Author: Brand Smit

WEDNESDAY, 3 DECEMBER 2003

My morning yielded several faces: the first was my own in the haze of a blotchy bathroom mirror; the second was the young face of any of the children in Number Nine Crooked Village; the third was that of the old man that looks like Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Min, behind his desk at the school at Number Nine; the fourth face belonged to a baby boy on the train back to Fengshan. This collection of portraits got me thinking.

I myself am a child of the early seventies. While I too had my daily portion of food then, as now, and breathed, and from time to time had something to say, I can’t remember much about that time. I need to consult history books and old newspapers to fill in the rest of the story of a time when most of what happened never infiltrated my consciousness (or that made little sense to my underdeveloped brain). Only later did I learn, for example, that BJ Vorster had been Prime Minister of South Africa during this period; Richard Nixon and then Gerald Ford the presidents of the United States; the pompous Leonid Brezhnev Comrade One in the Soviet Union; and Pol Pot Brother One in a country I would only discover two decades later on a world map. In other areas, as I would also only discover much later, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin had already left for the afterlife, Bruce Springsteen had jumped on a table and was the next day revered as the future of Rock & Roll, and the British Lions under one Willie John McBride had sown tears and sadness everywhere they touched a rugby ball.

I know all these things now because I read about them. It could just as well have been history of the Middle Ages if it weren’t for the fact that I was also on the planet at the same time.

The seventies was my spectator decade – even though I didn’t understand much of what was going on on the proverbial playing field. I spent most of my days during that decade in sandpits, locked in an old wreck in our backyard (my own fault), and at or near kitchen tables eating my body strong enough for the next decade.

I was still unaware of most goings on outside of my immediate environment during the first part of the eighties. By the end of the decade though I was old and smart enough to understand concepts like “The Cold War”, “Apartheid”, “The Communist is Satan” and “Nelson Mandela will become the first black president of South Africa”. My reading and writing skills had developed enough by 1989 for me to leave school, and I tried to sound clever when people asked me what the next step of my life was going to be.

In the nineties, I became a more active member of the community, and remain so in my own way during this first decade of zero. I am now old and bald enough that it’s not unheard of for other adults to ask me, “What do you think?” I am also wise enough to marry and have children (or wise enough to not do it), and to throw my two cents in the purse of Polite Society.

Now, the above is useful as a short biography of myself, but it is somewhat limited as a larger view of the proverbial “us” that live out our existences during this time. Although I like to think of the last decade and the current one – the years of my late twenties and early thirties – as my time, that is just a fraction of the truth. This is also the time that the children in Crooked Village feel the same sun on their cheeks as I do on my half-bearded face. Same with the baby boy on the train, and the grandfather who owns the kindergarten. We all live in this time.

Five hundred years from now it won’t matter that I was 32 on this particular day, the children 5 or 6, the grandfather 75, and the baby boy 6 months old. This time belongs to all of us, even though some of us can barely write our names, and others have signed their names so many times that they’d prefer if someone else does it on their behalf.

We tend to be very focused on our own age, and to classify ourselves according to a growing number of groups and labels. There are Toddlers, Pre-teens, Teens, Young People, Early Twenties, Late Twenties, Early Thirties, Middle Thirties, Late Thirties, Mid-forties, Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Retired, Elderly, Really Old and Old Enough To Be In The Guinness Book of Records.

I myself fit in the early thirties compartment, and some days I’m relieved that I am not yet in my mid-thirties. I have friends in their mid-twenties (or as I like to point out to them, almost on the “wrong side” of 25). I also have friends in their late thirties, and some of my best friends are in their mid-forties (the so-called mid-life). I can honestly say that I am happy to be 32. I am glad that I am not a teenager now. I am also very grateful that I am not yet elderly.

