Happy new year

   The last place has always been paired with all the bad connotations. Being last is seen as having virtually no good qualities. Sometimes, not even bad qualities. You just don’t have anything going on for yourself if you come up in the last place. You might as well not run or participate, many think. But the truth is that there will always be a last one, as nothing in this world lasts forever and everything and everyone is doomed to disappear. And someone or something will be last, because things are finite.

 Can you imagine being the last human in the world? Yes, it would be extremely lonely and sad but you would be the last one, the last creature walking in two legs with a brain good enough to create things that are almost impossible. And you would be the last one in that lineage. You would be the last one to understand what feelings are and the last one to know how to attempt and explain them. You will be the last one to love and the last one to properly cry of real sadness.

 That’s all very beautiful, poetic even. You will be the last recipient of a vast history, encompassing bloody wars and beautiful romances. In you, the last remaining body, memories of all that has been and had been before you were born would be deposited. A brain acting as the last vessel for all human thought and advancement. Every single thing that humankind has done will be imbued in your blood and your flesh. When you die, being the last one of us all, an entire part of the history of the universe will die too.

 Tragic but there’s beauty in all the most awful things. We can deny it all that we want but that’s the way it is. Awful things can be fatal, can mark the last part of something, and maybe that’s why they can be beautiful, even in the darkness and among the most despised of human occurrences. Not everyone can actually see that light in the dark, but when you do, it’s the most beautiful thing you can ever see. That’s the world we live in and the world we have made around us, as members of the human race.

 So when you die, being the last of us, you will encompass everything beautiful and everything awful in your own essence, in your body and your soul.  All the concepts, the ideas, the feelings and thought, they will all somehow live inside of you, still breathing even if barely, trying to survive one more day. But, as we said before, being last is something that happens forever, something that does not change, no matter how much we would like it. “Last” is forever and that’s the way it is. So we will have to calm down in the last moments and just appreciate what was and never will be again.

 A year is the same. The end of this year marks the end of a series of events that marked our life that made us into the people that we are. Of course, many of those things will spill put into the next year and the following years, but as our live are so short, we can really define each year with ease. It isn’t difficult to put a name to it, to define it as something. Some years are bad and some are good, for example, depending on whom you ask. That’s the base of it all, the one that’s stored inside our heads for the future.

 It always happens that people begin to think an awful lot during the last few days of the year. They regret not doing some things and are happy that they did some others, but they know very well that whatever has happened cannot be undone and that they will have to deal with it. Nothing is clearer than when a loved one has passed and we remember that year because of it. Of course, its painful, but it’s also the reminder of our own mortality and that we should appreciate every single day on this Earth.

 The thing is we start thinking about what we have done only when the year is coming to an end, but rarely before that. Maybe in birthdays or days when we feel especially sad or down about something, but in many countries the last month of the year is the one with more suicides, homicides and, in general, more violent deaths than any other part o the year. Maybe it’s precisely because we start thinking about things and we decide we didn’t do enough or others didn’t do enough either. It can be a mess.

 The best thing is to think about every single thing we did and not only fixating our look on the bad stuff, which is what we tend to do often. Bad things always seem to be more serious, like their matter more, which is ridiculous. Feeling good and happy should always be as important as feeling like shit, so we should never take it for granted. Taking everything into account is very important and never forgetting that we are creatures made to feel everything, no matter what is and that nothing is forever.

 At the end of this year, we shouldn’t thing too much about the next one, we should just feel content with what we have done and just be on the lookout for the next year. If we want to achieve something special, then we should work towards it, doing whatever is needed to properly reach our goal. And that’s it, do things if you want or don’t do them if you don’t want to. It’s that simple and you should never complicate yourself with silly thought in a moment when you should be celebrating instead of feeling like shit. Jus enjoy the time you have because it is limited and there are no do-overs.

Happy new year.

What is content?

   The world today is all about making things, producing whatever it is you want in the hopes that someone, somewhere, would want to own in some way, whatever it is you have made. Content creation is the biggest thing nowadays and the fun part of it all is that the ones who create that content are not even good at creating anything. They just grab the best parts of what interests people the most and they mash that up together in order to create something that will attract people to it.

