Because if you keep trying, you keep sending out a signal: “I’m still here.”
How else will happiness find you?
(Recent thoughts on the role of luck, and keep trying versus giving up; various social and other media reports of people winning millions in lotteries – and you can’t be lucky if you didn’t buy a ticket; a video clip on Twitter of someone whose parachute failed – he falls to the ground, keeps jerking and pulling on ropes and finally he cuts something loose and his emergency parachute opens to break his speed seconds before hitting the ground; also a video clip of a group of men stranded for days on a small island (looked more like a sandbar), with one guy continuing to wave a big green flag even after rescue personnel in a helicopter noticed them.)
11:24
“Why keep trying? It’s not going to work anyway…”
Say what? Why use that as a criterion? It’s not so much about working. It’s about sending out a signal!
“Many people are successful because they were lucky – the right things happened at the right times, and so on, without them doing much themselves. In other words, other people did similar things, or worked just as hard, but the time was wrong, or the stars just weren’t aligned at that moment.”
Let’s say you’re right.
But how will luck find you if you don’t play? How are you going to get lucky – time is right, stars are right – if you are not active at that moment?
FRIDAY, 5 AUGUST 2022
Not just luck in the general sense of the word.
Perhaps you feel you’re not so much an unlucky person, but in love you just haven’t hit the jackpot.
So: If you stop sending out signals, how will love find you?
Or maybe love has found you, but you could definitely do with more money.
Same story: If you stop sending out signals, how will money find you?
Was the South African government policy known as Apartheid evil, as many people think it was?
The idea of separate development, that Zulus have their own territory that has historical value for them, with their own government that makes decisions on matters that are important to Zulus, or that solves problems in ways that are consistent with the values with which most Zulus identify, with Zulu cultural organizations and schools and universities, and then the same for Xhosas and Sothos and so on, is either a workable idea, or not realistic considering the realities of the South African economy and wider society.
But is it an evil idea? I reckon, no.
The evil entered the story with how the policy was carried out in practice, the way in which the National Party government reacted to resistance to their policy, and the deeply biased thinking that served as the foundation of the ideology.
The policies implemented by the government eventually included the forced removal of communities from neighbourhoods where people of different races had lived together for decades; the requirement of identification documents that only black adults had to carry on their person, without which they could be arrested; laws that prohibited black people from entering urban areas unless they could prove they were employed in the area; a ban on marriages between members of different population groups; a restriction on where black entrepreneurs could open businesses; and the segregation of public areas and facilities, public transport, as well as schools and universities, with the result that black South Africans generally experienced a significantly lower quality of life than white South Africans.
How did the government respond to opposition to their policies? They responded with lethal force against protests, jailed the leaders of the resistance, and banned civil rights organisations.
The most nefarious of the Apartheid government’s deeds, however, was to apply a type of psychology and a type of philosophy that told the adult black population: You are less of a person because you are black. You are worth less than the white man and woman on the other side of town who are just as old as you, just as smart (or stupid) as you, who also love their children. You’re worth less than the white people – because you’re black. Education in schools also made it clear to black children that their futures were not as engineers and dentists and architects, but primarily as labourers and servants of white people. Hendrik Verwoerd, Minister of Native Affairs from 1954 to 1958 and later Prime Minister of South Africa, said about the education of black children: “[There is] no place for the Bantu in European society above the level of certain forms of labour. What is the use of teaching mathematics to the Bantu child if it cannot be used in practice?”
Not only were black children neglected in their formal education, adult black men and women were also systematically reminded of their second-class status in South African society. Young white police constables could stop middle-aged black men and women in the street and demand to see their “papers”. Black children were given Afrikaans or English names that were easier for white people to pronounce, and if the adult black worker did not have an Afrikaans or English name, he or she was given one. White men had to be addressed as “Boss”, even if the black man or woman did not work for the white man. Until as recently as the late nineteen-eighties, black men and women were not allowed to use public transportation intended for whites or were only allowed to use third-class seats.
Steve Biko, circa 1970s (Source: Unknown, copyright is owned by the Steve Biko Foundation)
All these measures were applied to entrench the idea that the white person was the master and the black person the servant. When black intellectuals like Steve Biko from the sixties onwards wanted to promote the idea of Black Pride, when they wanted to popularise the idea that an adult black man and woman should raise their heads and insist on dignified treatment – that they should indeed believe that they were the equal of their so-called white masters, these leaders were brutally oppressed. Steve Biko himself was first intimidated, then arrested, and finally assaulted so badly that he succumbed to his injuries. His offense? A radical message to both white and black: “[As] a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior.” And: “The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth.”