The question is, what does it matter? Of course there’s a difference between 15 and 75, and between 25 and 55. But let’s look at everyone who is now, say, under 35. This includes myself, my two sisters, a few friends, the teens of today, but also the many snot noses at the nursery school. It even includes the 6-month-old baby on the train. Where will we stand in relation to each other in thirty years’ time (or those of us who will make it that far)? I will be 62; not exactly young anymore, but not yet elderly. My one friend who is now 25 will be 55. My two sisters will be 56 and 64. The lot at the school will be between 34 and 36 years old, and the baby on the train would have just turned 30. Although this last group will be the youngest of those who felt the sun on their cheeks today, even they will not be children anymore. Some boys will have more hair on their faces than on their heads; some of the girls could have their own teenage sons and daughters.

Sixty-two, late fifties, mid-thirties … we’ll all be adults of the Time and World of 2033. It is possible that I will conceive children that will be younger than the children of the kids who had their little arms around my leg this morning. But at this moment we all have our feet in this time – here and now. If it rains tonight, we’ll all feel it. If there’s an epidemic of some sort, it will affect all of us.

I am tempted to say I am only weaving this essay together to make myself feel better because my own years are relentlessly advancing. Or because I felt like Grandfather Ho Chi Min this morning when I looked at a two-year-old in a thick coat dancing on stumpy legs, his nodding head not much bigger than my knee. Or because I was reminded how far I’ve already gone down the road of average life expectancy when I noticed the baby on the train, sleeping blissfully, unaware of anything but the warm cosiness of his mother’s chest. But none of these things will change the fact that a difference in age between two people blurs as the years advance for both of them. It also won’t change the fact that institutions, conventions, and the external evidence of our existence will probably survive all of us.

The fact is that other people were here before us. Democracy, free markets, modern labour relations, cities that look as if they’re about to burst out of their seams, and people who don’t know what a cave or a patch of vegetables look like exist not only because of our own actions. We inherited this world. And it is our duty to do what we can to leave something to those who will reflect on the meaning of their existence 200, and 500 years from now.

Not I, my two sisters, my almost-on-the-wrong-side-of-25-friend, my middle-aged and late-thirties friends, the toothless in the kindergarten and on the train, or any of the toothless old men with long white beards will still be here in 200 years’ time. This – this is what binds us all of this time together. None of us lived in the time of Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte or Beach Walker X (disregarding theories of reincarnation or time travel for the time being). Likewise, none of the people who lived during the time of the French Revolution or during the Golden Years of the Roman Empire made it to Tuesday, 2 December 2003. They all died. All of them. With no exception.

It will therefore not be inappropriate to end this piece – for the sake of illustration – by asking what it matters today that a particular woman was on the later side of 25 in December of the year 1541, or what it matters today that an old geezer was in his seventies. And does it still matter today that a three-year-old child danced on clumsy legs to a forgotten tune 462 years ago?

Historical footnote:

“And,” someone asks 462 years from now, “what does it matter today, Wednesday, 2 December 2465, that a 32-year-old man was brooding over the value of his own existence late one afternoon in December of the year 2003?”

______________________

SUNDAY, 30 NOVEMBER 2003

This year has yielded a few good things. Among others, I realised none of my plans is ever going to work out and that I’m probably going to be trapped in an “Exile” essay for the rest of my life. I’ve also learned a few things about life and have written some pieces about it. However, the development that has led to this particular piece of writing is that I have started playing tennis again. This delightful hark back to the days of my youth was due to my friend O. – always on the lookout for someone who can join him in some athletic undertaking.

So it happened that my energetic friend and I were chasing old tennis balls last Thursday afternoon. In the middle of a double fault, I took notice of the people on the court next to us. Anyone who has ever played tennis anywhere in the world would have recognised the spectacle – a coach, and a teenage boy who was sending one perfectly executed forearm after another over the net.

The forearm action was not what impressed me the most. The youngster was dressed in the most perfect tennis attire that one could desire from any tennis magazine. Expensive tennis shoes. Expensive, proper tennis socks. Shorts that were a proper fit, and an expensive, high quality T-shirt with some or other sporting logo. The young tennis player looked good. He would have been able to attract the attention of any teenage girl in the district as much for his impressive forearm action as for the fact that he was a paragon of success: attractive build, athletic abilities, and of course financially successful parents – who else could afford such a perfectly assembled tennis kit?

