Assorted Notes

THURSDAY, 17 FEBRUARY 2005

10:20

If I travel by train from Moscow to Paris and I stay a day or two in Berlin, it will be incorrect to say that my trip has stagnated. My journey is still in progress; I am merely spending a day or two in a place between starting point and destination.

If I travel by train from Moscow to Paris and I stop for a day or two in Berlin, it will also be incorrect to say that my final destination – Paris – does not exist because I have not yet reached it. Paris – my destination – is not going to come into existence as my train draws closer to that spot on the map. The place to which I have been travelling since the train pulled out of the station in Moscow has existed from the beginning of my journey. As I spend time in one place or the other my final destination already exists.

The destination exists independently of me – it is there, long before I reach it, long before I first observe the city on the horizon, long before I walk the streets of my destination, and breathe its air.

11:59

I am sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car, on a bare piece of grassland known as My Sister and Brother-in-law’s Smallholding outside Bronkhorstspruit.

My brother-in-law explains about a swimming pool, four bedrooms, a pond and trees that will cast long shadows in a decade or so over dogs and children and grandparents sitting around a barbeque fire, having a good time.

I find it quite interesting. With folded arms I make a comment about “believing in things you cannot yet see” while my brother-in-law brings down a pickaxe from high above his head on a piece of turf where a tree will live out its existence.

I find the time and the place where this series of moments of my life plays out acceptable in terms of significance and entertainment value.

I also know that if I am still sitting here sixty minutes from now, in the passenger seat of a parked car in the African sun, I will become restless … and not quite as pleased with the value and entertainment of the series of moments that will then be my life.

“Short-term gratifications,” I say to myself, and turn the volume on the car audio system up a few notches.

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TUESDAY, 15 FEBRUARY 2005

1. Starting a relationship is a creative process. It is organic, take-it-as-it-comes, not a step-by-step, just-follow-the-dotted-line-for-desired-outcome process.

2. One must, at the beginning, be prepared to lose the person, however unpleasant that may sound. The reason is simple: If you’re not willing to lose someone at the start, you will a) not be yourself, b) appear desperate, and c) force the process; virtually all of which will doom the endeavour to failure anyway.

* * *

Two days ago I thought about how comfortable or relatively more relaxed I usually feel in the company of [my younger sister’s former in-laws], people my parents’ age, whom I have known for a few years but with whom I have no emotional connection.

I realised that it probably has to do with the fact that they have no prior knowledge of me – what they see now, is what they have always seen. My own parents knew me as a new-born, as a seven-year-old boy, a twelve-year-old preteen, a sixteen-year-old teenager, and as a young man of twenty … They know the person I am now is not the person I have always been.

It also occurred to me that my mother has a bigger problem than anyone else in the family with the discrepancy between the earlier version of me and the person I currently am. She is still holding onto a romantic image of me when I was at my most beautiful, so to speak – maybe about twelve years old, clean face, quiet, on my knees praying every night before bedtime, the first signs of religious dedication, the idea that I might become a minister one day.

My father, on the other hand, doesn’t have a romantic image of me as a young boy. Although he loved me, he saw me as clumsy and incompetent to overcome even the smallest technological challenge; plus, I had little interest in how a car engine worked. His view of me, now, is actually more positive – that of an intelligent man, someone with an interest in the Greater Questions of Life.

So, on the one hand my mother, who still hopes that I might return somewhat to the romantic image of her “beautiful son”. And on the other hand my father, who readily accepts me as I am now, since it is somewhat of an improvement from my childhood.

Then a thought kicked me in the face late this afternoon: I am also guilty of this romantic idea business. Ten years ago my younger sister appeared to me differently than she does now – she was a rebel, ready to take on the world … and yet vulnerable and fragile. Now, ten years later, she is a mother, a partner in a marriage, and a valuable administrator of my parents’ business. But without really noticing it, I have been slightly disappointed all this time, because “What happened to the rebel?”

