Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta future. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta future. Mostrar todas las entradas

jueves, 5 de febrero de 2015

High School

   I remember I sat down on a corner, by the stairs that came from the soccer field to the main yard, and just ate what I had just bought in the canteen. I believe I had a donut and some orange juice, as it was only a thirty-minute break. Those thirty minutes felt always like thirty hours. I just read something of some book I had in my backpack or looked at what others might be doing. But I stopped doing that quickly because I didn’t want anyone to think I was eavesdropping or something.

 Of course, I already liked boys back then but there was no desire or sexual tension of any sort. Not that I couldn’t be sexual but I thought of the school as a space free of that tension as I rapidly realized no one would correspond those feelings. Especially not the boys I thought were the cutest, normally those who played sports or had some sort of annoying attitude. Somehow that last thing made me look at them even more.

 I got really good at looking at guys without them, nor the annoying girls that always flocked around them, notice me. It’s a skill I still have although I don’t care anymore if a man, straight, gay or whatever, catches me looking at them. At the end of the day, it should be a compliment. Of course, any boy back then wouldn’t have taken it like that. I believe all guys in my school started dating when they were like fourteen but I’m not really sure. It just seemed like it.

 The girls, on the other side, were different. For the exception of some guys, all of them were exactly the same: sporty and mean spirited. But the girls were divided almost equally into two groups: nerdy or artistic kind of chicks and the popular girls. These last ones were only popular because of the money their parents had and because they had a bit more grace than any of the others. They were not especially cute or anything, they were just better actresses from a very young age.

 See, my last high school years were spent in a private school, which used to be very exclusive. Not everyone could get in as money and status were kind of mandatory to get in and if you didn’t have any of those, you had to be related to someone that could help you get in. It was that simple and everyone knew although no one ever spoke about it.

 So I was there, whether I wanted it or not, and I soon realized how much of a nightmare it would be. I had never been great in large groups and there were at least eight groups of the same grade, each one consisting of twenty-five people. That was intimidating and the worst part was, every years groups changed. So you could end up with that person that looked at you as if he had shit under his nose, or you could end up making new friends.

 All right, now we have to clarify that word, that social networking has prostituted in an awful way. A friend is a person that you trust and that trusts you back, who knows all about you and you know all about him or her. Of course the word “all” is not literal, but you get my drift. I think the key to a friendship is trust and that means being real, being just as you are with that person and that person thinking you’re amazing because you are who you are.

 Well, I never really felt I had friends in school. Never. I had good school companions, whose company made the days less annoying and the classes a bit less boring. But I wouldn’t call them friends. They never really knew me and I don’t blame them because I never let them know who I was or who I wanted to be. I think it was, especially towards the end, a huge collaboration effort to make school a bit more fun and bearable.

 They were all women, in my case. Girls that, like me, felt a bit in the edge of the social circles that had formed with the years in that school and we just got along fine because we were all eager to finish up and leave forever. I always related more to women because I found them less intimidating. Even today, I still look more for the support of a women that from a man. Back then, as well as today, I feel intimidated by men. Why? Very easy answer: because there’s always competition between men and I have always hated to compete, as I know I’m no match for anyone.

 Yes people, that was when my self-esteem problems began. I mean, I can maybe trace them back a bit more but high school just compressed al my fears and anxieties into one place. Sports were the worst. Playing football, basketball or even badminton was a torture for me. Not only because I absolutely hate exercising but because it put me in the spotlight. Many will know how awful it feels to be chosen at the end I always ended up being the last or next to last one to be chosen for any game.

 Of course, if that happened today, I wouldn’t mind. I would not play actually and I would have a witty response to anything someone told me. I can be very abrasive but that is a perfect answer in many cases. But back then; it was not a choice to be like that. I wasn’t fun enough to just make a fun statement. The reality was that I was a shy boy and I’d rather shut up that say anything to anyone. I felt bad enough as myself, because of all the pressure around. There was no need to make it worse if I could avoid it.