It is at this point – where you want to crush the spirit of someone because he disagrees with your political policies, to want to break his will so that he will never again think of rising against you, that any reasonable person should realise he had crossed over to the Dark Side: Welcome to the Land of Lucifer.
Karl Marx’s second eldest daughter, Jenny Laura Marx, and her husband, Paul Lafargue, committed suicide together in 1911. They spent most of their adult lives doing revolutionary work, including translating Karl Marx’s works into French. When she was 66 and her husband 69, they decided they no longer had anything to give to the cause to which they had devoted their lives.
In a letter, Paul Lafargue wrote, among other things, the following by way of explanation: “Healthy in body and mind, I end my life before pitiless old age which has taken from me my pleasures and joys one after another; and which has been stripping me of my physical and mental powers, can paralyse my energy and break my will, making me a burden to myself and to others. For some years I had promised myself not to live beyond 70; and I fixed the exact year for my departure from life. I prepared the method for the execution of our resolution; it was a hypodermic of cyanide acid.”
It’s an unpleasant subject for sure. Old man or woman thinks they are no longer useful, or can no longer make a contribution, so the end is hastened. Would governments and companies that have to make increasingly high pension pay-outs to people living longer and longer be enthusiastic about such an idea? Who knows.
Still I think: Imagine yourself 70 years old. You are single, or a widow or widower. You have no children or grandchildren. You don’t have much of a pension either, and you no longer feel like working.
Then you hear about a program with a name like “Dignified Last Journey”.
Before you enter the program’s facility for the last mile of your journey, a consultant helps you settle your affairs, sell or give away your last possessions, say goodbye to your remaining friends or acquaintances, and so on.
Then your last few days arrive. You eat tasty but healthy food – you don’t want to experience unpleasant consequences in your last days. Convenience is of utmost importance. You also start getting daily doses of morphine. You sleep well, and longer every day. On Day 7, when you get your final injection, you don’t think anymore. You’re in dreamland.
Imagine you’re in your early thirties. You want to live – I repeat, want to live – in at least the same province as your family so you can see them once or twice a month, and you want to live in the same city as at least half a dozen old friends with whom you can hang out regularly. Imagine yourself wanting to be in a serious relationship, with perhaps a child or two. You want to be established in your work, with a satisfying social life.
Now imagine you actually find yourself in a foreign country on the other side of the globe. You see your family maybe once every two years. You have a few friends, but don’t see them often. You’re single, with no relationship in the pipeline. Your work is not fulfilling, and you often remind yourself, or are reminded, that time is running out to establish yourself in a profession.
To complicate things, you are not stuck in a situation where you can just resign and book a plane ticket back home. You have an apartment full of books and furniture and wall hangings and ornaments with sentimental value. Your income is sufficient to eat well and sleep comfortably, but you don’t have enough savings to survive for more than a few months if you go back to your own country.
Of course, you can leave all the furniture, the wall hangings, and a few ornaments behind and go back home, and hope everything works out. Problem is, you did exactly that a few years before when you were in a similar situation in another country, and let’s just say, it didn’t work out.
What do you do?
You can’t go home because you’re already at home?
Just accept it, and push ahead?
What did I end up doing?
I had no desire for packing up and trying my luck again in South Africa. So, I straightened my shoulders and kept walking.
And kept writing:
sinking
everybody runs away, the rats are fleeing
he is … like his ship, sinking
with solemn respect comes the salutation
middle finger held up high
pulls a recorder from his pocket
plays a death hymn, stops
with his forehead the smashing waves
calm flushes the depths
lives the fountain of abundance
manna, quail, island silence
in wisdom he bites, with razor-sharp teeth
into the sweet flesh of second life
so come on traitors!
creep closer mocker crowd!
one by one you’ll have to face reality
and if your eyes can’t see, and your ears can’t hear
then let me shout it out to sink it in:
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE LIFE!
even for the single survivor.