Family is not just people who lived together for many years, and who call each other from time to time to hear if everything’s still okay. Family – and in this case I mean parents and siblings – are people you should allow to constantly grow in your own eyes. That is how relationships are kept alive, and real.

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MONDAY, 14 FEBRUARY 2005

What I have BECOME is for the people I love a closed book. And it would simply have been an extremely useful and accurate metaphor were it not for the fact that it is also literally true.

* * *

It is not about love, it is about appearing. And, like many things in life, it is not a problem … until it becomes one.

My parents and my two sisters appear to me as they see themselves – they appear to me as who and what they are, in their own eyes. I appear to my family not as I see myself, but as they see me by default. In the absence of data on who and what I have become, they stand in relation to me in a way that is acceptable to them, in a manner that enables them at the end of the day to say, “We know him. He’s our brother (or son).”

What I have become, and therefore what I am, is endured as a result of old data (and possibly for the sake of maintaining the memories from which the old data is compiled), and because of manifestations of who I am in speech and action that are reminiscent of who I used to be; manifestations that are consistent with an earlier image of me (or that is supposed to be me) that they still adhere to.

As with a book that cannot be flipped open by the author and forced in the face of the reader, so it is with what we become. We must be “read”. And, like a book rich in contradictions, clever metaphors and a developed, fuller character, this takes time.

I will stand with my arms open ready to embrace them when my family reach out to me again in their own time.

* * *

Why, would someone ask, would your family reach out to you? Because they have lost me. How did they lose me? By not recognising and accepting the person I have become, but only enduring me because I remind them of a manifestation of myself that they can relate to more easily.

I still believe that my family loves me. Acceptance, however, requires tolerance, an open mind, and the ability to look someone you love in the eyes and admit that the person has become something you do not understand, but to also understand that you do not suddenly become a stranger in their eyes.

[03/06/15: This estrangement of one family member from other members of the family with whom he had previously had close ties may be due to, among other things, sexual orientation, change in religious affiliation, or a change in political beliefs. In my case it is mostly about change in religious affiliation, and a generally more humanistic outlook on life and humanity.]

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SUNDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 2005

07:20

Blue chair, green tree, green lawn, cobwebs glistening in the morning sun, a blue Bic pen and the same notebook that always travels with me like a passport.

Round One of Estrangement from People I Love occurred late yesterday afternoon. The topic was people’s domestic problems, relationships, so-called genetic tendencies, and so on. I wanted to go a little deeper than the superficial exchange of views (based, this I know, on real, heartfelt emotion), but cups were loaded in a tray, heads were cast aside and “Oh! Come on!” was yelled out. I followed up with a 90-second rant on how problems cannot be solved if there is no proper communication and a reasonable amount of discussion – and what problem can be solved, or more importantly, what problem that is not easily decipherable can be solved if heads are cast aside and “Oh! Come on!” is yelled out once one party begins asking questions that might require a proper discussion to answer?

Nevertheless, it is really nice to be back just five and half months after the last time I was here, under a tree, on a smallholding outside Bronkhorstspruit. It also feels good that this is not my Big Annual Visit but only a two-week flash vacation. It almost feels normal, like I actually inhabit the same planet as my family.

Also entertained a thought yesterday about the environment and the lives that I observe. The dominant impression was of a life of struggle – for survival, for hope to experience little moments of happiness like when you discover flowers where nobody believed any flowers will grow, for special times like a long weekend or a short holiday, and for Greater Things that Bring Happiness like pregnancies, and a child of your own.

I know many people, intelligent, educated people who distinguish themselves from the “rest”, as well as people who do not spend much time in contemplation on the deeper questions of life will pull back slightly, and ask me with a doubtful look: “So? Is this not life in general? Is this not what everyone hopes for? I mean, not everyone necessarily wants to get married and have children, but they do other things to make up for it. Where do you fall out of the bus? Are these things not also important to you? Is life not a struggle?”

