Author: Brand Smit

MONDAY, 23 AUGUST 2004

[A necessary repetition of previous thoughts to clarify the meaning of certain concepts.]

Identity serves a PURPOSE; this purpose is SURVIVAL.

To survive, a person needs to FUNCTION.

In order to function, a person requires IDENTITY.

Why? The reasons include so that he can identify himself to others in the community to enhance the probability that his needs will be met.

Identity is compiled from information provided by a particular environment, at a particular historical time.

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FRIDAY, 20 AUGUST 2004

Afternoon, between four and five, under a tree; light-brown socks, old leather shoes, green shorts, yellow underwear and a red short-sleeved shirt with white speckles.

Just walked back from town to the smallholding, last stretch on a dirt road. In town, I purchased three books at the total cost of one R5 coin: When White People Were Poor, a Truman Capote book and the screenplay for an Italian play with the title, Six Characters In Search Of An Author. Paid a visit to some second-hand furniture stores, did my banking at Standard Bank and Postnet, and had lunch at the Spur Steak Ranch.

At the Spur, I sat in the smoker’s section. An elderly woman was sitting alone at a table behind me. I don’t know what she was drinking, but she yelled “One more!” in the direction of the nearest waiter soon after I had arrived. Also sitting alone was an attractive young woman at a table across from me. She was talking on her cell phone the entire time, drinking iced coffee and smoking one Paul Revere after another.

I ordered a Spur burger for R23.95, extra garlic sauce for R7.95 and a Black Label for R9.95. I read the County News (R1) and lit up two Nat Shermans with Lion matches.

In the middle of town, I read some interesting facts on a notice board: Pretoria is 50 kilometres from Bronkhorstspruit, Cape Town 1,380 kilometres, Johannesburg a hundred kilometres, Taipei 11,620 kilometres and Hong Kong 10,800 kilometres. Then I walked back to the smallholding.

Now, I’m sitting under a tree, and I’m thinking: Life is … pigeons cooing, cars driving past, the wind blowing through the leaves, something between my teeth, footsteps in the background, small birds and insects making a commotion in the trees, the smell of vegetable soup from the kitchen, a radio playing lounge music from the sixties, a telephone ringing …

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FRIDAY, 13 AUGUST 2004

The hermit (and his loved ones), first notations

I have once again realised today, Friday the thirteenth, why some people are hermits. It’s the silence, the absence of confrontation with people who do not understand you, who have no idea what goes on in your head, who misunderstand you; also the absence of your own voice when you once again try to explain yourself.

The hermit, therefore, gives up to a large extent on his attempts to be understood and to be accepted by the community, even by those he loves.

SUNDAY, 15 AUGUST 2004

The hermit (and his loved ones), second notations

I love my family, and they love me, but between this love and the manifestation of it there is a lot of misunderstanding, and a lot of frustration.

“Talk to them about it,” someone might say.

I can’t, because they cannot hear me. They are trapped in their own insecurities and fears which, as it turns out, have never properly been confronted. I am talking to a brick wall, and there is always frustration and verbal aggression in their response. And sometimes this frustration and verbal aggression are also present in my own voice.

My parents love me, but I believe they do not respect me. The main reason for this is because they judge me according to certain standards.

They respect my older sister because she qualified for a certain career, because she has a fulltime position at a large corporation, and because she earns “good money”.

They respect my younger sister because she has tried hard over the years to build her own life along lines with which they can relate – work, money, marriage, setting up a home.

In comparison with my two sisters I fall out of the bus with “creative independence”, “intellectual enlightenment”, “the Enlightened Individual”, “freeing yourself from the worker-boss relationship”, “language as identity creator”, and “the concept of God in a person’s search for his own identity”.

I believe not one of the people I love deeply understands these things! And it’s not because it’s above their intellectual abilities – no one in my family is stupid. But just because you know what “creative” means, and you know what “independence” means, is not to say that you will understand when someone does not want to do a job that would require giving up his creative independence – whatever the price.

There are always reactions to what I have to say. My older sister reckons I think too much. My younger sister is not interested in my “thoughts and opinions”. And my parents are just people – they have their own understanding of things, and anything that upsets that, or anything that they don’t fully comprehend, leads to a response of verbal aggression.

I have deep affection for my parents and my two sisters. But to try to lead them to better understanding with verbal communication is virtually impossible. I speak in a language they do not understand. My world is not theirs. I don’t blame them; I am merely giving expression to my own frustration.

* * *

What is family? It is a case of individual entities thrown together by fate and who, by spending thousands of days in close contact, develop love for each other. But to expect understanding from them just because they love you is to throw one and four together and to expect to get two. I have to accept the situation as it is.

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SUNDAY, 15 AUGUST 2004

I am suddenly acutely attracted to silence, like sitting in or nearby a piece of open veld and just listening, and maybe having a whispered conversation with myself.

Some might consider this to be the flipside of a desire for non-appearance; the latter, of course, in order to protect oneself. I believe that I have become increasingly alienated from people because most people I meet are not on the same journey as me – intellectually speaking, but it can also be seen as a spiritual process.

If I had, for example, converted to an orthodox version of Judaism, my relationship with my immediate family and some old friends would have been at a similar level of alienation than is now the case. But now the convictions to which I have come and which I have worked out for myself, is my own faith, with no external paraphernalia like a prescribed dress code and a prescribed style of facial hair growth shared with others in a community of faith, as in the case of, for example, orthodox Jews. I am still trying to be recognisable (“basically the same guy you’ve always known”), but it is becoming increasingly difficult.

———–

[To some extent I do not blame my family. They love me, and they probably wish that I could be “more like other people” because they are convinced of the fact that I am miserable most of the time. It is also possible that if I were not so stubborn and if I did not hold so many beliefs unfamiliar to them, they would find it easier to relate to me.

In terms of a lot of things I say, I am indeed a stranger to the people who have known me a lifetime, and because they do not live the process with me day-in and day-out, they do not know where I am coming from half of the time I open my mouth.]

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FRIDAY, 13 AUGUST 2004

Community or intellectual/spiritual enlightenment

09:07

Back to the thought of community or intellectual/spiritual enlightenment. It’s a practical and valuable illustration of the process of identity formation.

The person who chooses Enlightenment says: I spend a lot of time on my own; I don’t unnecessarily conform to conventions; I strive for knowledge and understanding.

Someone who chooses Community says: I spend a lot of time with family and friends; I am part of an intimate community on a daily basis.

I can go further and give names to these two options (unfortunately both male names): John the Baptist for Enlightenment, and Jack Campbell for Community (named after the Nicolas Cage character in the film, Family Man).

The question then becomes: Who are you, John the Baptist, or Jack Campbell (or the female versions of these characters)?

My own initial response (though it sounds slightly frightening) is Jack the Baptist – or, John “Family Man” Campbell.

10:13

Of course it can be said that I am very comfortable with the idea of the Desert Walker who doesn’t concern himself unnecessarily with conventions.

I am very comfortable with being John the Enlightened today, and tomorrow, and next week. Long term is a different matter – then powerful visions of Jack the Family Man kick in.

Measures and “true” identity

We take measures to alleviate inconveniences such as loneliness, and these measures become intertwined with how we see ourselves and how we appear to the world. To what extent is “I as result of measures” the “true me” and to what extent is it almost a barrier to who you “really” are? Or, should measures simply be accepted as building blocks of identity in the same way as one would accept the genetic instructions in DNA as building blocks of identity? And yet, measures easily change with environment … which brings you back to the slipperiness of “true” identity.

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