I took both pictures - left: the protest in the morning, right: a wedding at night -on the same day: August 22th, 2009.
Most readers probably ignore it, but to write this blog is quite hard for me. First, I have been learning how to speak and write English with this blog and it has been a bit like a blind trying to walk throughout an unknowing land. Every time I write a new entry I’m forced to look at the dictionary over and over again looking for that specific word such as “General Prosecutor” or even “Demonstration” that I need to explain you something and then I have to read and re read the entry looking for possible grammar mistakes. Even with all that effort, I always find a kind correction of a commenter of this word or that expression and I have to edit and review the entry all over again.
With the difficulties of writing to you in a language that I was never formally taught and that I’m still learning; you have to add the care I put on telling the Revolution from inside without telling you much about my true identity. Believe me, it would be a lot easier to explain you how things really are if I could just tell you all the things I’m afraid to say, including those regarding my identity. It’s also hard to publish inside thoughts about a situation that above all is rather painful for me and for those around me.
A few months ago I started writing with little success a blog in Spanish. My purpose on opening that blog (that still remains) was to write about the other side of my life: that funny, normal, ironic, spontaneous side that emerges when politics isn’t my main concern. I wanted to make a light blog that talked mainly about becoming an adult, just because is the stage of life I’m currently living after I finished the university. I thought that writing such a blog and doing it in Spanish would be a lot easier and maybe, a bit more enjoyable.
But sometimes conscience makes me feel guilty whenever I simply blog about music, parties or my boyfriend. I always feel that I should be more concerned about any recent disturbing political event. This guilty feeling also arises if for instance, I have been so worried and focused on personal troubles (my lack of a real job, family or friend issues, economic things to solve… you get the picture) that I haven’t seen the news neither I’m disturbed for the “cacerolazo” I’m hearing from my window nor I want to be part of it.
Last Saturday I went in the morning to a protest against the new Education law. My mom and I left the protest early, before the troubles began (meaning repression of the protest with tear gas and other sorts of violence, followed by arbitrary detentions) just because we needed to go to the beauty salon in order to be presentable for the wedding of a very close friend of mine that we had at night.
While my hair was being cut and straightened and my nails were being painted French style, the TV of the beauty salon showed the repression of the demonstration we had just left so I knew I couldn’t write a post about how adult I feel because I’m now attending to friends’ weddings, people my age, instead of old cousins or something. I knew I was going to find it hard to focus on a post about guilty feminine pleasures such as reading Hello magazine while the hair dresser is trying to make miracles with my impossible curly hair. I knew that writing a post about my growing interest on things like china and kitchen tools as a sign of me inevitable becoming an adult was out of the question.
I looked at the results of my well spend money at the beauty salon with a certain guilty feeling. “I shouldn’t be doing this” – I thought. But then I thought it twice and it occurred to me that I should be doing that and more, because after all, that’s the main reason why we are worried about the news and protesting all the time: to earn the right to live a life where our rights are respected and to live the way we want to is allowed.
So either way I went to the wedding and had the time of my life. It was hard to believe that just hours earlier I was with my sneakers and my UCAB (my university) baseball cap, taking pictures of protesters and now, I was wearing a beautiful dress and high heels and dancing with my boyfriend one of those good salsa tunes that I never dance well, but I always have a great time trying to.
Political events – or this political crisis in particular- have the tendency of diminish our personal lives and concerns. Besides the political struggle we all face in our daily life in one way of another, we have another struggle: the one that goes between our normal life joys and sorrows and those of a political more general origin that are constantly demanding more space in our minds and hearts that the one we are ready to give. And it is between that fight that my personality has developed throughout all this years (lets not forget that Chavez has almost 11 years in power and that most of us have spent at least 8 years of those protesting in one way or another), always in a protest wishing to be somewhere else, whishing that our life concerns were different and always in a party feeling a bit guilty for those opportunity bites of enjoying a different life, because of not being either protesting or concerned at the moment.
Lately, I’m convinced that this fight - to fight like this- is everything but healthy. That to let politics simply invade our personal lives makes us more harm than good. To be honest, it doesn’t make any important improvement on the political struggle but rather, it just hurts. This sense of patriotism and commitment to your country, and democracy, and freedom, and civil rights, and reading news more and more and more, and force to you to be concern about everything… it tires me and it hurts.
Lately I have taught to myself to not feel guilty if I’m not aware or concerned of my country' situation at every single event of the day. I have learned that to not feel terribly worried or guilty all the time can give me a certain sense of liberation.
So that’s why I’m going to turn my Spanish “light” blog into a therapy. I’m going to keep with the hard task of putting politics aside for a moment and remember all the rest of things that are so good about life. Maybe this blog will also allow some “light” posts too if I feel like it. Some might argue that this is an “irresponsible” decision, that my indifference only allows the government to do more harm. But from where I see it is quite the opposite: maybe to not be so overwhelmed about the latest events can bring us more clarity in order to understand and truly face what’s happening.
After all, Venezuelans seem to be in one way or another condemned to live a double life, a life that goes between daily struggles, repression, controls, news, fear and other several political difficulties and a life filled with everything else that still and in some magical way, manages to survive: love, parties, meetings, family, friends, gossips, smiles, fashion, movies, music…The only thing that remains is to find a way to not lose ourselves in the place where we always fall: that place located right in the middle of our parallel existences.
