Tribulations of People in the World

By Juan Martin Sanchez

Tribulations of People in the World is a journey through the thoughts of Gabriel and Irena, the protagonist of a romantic entanglement. Their stories meet and their thoughts and feelings mingle. Their impressions and ideas are idiosyncratically different at first, but then the shades of their spirits blend until it is difficult to tell one from the other. There are interludes of poems between the two sides of the romantic story. It may be that Irena has her own entity or that she is just the product of Gabriels mind. This book is not the relation of a story but a creational act that is represented by Irena, Gabriel and their world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499034318

Juan Martin Sanchez

Juan Martin Sanchez was born in the north east of Argentina. He started writing at the age of seven. He took philosophy and law courses and had a serious interest in music. He learned many languages to broaden his literary skills. In 2012, he moved to Poland to be able to make use of his linguistic abilities. There he finished his studies in English, and he has been working as a translator and writer for magazines, and as an English teacher, since then. All his books are realistic and describe his life in Argentina and Poland.

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Copyright © 2014 by Juan Martin Sanchez.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 06/06/2014

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CONTENTS

Tribulations Of People In The World

From The Beginning: Gabriel

Gabriel’s Writings

From The Beginning: Irena

Gabriel’s Thoughts And Concerns

Back To Irena

Meanwhile Gabriel

The Nightmare

TRIBULATIONS OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD

The Polish girl who trotted by

was hurrying with style, her anxiety

was muffled by the quietness of her quick steps

tapping the cobblestones of Garbary.

Why do you rush fair lady?

Are you late for your date with the tram?

Or is it the gladness of summertime

that makes you hop out of happiness?

Speed up a little, I’ll watch you from here,

I’ll see you become a shooting star

streaking across Stary Rynek

to finally alight in some Rondo or Plac.

My voice frequency is so low that you can’t hear it

But I’m hoarse from shouting beside you,

Whereabouts do your eyes wander?

The same which welcomed me with sparkling enthusiasm.

My hands are so feeble they can’t hold you,

My shaky steps keep lagging behind,

Where do you go like the rainbow?

Where will your eyes rest their weariness?

My light steps could follow you everywhere,

Though indecisive, they know when to submit

To an open request, an appeal in full bloom.

Let it be spring between us.

Ode to the real love.

Some people give their hearts away

For a promise, an ephemeral illusion,

Some fall in love with their eyes,

Some with their circumstances,

I wish I hadn’t known about beauty

And the only thing my eyes could glimpse

Was your face close to my face.

The eyes can crave, our life can be stuffed

With desires and expectations.

But when you come asking me to love you,

I regret the world and its turmoil,

And I wish it was just you and me,

You for filling my mind with your presence,

I for making your world a shelter.

Argentina is a nice country located at the edge of the world, beyond which there’s just a vast ocean of sea and ice. It communicates with the world, of course, but it’s not directly affected by worldly events. This country has seen few wars after its independence from Spain; it has never taken an active part in world conflagrations and is vast enough to allow huge numbers of immigrants, while even giving out land to newly rich foreigners with a landlord complex. People can live a comfortable and calm life in Argentina; a rather easy life, free from the constraints of a globally driven economy. The country is capitalist to its roots, but there are still people who will never exchange their comfort for wealth; people who prefer sitting outside their ranches, drinking ‘mate’ with their family and friends instead of rushing around all day long to fill their luxurious lives with overrated goods.

We won’t talk about issues in this country. It has many problems, as every underdeveloped country has. Nowadays, we talk of development and underdevelopment, when just decades ago we made wars in order to develop more than our neighbours. This label that we give ourselves as ‘one of the countries that aren’t up to the mark’ is just another way of submission. We look up to development and long hours of work, and far-fetched careers seem to be the only means towards it. For example; teaching is the last option in developed countries. Young people in the bloom of their lives are reluctant to pass on their knowledge to nimble minds that will make use of this power they’re receiving. If you are a philanthropist and you want to better the world, you’d rather get a doctorate in Sociology than suffer the ignominious travails of a teacher.

Argentina has a higher studies system where you become a teacher despite your own interests because this is the only field where you can work. This happens everywhere. Nowadays development and underdevelopment coexist in the same country, state and city and there’s so much liberality of access to opportunities that anyone who has amassed a little money can take advantage of it. Modern society is the end of stratification; we aren’t divided anymore, but at the same time we don’t belong anywhere. Children can become ‘better off’ than their parents by starting careers that would get them more fashionable jobs, which would allow them to earn more money. It’s the age of opportunities and people are bleeding their American dreams even in the last corner of a bakery in Algiers. There are two tendencies in life: progress and acceptance. There are people who tend toward progress and promote changes for the betterment of society and there are people who are just content with life as a miracle of which we can’t foresee the smallest of events. On the one hand we have life as struggle and the survival of the fittest, and on the other we live in a fraternal community. No one is exempt from desire. This is the main engine of the progress and wellbeing we are so fortunate to live in today. However, passion doesn’t have a restraint and people need something to put all their primeval instincts on; an outlet for all of their repressed feelings of conquest and victory.