* * * * * * * * * * *
storm
storms urge me on
my grotesque frame too large
for a nice tight keyhole fit
a closet too small and cramped
a golden cage too fine and much too cold
I rush forward at furious pace
with walking stick and day-old beard
* * * * * * * * * * *
grind
shuffling wordless in dusty spaces
filling ashtrays one upon the other
full and empty again; cups full of coffee
fresh bottles of tea from the all-night cafe
old chairs give way
the weight of evening air sours
in the face of absent light
I rock back and forth, back and forth
it seems you have sometimes
to pull your claws from the mud of time
be more philosophical
about waiting for things to turn on their heel
so, if it can’t be avoided
I’d have to calculate yet again:
one thousand seven hundred and eighty
five one thousand seven hundred
eighty-four, one thousand seven hundred
eighty-three, one thousand …
nights without you
* * * * * * * * * * *
geography
new housing draws
lines across my plans
my eyes narrowing, looking
through other windows at neighbours’ walls
suppose I know about more
than just life and death and pipes full of mice
if I had memorised the sermons of old
I’d have learned too much about retirement homes
sometimes I look too deep into the bottle of time
write notes on floors with pencil and chalk
sometimes I bite a little too much
off rules brittle and yellow from age
sometimes one must move to new housing
the work of a man like a woman ever not done
but I keep writing my lines and shutting my mouth
my eyes peeled until tomorrow, or next month, or next year
(Sunday, 14 September 2003)
* * * * * * * * * * *
(untitled)
I feel myself
irresponsibly close to you
less than your presence
unconditionally close to me
I feel, what’s more
myself untouched
while I live within you
* * *
forty tons of events stay mum
numb my love as it were
shall I ever, as long as I live, discover the axe
that’s been chasing me for so many years?
* * * * * * * * * * *
shoes
on your way to a 7-Eleven, you see it again:
a desert, in the middle of the sea
you want to sneak closer, crawl, aim for the other side
but time and place are shoes that squeeze
you think about coffee, then you buy tea
talk about holding out, holding on, then you give in
want to say “No” in confusion, then nodding “Yes”
wink apparently cool, then fleeing again in a daze
sometimes I say you give in too easily
too few see courage and daring as talent
vagabonds like to pitch a tent at night
clapping whips against trees on the break of dawn
say you want to go together, say you want to sleep
say you’ve had enough, please for once say “Yes”
suspect a little, believe, weigh things up again
because this time and place squeeze far too much
* * * * * * * * * * *
(another) night poem
I’m working my ass off, but
the night remains a bottomless pit
like a miner of a cleaner nature
I dig for words, light, figures, and signs
apt metaphors spoiled by pretence
stand like saints over my open grave
while I’m earnestly looking for dawn
the pick breaks, then the spade, then the lift to the light
and I remain
still
caught up
in yet another night poem
* * * * * * * * * * *
place
i
tumultuously burns the form
leaves the contents fresh, untouched
clothes from another century
hang upside down in my crumbling closet
look carefully at the streets, the markets
poke around in towns and cities
sneak barefoot through half-lit alleyways
wrap yourself in a transient’s blanket
too many preach about proverbs long forgotten
sing false psalms about damned old ideas
reconcile dogma with new science
steal slyly overnight, words from a dungeon library
ii
dozens of descendants, ancestors in front
portraits against faded walls, half-heartedly shining on
books full of museums and ancient buildings
sketches in a thousand corridors full of thoughts
remind only, sing melodiously without stop
priests dance with animal hides draped
over shoulders hanging under the weight
fifty thousand years of searching for a truth
continue to dictate in mumbling chant:
that place and knowing
not only are where you belong
but in truth
is where the soul ultimately ought to be
When I went to Europe in March 1995, I only had enough money for about two weeks of cheap accommodation.
I landed at Orly airport, about ten kilometres south of one of the most beautiful cities in Europe – Paris. It was at the beginning of March, so when I left Cape Town, it was still warm enough for shorts and a T-shirt. The moment I got off the plane and the 2º Celsius air hit my face, I thought I was going to freeze to death before I saw the Eiffel Tower.
Remains of a plane ticket
I took a bus to the city. From the window I saw caricatures of France: a man with a fat moustache with a baguette under his arm; a taxi driver with a fat moustache who explained with exaggerated hand gestures that the man in the other car was wrong; an attractive woman in a red dress and loose, wavy hair, who I was sure smelled of perfume.
I got out when I figured we were more or less in the centre of town. The bus stop was a few blocks from the Seine, and on the other side of a large park was the Les Invalides – where a few days later I would see a trench coat with mud stains from the First World War.
View from the apartment
I sat down on a bench next to the bus stop and smoked a Paul Revere, and considered myself very fortunate.