 Usually, content means videos, texts and pictures, all trying to call your attention into something you are probably interesting in. There so many things around right now, that we can say for sure that there is something for everyone. Is not like in the past when people had to go places to look for what they liked and maybe what they liked was not widely available or was even forbidden. Nowadays, every single kind of content is available in your home, without even moving from your bed.

 And people complain about that. Actually, they have two ways of complaining: they want more information, even easier to attain at every single moment in their lives and every single place in the planet. But others want the opposite. As always in human history, there’s always a group, a very vocal one, that advocates for a return to the old days when everything was done by hand and when people didn’t have the same freedoms they have today. They phrase it differently but you know what I mean.

 I won’t say that these kind of people want less freedoms and less information, because many of them just want to be freed from things like social media and the pressures of modern life, but I bet there are some of them who don’t really like the fact that information gives freedom, it gives us power to know that there’s something better out there. Information is knowledge and knowledge is a big power that can never be underestimated. Just ask the ones that have used it to their advantage.

 Of course, not every single piece of information is valuable; just as not every single piece of content is good or even worth a look. We are being dumped tons and tons of shit every single day into our mind, by people and even by computer generated automatic services that read into what we like and enjoy, deciding then to sell us whatever it is they are pushing somewhere in the world or maybe closer to home. Maybe they want us to buy tickets for a sport event, or music from various artists. Maybe they even want us to buy time with some other person or a game that can shield us from the pressures mentioned before.

 This world is surprising in that it has some things that are surprising, amazing if you will, but there are others that have always remained the same. For one, our naiveté is still a big problem when someone else wants us to believe in whatever it is they are talking about or whatever they are trying us to do.  We are still very much a silly little creature that had the luck to evolve into something a little bit more versatile and interesting. And yet, we still like to believe what we know are lies.

 Maybe its because people have gotten used to having everything at hand, just in front of them, so they have left their defense mechanisms in a dark corner inside their minds, where it cannot help them when someone wants to take advantage of them. Humans have decided, actively, to let their guard down and just enjoy all the good things of being the most evolved creature on the planet’s surface. Sadly enough, there are bad things too and there are many bad humans around to make our lives not like a dream.

 But we were talking about content. And how does this all relate to that? Very simple: the content machine that has been created, where people ask for “community managers” in their companies, is all about trying to make us thing one thing that may not be true. Actually, it’s mostly never true. We are now offered various options and we have to decide which one is the real one, which will make us happy for sure. And when we decide, we mostly choose the most visual striking option.

 That’s because we are humans, we are attracted to everything that goes inside our heads through our eyes. It has always been like that, ever since publicity was created and all the attempts to sell whatever it is they were selling. Because you can better believe that every single piece of content today wants to sell you something. Only a small fraction has been created for your pure enjoyment and even that can be put into question. It’s all about buying, about exchanges between people that can go right or wrong.

 But the truth is that we don’t really mind at all. We don’t care what it is they want to do with us. We just conclude that it is all a tale trying to make us feel scared about big companies and the government and how the mighty God of capitalism works. Our reaction is one of contempt for the ones that try to warn us about the bad things behind this society that has become a huge marketplace where everything is exchanged, no matter what. There is always a buyer and there is always someone selling exactly what we are looking for, what we want the most.

 We don’t know how else to live anymore. If everything disappeared tomorrow, many people would collapse on the spot, not knowing what to expect from the world. And that’s very important, because people feel safe in this huge marketplace, they know how everything works and they like that. The unknown has only ever attracted a very small amount of people, the real adventure of not knowing what lies beyond. Most of us like a good routine and we stick to it even if we complain daily about it.

Well, that’s what content is all about. It’s brings a cozy feeling to people that sometimes think the world might be going down any day now. That’s why even the news coverage in general has changed, in order to adapt reality, those things that we always thought that they couldn’t be manipulated. History changes or at least the way we look at it. Our perspective is no longer ours, but someone else’s, someone behind a computer who wrote exactly what we are going to think about a certain subject.

 And I have bad news: they have succeeded. Because people are not critical anymore, they just listen and listen, read and read, they think they are building their own opinion but they are not. They are just choosing what they like from what they’ve heard and seen, not really digging deep into anything. That’s too much work.