This young man looked the way I wanted to appear to the world ten, fifteen years ago on the courts of tennis clubs in Stellenbosch and in suburban Pretoria. Then it mattered, because at that age you’re eager to compare yourself with others in the area competing for the same spots in the sun. And if you weighed yourself up and found yourself to be a little light in the pants, you usually chucked your hairless tennis balls in your plastic shopping bag, straightened your racquet’s strings, and headed home.

However, there I stood, ten years later, on court number four of the Yang Ming Tennis Club in Kaohsiung. I had on a pair of shorts two numbers too big for me, a white T-shirt with a dragon motif in black, and on my feet a pair of old school socks and a pair of running shoes with worn-out soles. As I was smashing another ball into the net, I thought how gratifying it was that it no longer mattered that I looked the way I did, while the guy on the other court looked like a fledgling Pete Sampras.

Why does it not matter anymore? Because I have something now I had thought a decade ago the best tennis outfit would have given me: I feel good about myself. Why? Because I have found what I like to do; something which I figure I’m at least not worse at than playing tennis. I’m a writer, who runs around on a tennis court for an hour or so once a week with a friend. I’m not a tennis player who at the age of thirty wish I had gone to a foreign country instead, to write essays about the meaning of life. I feel good about myself, and I don’t need expensive tennis shoes and a professional coach anymore to give that to me.

And that’s where this piece would have ended if I could have it my way. But just as I was finally sending the ball with a beautiful backhand down the right line, the internal argument hit:

“So you feel good about yourself because, supposedly, you’re a writer?”

“Well, yes. I write, and I know I don’t write short stories or material for any well-known magazines, but I write.”

“Is it important to actually produce decent literature in order for you to feel good about yourself?”

“I suppose for the formula to work one must certainly not be too lousy at it. You have to be honest. And your identity must be rooted in credible external reality. So, yes. I think if you call yourself a writer, your material should at least be adequate.”

“And your material is adequate?”

“I’m not the best writer of my generation. I’m not even terribly original. I don’t necessarily say what others are not saying. But I say what I want to say, in the way I want to say it. And if I’m going to fail as a writer … well, then it’s something that still has to happen.”

“So you would agree the fact that you feel good about yourself nowadays is possibly based on your own misconceptions and illusions?”

“It’s possible. But life is a struggle, and I’m still standing. So I can’t be doing too badly.”

My friend O. and I finished our game. We wiped the few grains of salt off our brows, finished our sodas and walked away. On the way to our modes of transport I shared with him my thought about how a certain class of tennis player always looks the same, doesn’t matter whether you’re in Taiwan or South Africa.

We laughed about the children of rich people, solo tennis with wooden paddles and hairless tennis balls and how you eventually shake off the feelings of dissatisfaction about yourself after years of torture comparing yourself with people who look so much better in the sun than you.

I mentioned how it sometimes appears as if we spend years constructing our own worlds in such a way that we can eventually feel good about ourselves, so that we don’t have to feel ashamed anymore about the things we couldn’t have had better in our younger days. And, O. added, to be able to laugh about the things we were once so embarrassed about.

But I have never been satisfied with an unfinished argument, and I know the standard for a “good point” is high. After all, I can still get away with a debatable point if my opponent was of flesh and blood, but my differences of opinion these days are mostly with the Internal Man of Steel. He does not tolerate partially assembled arguments, and he does not rest before an issue has been resolved.

“What does it mean to feel good about yourself?” the Man makes his reappearance as I’m starting to pedal home. (“Damn this!” I wanted to shout.)

“Among other things, it comes down to you going through a process by which you identify what is not important to you,” I replied to my own question. “Or you go through a process by which you come to understand that some things are not as important as you once considered them to be. So, you distance yourself from things that don’t matter so much anymore, and the end result is that you feel better about yourself.”

“You mean things like expensive tennis shoes and flawless forearm shots to your professional coach?”