FROM THE BEGINNING: GABRIEL

Gabriel was watching an American theorizing about economy; he was explaining how economy is a complex system which, like the nervous system or a rainforest, is made up of highly decentralized and interdependent systems constantly adapting themselves. He pointed out that the neoclassical models we are taught at school instil an image of equilibrium into our minds, and that’s why the economists totally failed to predict the American financial crisis. This crisis was the product of this complexity in the economic system. He was also scaring Americans with the idea that the US’s power can fall apart like the Soviet Union’s did, because of a butterfly effect caused by the lack of credibility in the fiscal policy.

Objectively speaking, they seem eager for knowledge, thought Gabriel; they would always try to learn from their errors so that they wouldn’t stumble on the same rock. Now they are learning that the economic system is complex and that it doesn’t only bring profit but also misery to the other part of the deal. They’re learning that the economy is not a bubble you can inflate eternally but a scale where if you want it to go higher you must weigh down the other scale pan. The butterfly effect metaphor so eloquently conveyed the idea of a packhorse bucking after years of oppression. Gabriel’s enmity with the US came in waves, and this time the flow had been provoked by the US’s eagerness to move on from the crisis and get back onto their trail of success.

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Gabriel was a timid twenty-five year old guy. He was in the middle of his life; just on the edge between acquiring knowledge for life and starting to apply it. When we say timid, we refer to the etymological sense of the word: fear. Fear is an instinct that used to be useful; we could fear putting our hands into fire for example, but this instinct expired when we started making use of our reasoning. There’s not a good side to being fearful and it was something Gabriel always implicitly knew. However, sometimes nature offsets its unfair distribution of gifts by endowing the person with some other qualities. In this case Gabriel had what is called penetrative understanding: the faculty of analyzing things before they even happened. It was a useless gift sometimes, when ideas and projects were dissipated by the air, but very rewarding emotionally other times. There was no need to go through the whole process of what was meant to be a mistake; he could just skip the end of a tragedy by nipping the experience in its bud. Of course no one is exempt from failure, but Gabriel’s life wasn’t tinged by the bitterness of having been the executioner of his own happiness; he didn’t regret any decision he’d taken in his life. Probably it had taken him time to get used to his slowness of character and the utter inability to make up his mind, but whenever he made a choice, he hung on to it as an infuriated dog keeping you away from its bone. He wouldn’t let go of it either playfully or in earnest, neither in a merry guise or with fully bared teeth. He could despise his fate or erase the idea from his conscious mind for a while, but it’d always come back to him with all the momentum it had gained on its ebbing phase. To put it in few words: he was unable to escape his conscience.

This inner awareness had been present in him from early childhood. He’d remember coming back from school and reviewing every conspicuous phrase he’d said or any valiant action he’d performed, like lifting an eraser that had fallen on the floor and giving it back to its pretty owner. He’d remember tormenting himself by some embarrassing thing he’d said or done or by the idea of the girl he was in love with laughing at him in a scornful way. He’d never talk to the object of his love but he’d be the happiest person ever if he perchance caught her attention.

Gabriel had to write an essay on aggressiveness for his English school; he had to poor down his ideas, but in the mould they had given to him. He totally disagreed with the stand he had to take, but it was good for him to realize that, although meaningless in essence, the defence of this point of view was not only possible but plausible. The topic of the essay was supposed to be:

Aggressiveness is an innate trait in human beings and it cannot be avoided.

Why do people have aggressive attitudes towards themselves or other people when this is obviously harmful to themselves? Why do people hurt themselves or provoke other people into anger? Why do people drink so much or risk their lives just for sport? Are there people who really don’t want to be happy and who find pleasure in endangering their own lives and others’? So where is the root of this pleasure we find in hurting someone else or by putting our lives at risk? Is aggressiveness an innate trait in human beings which cannot be avoided?

We can see it more clearly in some examples of self-harm. Even if we turn it around, we can never completely grasp the idea of pleasure behind self-inflicted pain and we always label it as a sign of lack of self-esteem, or extreme emotional suffering that must find a physical outlet. However, a subject that is very closely related to this example is the case of a cheerful young person who cannot find anything better to do than speeding up on his motorcycle even when it could mean death for him. These apparently diametrically opposite attitudes share more in common than the possible consequences. They also share the same cause: aggressiveness.

In addition to the fact that we are not given a choice to be born, we are not given the choice to love our lives either. We are weighed down by the responsibility for our own lives and others’, and sometimes this can cause us to implode or explode. We need a blackout of our consciousness or maybe a dose of pain to make us react. Aggression is the reaction we get when there are no more communicational tools to resort to, or whenever we are not listened to and we want to make ourselves heard. Aggression is implicitly ingrained in many aspects of social life; the most conspicuous of which is sports. Sports are the most glaring proof of how aggression is not only allowed in society but even institutionalized and rewarded: the team which defeats its opponent receives a prize, while the other one receives just the humiliation of having lost a battle.

