Assorted Notes

WEDNESDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER 2012

Failure, and the renewed impression that, because I barely make enough money, I don’t work. Despite books published – both personal material and commercial projects, websites and other internet properties, and years of day in and day out, week in and week out, and months of struggling to make money with projects that ended up as packs of scrap paper.

Which makes you wonder why you’re still trying. What exactly is the point? Keep trying because it’s better than giving up? Then I’d rather spend all of my time writing – morning, afternoon and night, weekday and weekend, twelve months of the year until I expire, and to publish what I have written, and to market what I have published.

Is that not enough? Who does better? People who have children? Do they necessarily do better? Do they leave more behind? Is what they leave behind necessarily good? What if their children become violent criminals? What if their children become corrupt, greedy bastards, or junkies and alcoholics?

I am trying to make money. Because it’s the right thing to do. Because I like to eat. Because I like washing with soap and I like brushing my teeth at least twice a day. Because I like clean clothes, even if my shirts and trousers have seen better days.

I have to make money. And my wife has to make money. After work, my wife watches TV, or she cleans the house. After work, which at this stage is synonymous with appearances as an English teacher, because that’s apparently all I can do to make money, I do more work because I don’t want to make more appearances as an English teacher, and because it’s not sustainable anyway. When I finish the other work, I have to continue writing, and I have to publish what I write, and market what I publish. Work, work, write – which is also work, but it only counts as work if it makes money.

Every day people bite the dust. Every day. And the world continues. It’s not that people don’t care, it’s just that their own lives don’t stop just because someone has crashed into the gutter, or worse.

Every day people bite the dust, victims of circumstances, victims of other people’s diabolical deeds, or victims by their own hand.

It’s simple: Stay on your feet, or you, too, will bite the dust. And the world will continue without you.

______________________

SATURDAY, 18 AUGUST 2012

That is the advantage of someone else reading your material for once: they comment on it, which gives you an opportunity to add a thought or two to the original idea.

So it happened that a good friend recently sent me an e-mail about a piece I wrote in 1998 entitled, “Story of two travellers”. The “story” was about one “traveller” at a crossroads, unable to decide what direction to take, who then sits down on a rock near the crossroads – from where he then observes over the next few months (or years) other people making decisions, making mistakes, and generally getting on with their lives, while he continues thinking about what to do. One day another traveller arrives at the crossroads, sits down on his haunches, looks this way and that, sniffs the air, gets up and starts walking, apparently convinced that he is taking the right path. A conversation then follows shortly after between the “walker” and the “sitter”.

Eventually, my opinion was that the guy who had been sitting on the rock for so long had to stop thinking and taking notes, and move his arse. He had to decide on a direction even though he could not be sure how it would work out, and dedicate himself to that path.

My friend had more sympathy, to some extent, with the guy on the rock. She sees him as someone who chooses not to participate until he is sure where he wants to go. She likes his willingness to say: “Wait a minute. I’d like to think about it first.”

When I wrote the text in Korea, in March 1998, I was feeling very frustrated with myself. I had been making plans for months at that stage, and I still had no clue what I was going to do next. I was the guy on the rock, but I wanted to be the other guy – the one who sniffed the air, threw a handful of dirt into the air, and then walked off into the sunset.

My friend suggested that I write a follow-up that will describe what happened later in the “story”. This reminded me of the fact that eight months after I had left Korea, I was back at the crossroads (January 1999), again making myself comfortable on the rock by the side of the road, thinking: “I know where I want to be. I just don’t know what road to take to get there. And I don’t want to waste time by just rushing off in some direction, and possibly realising too late that the road is taking me further away from where I want to be.”

Then I realised: Maybe the rock is my place in the bigger scheme of things. The rock, at the crossroads, is perhaps where I was supposed to end up. Maybe this is where I belong. Maybe I did choose a road, walked it, and it led back to the crossroads. Back to the rock.

______________________

SATURDAY, 11 AUGUST 2012

RESULT is what matters. And RESULT does not only refer to the calculations that are made the day after your passing; it also refers to the outcome of every task you attempt to fulfil, every undertaking, every project you take on.

PROCESS precedes RESULT. PROCESS is either conducive to good RESULT, or it is not conducive to it.

IDENTITY is what enables you to function as a human being during the historical period when your existence plays out, and in the place where you were born and raised, or where you find yourself as an adult. Your IDENTITY is good enough if it enables you to survive, and if it enables you to pursue good RESULT.

HAPPINESS is one of the conditions that make PROCESS worth the effort.

BEING HAPPY makes it more likely – although there are exceptions – that the PROCESS will lead to good RESULT.

———–

Preceding thought:

This week I started moving my workspace to a home about fifty metres from my old apartment. The new place – actually only two empty rooms on the second floor of a house where the couple who owns the place overnights once every two months or so when they have business in the city – is okay, but not perfect.

“The result of the process is ultimately what is important,” I thought to myself on my way back home earlier tonight, “and the new place is good enough to at least not undermine the process.”

______________________

SUNDAY, 29 JULY 2012

I am sure I have previously made a similar statement on Facebook – or to total strangers on Twitter, but here it is again: My personal 1972 playlist kicks dust in the eyes of anything that anyone else can conjure up on their iPod.

Okay, that’s a little childish. In the first place, it creates the false impression that I own an iPod, and in the second place I, myself, can think of quite a few other good years in terms of popular music – and that’s just between the years 1960 and 2010.

Nevertheless, what makes 1972 so special? Cat Stevens, Elton John, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Neil Young, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Carly Simon, and to close the list, memorable contributions from Johnny Nash (“I Can See Clearly Now”), Bill Withers (“Lean On Me”), Al Green (“Let’s Stay Together”), Stealers Wheel (“Stuck In The Middle With You”), and one of the first tunes that caused me to sit up straight in the back seat of our green Datsun, Hot Butter’s “Popcorn”.

And the icing on the rich chocolate and vanilla cake of 1972? The fact that it seamlessly passes over into 1973 – more Pink Floyd, more Elton John, more David Bowie, and then Springsteen, Tom Waits, Aerosmith, Billy Joel, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Gladys Knight & The Pips, ZZ Top, and a song that will always remind me of my father, “My Friend the Wind” by the Greek vocalist, Demis Roussos.

Thank goodness for music.

______________________

MUZORIAN: 1972 from MUZORIAN on 8tracks.

______________________

______________________

SATURDAY, 28 JULY 2012

Damn … sixteen before midnight.

The word “hate” is strong, so let’s just say this is not my favourite time of the day. I am tired … and my eyelids are about to give in. But inside my head there’s still a stirring of things that can be done, things that need to be done, things that will be fun and interesting to do.

In my mind’s eye, I see a bazaar, or a night market in Taiwan. You hear hundreds of people, food thrown on hot plates, sausages and pancakes and fried chicken and samosas being prepared for people waiting hungrily at plastic tables. You know it’s there, but you are not.

That’s how it is, for me, late at night.

______________________