20:52

Confrontation with reality. Accept what you cannot change. Implement measures for the sake of self-preservation and survival. I will not again talk with my family about my work, my thoughts, my beliefs or my opinions, until they sincerely ask about it. In actual appearance this means that I cannot be with them who and what I have become, and therefore who and what I am. This state of affairs will continue until they reach out to me with open minds. Then and only then, can I reappear as who and what I really am.

I love my parents and my two sisters. I know they love me. My hope is that my appearances to them, and my relationships with them, will be characterised by dignity, respect, and other things that come down to “love” in practice.

However, it has become clear that, because of their views and their convictions, and their own shortcomings, I cannot appear to them as the person I have become and who I am at this moment of our lives.

This is the reality. This is what I cannot change. This is what I have to accept. This is the measure that I implement for the sake of self-maintenance and survival.

[03/06/15: My family still does not reach out to me. They are always happy to see me, and we are all sad when we have to go our separate ways again. But they are not searching for me.

Do I search for them? Do I ask them what they believe? Do I ask them what is important to them?

It should not be an excuse to answer that I already know what they believe and what is important to them. Maybe I am wrong. Their answers might have changed over the years. Perhaps I should be more interested in what is important to them and what they believe in. Sincerely, one must of course add, and with an open mind.]

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FRIDAY, 11 FEBRUARY 2005

09:03/03:27

I just thought: I live and think and work (meaning write) in a brilliant teacup. My world must be almost perfect to be conducive to the kind of thinking I surrender my mind to and the kind of material I produce.

Fine if it is so, if a certain environment and other related factors are important to make certain things possible. I am just wondering what I would have done if a part of my life had been lived on the kitchen table, outside the enabling boundaries of my beautiful teacup. (Do I need to remind myself that monasteries are not exactly oversized coffee mugs or Taiwanese hot pots?)

Two articles I read in the Time magazine are what inspired this thought. One was about all rights being suspended in Nepal – including the right to express what you think, the right to criticise the government, and the right to privacy. I wondered: Could I survive in such a situation? The second article referred to Shanghai’s mostly Western businessmen in the nineteenth century – all the wheeling and dealing, greasing of palms, etcetera. Again I wondered: Could I survive in that kind of world?

Do these uncertainties really have any value, or are they just interesting speculations?

Point remains: monasteries are also teacup environments that are conducive to significant results. Plus, I don’t exactly live and work in a monastery.

05:33

The land of my birth is spotted.

Date: 11 February 2005

Day: Friday

Time: 05:34

Location: Seat 29K on a Boeing 747 at a height of 11,887 meters above sea level

Clothing: Black jeans, a green short-sleeved shirt I’ve been wearing since yesterday morning, (clean) blue socks, 2002 Merrells

Emotion: Neutral excited. It was a bloody long journey, and I was bored most of the time, although the Time magazine did help. I have been sitting in a very narrow space for almost ten hours, and I have an emergency situation developing because of all the rich foods I’ve been eating the last eight hours. I am almost constantly thinking of a certain female character with whom I have spent a lot of time the past few weeks. I am also thinking of my parents, my two sisters, their firstborn children …

15:53

One Greek salad, one pasta salad, half a potato salad, half a pecan pie, and two cups of green tea later (oh, and a three-hour nap and a hot bath): It was a bit of a shock to my inner organisation to be alone in Melville, the battlefield from where I had retreated just in time, seriously wounded and injured a few years ago. It is also amusing to appear as “Brand (you know? [X])”.

On the subject of people who have children in the conscious or unconscious hope that it will give meaning to their lives, the next piece of advice to myself: consider the possibility that there are aspects of the matter that I (still) do not understand. Maybe this – to hold your own child in your arms – is the element that unlocks great things, beautiful things, in some people. (And in other peoples’ cases, it might be something else.)

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