanted a change’.

‘It only happened in Japan and the Americas…’ interjected the brother. ‘I always thought if anyone were to off themselves it would be the Russians or the Swedish or something… No one did it in Europe or Africa or Australia… Just Japan… and the Americas…’

‘The all overdosed in RPG games’ retorted his sister.

‘Very funny’

‘What’s an RPG game?’

‘You see?... Mom didn’t know either’. They boy fixed his eyes on the TV set above his head, contorting his neck, and abandoned the conversation.

Other mourners had entered the coffee shop, all murmuring around the same subject.

‘Do you have anything your brother didn’t?’ asked the woman, finishing the last of her drink.

‘Unassisted boners’ he retorted, and signaled a waitress for another cup. ‘He had been drinking pills for… what? Five years now. I blame that…’

‘Mom didn’t drink boner pills…’ retorted the woman.

‘I have a dog…’ he continued. ‘He didn’t do It either…. My landowner’s cat bit his own stomach open… My dog’s fine, he’s got a crooked leg, walks like an overexcited drunk penguin. I know he heard the call, we both did. When we heard the call he just ignored it’.

‘Like you did?’ asked the brother.

‘Yeh…’

‘The landowner killed himself too?’

‘Only after his wife did it. Spent a whole night sobbing over the blood on the floor, then shot himself with the same gun. They hadn’t picked either of the bodies by morning… Wanna eat something, kid?’ he asked the boy, who shook his head. ‘You look like shit. No one’s gonna cook like your mom did, you better start getting used to garbage on your plate right away…’

‘I can cook like her’

‘Doubt it’ retorted the brother with a snort, his sister sighed. In the meantime, the middle aged man had ordered sandwiches for all of them. The waitress set the three plates at the table with delicate moves. She cleared her throat, then ventured, ‘You all come from the funerary, right?’

‘Yeh…’ they answered as one.

‘Isn’t it awful? All my fish jumped out of their tank, ‘cept one…’ her heavy lidded eyes were wide open as she shared her story. ‘Sorry, I guess that’s nothin’ compared to…’

‘It’s the same shit’ retorted the man.

‘Well, uh… Sorry for your loss’ she said, and disappeared among the crowd.

‘Listen’ said the girl, ‘I was thinking, we don’t really want to stay at mom’s house… And we thought, maybe, you’d prefer to not be alone, too, so… You look like a decent man. Think we could stay at…’

‘No room’ he barged in. ‘Sorry… I live in a pigsty no one should see, just me and my dog, no visitors allowed. And I’m not a decent man, I’m a drug abuser with bad breath and I got a rash’.

‘What’s your dog’s name?’

‘Dog’

They ate in silence. When they were finished, the man and the woman split the bill. They smoked a cigarette at the parking lot of the coffee shop.

‘How about you stay at our place?’ she insisted.

‘Then who’d take care of Dog?’

‘He doesn’t want to, Gin’ said the brother.

‘Whatever… It’s ok’ she replied.  

(D.)

Winter is Coming

“Winter is coming” my father says.

These words always bring a painful strain in my stomach.

These words mean that good times are over and bad times are coming.

They mean that from now on there will be scarcity and want, there will be pain and I will require patience and self restraint.

My father means that this is only one winter of many, that he has seen more than I have, and that I must learn from this one and from all that come after so that I can be strong.

These words mean that there will be less sun and less warmth and less enthusiasm, less food and less entertainment.

These words mean that a test on my character is coming, and what makes my stomach ache is being aware of it.

I prefer not to be aware, but it is impossible. If my father hadn’t spoken the words, someone else would have, to the same effect.


I guess I’ll move to the tropic.


D.

On Victory

So, I don’t have everything, big deal, no one does. I thank the gods that what I don’t have is not essential. I’m alive, I have food, I have a roof over my head, I have money, I have a significant other… What am I complaining about? Am I complaining at all? Life is not as heavy as I draw it, it’s not that complicated. Then what is it?

Why do you want to put a name to it? You won’t destroy it, you know that much, it’s what makes you write, and writing is what gives life a meaning, a reason, a sense or whatever… So, why?

Because in looking for a name I will name myself, I guess. For example now, I am wishing to catch someone’s attention, I’m wishing someone would come and ask me what it is that I’m writing, I wish to feel someone’s interest on me… Yet I’m unwilling to show interest for other people, openly. I’d be embarrassed about it.

Enthusiasm is life itself, the less you feel it, the less of it is inside you.

How do I get it back?

Through victory. It’s so easy and perfect that it’s scary. When you consciously do things that lead you away from victory, you are stupid. Stupidity is a great flame extinguisher.

Am I being stupid protecting the things I have?

Only if you don’t want them.

I want them half the time.

Then you are half stupid.

I am only nothing.

You are half genius and half stupid, you are human.

Was Cortazar human? All those great writers, Dostoievski, Saramago, Walter Scott, Shakespeare, Bodoc,…

All human, that’s why most had miserable lives. Is that what you want for yourself?

I want so many things…

That only gives you a wider range of possible victories. 

 

Searching for Valdemar

The youths ravaged the city. Windows were broken, doors were breached, people were beaten down.

They had found out about death.

No one had told them about it before.

They wondered in anger. So after all, there is death, they thought. After being beat up as children, after being forced to do things they didn’t feel like doing, after neglecting fun over chores, after sex, marriage, children, work, grandchildren… there was death.

And after death was nothing.


Fucking bastards, they thought. They never said it before, now they come out and tell us that, just like that, like it’s ok.

After the riots, they stayed quiet and low for a while, like nothing had happened. Research was being made, people were being contacted.

They found the clinical history of a man named Valdemar. The people who worked at the hospital said he was still ‘there’.

So they went to find him.


D.

Girl Talk

‘That’s what it’s like, girl’ said a mother to her child.

‘You don’t need much help in looking beautiful until you turn forty or so. Don’t waste your time striving for it, you already have it. After that, age with grace. Us women have the privilege or curse of living physical decadence very closely, more than men who don’t lose shape over pregnancies and don’t really need good shape in order to reproduce.’

‘While you have beauty’ she continued, ‘strive to gain things you don’t have: skills. If you go the other way around you’ll be wasting time. You’d be looking for things you already have, and then things you can no longer get.’


D.

Kudos

People build up too many expectations around life.

It’s made of, what? Eight decades, tops? Then everybody gets all worked up about what you are going to do with it… I really don’t get it.

If I were to plan a great deed I’d need the first two decades to figure myself out, then another two to study everything that has been done in the past and what improvements I can make, how to be original and not just do something that someone else did exactly like me a couple of thousand years early. There goes four decades down the drain, only in preparation, you got half in front of you.

But then, that half has been possibly damaged by environmental factors, so you’ll lose between five to ten years to cigarettes, drugs, alcohol and stress. Which brings me again to the next half: generally, we fall in love. There goes four decades for you, between falling in love with your spouse and falling in love with your grandchildren.

Just a simple little life, that’s what you get in the end, no big plans, ‘cuz you didn't have time to see them through, that’s for the highly lucky, exceptionally talented or extremely well positioned people.

To you and me, kudos, we get life.

D.