Tag: adult life

Three thoughts from the 16k

SATURDAY, 13 DECEMBER 2003

“You don’t have a house, you don’t have a car, you don’t have a real job, and you’re already in your thirties and you’re not married.”

“Yes, I know. But …”

“No buts. These are the things that matter when I judge a man. You might have spent seven years in Northeast Asia, speak broken Chinese, and have filled an entire literary project with your opinions. But you don’t have a proper home, you don’t have a car, you don’t have a job, and you’re already in your thirties and there’s not even a romantic relationship on the horizon.”

And that’s it. Case closed.

Does it matter? Not as much as it annoys.

TUESDAY, 30 DECEMBER 2003

Many people reach a point where they realise they don’t really count. Some people keep trying; others don’t.

I have seen many people in Taiwan who give the impression they’ve stopped trying. They lie on a chair, bare feet baking in the morning sun, waiting for someone to buy a soda, or for other Mah-jong players to arrive, or for the cigarette between their fingers to burn out so they can light another one.

Is it possible that I just don’t understand these people’s outlook on life? Maybe not everyone is so bothered with “counting” in the greater understanding of things.

* * *

One of the positive effects of the Industrial Revolution was the emancipation of the serfs, and the ending of a system that had bound them to the soil and to their landlords. This emancipation, together with a policy shift which resulted in a significant percentage of public land not being available anymore for agricultural purposes (as was the case in England), however, ensured that the former serfs soon found themselves, for the sake of their own survival, bound to the needs of new industries.

The Industrial Revolution also meant more freedom for the individual – in theory – and gave them more choices. Money does sometimes make things equal. More than just capital bound the serf to the land and the landlord under the feudal system. Today, by contrast, money buys almost anything you need. If you are an industrial or corporate serf today and you win the lottery, or if you think of a good idea, you stand at least a chance of calling the shots tomorrow in your own little kingdom.

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The end of an address/Transformation

FRIDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER 2003

I’m sitting in a denuded apartment waiting for the moving truck to move me and my junk to a new habitat. Some thoughts have to be jotted down immediately.

First, as I have mentioned many times, my sense of where I belong is highly unstable at the best of times. This raises the question of whether I will ever feel at home somewhere. I mean, some people never fit anywhere, right? Is that not the meaning of the labels “drifter” and “loner”?

Contrary to the first point, I recently experienced a more developed sense of where I belong. I’m also sceptical of fitting in too well. Is it because you have to conform to sets of rules – which are usually never spelled out – to fit in? Such rules include what and how you should dress, how you should behave towards different people, what you should say and what not, what you should believe, which ideals are acceptable and which not, and what ambitions you should have. But what good does it do to be honest – to not conform to the detriment of who you believe you truly are – if you end up alone? What is the value of remaining true to yourself if that means you always walk alone?

The other related thing I want to mention is that I could consider transforming myself into a creature that fits in more easily. It can’t be that difficult – I do after all have friends! (Family doesn’t really count in this case. They have a moral obligation to accept you in their midst … that is to say if your clothing style, your behaviour, what you say, what you believe, and your goals do not offend your family to such an extent that they reach the point where they feel it would be better for everyone if you don’t insist that they satisfy your need to be part of their intimate circle. Fortunately, my clothing style, my behaviour, and even my ambitions are of such a nature that they don’t offend my parents’ or my two sisters’ dignity too much. It is naturally to my advantage to believe this to be true.)

So, with the moving truck drawing closer, what are the chances that I can transform myself to such an extent that I could more easily make an entry into groups and communities?

* * *

At 14:55 it was all over. I wanted to end the last part with the words, “So, as the villains in their blue truck draw closer …” but I thought I’d give them the benefit of the doubt. Rogues they were, all right, but friendly enough after they managed to extract twice as much money from me as I had hoped the whole operation would cost me. I wanted to argue, but they gathered together, with one of them lifting his T-shirt up ever so slightly to show his underworld tattoo. At that moment I remembered yet another one of the Important Principles of Survival: Restrain yourself from physical conflict with more than one villain at a time when you’re alone. This principle is of course even more applicable if the villains are of the type who carry sofas and washing machines on their backs up three flights of stairs, and even more so if you are, let’s just say, the scholastic type. (Is it necessary to add that it’s not a good idea to want to pull sheets of papers with notes on them from said sofa while the aforementioned villain is carrying the sofa up a flight of stairs?)

All in all, the process went by without much incident. Right now, I’m sitting outside my favourite coffee shop, quietly sucking on a cup of creamy Viennese coffee while I breathe in the sulphur-polluted air of this part of town.

In the hours that passed between the move and the coffee, I had to teach a class at the school where I’ve been working for almost five years. Here I was in the fortunate position to spot a Taiwanese colleague – who works in the office – out of the corner of my eye. Needless to say, her sensual beauty inspires me to make as many photocopies as possible, and to even enter into conversations with her in my distinctive Chinese dialect.

I heard her mentioning something about being single to one of the students. That forced me once again to contemplate my own reputation as a wandering wolf on the road between my house and … well, the 7-Eleven. A quick mental computation of the reasons for this sorry state of affairs reminded me how I have a problem with my place in the world.

This brings us back to my pre-confrontation with the tattooed movers question: Is it possible that I can transform myself into an individual who will have the ability to fit in more easily?

