Cucharada de realidad, la mía al menos

   Nada. Nada por ningún lado. No hay opciones, no hay alternativas, no hay absolutamente nada que hacer. Claro que más de uno culpa a la persona, en este caso a mí, y dicen que no buscamos con suficiente ahínco o que simplemente no queremos trabajar y los ocultamos con numerosas excusas. No les voy a hablar de excusas porque no las tengo ni las quiero tener. Les voy a hablar de la realidad de las cosas, de lo que es estar sin trabajo en un mundo donde un desempleado es peor que un ladrón.

 Un ladrón entra a las casas y roba lo que haya de valor, o al menos que para él o ella tenga valor. Y agrego el “ella” porque en esta época del mundo no se puede ser sexista en ningún caso. Todos y todas podemos ser ladrones, viciosos, groseros, irresponsables y ejemplos de lo peor de la humanidad. Tener pene o vagina no cambia nada de eso. La humanidad está podrida y la fisionomía de los cuerpos poco o nada cambia nuestro potencial para ser todavía peores.

 Pero ese no era el punto del que hablaba. Lo que decía es que los ladrones tienen un trabajo. Es ilegal pero lo tienen. Igual pasa con los cartoneros que se la pasan recogiendo papel y cajas por las calles o los que piden dinero en las esquinas sin dar nada a cambio. La gente no lo dice a viva voz pero a esas actividades se les considera trabajo a la vez que son maneras de no morir en las grandes ciudades. No importa quién sea o para qué necesite el dinero, el punto es que algo hacen y la gente los ve.

 Y ese es un gran punto. ¿Porqué creen que a estas alturas de la historia humana la gente todavía se viste de traje y corbata, con zapatos bien brillantes y todo muy en su lugar? La gente dice que se trata de etiqueta, de estar presentable y de lucir pulcro y bien presentado. Pero hay algo más. Esos elementos son visibles a casi todo el mundo y le grita en la cara a cualquier transeúnte: “Tengo trabajo y todo esto que llevo encima es prueba de ello. Aporto a la sociedad”, así no sepamos que carajos hacen.

 Porque no hay trabajo malo. Al menos no a los ojos de sociedades que han vivido desde siempre en un estado de necesidad perpetua. En estos países del llamado “tercer mundo”, nunca hemos sabido como se siente vivir sin necesidades, hasta las personas con más dinero las tienen de una manera o de otra. Por eso hacer cualquier cosa es bueno, no importa si fritas papas en un restaurante o saludas a la gente al entrar en un edificio o si pretendes hacer respetar la ley. Los seres humanos respetamos el hecho de que alguien más haya decidido que una persona es lo mejor para cierto puesto.

 La convención humana dice que cada uno tiene su lugar. Ese cuento chino (más bien europeo o gringo) de que todos valemos lo mismo es una mentira enorme. Ni a los ojos de la sociedad ni a los ojos de la ley somos iguales. Hay poderes mucho más fuertes que impulsan por debajo todo lo que vemos. Uno de esos poderes es el dinero pero otro, que subestimamos seguido, es nuestra propia manera de hacer las cosas, nuestras costumbres arraigados en los más hondo del cerebro.

 Culpamos a los poderosos o a los pobres de todo y de nada pero la verdad es que cada uno de nosotros aportamos a que las cosas empeoren o mejoren o, en el caso actual, a que todo siga como ha sido durante el último siglo. Miles de avances tecnológicos no cambian nuestra manera de ser en lo más hondo. Seguimos teniendo costumbres tontas, como ignorar las mejores porque creemos que tiempos peores fueron mejor, solo porque no aceptamos nuestro presente.

 Ese estado de negación perpetua es el que ayuda a que el mercado laboral sea, en esencia, el mismo que hace unos cincuenta años. Sí, por supuesto que han aparecido nuevos empleos y se han abierto caminos antes inexplorados. Pero siguen siendo trabajos y a la gente se le sigue seleccionando de la misma manera. Así sea un robot el que analice las hojas de vida, el resultado será el mismo pues los datos que se consideran no han cambiado y, seguramente, jamás lo hagan.