Then I started looking for my accommodation – a one bedroom apartment of an acquaintance from high school. The only clues I had were the cryptic notes of a mutual friend who had spent a few nights there a year before. It took me about seven hours to track it down. By late afternoon I had spent my first franc at a supermarket in the neighbourhood – on a piece of cheese, a pack of macaroni, and two cans of Czech beer.
Source of cheese and cheap beer
The first week I was alone in the apartment. I walked for miles every day – to the Eiffel Tower, to the Place de la Concorde, to the Père Lachaise cemetery, to the Moulin Rouge, and up and down the Champs-Elysées. One day I also took the train out of the city to the palace in Versailles – a definite highlight.
Apartment of high school acquaintance in Paris
At the end of the week, my acquaintance returned to his apartment. I stayed a few more days, and then bought a bus ticket to Amsterdam. Here I visited the Anne Frank House … and not the Van Gogh Museum because it was too expensive.
The plan from the beginning was to get some kind of job to keep myself alive and every now and then to travel to interesting places. In Paris it was not possible because of the language. In Amsterdam I went to a McDonald’s and asked about work. The application form indicated that if I was not a citizen, I had to be able to prove that I was a refugee. I also met the son of a friend of a university professor. He had vague ideas about knocking on doors to offer your services as a cleaner, or something like that.
Next stop, London: The capital of illegal work for anyone from anywhere in the world. I found a bed in a room with six or seven other men in a small hotel not far from Victoria Station. Quickly made friends and walked around for a few days – had a photo taken of myself with Tower Bridge in the background and visited the Imperial War Museum and the British Museum, but I didn’t really look for work. One night on the news there was an item about a man from Nigeria who had been working illegally. The police came looking for him where he lived. He was startled, jumped out of the window, and fell to his death. Another South African who also stayed in the hotel talked about construction work, and that it helped if you had a working holiday permit.
Hotel in LondonBridge and tourist on a sunny day in London
Friends of mine spent six months in Britain the previous year on working holiday permits. No surprise that it seemed like a more attractive option than running from the police.
Red light district in Amsterdam
I decided to go back to Amsterdam, from where my flight was booked back to South Africa – actually not until months later, but I had the option of changing it. Someone talked about cheap youth hostels in the red-light district where you could get free bed and breakfast if you helped clean and did laundry. I found a place in a hostel in a room that smelled of dirty socks and unwashed bodies. I inquired about work, and they said they would think about it (to check if you were trustworthy, I later learned). However, I only had enough money left for a few days, so on the third day I called the airline and booked a place on the earliest flight back to South Africa. A day before I was to fly, the manager informed me that they could use my services if I was still interested. However, by that time I had less than the equivalent of ten euros left.
Hands in the pocket, but broke
Of course, today I think back on opportunities I didn’t take. Why didn’t I apply for a work permit before I went, knowing full well what benefits it would bring? Fact is, I tried, but the travel agent said it would take something like two weeks, and I didn’t have two weeks. Only later did I find out it only took a day or two. The two weeks in Paris, though I didn’t pay for accommodation, also ate into my finances. Why didn’t I find out about the free bed and breakfast if you work at the place in the first week in Amsterdam? Don’t know. Why wasn’t I actively asking around London for opportunities? Lack of confidence? Lack of motivation? The man who jumped to his death would probably have made an impression on anyone, but after all there were thousands of other people who worked illegally in London or elsewhere on the islands. And why not take the job in the hostel and see if I survived for a few weeks until something else happened? Probably thought my plan to go back to South Africa, apply for a work permit, and then come back made more sense. And it was safer.
Making friends on a napkin
Would it have helped if I had a partner there who said: “Let’s do it! Let’s take a chance!”?
Yes, it would have made a difference.
A few weeks after I got back to South Africa, I applied for a work permit, and got it. Beautifully it graced my passport for six months, and then it expired. Never got together enough money for a second plane ticket to Europe.
Right around the time the work permit expired (end of 1995), I saw an advertisement for “Teaching in Korea” in the Cape Times. What happened next is the timeline of my real life over the past quarter century.
How many alternative timelines did not cross each other in those few months of 1995?
Can one say with certainty that everything would have worked out differently if you had changed one thing years ago, said yes to something, said no to something else, taken a later flight, walked in a different direction, took a bigger chance? Do you wish things had turned out differently?
I am happy with my current life, and with how my life has developed the last 27 years. But if I closed my eyes and the alternative lines were revealed to me, would I see a more interesting life than the one I’ve been living? Would it have been more dream than nightmare, or the other way around?