“Yes, to name one example. The process also involves that you identify the things in which you are truly interested, things which are important to you … your talents, your strengths; things you can use to make a success of yourself. The idea is you go through this process, and you emerge at the other end with a better idea of who you are and what you should do to be happy. To eventually …”

“… feel good about yourself.”

“Yes.”

“But what does it matter if you feel good about yourself?”

Dear reader, it’s quite possible that you consider this material to be boring. You may think I constantly harp on the same points. You may think I’m keeping this project artificially alive because I am too much of a coward to confront a more ruthless world in my own country. You may even feel like putting this material down to watch TV instead or maybe going outside to hit a tennis ball hairless yourself against a brick wall.

However, I politely implore you to do me a favour: Imagine what it must feel like to be me.

I cannot take anything for granted. I have to question everything, and at least make an attempt to understand everything. And not even to slide in behind my computer at home to write an essay about it. I must understand in order to function – in this world, in this particular period of the history of human existence, on this planet!

By now I have actually managed to develop an adequate understanding of the world and historical period in which I live. (Don’t have much of a choice: We all know what happens to people who fail to function properly in Polite Society.) I will even be so presumptuous these days as to claim over a cup of tea that I know what the “meaning of life” is, that I even deserve to know, or that I have spent enough years pondering the question to have at least a reasonable idea by now. Other people my age have houses and cars and credit cards and children. I should, after all, have something to say at a social occasion! (“Hello, I’m Brand. I don’t have a house, a car, a credit card or a child, but I do know what the ‘meaning of life’ is …”)

Of course, it’s always possible that everyone knows what the “meaning of life” is, that I’m simply far behind everyone else, like being late for a party and blaming the traffic. And as friends and family share glances I know everyone had to deal with the same traffic to be on time. It was only me who had to stop at every corner to take a smoke break, to survey the landscape and take everything in. And just maybe the so-called meaning of life was never such a big secret from the beginning.

However, why on earth do I ask these questions? And I know I’m not the only one! It does sometimes feel like I’m on a solo mission when I stare out my kitchen window night after night, but I know everyone wonders about these things – or maybe I just hope they do.

Have people always asked these questions? And I’m not talking now of the Greek masters and writers of ancient Rome and Confucius and the Buddha. I’m talking about the peasants and innkeepers and market women and maids and sailors and soldiers from a few centuries ago. Did they know the answers to the important questions of life? Did they wonder about it? How about miners and factory workers in the present day and age, and mothers with curlers in their hair and a baby on the hip, and street sweepers, teachers, tradesmen, lawyers and engineers, and professional tennis players and their coaches?

If serious questions challenge us, how many of us are ready to recite an answer in which we truly believe?

______________________

TUESDAY, 18 NOVEMBER 2003

The so-called benchmarks of adulthood are marriage and buying a house. According to this standard, I am still a child, trapped in the body of an adult male. Surely I will hit the benchmarks sooner or later. The question is, will I feel more like an adult then than is the case now?

It is strange how I almost look forward to being an adult, to finally, after so many years as a child-man caught up in my own strange world, qualify as a mature adult in the eyes of the community. Will I have a car? I will certainly own a house. Maybe I’ll even shave every day! I’ll also have to mow the lawn. I will, as a matter of course – because it’s a requirement – be married.

My “wife” will introduce me to people as her “husband”. We’ll go shopping on Saturday mornings – me in an old T-shirt and possibly unshaven (since it would be the weekend). My “wife” would throw frozen vegetables and fresh fruit into the trolley and remove the frozen pizzas and fresh doughnuts that I threw in. Maybe we’ll go to church every Sunday – naturally I would be clean shaven, with a smart suit.

On Sunday afternoon we will visit friends, drink tea from cups with matching saucers like decent adults, and talk about what had happened at “work” that week. After the conversations we’ll get back into our car. My “wife” will confirm the ingredients of a recipe with the other woman, and then I’ll tap once or twice on the horn as we drive away, with a single arm waving out the window.