 La edad es un factor clave. Alguien joven es, a los ojos del mundo laboral, alguien con vigor y energía, capaz de traer ideas nuevas que ayuden al progreso general de la empresa. Sin embargo, también son mulas de carga, pues tienen mayor resistencia y se les puede pedir lo que sea y lo harán porque, en estos países de los que hablamos, no pueden darse el lujo de negarse a hacer una u otra cosa. Así sea algo que no tiene nada que ver con su cargo, lo harán porque se arriesgan a perder su miserable sueldo.

 Y es que los sueldos siguen siendo miserables porque la humanidad avanza, nunca para. Así lo suban hoy y pasado mañana, el sueldo seguirá sin ser suficiente para poder vivir una vida realmente agradable. Ese lujo está reservado para los ricos y para las personas que esperan cuarenta años o más para poder reunir lo suficiente para hacer de su vida algo de provecho. Esas historias son contadas y hoy en día pareciera que son más numerosas. Pero es una ilusión del mundo interconectado que hoy. Sigue siendo igual de idílico que hace décadas.

 Lo otro es la educación. La pobre educación que ha pasado de ser un pilar de la humanidad a un negocio que se vende como salchichas a la salida de un estadio. Ya no hay calidad sino nombres y precios, como quien va a comprar ropa a un centro comercial. Lo que la gente busca es comprar la marca más cara que pueda comprar y ojalá esa le sirva para lo que quiere hacer. A veces el solo nombre es suficiente y otras veces hay que apoyarlo con más inversión, dinero y dinero.

 La calidad es algo que pasa a tercer plano, ni siquiera a segundo. Son esos árboles que pintábamos cuando éramos pequeños, al fondo de todos nuestros dibujos. Hacíamos el tronco, grueso o delgado, de color marrón y luego una suerte de nube verde que iba encima. De vez en cuando le dibujábamos algunos frutos pero los colores se confundían y lo que se suponía eran manzanas se convertían en bolas negras. Así es la educación, nosotros la hacemos para bien o para mal.

 Esos que hablan de un profesor u otro, que ese sabe más o que esa clase es más satisfactoria, solo está tratando de justificar el dinero gastado. Porque, de nuevo, somos nosotros, cada alumno, el que hace que toda la educación tenga sentido. Y no hablo solo de la universidad sino también de la secundaria, la primaria y hasta el jardín de infantes, que hoy cuesta una millonada y no sirve para nada, excepto como peldaño a un colegio caro que es tan vacío como una caja sin contenido.

 En los trabajos existentes no quieren personas creativas. Eso, en una palabra práctica, es pura mierda. Muchos trabajos dan la ilusión de ser una aventura o, peor aún, de dar el control al trabajador. Pero eso no existe o sino todos serían sus propios jefes y ni siquiera la gente que de verdad lo es puede hacer lo que se le da la gana. Hay fuerzas de todas partes, que quieren algo o que solo lo toman. La mente que piensa ya no es una cualidad sino un problema, si acaso un estorbo.

 Esas son mis justificaciones o como sea que les de la gana de llamarlas. Así explico yo el hecho de tener más estudios que la mayoría y, sin embargo, a los casi treinta años de edad, ser un fracaso completo a los ojos de toda la sociedad, sin excepción.

 Y lo peor, o la sola realidad, es que no me arrepiento de los pasos que he dado. Si tuviera una máquina del tiempo, no la usaría. Porque sería este mismo mundo de mierda el que estaría del otro lado del umbral. Y ya está visto que a mi eso no me sirve para nada.

They speak to us

   If you stand in the bridge, you wouldn’t be able to see it. You have to walk south, by the great way. It’s a rather short walk. On the left bank, you will see a beautiful meadow plagued with trees that are not tall or especially beautiful. However, if you walk across the meadow, close to a wall that limits the growth of plants, you will see a small hill and three trees on top of it. The one with the straightest trunk, clean leaves, and no roots on sight, is the one I want to tell you about.

 Beneath that tree, a friend of mine was buried a long time ago. He was not especially strong or fit or brave. He was not particularly remarkable in any way. He was just my friend and that is the reason why that tree is so special to me. I’ve been there many times, at night and during the day, a few minutes and also several hours. And every single time I visit that place, I talk to my friend. Sometimes there is nothing to say, other times it’s different. It changes, as life happens to be.