In class, it was different because there was no interaction between students. All you had to do was stare at the teacher and answer if you were questioned. No, I wasn’t shy because I was smart. I wasn’t smart at all. Besides a few dates and country names I had learned from reading, there was not much more I could bring to any class. Literature, funny enough, was a torture. A load of books I didn’t understand made me miserable. I never read all of them to be honest. That reminds me; in my school all classes were taught in French so it wasn’t as easy as you might have thought.

 Then of course, I had my “nemesis” course: mathematics. To say that I sucked in that class would be a large understatement. I never got anything past the divisions. I only understood equation two years after we had seen them, which of course, was a bit too late. What I always hated was when the teachers said that mathematics would always be necessary in daily life so it was imperative that we got good grades. I never got more that a twelve over twenty, and that was not very often. As for my daily life, I never use equations. Thank God, I’m not a rich man.

 Like later in life, they would always scare us with exams and tests and so on. And, ignorant as one is when young, we would all be scared of them. It’s a natural response that now, I know, is just to make you feel in a rush, in order to be on the lookout for anything. Tests only get easy when you know your answers and how do you that? By understanding in class. Studying at home doesn’t do shit. And sorry if someone disagrees but I’m a strong believer that if you get it the first time, that’s the time that counts.

 At home, I had my TV and Internet. There was no YouTube craze by then, nor Facebook or Twitter. But you could get distracted with chat rooms and even pornography. I cannot say I didn’t check that out when I was younger, it would be a lie. And besides that, the Internet had stories and videogames and news to offer. So I was driven to that and not to study math that was complicated and that, by age sixteen, I had given up to. To this day, it annoys me to see a lot of numbers in a sheet of paper.

 As we all did, I’m sure of it. I handled on one side my home life and, on the other, my school life. That’s why I hated seeing people from school in the supermarket or in a mall. I felt they were invading my space, the one were I felt more at ease, where laughing did not feel out of place. You might think I’m being exaggerated but that’s how I felt. That’s why being parent to a teenager is hard: it’s a person that’s feeling so many things at the same time and they often have no idea how to handle it all.


 In secret, and I’m sure many did the same; I was looking forward to the end of high school, the graduation ceremony. People often say how that time of your life is perfect because there was nothing to be worried, you get to have lots of friends, first loves and you were just happy all around. But that is a filthy awful lie, because it’s not the same for everyone. I wasn’t happy there, at all. I didn’t have any friends and, much less, loves. I wanted to get away from there and once I did I made sure to live a life I could say “Well, it may be crappy but this is mine and I’m me. And if you don’t like it, fuck off”.

sábado, 24 de enero de 2015

Her war

  Alicia had just taken the lives of at least ten men. But she didn't care. She had learned not to care much when it came to do what she had to do. The past had taken the lives of many people she had loved, some way or another. Who cared if even more people were killed now? The world wasn’t one to care no more. And she, Alicia Hall, wasn’t one to feel sorry anymore. She just didn’t care.

 The fight had happened just outside of the many quarantine zones. This one encircled the whole city formerly known as Panama City. As many knew, even then, Panama had been a worthy ally to the Statian cause. So much that, during the attempt of the Confederation to take the south part of the continent, they built a parallel city on the other side of the Panama Canal to ensure their troops were properly supported. They had even built a large nuclear energy complex to feed both cities with electricity.

 But no one predicted a surprise attack; done by the Southies (slang termed the Statians used to call the people living on the other side of the canal) but covered up by the Statians, calling it a “failure” of the energy station. There was an explosion and everyone got evacuated. Many people died, though but no one ever knew about any of them. The place was rapidly turned into an exclusion zone for airplanes and the whole city was barricaded and put into quarantine. The people living beyond it were left to their deeds. In other words, they were left to die to the radiation.

 That had happened almost thirty years ago. The world today was very different: the war had ravaged entire regions. Food was hard to come by and countries were not as important as they had been before. The Statians had been reduced to a mountain range and many others had done the same. Technology existed, of course, but had been improved. All innovation had stopped. Anyway, people were more worried about feeding their families than about anything else.