 That’s how we live nowadays. So if we can still fight, making the kind of content that is free from everything and every form, maybe that way we can still have a little window of hope. Maybe that way we can actually give people hope for the future and even for a present that looks like one thing but that is most likely something else.

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.

Rainfall

Rain falls. That's what it does. But it doesn't do it always in the same way. Sometimes, rain feels almost extraterrestrial, as it fell not from the sky, but from some awful place, far in space. Other times, you would think it comes from a land made of candy, created for children or for people that love a nice piece of heaven in their mouths. Wherever it comes from, rain is one of those things that makes us feel truly alive, specially when it rolls down our faces and bodies.

Rain is water but it can also burn when the body it touches is not pure, full of guilt and all those pathetic human feelings that fester inside brain and heart. Water cannot wash way all of our evil. It's not acid, even when it feels like it. Some cannot feel all of its properties. There are people that could swim for hours and never feel clean, not truly. Hot or cold, the liquid is not enough to wash away everything that is wrong with the human soul, and humankind in general. People won't be saved.

Rain won't do It and nothing else will. On other worlds, it rains gasoline and diamonds. So we all have that in common: things will Jeep falling on our heads, no matter what we think about the universe. The brain might have an understanding of how mostly everything works but when we're all dead, that won't matter. Water will still be water and gasoline will keep falling from the sky unto someone else's head. And it won't matter if we were here, if we attempted to understand this place or not.

Rain won't care. Nothing will. Because we don't want to understand that se are all here for a little while. We were given some seconds on the clock of existence and that time will run out. No matter how much we try, we won't be here forever and our existence will leave no trace. No wonder or creation made by our hands will remain to tell our story. This scares us more than we want to admit, but that's how it works, no Gods in question. One moment we are here, the next we're not.

Rain, however, will stay. Until the very end.

Rush

   What did I dream? What did I eat last night?  What was my last thought before closing my eyes and falling asleep? It’s silly, but I don’t remember any of it, or at least not once. I have to be still and really try hard to remember the answer to every single one of those questions and many more that appear many minutes after I wake up. Does it all have to do with this? Is it all connected, as many people believe? They think that if one thing happens and then another or something else on the other side of the globe, then it’s all connected. To me it sounds stupid and very easily dismissible as a theory but who am I to trump over the delusions of so many of our fellow human beings. Maybe it’s better to let them wonder through the cosmos and just not pay attention to whatever they might have to say.

 Yet, I feel confused, scared and my stomach is rumbling like mad. Did I lose my last meal too, even if I haven’t vomited at all? It feels like I have. My belly really hurts and my body overall feels tired and weak in a very weird way. It’s like something took away my bones for a single second but I can still feel them readjusting to their original positions. It also feels as if the room had been completely moved like a gigantic cube while I was sleeping, causing my senses to become insane. I can’t really tell if up is that way or down is that other way. I don’t know and to be honest I have no intention to help anyone in that department. I just want this very awful feeling to leave me, my heart to stop pounding. It seems it wants out.

 Turning on the light in the room, and I say it in singular because there’s only the one, was not the best idea. Only to see the mess I caused… Well, it wasn’t me and it was, all at the same time. Maybe that’s why I feel a little bit guilty too, like when you’re little and you pee your bed. And you are conflicted between going to your parents and tell them what happen. Or maybe, you think, you can clean it yourself and put the linen in the washing machine and no one will ever know. And when they realize what happened, you feel weak and shaky and you cannot really talk and you want to cry but know it’s not really a moment to cry because, somehow, it doesn’t feel like it.

 My stomach is the worst part. It’s still restless and I don’t know if it’s a good idea to have breakfast. I mean, what if I just expel all of that in an hour or less? I don’t want to be cleaning that or feeling even worse than I feel right now. I don’t want to risk my mental health and my physical one. Besides, the possibility of having to clean the floors (here’s hoping it’s the floors…) does not really excite me at all. If anything, it makes my stomach even more restless, as if I had a very violent electric eel trapped in there and she stings me every time I think of pulling her out of her cozy environment. I don’t feel good, that’s the point.

