A dream, proof of life, answers and advice

SUNDAY, 5 OCTOBER 2008

“Somebody let off firecrackers in the street, then you became disoriented and fell out the window. Then I grabbed your arm, steadied myself against the window frame and pulled you back. Then I scolded you.” ~ the dream Natasja told me about this morning that she had had last night.

TUESDAY, 7 OCTOBER 2008

I fill my notebooks and type stuff on the computer to create evidence of my existence. My writings are proof that I am alive, and have been alive all this time.

WEDNESDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2008

I am getting a little tired of struggling every day and every night to pull a miracle from my computer. It feels as if I am confronted with a choice: take it easy, or keep pushing until I die, or until I drop dead.

If I consider it superficially, or if I want to be propagandistic about it, I would have to say, then I choose to keep pushing until I die, or until I drop dead (or until I succeed; I forgot to add that to the original set of possibilities … we do after all strive for something). But I would like to know exactly what it means to “take it easy”. Does it mean give up and become a couch potato? Does it mean spending your days and nights watching TV until you are forced to sell your couch and TV for food?

Can you take it easy and just maybe get more done – and just maybe live longer and be happier?

MONDAY, 13 OCTOBER 2008

[Excerpt from an e-mail to a friend]

You ask whether everything is going to work out “right”. I’m old enough to know things don’t always work out exactly the way we wanted. We hope and believe – in a better tomorrow, that things will work out, that the future will be fantastic … but everyone knows that faith and hope often end in disillusionment, and without a little luck every now and then our daily efforts wouldn’t take us nearly as far as we would like to believe they should.

What’s going to happen next is that you are going to go on struggling for everything that’s important to you, from serving a cause greater than yourself to fulfilling your potential. That is what will happen next.

Will things work out? You’re probably not going to have as many interesting experiences in the next few months as you have had in the past almost six months – or perhaps you are going to have even more interesting experiences. The immediate future might not bring as many interesting characters – but maybe other interesting characters.

Believe in yourself. Believe in what you do. Fight on. And forget about “everything”, the perfect life, and believing that something will always smile back at the end. As long as you remain on your feet, you’re still in the game – and if you stumble, you get back up.

If life is a struggle for something better, and for all that we can be, you already have more than enough tools, knowledge, experience, enthusiasm, vitality and tricks up your sleeve to see the fight to the end.

That is the best I can offer in terms of advice.

WEDNESDAY, 15 OCTOBER 2008

I always want to do more, while less is in many cases better.

WEDNESDAY, 29 OCTOBER 2008

How does evolution work? What mechanisms generate small changes that lead to a creature hunting, eating, swimming and climbing trees in a different manner after a thousand generations than its ancestors from a thousand generations earlier?

Answer: I don’t know.

Another question: What is 15,384,523 multiplied by 27,947,238?

Answer: That I also do not know. But someone can locate a big enough calculator, punch in the right numbers and give me the answer. And he or she will be right! It will be the real, true, accurate answer!

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Too important to win, too important to lose

TUESDAY, 30 SEPTEMBER 2008

I recently had a thought about [a gambling-related activity with which I thought I could make money]. I guess I can make money with it in the long-term, but I have a problem with the amount of time I spend on it, and I have a problem with what it does to my mind. If I end an hour with more money than what I started with, I am ecstatic; if I end up with less money, I am not so much unhappy, but let’s just say a general sense of happiness and well-being is completely absent.

After drawing a comparison between that and anything that requires creativity – can be a poem or an article for a web page, I mumbled in the direction of the refrigerator: “It is too important.”

To end an hour’s activity with a profit is simply too important. I follow my strategy and go through the steps with the thought in the back of mind that I just have to make 1000% (that’s right, one thousand percent) profit within four to six weeks then everything is hunky-dory and I can go on vacation. Then after an hour I walk back to the kitchen with less money in my account, disappointed, a little angry, and increasingly uncertain. “Will it work?” I’ll mutter to myself.

I put everything on the table. I risk my health, my happiness and well-being, a trip to my own country to see my family, my hope, my … faith – on the outcome of an hour’s activities that are supposed to make money.

This piece is starting to look like a confession, so let me make it clear: I do not gamble – not with cents, and not with dollars. I carefully work things out. I go in for profit, not for entertainment.

Nevertheless, to win is too important. Losing also weighs too heavy on my mind. Can the situation be saved? Or should I steer clear of anything where I win or lose because in both cases my blood pressure threatens to go through the roof?

Then again, everything that raises my blood pressure? What is left? Reading? Definitely out! I get all worked up and discuss everything with myself out loud. Movies, TV? Same story. Going on vacation to see my family? Problematic – there’s the stress of saying goodbye. Teaching English? There’s the noise, and the insolence of some of the kids … oh my goodness! Is this check mate?

WEDNESDAY, 1 OCTOBER 2008

In Korea, I had the insight that I hate to lose, because I expect to win. What inspired this insight was the severe distress I used to suffer when I lost an arcade game like Daytona USA or Soul Edge against someone. A similar thing rears its head nowadays with games on my computer like Pacman, Tetris, and FreeCell.

Why is it so important for me to win? It certainly confirms that I was right about something, but why is it so important to be right?

