Assorted Notes

MONDAY, 19 NOVEMBER 2007

“He has it in him to become successful, but does he have it in him to be successful?” ~ part of a conversation in my head

MONDAY, 26 NOVEMBER 2007

It is like I am always in conflict with myself. One part is almost autistic – he just wants to sit in his own little corner where everything is familiar, where each little dust ball is in its place. Nothing should ever change.

The other part is ambitious. He wants to improve things; he wants things better. He is impatient, and endlessly frustrated with the guy in the corner.

TUESDAY, 27 NOVEMBER 2007

Themes for a writing project:

– moral compromises, and the situations that give rise to them

– life as struggle, and then you rest

– living with the consequences of your own catastrophic mistakes or failures

– knowing what might happen (in theory, according to CNN, newspapers, etc.) and living every day as if it won’t happen

TUESDAY, 18 DECEMBER 2007

I can take losing. A pain that I would like to avoid as much as possible, though, is disillusionment.

MONDAY, 31 DECEMBER 2007

That I mention this on the last day of 2007, is incidental.

An overview of the year in yesterday’s Taipei Times reminded me that I have succeeded to a large extent in one of my visions for the future in 1994: I have become a recluse. That I go out to teach a few classes every week, and to be with Natasja make it a little less obvious, but not much further from the truth.

There are cultural events in this city, plays, performances, art and museum exhibitions, but for years I have been trapped in a reclusive existence, a reduced reality if any sociologist or psychologist has ever hoped for another case study, full of energy and focus, busy with some project, some struggle.

Is it absolutely necessary for things to be like this?

______________________

MONDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2007

I recently had the insight that it is very difficult to make money, a) if you don’t have a target list of prospective clients, b) if you don’t have any partners, c) if you don’t have a product of your own that you can market with the help of affiliates, and d) if you don’t invest at least some money in pay-per-click ads or other paid advertising. The idea that you just can fill a space on the Internet with text and a few affiliate links that say “Click here for more information” is nice but completely unrealistic.

* * *

Besides so-called Internet marketing, I have developed an interest in sports betting as a way to make money. How do I justify risking precious time and financial resources on activities to which I have had almost no exposure until recently? The way I see it, everything is a gamble.

A so-called permanent job is a risk you take: You place a bet against any large-scale layoffs in the near future, and you place a bet on how profitable the company is, how well the company is doing in the stock market, how well the company is managed, and other factors that are totally beyond the control of you and the company. You also take a chance with your own business, like a series of pottery products or a coffee shop. Marketing other people’s products on the Internet is also a risk you take: You place a bet that enough people will visit your website, then click on a link, and then buy something while the piece of code on their computer that will give you credit for the fact that they bought something is still active.

You put time and money on the table, and you hope for the best. In the case of a full-time job, you are influenced by social convention that says, “Everyone gets a job, and then you get a salary, and after five years a promotion and everything works out fine.” In the case of Internet marketing, you base your risk on the advice of some expert (real or not) who says do this or do that, or go to this site or work with that platform and then your dividend will be this much per day or per week or per month or per year.

Every way you try to make money is a gamble, and every industry has its so-called experts. Sports betting, horse racing and other such activities are simply gambling stripped of the thin layer that makes other things look a little less like gambling.

Every person has to decide at the end of the day where the best bet lies for him or her, how much they are willing to risk, and how much they are willing to lose.

* * *

A few days ago I watched two documentaries about North Korea. A few remarks: North Koreans work with the reality with which they were born. They cannot function as if they were, for example, Americans who were born in Chicago, because it simply would not be conducive to the continuance of their daily existence. They speak Korean; they recite their oaths of loyalty to the Dear Leader; they work, eat, sleep, take part in mass performances, marry, have children, laugh, cry, suffer; they enjoy the small things in life, and the fellowship of friends and family; they avoid criticising the government or the authorities, or the Dear Leader’s height or weight or hairstyle; and then they die.

WEDNESDAY, 24 OCTOBER 2007

From the Complete Memoirs of Jacques Casanova: “If you have not done anything worthy of being recorded, at least write something worthy of being read.”