 I like that meadow because the sunset look gorgeous from it, the golden rays from the sun seem to be touching your body in such a magical way. Even when it rains, the green field looks as if it had escaped a book of fantastical stories. It’s the kind of place where, in stories, ladies and lords encounter beautiful white unicorns and heroes lift a sword out of a stone. I wonder if thing like that have actually happened there but maybe it’s best not to know for certain and just imagine.

 It feels good to be there, laying on the grass and just hearing the wind caressing the greenery. Flowers are scarce but when you find one, it is sure to be one of the most beautiful botanical being your eyes have ever seen. So many colors and such beautiful designs. They make you realize how perfect nature is and how intricate life can be in order to create things that have apparently little to no value. That’s how simpleminded and stupid humans are, because we just do not understand.

 I’m not saying I do understand but, when I’m there, I do feel different than usual. Sometimes I feel my muscles are stronger than ever and some other times I feel it is my mind that has grown one full size, in intellectual terms. I have attributed this particular feeling to the fact that my friend is there, beneath the tree or maybe inside of it. I have a special connection with that place, that goes far beyond it’s location or the many ways the sun touches the leaves and the rain flows down the small hills. It’s just something that I will never be able to understand or explain.

 I never go to two of my favorite places at once but I do have another natural space where I like to relax my aching bones. It’s a prairie, many hours away by walking from the meadow. It’s on the outskirts of civilization and maybe that’s the reason why it feels so special. It might also be the fact that many great people died there a long time ago and the place became a graveyard, although not on purpose. There’s not a sign labeling it as such and there are not tombstones to read.

 You feel the presence of thousands of soul when you enter the prairie. That one, different from the meadow, is filled with flowers all over. As trees are scarce, flowers grow on the ground, big as the fists of a mighty warrior. The colors are unimaginable if one has never been there and the sound of many birds creates a wall of sound that no scream or weapon can pierce. It is very beautiful but it can also be a little bit too much, if the person doesn’t know how to handle it.

 I’ve gone there for many years, from a very young age. Family members were buried there for generations and I feel that my body will also lay beneath the many flowers of the prairie. It’s not a nice thought on my head, but it comforts me that, at the very least, my final resting place could be that beautiful place full of all many of the things that people in other places don’t really have anymore. Birds and flowers are considered wild nowadays and people don’t like that too much.

 There are no hills, no real elevations on that never-ending prairie. There’s just a road on one side and a road on the other. The rest is grass and flowers and birds’ songs. Nothing much besides that. I relax on the meadow but not on the prairie. The prairie makes me think too much sometimes, about my own mortality and about the many things I have yet to do in this life. It makes me feels I have little time, which is true, but I suddenly hear the clock ticking and it’s unbearable.

 When I go, I only stay for a couple of hours and then leave without a prayer or a word. I don’t talk to anyone there, even if a good part of my family’s bones has fed the flowers that live there. I don’t feel comfortable or happy there. But I don’t feel sad or persecuted. It’s just a very strange feeling of not being quite there somehow… I don’t understand it and I just go there when I feel I need to pay my respects, which happens when I take the road north in order to get home after several days of hard labor. I go because I have to, in a certain way, not because I want to.

 My final spot is not very far from home. I live in a beautiful mountain, which oversees the most amazing green valley you have ever seen. Only a small amount of farms break a beautiful natural landscape. The sound of the stream is the one that always tells me I’m only a few minutes away from seeing the faces of my family. When I pass the rushing waters, I can almost feel their skin on my hands, their perfume on my noise and their happy laughs on my ears. It really is home.

 When I’m there, I often take my family to the other side of the mountain. It’s a bit colder and rockier than the place we live in but somehow I really like it. It happens to be the border that separates our country, if one can call it that, from the rest of the world. Beyond the rocks, you can only see the tallest and greenest trees in existence. They make a kind of fabric that extends for several kilometers and then some more. Water can be heard but not seen and animals are the only ones populating it.

 There are no roads that cross it. No one really dares to go through the maze that is the forest. Some daring neighbors love to go there in the summer to pick up grapes, the wild kind, that grow on the outskirts. The yare very sweet and have a beautiful purple color and kind smell. However, wolves have been known to attack people that stay there for too long. It is not a place for humans to thrive. But it’s nice to look at all those leaves from above, while having a warm drink.