Is the problem an exaggerated sense of self-worth? Do I constantly need confirmation of my value as a person because uncertainty about it lurks just beneath the surface?

Am I doomed to be forever tossed between an exaggerated self-esteem, an insatiable need for confirmation of my value as a person (as manifested in the need to be right), and looming uncertainty about my own value and the accompanying anxiety, while existing in a reality in which everyone sometimes wins and sometimes loses, where everyone is sometimes right and sometimes wrong?

______________________

Why I do what I do – as long as I remain standing

THURSDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER 2008

Why I do what I do: a conversation with myself on the way to the 7-Eleven late last night

Reason one: Distrust, since the age of fourteen, in an adult life of get a job, get married, get a loan to buy a house, get a loan to buy a car, have children, then the economy turns bad or some other fuck-up that makes you lose your job, you get desperate, you borrow more money, you move to another city, you trade in the car for an old wreck, you explain your situation to friends and relatives and strangers, you get even more desperate until you get to the point where you are willing to call anyone “boss” or do anything for a paycheck.

Reason two: Even when I was supposed to get ready for a career, interests like history and religion weighed heavier than subjects like personnel management or marketing.

Reason three: Like millions of other people I, too, have been given a gift, and I’ll be damned if I do not apply my life to something better than a mediocre existence.

MONDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER 2008

We often hear ourselves and other people say things like, “My life should be better,” “X should actually be Y,” “A should be B.” You also regularly remind yourself that life hardly ever works out the way we want. You do your best, and you try to be happy with what you have. Yet you keep striving for a better life, to make things better.

Most of us know that life is a struggle – for a higher level of existence. Sometimes you succeed, and your life is better from that day on. Sometimes you struggle for what feels like an eternity, and you barely remain standing. But – and I know I have used this image more than a few times, but here it is again – if you are not down for the count, you’re still standing. And as long as you remain standing, you struggle on.

______________________

Tomorrow I dream again

WEDNESDAY, 9 JULY 2008

It’s five to two in the morning. I feel like a cheap prostitute who’s been selling his body for his dreams all day long, but who still ends up with nothing.

Fuck it; then I’m a cheap prostitute. Tomorrow I lie down again. Tomorrow I dream again. Because … whatever. That’s how it is.

09:12

Every time I believe in something and it backfires in my face, a piece of my soul stays behind. This is a problem because I need to believe. Otherwise, what’s the point?

09:59

How do you go on believing, if you know something can backfire in your face anytime?

What you do is you think twice before you jump into bed with every new idea that promises you the world.

11:24

“More than a million blind warriors form the vanguard.” ~ from a documentary on ants

FRIDAY, 11 JULY 2008

I am good at struggling, but can I deal with success?

Just thought I’d ask, again.

THURSDAY, 14 AUGUST 2008

A statement to which no price can be affixed: “You loved me when I was poor.”

WEDNESDAY, 20 AUGUST 2008

My motto: Be reasonable.

[no date]

Standard marketing advice:

1. Here’s what I’ve got.

2. This is what you’ll get out of it.

3. Here’s what I want you to do next.

______________________

My blessed experience of life

FRIDAY, 13 JUNE 2008

That then was Thursday, the day numbered “twelve” in the month labelled “June” in the year following “2007”.

I know there is a point behind everything I fill my days with. Time flies. Everyone gets older. The world perishes bit by bit.

Time for bed? Why? Because I’m tired of sitting on this chair, but especially since sleep traditionally precedes breakfast. And I like to do things right.

TUESDAY, 17 JUNE 2008

It is because we are born that we die.

It is because we survive 85 years of life that we die of old age.

It is because of life that we succumb to death.

THURSDAY, 19 JUNE 2008

Today is not January 6th, the Day of Epiphany, and I know I have an almost programmed tendency to go profound whenever I get near Lane 55 [my first neighbourhood in Taiwan], but as I was pedalling past early tonight, it struck me: Life came to me.

In Korea, I often spoke of pausing at the red light, waiting until I can continue with my life. These sentiments were repeatedly reconsidered in ‘99 and 2000. Taiwan was, initially, like Korea, a place of waiting: Waiting until I could go “home” – where I could live a fuller life, where I could finally commit and belong.

June 2008. I am still in Taiwan, nine and a half years later. Still here, as I remind myself every time I pass by Lane 55. But I am not waiting anymore. People came to me. First it was just friends, and then, finally, love.

* * *

To me Natasja represents LIFE. To me, she is LIFE incarnated. Surely we are all, technically speaking, but to me she is a truly wonderful manifestation of LIFE: her personality, her willpower, her survival instinct, her enjoyment of things, her experience of things, even her fears, although she doesn’t always talk about them.

Of course, Natasja would have been here regardless of my presence. She would have come here anyway, and she would still be here now even if I were not. But if I did go back to look for LIFE in South Africa as I had planned to do more than a few times, I would have missed her.

I was here in 2004. And she came here.

The rest is my blessed experience of LIFE.

THURSDAY, 26 JUNE 2008

“Marry me, Rita,” says the title character in the film, Sgt. Bilko. “I know I’m a longshot, but sometimes they pay.”

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