Most readers probably ignore it, but to write this blog is quite hard for me. First, I have been learning how to speak and write English with this blog and it has been a bit like a blind trying to walk throughout an unknowing land. Every time I write a new entry I’m forced to look at the dictionary over and over again looking for that specific word such as “General Prosecutor” or even “Demonstration” that I need to explain you something and then I have to read and re read the entry looking for possible grammar mistakes. Even with all that effort, I always find a kind correction of a commenter of this word or that expression and I have to edit and review the entry all over again.
With the difficulties of writing to you in a language that I was never formally taught and that I’m still learning; you have to add the care I put on telling the Revolution from inside without telling you much about my true identity. Believe me, it would be a lot easier to explain you how things really are if I could just tell you all the things I’m afraid to say, including those regarding my identity. It’s also hard to publish inside thoughts about a situation that above all is rather painful for me and for those around me.
A few months ago I started writing with little success a blog in Spanish. My purpose on opening that blog (that still remains) was to write about the other side of my life: that funny, normal, ironic, spontaneous side that emerges when politics isn’t my main concern. I wanted to make a light blog that talked mainly about becoming an adult, just because is the stage of life I’m currently living after I finished the university. I thought that writing such a blog and doing it in Spanish would be a lot easier and maybe, a bit more enjoyable.
But sometimes conscience makes me feel guilty whenever I simply blog about music, parties or my boyfriend. I always feel that I should be more concerned about any recent disturbing political event. This guilty feeling also arises if for instance, I have been so worried and focused on personal troubles (my lack of a real job, family or friend issues, economic things to solve… you get the picture) that I haven’t seen the news neither I’m disturbed for the “cacerolazo” I’m hearing from my window nor I want to be part of it.
Last Saturday I went in the morning to a protest against the new Education law. My mom and I left the protest early, before the troubles began (meaning repression of the protest with tear gas and other sorts of violence, followed by arbitrary detentions) just because we needed to go to the beauty salon in order to be presentable for the wedding of a very close friend of mine that we had at night.
While my hair was being cut and straightened and my nails were being painted French style, the TV of the beauty salon showed the repression of the demonstration we had just left so I knew I couldn’t write a post about how adult I feel because I’m now attending to friends’ weddings, people my age, instead of old cousins or something. I knew I was going to find it hard to focus on a post about guilty feminine pleasures such as reading Hello magazine while the hair dresser is trying to make miracles with my impossible curly hair. I knew that writing a post about my growing interest on things like china and kitchen tools as a sign of me inevitable becoming an adult was out of the question.
I looked at the results of my well spend money at the beauty salon with a certain guilty feeling. “I shouldn’t be doing this” – I thought. But then I thought it twice and it occurred to me that I should be doing that and more, because after all, that’s the main reason why we are worried about the news and protesting all the time: to earn the right to live a life where our rights are respected and to live the way we want to is allowed.
So either way I went to the wedding and had the time of my life. It was hard to believe that just hours earlier I was with my sneakers and my UCAB (my university) baseball cap, taking pictures of protesters and now, I was wearing a beautiful dress and high heels and dancing with my boyfriend one of those good salsa tunes that I never dance well, but I always have a great time trying to.
Political events – or this political crisis in particular- have the tendency of diminish our personal lives and concerns. Besides the political struggle we all face in our daily life in one way of another, we have another struggle: the one that goes between our normal life joys and sorrows and those of a political more general origin that are constantly demanding more space in our minds and hearts that the one we are ready to give. And it is between that fight that my personality has developed throughout all this years (lets not forget that Chavez has almost 11 years in power and that most of us have spent at least 8 years of those protesting in one way or another), always in a protest wishing to be somewhere else, whishing that our life concerns were different and always in a party feeling a bit guilty for those opportunity bites of enjoying a different life, because of not being either protesting or concerned at the moment.
Lately, I’m convinced that this fight - to fight like this- is everything but healthy. That to let politics simply invade our personal lives makes us more harm than good. To be honest, it doesn’t make any important improvement on the political struggle but rather, it just hurts. This sense of patriotism and commitment to your country, and democracy, and freedom, and civil rights, and reading news more and more and more, and force to you to be concern about everything… it tires me and it hurts.
Lately I have taught to myself to not feel guilty if I’m not aware or concerned of my country' situation at every single event of the day. I have learned that to not feel terribly worried or guilty all the time can give me a certain sense of liberation.
So that’s why I’m going to turn my Spanish “light” blog into a therapy. I’m going to keep with the hard task of putting politics aside for a moment and remember all the rest of things that are so good about life. Maybe this blog will also allow some “light” posts too if I feel like it. Some might argue that this is an “irresponsible” decision, that my indifference only allows the government to do more harm. But from where I see it is quite the opposite: maybe to not be so overwhelmed about the latest events can bring us more clarity in order to understand and truly face what’s happening.
After all, Venezuelans seem to be in one way or another condemned to live a double life, a life that goes between daily struggles, repression, controls, news, fear and other several political difficulties and a life filled with everything else that still and in some magical way, manages to survive: love, parties, meetings, family, friends, gossips, smiles, fashion, movies, music…The only thing that remains is to find a way to not lose ourselves in the place where we always fall: that place located right in the middle of our parallel existences.