 I enjoy the view alone or with my family. We spread mother’s ashes there some three years ago and I still remember how the wind carried the dust the deepest parts of the forest. I stayed there, waiting for the cloud that was my mother to fall on top of the trees but the wind kept on carrying it away, farther and farther away from everything that woman had ever known. It made me think about her and about every single person I had ever met that was not in this world anymore.

 Those are my favorite places on this Earth. They are so different the one from the other but they do share the fact that I feel my people on them, I feel their hearts and minds and, certainly, they souls. They guide me still in this wretched world.

 I know I will become one of them someday. It might be today or tomorrow or in several years. But I know it will happen. In a very strange way, it calms me to know that they are going to be there, on the other side. And I will still be able to visit all my favorite spots.

Nunca es fácil

   Nunca será fácil despedirse de un ser querido. No importa su edad, su estatus dentro de la familia o incluso si era o no de la misma especie, nos duele en el alma cuando se va alguien que amamos profundamente, así nunca antes no hayamos dado cuenta. Es un dolor grande porque los seres humanos tenemos la maldición de tener que recordar, de guardar en nuestro cerebro esas imágenes que se repiten una y otra vez como viejas películas que ya nadie parece querer ver, solo en ocasiones.

 Se nos secan los ojos de tanto llorar y nos duele tanto la cabeza como el pecho, porque no hay nada más doloroso y duro para el ser humano que enfrentarse a la muerte. Ante ella no somos nada, no tenemos ningún tipo de poder. Solo somos pequeños animalitos asustados que se arrodillan y piden clemencia, porque no hay nada más que hacer en ese momento. Ella ha llegado y hace lo que quiere cuando quiere, sin que nosotros importemos tanto como creemos que importamos a diario.

 El dolor se va con el tiempo. Aprendemos a vivir con él y a verlo como una criatura que habita dentro de nosotros. No es algo bienvenido porque a nadie le gusta sentirse así a propósito, pero sabemos que es la única manera en que podemos soportar la pérdida. Si no sintiéramos dolor, no podríamos expresar lo que significa para nosotros que alguien haya dejado su lugar junto a nosotros. Es necesario sentir que el pecho no puede más y que los ojos están secos y duelen como nunca.

 Y los recuerdos llegan a altas horas de la noche. A veces son simples imágenes, otras veces son más complejas y se comportan cuando pesadillas cuando son una simple realidad pasada. Es por eso que tenemos que aprender a vivir con la muerte. Tenemos que aprender a que las cosas pasan, a que todo es un ciclo de vida en el que estamos involucrados y, aunque no podemos hacer nada para cambiarlo, sí podemos darnos nuestro lugar en él y aprovechar la vida como viene.

 Debajo de un árbol yacen muchas de las personas que estuvieron junto a mi, muchos amigos entrañables. También flotan en el aire, libres de las cadenas humanas. Están aquí y allí, siempre junto a nosotros. Son almas, recuerdos que nos enseñan y pueden impulsarnos cuando no sabemos como seguir adelante. Es ahí cuando la vida y la muerte se cruzan y forman un mismo tejido hermoso, con dos caras distintas pero dependientes. Debemos vivir la vida, aprovecharla, ser felices y siempre disfrutar a los seres amados. En la muerte, todos estaremos juntos, tomados de la mano, libres.

The planetarium

   The planetarium was almost empty. The small crowds of the morning had been gone for a while and now only two couples and a sleeping guy were beneath the dome, not really witnessing the lightshow that had been made to teach people about stars, planets and all other astronomical bodies. However, there were two other people in the room. They were there only for a couple of minutes but enough for one of them to look at the massive Milky Way for quite a while.

 His name was non important. His service badge had the number 954. The number was always assigned randomly, with no real meaning. It was just a way for people to know something and, at the same time, not knowing a single truth about the person they were in front of. He would wear his badge everywhere when on duty and, on secret missions like these, he would have it somewhere on him to pull out fast or throw away in an instant, anything to live a bit longer in order to survive, step by step.

 He had arrived too early at the meeting but he had done so because it would have been too obvious if they had met on the street or even in front of the planetarium. And if they had entered at the same exact time, people would have noticed something else going on. So he just got there earlier, his hotel being pretty close to that place, and had witnessed most of the lightshow without a sound interrupting the narration, except maybe the snore of the sleeping guy on a back row.