Oh my. How nice it sounds to be an adult. I just wonder, would it be all right if I only shave every third day? And is there a chance that we can negotiate about mowing the lawn?

______________________

SUNDAY, 3 NOVEMBER 2003

To say money is important is the same as to say “It’s cold” when you’re standing stark naked in two feet of snow in sub-zero temperatures. Both are absurd understatements that disregards the severity of the actual situation.

The importance of money cannot and should never be underestimated. But to stop at the realisation of the importance of money would be to only acknowledge half the truth. To remain caught up in the singular pursuit of money when you’re not engaged anymore in a daily struggle for survival is to be an ignorant former serf, too recently released from his servitude to know any better.

I can go one step further. Being in a position to afford more noble and/or creative pursuits in terms of both time and money, and to not pursue them, is indeed to be the most pathetic class of serf imaginable – one in seemingly perpetual mental servitude. And this applies not only to “those rich folks up on the hill”. It is equally valid for the average citizen who wastes his or her life while in actual fact being capable of a life worthy of being called human.

______________________

TUESDAY, 28 OCTOBER 2003

I am not desperate enough to get rich. And I don’t mean to say that this desired state should arrive right about at the moment I withdraw the last small change from my inner pocket. No, this desperation should arrive on a plate filled to the brim with actions one could take, items one could purchase, and improvements one could only manifest with some real hard currency.

There can be no doubt that this is the time to be rich. If you’re not a terrorist, you can enjoy almost unrestricted travel anywhere in the world. The well-to-do man or woman can also embark on endless shopping sprees, accumulating a range of consumer products to indulge their every fancy. They can naturally also attract members of the opposite gender, or whatever gender they prefer.

It’s fair to say I don’t follow fashion, and I’m no devoted addict of consumerism. But in case sudden wealth befell me, I would purchase myself some shirts and maybe a new pair of trousers (my best pair is adorned with multi-coloured splashes of paint). I would also buy myself a new computer, and a new bicycle. And then I would fly to Japan, economy class, despite the fact that I’d be able to afford a place in a more elevated hierarchy. Going on a vacation like that would also mean that I will indeed have reached a degree of freedom of movement hitherto only imagined in afternoon naps. I could also fly home for a week to stock up on decent toilet paper, Steers garlic sauce, and some magazines where I don’t need to consult two English-Chinese dictionaries just to understand the title.

This is not only the time to be rich, it is also the time to become rich. Technology previously beyond the reach of common people is, in a lot of cases at least, now as easily obtainable as a new shirt, and not necessarily more expensive. It has become a mantra that I dutifully recite to all within earshot that it is now more unnecessary than ever to submit your labour to the highest bidder, and to submit your freedom of dress, speech, thought and movement to corporate authorisation. Information on specific methods, skills and tricks are widely available to the corporate serf who is planning an entrepreneurial breakout, or the odd rebel who has so far been untouched by the fascist claws of corporate institutions.

To seek out and find this information is one thing, though. The virgin entrepreneur also needs to re-educate themselves. They would need to carefully analyse, reconsider and change where necessary their ways of thinking about things. They need to understand that doing “free creative work under one’s own control” requires self-discipline, ambition, and confidence in one’s own abilities and talents – and an honest appreciation of one’s weaknesses. It requires of the would-be successful entrepreneur to work long, hard hours – almost like in a corporate job, but hopefully at home, in clothes ten times more comfortable than a suit, with music of their choice filling airwaves previously ravaged by the screams and whines of corporate authority figures.

All of these useful little titbits are not what I intended to state in this particular piece. I merely wanted to create a platform to express my opinion that I am not yet desperate enough to be rich. I am adequately aware of weaknesses and strengths I could have as an entrepreneur. I am also very stoic – in case that comes in handy (I eat cereal even when I have canned tuna in my food box), and the fact that I’m reluctant to socialise with people doesn’t mean I can’t call it self-discipline.

What I need though, is the desire that burns inside a man returning to city life after years in the desert, knowing that he can have anything and everything he’s been missing if he could just lay his hands on some local currency. That – is what I need.

______________________