Assorted Notes

FRIDAY, 2 JANUARY 2009

Smoking cigarettes: addiction to the toxic fumes of burning leaves.

If it weren’t for smart packaging (until recently), smart marketing (until a decade ago), identity-related brands, social acceptability (in decline) and the wide availability and relatively low cost, only a fraction of people who currently smoke would actually have started smoking in the first place. How cigarettes are presented, and how people think about smoking cigarettes, change everything.

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Sniffing glue has a reputation as the first drug of choice for street children, poor teens and other people who are not positive about life but who do not have money for a better narcotic. To smoke tobacco – daily, as a matter of routine – is seen by smokers as in an entirely different class as glue sniffing.

Here is what I think: smoking tobacco doesn’t make you stupid, but think about it for a second: you roll dry leaves in a piece of paper, set the whole business on fire and suck the smoke into your lungs. Granted, it’s not the same as sniffing glue, but it is also not exactly the result of a brilliant thought process.

MONDAY, 5 JANUARY 2009

You can justify and rationalise the most criminal behaviour. What you need is the ability to honestly criticise yourself, to question your own behaviour and choices, and to reconsider them in a critical fashion.

MONDAY, 12 JANUARY 2009

Here is my advice to other people who want to write: write your ass off about everything that bothers you and everything that makes you happy. Write as if you’re fucked in the head; edit later. And be modest. Opinions about your own importance, that the world won’t function without you, that you possess knowledge and understanding that nobody else possesses, fade as the years go by, and guess what: there you are again, sitting on a rock next to a dirt road, forced to again draw your own map with a blunt pencil on an old discarded piece of newspaper, stuffing your bag full of dirt and grass and a bottle filled with watered-down cola in the hope that everything will turn into something better if you sit on it for long enough.

Life is a journey. Never take anything for granted. Struggle on.

And to think it’s only Monday today. In January.

SUNDAY, 18 JANUARY 2009

Exactly one decade after I arrived in Taiwan.

Crossroads, again: I can either sputter out a few final sparks like a wet firecracker, or I can again flame up for five … or just maybe, another ten years.

MONDAY, 19 JANUARY 2009

Discouragement is a monster who will wrap its trembling fingers around your throat and strangle the life right out of you – unless you intentionally sidestep it, every day, and actively oppose and undermine its repeated efforts.

TUESDAY, 20 JANUARY 2009

Myth 1: Poor people who struggle for survival and who take nothing for granted never get bored. Boredom is the exclusive right of the bourgeoisie.

Myth 2: Happiness is a luxury that you can only afford if you are rich, or if you’re stupid and you don’t know any better.

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THURSDAY, 25 DECEMBER 2008

One of the reasons why many smokers find it difficult to quit is because they think they will never again have a certain experience they associate with smoking. I subscribe to the idea that it is not about you never again doing or experiencing something; it is about breaking a habit.

The smoker who is seriously considering breaking the habit should think about it in this way: that they will eventually smoke another cigarette, or another cigar, but then it will not be as part of a habit connected to an addiction; it will not be as part of a routine ruination of their health.

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Note on Thursday, 26 May 2016

The above was not the first note I had written over the years on the topic of quitting the habit of smoking cigarettes. What was unique was that Christmas Day 2008 saw my final and ultimately successful attempt to break the habit.

How did I do it?

That night, after having stubbed out my last cigarette, I gathered everything in my apartment that had any connection to smoking and chucked it in an old book bag – ashtrays, lighters, pipes, Rizla papers and rolling machine, and of course the box with a few remaining cigarettes. The next day I took the bag to Natasja’s apartment and buried it deep inside a closet. I made a deal with myself that I could take it out again in two weeks’ time to smoke two cigarettes. That is exactly what I did, after which I again closeted the bag, with the idea that I would again allow myself one cigarette two weeks after that. By the end of January, I thought I could push things a little further.

Months later, September 2009, I decided I again felt like having a cigarette. Natasja and I went out with friends that night, several of whom were smokers, and we decided we would buy a pack of pipe tobacco cigarettes. I ended up smoking two or three cigarettes that evening. Then came the big test: Will I smoke one final cigarette when we get home, as I always did in the past, on the balcony, while staring out into the night? No, I decided – no cigarettes at home.

And so it remained for the next few years. When we went out, we would take our packet of smokes out of the fridge – we bought a fresh pack every few months, smoke our few cigarettes outside a pub or restaurant with friends, and back home put the packet back in the fridge.

Then, about two years ago, just before going out one night, I realised that I had absolutely no desire to smoke a cigarette. The smell on my fingers, the taste in my mouth, the possibility that I might get a head rush from the sudden nicotine injection were all simply not worth the experience – something which I had previously enjoyed so much on a daily basis.

It was then that I realised my attempt that I had started on Christmas Day 2008 had reached its ideal point: I could walk down to the convenience store, buy a pack of cigarettes and have a smoke on the balcony, if I wanted to – but, as it turns out, I do not crave the experience anymore.

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MONDAY, 3 NOVEMBER 2008

Susceptibility to fantastic claims and to results that look incredibly promising is not affected so much by how reasonable or how rational you are (or think you are), but by how desperate you are for the type of success and the associated rewards of success that are promised.

I regret

1. that I have been so receptive in the past almost three years to promises and stories of great wealth in a relatively short time;

2. that I always shared my naïve expectations with people close to me, and in the process undermined my credibility in their eyes;

3. that I continued to make promises of visits to family – by “April, or maybe June” followed by “September … or maybe by Christmas”;

4. that I did not put more effort, starting in May 2006, into making sure I never earned less than NT$30,000 per month from teaching English; fact is, my income dropped far below that level quite some time ago, and I have been suffering the consequences ever since.