SUNDAY, 28 OCTOBER 2007

If 60% of my results are bad, I accept it, and I am happy with the 40% that is good.

If 60% of my results are good, I complain about the 40% that is bad, believing the bad part spoils the good part.

I better work on that, fast.

______________________

MONDAY, 13 AUGUST 2007

[Thoughts after a conversation with a friend]

It took a long time for me to see other people more as they really are, and not as I make them – and sometimes want them to be – in my own, sometimes simplistic world. It remains true, though, that some people will always be in the minority at backyard barbecues or at a family table during Sunday lunch.

A simple truth, number two: If most members of a group make the same lifestyle choices, these choices would appear to most members of the group as the best choices they can make – whether they really are such great choices, or not. (And to be fair – just because the majority thinks something is right, doesn’t mean they are necessarily wrong.)

A simple truth, number three: You can’t tell people they are wrong if you don’t present them with an alternative – and not an alternative that will work better for you, an alternative that would be better for them.

FRIDAY, 24 AUGUST 2007

I am glad that I wrote what I wrote when I wrote it, and with the conviction with which I did it. I still stand by what I wrote, but the world is a strange place: Crime pays for too many criminals, irrational people seem to be in control of way too much, and people drunk on religion wreak havoc wherever they go.

SATURDAY, 25 AUGUST 2007

Taiwan: Where I wrote what I had wanted to write, where I met the love of my life, and where I built up a foundation for my future.

Create something to leave behind, love and be loved, and make it possible for myself to grow old.

That is, so it seems, what I came here to do. Could I ever have asked for more?

THURSDAY, 30 AUGUST 2007

The Power of One – not only the power that one person has to alleviate the suffering of other people, but the power of one person whose suffering has been alleviated.

* * *

My purpose on earth is to relieve other people’s suffering. Being a writer provides you with a nice identity, a nice label to hang around your own neck. But my writing is a means to an end, namely, to alleviate other people’s suffering.

[16/05/2016: Is this true? Am I not just giving expression to my experience of an active existence? Would I rather help people than to leave them stranded by the side of the road? I would choose to assist them, but is my writing really an attempt to find stranded people by the side of the road – so to speak – and then to help them get home?]

SATURDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER 2007

“George W. Bush is presiding over one of the darkest periods of US history. And it isn’t just external factors that are causing this situation, Bush himself is one of the leading causes of darkness.” ~ Thought with which I woke up this morning. There was also a thought about eBay, but I can’t remember the details.

[A few notes written during September 2007 but without a date]

“The best time to have planted a tree was five years ago. The second best time is today.” ~ Chinese proverb

* * *

A salesman apparently tries his best to convince people to buy what he has to sell. A marketer, on the other hand, determines what people want, and then he finds or develops an appropriate product or service to offer them at a price.

I clearly have a long way to go.

* * *

Apparently, it is easier to sell two thousand $500 products than it is to sell fifty thousand $20 products.

______________________

MONDAY, 25 JUNE 2007

You go on a “search” to “find” yourself because you believe you are “lost” – and then, as many people believe, you get to a point where you discover what you are supposed to be, or you simply see what is left after the “search” has eliminated what you had thought you were supposed to be. It makes one think of someone walking around in a mall full of clothing stores, not really knowing what they are looking for, but nevertheless trying to see as much as possible and then evaluating their reactions to what they see.

To define yourself is more like someone in the same shopping mall trying on clothes, putting together an outfit that will be an outward manifestation of who and what he or she wants to be. How did this person figure out in the first place who they want to be? By walking around, observing as much as possible, and evaluating their reactions to what they observe.

TUESDAY, 26 JUNE 2007

19:12 (Number Nine Crooked Village station)

It occurred to me that I go through quite a range of emotions every Tuesday at the language school at Number Nine. No other period of time in an average week can even remotely compare with it.

It starts with a fatalistic acceptance – from the moment I have to start getting ready until the 17:22 dumps me in the dusty hamlet that is Number Nine. Then it changes to miserable boredom, and my attempts to do something with my arms and hands, and with my voice, that could pass as English teaching. Then, more often than not, one or more of the children’s behaviour or their blatant disrespect drives me to the edge of a red-faced blowout and a very strong desire to throw something at the offending little gangsters in the back of the class. Then a softening of emotion when I remind myself that their behaviour probably still fits on the range of normal behaviour for pre-teens themselves bored out of their skulls.