 Alicia herself remembered her parents and brother often. It was true that she cried every night, thinking of them. She would always remember the day she had been taken from her home by a group of Righties. Righties were people that still believed in the superiority of one race or one group of people. They were loads, as people in fear always trust the wrong folk. They ravaged towns, raped women and killed innocent people, thinking they were Vikings of sorts. They also kidnapped women to be sold as sexual slaves and that’s what had happened to Alicia.

 But she had escaped. After an awful trip across the ocean, she had been sold in New Africa, the center of the Statians country. Strangely enough, the city was located by the sea. It was the commercial center of the country. Nevertheless, most of those folk lived inland, scared of invasion. Alicia then became the slave of a renowned politician and lived in his state for two years. Then, a storm broke out and there was fighting between the Statians. She took her chance and escaped the compound, unseen.

 But the day after, when she got up to a high hill, she realized they were following her. So began a journey of many days, even months, chasing through wilderness of all types to escape her captors. Eventually, they let her flee thinking she would die in the wild but Alicia was better than that. She learned to hunt and gather fruits in the forest. The young woman had even found useful things in more deserted cities: clothing, weapons, water bottles and food.

 The food was the best, by far. People everywhere were starving and there she was, having a whole city for herself, where she could pick up anything she wanted to eat. For example, Alicia had never had a spoonful of ice cream. The first time she had some, she laughed like a little girl and ate a whole bucket of it, tasting of vanilla. The stomachache that followed was awful but she thought it wasn’t a high price to pay for such a delicious treat.

 It was in that deserted city when she first killed. A group of men in military clothes walked in the center of the city and she saw them as they dragged two women along. The women looked foreign, like Alicia. She realized they were slaved. Rage ran through her veins and in that moment, she decided to do something bold. Without giving them the chance to say a word, Alicia penetrated their camp at night and killed the four men, with a couple of knives she had grabbed from a department store.

 When she was finished, the women escaped screaming like mad, looking at her as if she had done something horrible. But she knew she was right. All those men, all those people that thought were better just because they were of some color or lived somewhere, all of them, they had to pay. So, in her time in the city, she killed no less than a hundred men. She had trained herself, alone, to use every single weapon she found. Alicia had a small flat on the top of a small building and, in a case where she kept guns, knives, axes, arrows, grenades and other instruments to kill.

 But it was after some time that she realized she had to move on. Someone would get wise and would come to hunt her. And she didn’t want to give none of those people the satisfaction to do so. So, after gathering her things, she did a tour of various stores to replenish her stash of food and ammo, as well as some technology devices. These didn’t really worked well but she needed a GPS in order to know where to run.

 She wanted bad to go back to her country but she knew that was even more dangerous than facing a buck load of army men. She would have to penetrate the Statians territory and then, somehow, board a boat back the other side. No, that was a stupid idea, filled with things that might go wrong. Instead, after looking on a paper map, she decided that her best choice was to go south, through the old border and beyond.

 At the border, precisely, she met friends for the first time. They were indigenous peoples. Alicia had never seen people so beautifully dressed, not after the devastation of the war. But the indigenous women she met told her, in signs that they wanted to preserve what was theirs. War had torn them apart but they trusted that everything would get better. Alicia wasn’t as optimistic but shared a couple of days with them before continuing south.

 It took her months to cross through jungles and devastated cities. It was incredible to see how many people had survived the war, hiding in forests and going back to the lives lived by their ancestors. They were casual hunters and some had even started to grow food again. Many volcanoes made the soil a good friend but many people ran scared when rain came of when the wind blew to strongly. They talked about La Mancha, some sort of explosion that hey had seen and had destroyed, even more than war, the land were they lived.

La Mancha was no other than the horrible stain floating over the nuclear power plant that had being blown up by the Southies. Alicia heard of the story many times, by many people, on her way to the canal. But she noticed something else too: the more she traveled, the more Statians she saw. Some of them were taken as refugees by the locals but others were in occupation of small territories.