Could we learn to live an ordinary life without the stimulus of aggression? Would we be content if we did not fight or struggle for what we want? Is there any way of being happy in a passive way, that is to say, being content with what we have and not having the desire to get anything more than that? Is desire the way to happiness or must we learn to restrain our impulses in order to realize what happiness really consists of? We are not given the option to choose the circumstances we are born in; however, we are condemned to choose how we react to them: a set of decisions which will make up our lives. If that is not pressure enough to provoke a violent reaction, then surely there is no reason to rebel against life and its stifling effect. Aggression is sometimes not merely a need but the only choice.

Eloquent as Gabriel may have seemed, he didn’t feel what he had just said was right. Not that the arguments in favour of aggression were wrong, but he didn’t want to be violent. Submission was the only way towards happiness; that was a learned intelligence for him. There were two tendencies, he reckoned: to try to improve our environment or to try to embrace it as ours once and for all. Of course progress lies in being discontent with the current circumstances, but happiness truly lies in the ability to yield to the world and its demands on us; once we take up the cross and start walking the path of benefaction. Then, the struggle will gradually subside until we can start seeing happiness where it really lies; not at the end of a victorious battle as we thought before. The only thing we can really conquer is ourselves; the rest is only bitterness and disappointment. The only thing we can improve is ourselves; the rest is only frustration and loneliness. There are no tactics because there is no war; our intentions are stated plainly so anyone can read them and abide by them or avoid confronting us. There can be no enemies when we are not against anyone but in favour of life and all its expressions.

Gabriel had learnt the hard way to give up all his demands on people. The real world never reached his idealistic expectations. Gabriel’s timid nature transformed into panic sometimes, and he wanted to have control over everything surrounding him. His strong imagination wasn’t enough for him to believe that all his dreams could become true; he lacked the confidence needed to sustain his wishes for a considerably long time. He had a problem accommodating his dreams into reality and whenever something didn’t fit into his scheme, the imbalance was so violent that it threatened the whole structure.

A few months ago Gabriel had taken up dance lessons, because he’d found a girl whom he liked, but not enough to fall in love with her. She was pretty, but she had an unforgivable defect: she was too attractive to men. He’d had a glimpse of this on an occasion when he was invited to dine with a group of fellow dance students after class. While they were eating, she was boldly making some intimate remarks which seemed to proceed from a still adolescent character, but which had made a good first impression on Gabriel. She had just said that it was easy for her to get a boyfriend, but it was difficult to find one who could bear her for long. At first this struck Gabriel as a brave remark from a suffering soul, and he’d even felt flattered by her unveiling of her innermost unrest in front of him, but months after, when he didn’t have the influence of her attractiveness upon him, the same thing that at first had drawn him to her, now repelled him. He just found her too aware of her sensuality now. It’s strange how good literature, that means the truthful one, can be read for a second time just to give us a totally different impression than when we first read it. A song can be interpreted differently or a passage of a book can be suddenly enlightened by our recently acquired knowledge of the world. We can even start paying attention to different shades of the reading; different things now call our attention. This incident that Gabriel was now recalling hadn’t been attributed any meaning at that moment and had just been digested without being ruminated over. The most outstanding fact was that the girl had been ignored twice by mistake by the waiter. This would’ve been just a funny occurrence, as it had been the result of bad luck, a weak voice or a bad sense of timing on her while trying to call the waiter. Nonetheless, she had dramatically changed the hue of this situation by adding a tinge of sensuality to all this. When the waiter was called to the table by someone else, she complacently smiled at the waiter and let him know he’d ignored her twice; her eyes were playfully requesting a kind of retribution from him, like an apology or explanation, to which he answered by saying he just hadn’t heard her. A woman from the group let out a comment which seemed to come out of nowhere, but which turned out to be in place after all, as it was received with a couple of healthy laughs from the scant audience. She asked the waiter if he fancied blond girls. The waiter smiled a knowing smile; he’d understood the hint, but he really hadn’t heard her; he hadn’t ignored her on purpose to tease her because she was attractive.

Several months later, Gabriel review this scene in his head without the translucent glass he’d seen the girl through before; she was just too aware of her beauty and that was her doom. She had complained about her situation, but at the same time she seemed drawn to it by availing herself of her physical attributes, rather than trying to develop her intellectual ones. She discriminated herself; she wasn’t common to people’s eyes. Her beauty was a barrier she must overcome in order to establish a long lasting relationship.

Gabriel wanted to be happy, to start with, but among the items he considered necessary to attain happiness, there was a whim for writing novels that people can feel identified with; to label it in some way, he wanted to be a famous writer. Another aspect of his personality which combined with this desire was that he didn’t like working. He had a certain aloofness of spirit, which prevented him from getting involved in what seemed to him as childish activities; like running the whole life from childish playfulness through youthful ambition to a grown up’s authority complex. He had a set mental framework with everything in its right place; the only problem was that this image in his mind wasn’t consistent with the real objects surrounding him. This circumstance had endowed him with an aloof character, but with an effervescent mind which would induce him to take abrupt decisions and perhaps resort to violent