Finally, at 18:59 comes the relief – that is to say if I am fortunate enough, like tonight, to be informed that the boredom will not last until past eight because the only student attending the second class is absent.

That brings me to the current moment, waiting for the train at Number Nine’s station. Within thirty minutes I will be back at home, with my routine and … let’s just say, a more limited range of emotions.

______________________

TUESDAY, 1 MAY 2007

A few weeks ago, I noted how vulnerable we all are (“All of us,” I said), and that the only reason we are not completely … ruined is because we find in each other comfort and protection.

Then, on Monday, 16 April 2007 a 23-year-old student in America took two pistols from his drawer, loaded them with bullets, put on his “uniform”, pointed the pistols in the direction of more than sixty people, and pulled the trigger again and again. Easiest thing in the world. Thirty-two people died.

The shooter wasn’t strong. He wasn’t exceptionally intelligent. He wasn’t rich. What he was able to do was to buy two pistols with a credit card, point the loaded pistols in the direction of students and lecturers trapped in their classrooms, and pull the trigger. Thirty-two lives ended, and 32 families are plunged into grief.

We are vulnerable, all right.

Fact is, we all have dark impulses. We all have the ability to kill, and to destroy, and to harm. To find reason not to kill, to find reason not to destroy, and to find reason not to harm, is ultimately our only hope.

* * *

For some people identity becomes a crisis when they realise they have multiple choices, options, and possibilities.

THURSDAY, 3 MAY 2007

Thursday or Monday or Friday, 13 or 5 or 10 April or September or May.

There was the thought about choices and identity. Then the other night I drove past my old neighbourhood and thought: “I lived there.” And then the disconnect: I lived there?

I-now am in terms of responsibility under the law still the same person as the one who lived in that neighbourhood four years ago, the same person who lived in Korea ten years ago, and the same person who arrived with R100 in my pocket in Stellenbosch sixteen years ago. In terms of spiritual and intellectual growth, I-now am however only related to the person who did X, Y and Z, or who lived in A, B or C; a direct descendant, if you want to be more specific.

MONDAY, 21 MAY 2007

“You know how it is: the dust settles, you settle in, and one day you open your eyes and ten years have gone by. That’s how you end up in a place like this.” ~ thought inspired by a dilapidated house in my old neighbourhood

TUESDAY, 22 MAY 2007

A few days ago I talked with [someone close to me], and she told me how bad things are going – money, property on the market, second child on the way, husband that can’t handle stress. I realised I couldn’t really identify with her problems, and because I couldn’t identify, my options for encouragement and advice were limited: “Hang in there!” isn’t always appropriate.

What can you say? If you say one thing, the other person says something else that undermines the relevance of your advice or the effectiveness of your encouragement. So you find yourself in a position where you are looking for something that cannot be argued with, something that does not depend on something else to happen first for the advice or encouragement to be valid. Hang in there … for what? Because things will change? If they don’t change, “Hang in there!” sounds pretty hollow.

“Fight for the fighting spirit,” I suddenly declared, the conviction back in my voice, “for the sake of fighting for the fighting spirit! On that I won’t compromise.”

Why? It is absolute. It does not depend on anything else like better days around the corner to make it valid. It is valid because the alternative is unthinkable. If you do not fight for the Fighting Spirit, the Fighting Spirit will die. And if that happens, you will never live again.

Even if better times really are just around the corner.

FRIDAY, 25 MAY 2007

Natasja is coming back tomorrow, so I am trying to clean up my apartment – specifically the disorder I call my storeroom. It was here where I recently discovered a hot plate, a book bag that has never been used – and my current one is seriously frayed, and a packet of printed papers dating back to a series of classes I did in July and August 2005.

Between the usual boring lists, vocabulary, sentence constructions and dialogues, the following note dating from Tuesday, 2 August 2005: “From the moment you open your eyes in the morning to the moment they shut late at night you are engaged in a struggle for survival – and for happiness, to make the survival worth it.”

______________________