 After crossing lake Nicaragua, Alicia was arrested by one of these Statians. The man called himself a general and said they were retaking these territories “in order to protect them, as only us have the intelligence and power to do so”. They had killed several locals and threatened to turn Alice into a slave, again. But this time she knew better. She faked compliance and started giving them all a private show but when she was almost naked, Alicia took a gun from the general and killed him. Everything turned into chaos but the locals and Alicia prevailed.

 In the midst of the fighting, Alicia realized women where also members of the Statian army. They were not many, but they were there. She realized she had no compassion for them either, thinking of how low they had gotten. They were no different than the men. Alicia realized her struggle was not again the Statians alone; it was against every person that wanted others to do as they said.

 After the skirmish, the young fighter crossed more mountains and forest until she got to the exclusion zone. It was there where she killed ten more army men. She went through several papers they were carrying and realized they had been set to check the plant and retrieve something from it. Dead as they were now, they weren’t going to finish nothing and, hopefully, it would take some time before the Statians knew what had happened to them.

 Alicia then reflected on her being there and realized something: she was alive. She inhaled and exhaled several times and then stood still, as if waiting for something to happen. Nothing. Somehow, she could breath. Was that why those men were there? Then, she heard something she had only heard from afar and in television: a helicopter. It appeared just above her, flew a bit further ahead and landed softly. From the machine came out a gorgeous women, tanned and with short black hair. She neared Alicia and she was surprised by her question.

-       Are you all right?

 The young woman nodded. The woman told her to come with her. She took Alicia’s hand and they both walked towards the helicopter. Once inside, the machine started roaring again and rose above the trees and old buildings. Alicia didn’t say a word but saw the woman besides her give her a smile.

-       My name is Rosa. You might refer us as Southies…


 But Alicia was fainting. Unknown to her, one of the soldier’s bullets had gone straight into her right lung. The last thing she saw, before falling asleep, was Rosa pulling out  a needle from a case and yelling at her. But Alicia couldn’t her a word. She was pretty tired and just let herself go.

jueves, 22 de enero de 2015

Waves

   The ocean was his thing. When high school drew to a close, his parents had insisted on him finding a proper career to study in a big city, at least ten hours away from their small town. But Ari, our young enthusiast, was fascinated by the treasures of the sea and was eager to follow his grandfather’s footsteps. That man was a living legend as he had broken all records of size and number of fish he had caught. He was just the best at his craft.

 Ari visited Mr. Gons, his grandfather, pretty often. The old man lived in a small shack by the sea, where he would still fish his lunch and ate very little fruits and vegetables, despite his daughter’s insistence. He always told her that he was over eighty years old and, beyond that age, it didn’t really matter what had eaten before in your life. Mister Gons thought the ocean could give anyone a fair life and enough to nourish from.

 So it was from him from whom Ari had learned to appreciate the ocean, which had always been there for him. He loved swimming, of course, and had done a bit of surfing but he wasn’t much into it. He loved diving, though. He had attended a school were he had learned all the basics and now he did it every time he had a moment to do it. He would ask his grandfather fro his boat and dive alone, from the break of dawn to lunchtime.

 To his grandpa’s disappointment, he never brought fish to eat. He only went there to see the ocean creatures live, to the things they did normally, which was fascinating. He loved animals, sometimes bringing his dog Kop with him in the boat. When high school finished, his parents were mad at him for not having put his name down in any of the schools they suggested. They knew he loved the town but they also knew opportunities there were scarce.

 So, because of his decision not to study, he had the chance to do two things he wanted to do instead of studying law or medicine. First of all, he found a job leading tourists to a nearby reef. He would go with small groups and show them the marine life and how they tried to protect it from being destroyed. Besides work, which he always looked forward, he decided to help in the only fishery remaining in town. He started taking the guts out of the fish and putting them on ice but he hoped to get one a boat some day.

 The first months were both easy and hard, all at the same time. Driving the tourists around was incredibly relaxing, as only people who really liked the ocean would go on those kind of tours. The few times there was a nervous person, they would all help to make the experience the best of his or her life. There was definitely nothing like watching life just happen before your eyes and that’s what he loved of it.