 The agent sat down and waited. As he did that, he remembered his childhood, when he asked several times for stickers that lighted up in the dark in order to decorate his room. His mother tried to buy him some but she gave up after a couple of outings. Besides, his dad was against it the moment he knew of the kid’s request. The man declined to buy his son anything, especially not when he was doing so poorly at school. 954 had to repeat that grade the following year.

 Stars were just things that had fascinated him for a long time and they were also one of the things he had given up during childhood. When he looked back at those days, he felt that maybe he hadn’t really lived as a kid. His parents had always been so different and he was trapped often in his discussions. It was especially hurtful when they blamed him for things they hadn’t done in life, as he had been born very early in their relationship. He eventually learned that they had married only because of him. One of his grandparents told him, as if it was nothing.

 The exchange went fast. Agent XDE had come a long way for the information and she really didn’t feel like staying more than needed in that dreadful city. It was a very strange thing but she had been born in a city and hated every single urban landscape she had ever seen. This was because the only good memories she had had taken place far from those places, in nature, where animals lived and everything had a really nice feel of freedom and excitement about it. It felt true.

 She had landed her job just as she had come out of college. She was a very brilliant student, who had been fortunate enough to go to a very private and respected high school. She had done so many things to earn people’s respect that it wasn’t a surprise when the government started offering her jobs. Most of those jobs involved working on offices and she hated the idea of being in a closed environment. It was her that proposed them to work as an agent and they gladly complied.

 Her training was done faster than most recruits and she was sent to her first mission at the same age other girls are trying to fit in college and find what their passion in life is. She didn’t want their life and was successful in using everything she had in life in order to progress faster than others and always be ahead, no matter the costs. She had learned to be self-reliant and didn’t care at all about other people. Spies exist to prevent evil to destroy common people but she didn’t care at all.

 The adrenaline of her job was what kept her going; from the moment she stepped in her first mission. She never had an issue when asked if she could separate completely from her family. She even did it before they asked her.  XDE was assigned as her code and it was a series of letters she had chosen for herself and submitted them to her bosses. She didn’t care about receiving a “no” for an answer and that was because she knew people were afraid of her. She liked that.

 No one ever knew what her code name meant but that was of little importance in the long run. The most important thing she had to offer was her skills: she was fast, effective, silent and with an excellent eye to predict how a scenario would play out. She would play all the possible outcomes in her head and then try to move everything in order for her to get favored. She was a very good manipulator, which explained how she entered the museum without being seen and then out again, in a few minutes. She was one of the best spies the world had ever seen.

 The transaction was as follows: agent 954 was seating on the front row, very close to the projector. The couples were on the middle rows and the sleeping man on the back row. Agent XDE did not enter through the main door but through the one used by maintenance crew and all other people that worked in the planetarium and in the adjacent museum. She did it silently and had previous knowledge the door was always covered in darkness during one of those lightshows.

 When 954 noticed her, he immediately knew who she was. It wasn’t because she was obvious, but it was something about the way she walked or the way she looked at him from the dark, for only a second. He just knew that what he had to do was stand up and walk towards her side of the dome room. Darkness would help the deal get done faster and so it was. When he was very close to her, already covered by darkness, she grabbed his hand in a grip, almost as he wanted to crush it.

 Instead, she passed him a very small tube with whatever his bosses had told him to collect. The woman didn’t say a word. He just knew he had to pretend that he had decided to leave the show and she just disappeared through the same door she had used when entering. The woman almost flew away of the scene like a cat or some kind of incredibly silent creature. In a matter of minutes, she was already grabbing her only suitcase and hopping into a car for the airport.

 Meanwhile, he walked slowly through the planetarium’s exposition halls, watching the beautiful dioramas of how Humanity would colonize Mars and other celestial bodies in the Solar System. He just knew running away wasn’t the best way to do what he had to do. He had to play it cool. So he walked slowly towards the cafeteria and then bought some coffee there. He had in a table by a garden and then left walking as if nothing had happened, towards his hotel.

 The show ended inside the planetarium. The couples left after realizing the lights were on. They didn’t say a word, just walked to the exit in silence, as if they knew they had desecrated a place that was not meant for horny younger people.

 But the sleeping man remained there for a little more. After all, he hadn’t really been sleeping at all. He had just seen a very interesting exchange happened and he was well aware that many people would pay a lot of money for the information that was now in his power.