Caracas Chronicles

Quico says: Once every long while, a piece in Spanish strikes me as so incisive, so well-judged, so indispensable, that I’ll bit the bullet and translate the thing.

This latest one is by Laureano Márquez. The original in Spanish is here.

Chill, dude!!!
by Laureano Márquez

Could it be the water? Some medicine that’s not settling with him? Is somebody checking up on that? Is he eating alright?

I’m seriously starting to think the Agency has somebody very close to him who is hurting him. Seriously. This isn’t normal. Even you, my dear friends on the other side, must have realized something is happening to him. He’s not ok. This “decisive victory” has really left him worse for wear. Defeat might have been better; another win like that will be the end of him.

I imagine folks on the other side are becoming aware that somebody in such a state is a danger not just to those who oppose him (who, in any case, already knew what they were in for) but fundamentally to those who care for him (who haven’t realized it yet.)

The problem is figuring out how to love him without setting him off. I imagine the tortured calculus they must go through, scrutinizing his face to try to guess on which side of the bed he woke up that day: “What if he thinks I’m sucking up too much because I’m hiding something?…or that I’m not sucking up enough because I’m going dissident?…how to accept his support without being crushed by it?…am I decoding the meta-messages right?…have I gone too far, or not far enough?…”

In the end, that’s no life, no matter how much cash you might be sitting on. The stress must be terrible: how would you know when he’s going to fly off the handle at you? Spending your life waiting for the other shoe to drop must be simply hideous. There’s no way to sleep peacefully knowing that, on any given night, he might pick up the phone and call you in the middle of a bout of creative insomnia just to chew you out, to tip the dump-truck of his failures over on you.

It might just be an ancestral hatred of Christmas. It puts some people in a bad mood. The ways of the subconscious are strange. In my case, for instance, I hate cheese because, when I was little, they used to beat me with a mozzarella stick. If I ever make it to power I will ban cheese in all its forms. Maybe this page of the calendar is just no good for him.

Those closest to him should try to lighten the load for him. Do secret santa with him. A year end office party…something, really, anything!

I know that these humble thoughts don’t reach so high up, but in any case, reaching out is never wrong: calm down, daddy-o! Relax. Life is short and lovely. Christmas is a time full of wonderful things: toys for the kids, family gatherings, messages of peace and brotherhood between people. Believe it or not, people want just a bit of tranquillity over these next few weeks. Work out the transition, you don’t have so long anymore. Be happy and let us be happy…but more than anything, chill, dude! And don’t play dumb…

I’m talking to your, George W. Bush, did you hear?