 Breathing has become harder. I don’t know why, but it feels like this room, filled with freezing air, is running out of oxygen. However, I don’t want to open the window and become a human popsicle. Because even know, seating on my bed, I can feel that damn cold air like a snake going up my legs, through my belly and chest and to my brain. My fingers feel weird too, like they are about to crack. And I still cannot breath. Opening my mouth seems futile and only my nose is trying to keep me alive but I have no idea how skilled my nose is, even less right now when the punch had come from the area. I try to inhale some air and it feels heavy, almost solid. I can almost feel its taste and it doesn’t taste good at all.

 Why is that? Because of the surroundings I guess. I know now I don’t like this student life, or at least not at this age anymore. I sound old but I’m not, I just complain every single second about things that I have decided to be my life, so if you think about it, I should just shut up. And I do. I don’t really use my vocal chords as much as I did back home, although that is kind of obvious. After all, they are your family and you love them or at least I love mine. If you have issues with yours, well, sorry for that. But these other people, the truth is I don’t care for them at all. They could die out there, rammed by a bus, and I would honestly not give a shit. I would only worry for the next person, the next boring and predictable human male to stay in that room and talk about booze and pot, because apparently this is it for humanity.

  Well, that let’s a weight out, somehow. But still feel a bit lost. After all, my awakening today was too fast, too confusing and a little of a low blow. You never know when things are going to take a turn, one of those turns that changes your whole mindset for the day or even for more time. I hate it when it happens because change scares me and it scares me a lot more than I imagined it. I want it all the same over and over and over again and I’m not ashamed of confessing that. Because I don’t see anything over the hill. No green grass, no cute little houses, no beautiful people smiling at me and doggies coming to greet me. I don’t see anything.

 The future scares me and maybe my body had finally realized it. Maybe the war between my insides and my mind has begun and this, whatever it is that’s writing this, is in the middle of the fight. And I know there will be blood and pain all over, there will be losses and gains and my mind is going to spiral down a wormhole that I have made for myself. Because, if we are objective, no one else is guilty more than ourselves. If there’s something happening to us, we probably had it coming and we even knew that it was coming, even if we chose not to acknowledge and just pretend nothing was happening, as we often do.

 That roll of toilet paper is starting to look funny somehow. I guess it’s because it is. Such a funny thing to have around one’s house, when you think about it. It’s shape; it’s function, the one it is built and all the strategic marketing behind such a strange object. I don’t mean that to be funny or make some funny toilet jokes. I’m afraid I don’t know any of those so I cannot be funny that way. Actually, I have no idea if I’m funny in any way. Maybe I’m like the toilet paper, that’s just strange and everywhere and that’s me sometimes. There but not there at the same time, however always out of place, as if I was an extra and I always come in the scene a little too early or too late. I do feel like an extra sometimes and I believe we all do everyday, so I don’t really fell bad about it.

 I put on my socks again, as they slid out of my feet during the night. Maybe that’s the reason why I feel like I feel right now. But I doubt it. What do socks have to do with anything? I just want my feet to feel a bit warm in order for my body to stop trembling and for my belly to calm down. I know I have responsibilities and all that but I’m seriously thinking about staying in bed all day. The idea seems very alluring and a very great one, I must say… Fuck, there they go again with their music and their noise. I don’t care what time of the day it is; you just don’t shove your tastes down people’s throats. It says a lot about someone, music and how they behave with it and how they consume it or however you want to say it.

 My pillow was spared, mostly. I want to lay my head on it and just close my eyes because I start to feel a little dizzy again. I just want to rest and not have any of that annoying noise around me. I don’t want to feel more than the warmth of the bedspread and the smell that I leave in my pillow. That may sound a little bit self-centered, but I guess it is the only way to calm me down, to make me realize all of this is real and that I’m not imagining anything strange and crazy. Actually, I do want this all to be my imagination and I don’t mean this morning, I mean this whole part of my life. Because it doesn’t feel right and I’m just holding on, trying to make time pass day by day.

 All the blood I spilled this morning… It tells me it is real and that I still have to keep my ground, I still have to wait and endure for more time. I’m not a good person but I don’t think I’m bad either. I’m in between. When I woke up to a rush of blood coming out my noise, successfully avoiding everything to be tainted in red, I thought it was a punishment for something, I thought it was because I had done something wrong and now I was paying for it. Maybe through just the bleeding, maybe through something more. I don’t know that for sure and to be honest I don’t really want to know because my head is spinning. Although that awful music might have something to do with it… Sometimes I do hate people.