The fishery, on the other hand, was hard work. He would do it four days a week an even then it was hell. The people handling the place had been shaped by the sea, just like their product, and they didn’t allow anything to go differently than what they had planned. They yelled a lot, especially when the work place was too filthy or the worker was too slow. Taking the guts out and scaling the fish was not as easy as it looked like and it had to be done properly or the fish would be damaged and selling it would be harder.

 Every time he got back home, after work, he would be exhausted. It didn’t matter from what job he came from, his hands would always be sore as well as his feet. Besides, Ami would gulp down food and a lot of water at diner time, as he didn’t properly eat all day. His parents were not happy for this but they didn’t say anything. He was being responsible and was winning his own money. They hoped that the workload would make him realized that he needed to study to improve himself.

 Then, halfway through the year, something no one had seen coming happened: Mr. Gons had died. It had happened in the night, while he lay on his favorite rocking chair, having fallen asleep with the sound of the waves and the feeling of sand beneath his feat. He was loved by many, especially by those families that had always lived in the town. The turnout at the funeral was outstanding; the family couldn’t have been more proud. Everyone shared stories about him and coincided that he was a one special man.

 Ari then, stopped working for a couple of days. His bosses excused him, just by looking at him: he looked beyond sad. He looked as if it was a defining moment for him so they gave him some time to think but not too much as he was needed in both the reef and the fishery. Indeed, Ari thought of his grandpa, who had thought him everything of the sea, but he also thought what he wanted from life. He knew that things were hard out there but then he realized he had already taken steps to make a live of his own.

 So the day he returned to work, confident that he was doing everything right. He couldn’t push to happen, he couldn’t force anything, but he could improve himself and just be good at what he did. He started reading a lot more about fishes and other sea creatures so that he would be available to give more complete tours on the reef. As for the fishery, he trained himself with a small knife cutting open everything at home. His mom was certainly impressed when she noticed everything in the fridge had already being chopped in various ways.

 On weekends, he would return to his grandpa’s house to drink a beer and watch the ocean. He understood then why the old man loved the place: the peace and quiet was overwhelming but appreciated. Being away from everything but that soothing sound was just perfect. But then, four months before the end of the year, he began going there with a girl he had met in one of the tours. She lived in a town close to his and would visit him when out of work. It was the first time he fell in love for real and knew she was in love with him.

 When working, he noticed he didn’t thought of it as he did it. He would think of her or of his plans, which were slowly forming in his mind. He had realized that, despite everything he thought, his parents were right. He did need to educate himself more to be better, not just to earn more money but to afford to live, as he wanted to do it. He had even thought of living with his girlfriend but that was another project, for the future.

 He told his parents of his realization that learning more was necessary to him, in order to know more about what he loved and to live a good life too. They were happy tear it but not so happy when he told them he had found an aquarium, in a medium size city about two hours away by car. It was not that they wanted him to go but that they wanted the very best for them. He explained the aquarium had a school where he could study marine biology. They actually had at least some ten more careers to choose from, which was very interesting.

 One weekend he was free from work, he took his girlfriend and his parents to the aquarium. The place was beautiful and they were all amazed that they had never really known about the place. The lady that gave them a guided visit, explained that the school had been open only for the past two years but that many students that wanted to study the careers they taught were very happy with their presence. Even the zoo area of the compound was much better than any other he had seen: the pools were very big and the machines were kept away from the animals, so not to disturbing. They didn’t have large mammals, as they believed they were better off in the ocean.

 So when the year drew to a close, Ari told his bosses all about him studying and not being able to work anymore. They were both very happy for him and wished him all the best. He had been an exemplary employee in both places, and people had learned to appreciate his work thoroughly.


 Then came Christmas. They all had a big party in his grandpa’s old house and there was no one sad or thoughtful. Everyone smiled and enjoyed the food, the company and the prospects that the future was putting on the table.