WEDNESDAY, 5 NOVEMBER 2008

I recently had the insight that I have taken actions and started projects since February 2006 like one who has discovered a new religion: the religion of Making Money from Home.

I still believe in the possibility, but I would be dishonest if I did not admit that I have made mistakes. I was desperate and stupid, and this has been a combination that has left me without much to show for the past thirty months.

I end this note with a thought from last night: I am close, and I do not mean Moses-on-the-mountain-that-will-never-enter-the-Promised-Land type of close; I am close, and I will enter the Promised Land.

FRIDAY, 7 NOVEMBER 2008

It sometimes feels like I am still fighting for the privilege to write, as if I should justify the value I attach to my writing to people close to me who want to say, “How can you talk about writing if you’re not making money?”

Or, am I finding it hard to justify the value I place on my writing to myself while I am struggling to keep my head above water?

TUESDAY, 25 NOVEMBER 2008

Saw some young gang members on their scooters again this evening – flinging their scooters around the corner with some well-practised swagger. All of them sporting cheap white helmets, and matching fashionable outfits.

I made my usual remarks about people who find strength in the group, people who are willing to wear the exact same white headgear as badges of membership versus the competent, intelligent man or woman standing alone, who does not need group membership, or the rules or approval of the group.

A short distance down the road later, I wondered: What is my problem with these youths? They generally leave me alone, and I leave them alone. They don’t look for trouble with me, and I do not look for trouble with them.

Then I realised: I envy them. I envy them the friendship, the brotherhood, the camaraderie they enjoy with others like them. I desire what they have, and because I do not have it, I always have a comment to make.

Wow. A breakthrough.

SATURDAY, 6 DECEMBER 2008

The mistakes we make on any regular day in any normal waking hour repeat dozens or even hundreds of times to put us in a situation we wish was different. And we believe ourselves time and again when we tell ourselves and others that we just made “this one mistake”.

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MONDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 2008

There is true love, and there is sexual attraction. There is love that lasts a lifetime, and there are sparks of sexual desire. Sometimes you feel sexually attracted to a person, you take a chance, and you enjoy it for as long as it lasts. If you stay together, the sexual attraction must eventually be augmented with something more substantial, namely love – the kind that can last a lifetime, until long after the sparks have cooled down and you occasionally catch yourself wondering what it would be like with someone else.

A man is madly in love with a woman. The woman regards the man a pleasant enough fellow: he is kind, he can have conversations about interesting things, but that’s where it stops for her. She wonders if a person can force a heart that doesn’t want to beat faster. She thinks about sexual desire, for example, that is after all an honest physical response to someone’s presence.

The woman pictures for herself a very specific life with the man, should she choose to be with him – a life where things would always be like they are now: he loves her, she pulls back. Five years later: he’s still crazy about her, she’s still distant. Twenty years later: he still loves her; she cares about him but she doesn’t reciprocate his warmth, and occasionally she thinks back to an affair she had two decades earlier with a guy that looked like a movie star.

Reality looks slightly different in many cases, though: the man is currently at X+20, and the woman is at X+2; after two years, he is at X+15, and she is at X+7; after ten years, she cannot imagine a life without him; he still loves her very much – he still brings her breakfast in bed on Sundays, but sparks from his side don’t set the wallpaper on fire anymore. That is how life sometimes is, in a nutshell.

Of course, things could turn out completely different between the woman and the man who doesn’t look like a movie star. His torch may start showing signs of dimming after a few years, and he may start looking at other women just as the women in his life increasingly wants to be closer to him. This is also how life sometimes works out, in a different nutshell.

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THURSDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2008

Browsing through the book, Die Prosa van die Tweede Afrikaanse Beweging [The Prose of the Second Afrikaans Movement], first published in 1922, I found the text quoted below. You sometimes get the idea amongst Afrikaans people that they think progressive ideas about Afrikaans culture and literature did not see daylight in South Africa before the sixties or even as late as the late eighties. That this text dates from the early 1920s will therefore come as a surprise to some people (I know I was pleasantly surprised).

“Also amongst our own artists, there are those who anxiously want to expunge all foreign influences; these are people who seek their strength in a cramped, suffocating isolation. They hope to build up in this way a pure form of Afrikaans art, free from all bastard elements. We have to struggle forth on our own thorny road because our circumstances are apparently completely different from those in the older culture countries. That this approach is wholly wrong is proved at once by the fact that our best artists have created their most masterful work precisely under the influence of foreign elements. The true artist does not allow himself to be mongrelised by a foreign culture. He borrows from it that which is of service to the full deployment of his spirit, and transforms and processes the foreign ingredients into a pure national artwork. A nation that cannot stand his man against foreign influences is ruined, as is the artist. But rightfully we can demand of him that he broadens our scope and brings us into intimate contact with art from other countries as well. Isolation in the literary arena would mean cultural drought; it would lead to endless regurgitation. Let our artists therefore take full liberty in enriching their spirits from all corners of the globe. If they are man enough, their autonomy will not suffer, and our art will retain its national character. In any case no Chinese wall around South Africa!”

Source: Die Prosa van die Tweede Afrikaanse Beweging, by Pieter Cornelis Schoonees (1922) [The Prose of the Second Afrikaans Movement]

Well, there are some references that make it clear it was not written in the last decade, but the call itself to not be afraid of “foreign influences” but to use it to make your own art and literature better, more fully deployed, as the text says, is clear enough.

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