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Establishment of the Anti-Futility League

THURSDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER 2003

Is there something like an Anti-Futility League? If not, I call it to life at this very moment. Our motto will be straightforward: “What’s the point?” The league will be an exercise in meaningful endeavour – a deliberate attack on futility. (The thought did occur to me recently that this material I am working on might be just a useless enterprise. Who really cares if I know my own true name? Who cares if I see meaning in my life, and whether or not I fill my days with meaningful activities?)

We all have groups to which we belong – or most of us do, anyway. Most people like to be part of something, so now there’s a group of which you as a reader can be a proud member! We can even have name cards printed and give everyone a special number.

Membership would be free for the first million members; then we may start charging a small annual fee. One rule will be that everyone except poor artists must bring cake and tea to meetings, and preferably enough of both so that the artists can fill their plastic bags and empty bottles after the meeting.

Perhaps we should be a secret organisation, with cells that can infiltrate communities around the world! Then we can write a manifesto, and in fifty years take over Russia, or Cuba, or Mpumalanga. We can also launch protests against useless organisations and institutions, like publishers who are just interested in profit. We can even train missionaries to go from door to door …

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(Initially about) The fauna and flora of Taiwan

SATURDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2003

Taiwan has many beautiful flowers, and bees too. There are also trees, and every now and then one sees mountains. The air is quite dirty, though. There are also many dogs roaming the streets that bark at people with long noses. Some of the dogs are green.

What really bothers me about this story is … why am I so desperate for answers? Why do I have so many questions? Is it because of my education – religious environment where one was regularly preached to by those who were supposed to know? And if you didn’t know, you could go to hell! I mean, no one could ever use it as an excuse that they didn’t know! You were either one of the lucky ones who knew, and therefore could go to heaven, or you didn’t know, and was therefore temporarily condemned to eternal torment in Satan’s hell. I say “temporarily condemned” because there was always the possibility that you could acquire the necessary knowledge before you breathed your last, and as one of those who then knew, you could enter eternal utopia – not because you were a good person, or because you died while saving your neighbour from drowning, but because you knew!

(I promise I’ll come back to the fauna and flora.)

Round about ten years ago I wasn’t sure of what I knew anymore. I panicked for understandable reasons. I had to start from the beginning to sort out what I knew, because even though I was no longer sure about heaven or hell, I still thought you were in quite a predicament if you didn’t know certain things.

This resulted in me not following the conventional priorities over the past ten years of someone with my socio-cultural background and tertiary education. I decided that I couldn’t give immediate attention to such mundane things as financial wealth, position and status in the community, and whether or not I might end up in the madhouse one day. All I knew was that I didn’t know.

I met many others who apparently knew, or just pretended they knew, or for reasons I’ve never been able to figure out, did not care whether or not they knew. I, on the other hand, was in a position where everything I had known had lost credibility. I therefore had to postpone all conventional priorities until the day of liberation when I could finally announce that, after years of uncertainty, I finally knew again.

Very soon I was confronted with a harsh reality. Banks that are so kind to lend money to ignorant young students, grocery stores, and the owners of rooms and apartments simply refuse to wait for payment until you know or understand what you believe is necessary to know or understand. Everyone wants money now, whether you know what you need to know, or not.

That’s how I ended up in Northeast Asia. Here I am able to earn money without pretending I have the type of “knowledge” I previously possessed. Here it is good enough that you look different, that you come from another part of the planet, and of course that you can speak English. What a paradise! I’ve been wandering around for years in this part of the world in my apparently endless quest for answers.

To not acknowledge that there are advantages to ignorance would make me a liar, though. One advantage is that one can reflect your ignorance in your appearance. Indulge yourself a bit by standing on a sidewalk in the town centre and staring at passers-by. I surmise that the well-dressed pedestrians with clean-shaven legs and faces can explain in well-articulated sentences what they know. The other part of the crowd, those with furry legs and cheeks and dressed in old jeans and dirty T-shirts, will probably fail to explain what they don’t know in long boring monologues.

Now, here’s where ignorance comes in handy: If you find yourself in this second group, and people look at you and think you look like a homeless person, you can simply drop your shoulders and tell them you know how you look, but it’s because you don’t know! In some cases, they’ll understand, and they will sympathise. Other people – who one can only conclude have always known – will not understand and will probably never have any sympathy.

There is a third group: Characters who don the fashionable uniforms of people who have answers to key questions and who therefore know, but who stare uncomfortably at the ceiling when they are required to make a definite statement in this direction or the other.

By the way, the factor of financial resources, which allow people to buy a pre-assembled and pre-packaged uniform that would give them the appearance that they possess all the important pieces of information can never be underestimated. The same is true for community. If everyone in your group wears the same uniforms and recites the same rhymes, the likelihood is slim that anyone in the room will ask awkward questions – except of course if one with a dirty beard and a T-shirt that advertises shoe polish stumbles into the coffee shop, and accidentally plonks down at the wrong table.

* * *

A more liberal attitude towards your appearance, and other advantages of living in the Far East such as eating Chinese takeaways every day, cannot be overlooked. I nevertheless look forward to the day when I had gathered enough knowledge to again be able to proclaim: “I know.”

There are always alternatives. I can say that I give up or try to convince myself that I don’t care anymore. This could just make it possible to use my time and energy to pursue wealth and material comfort, although it would surely require a transformation of incredible dimensions. The odds are always that I would be confronted later in my life with the fact that, despite appearances, I still don’t know. For me this is a great dilemma.

As I already mentioned, the grocery store, the bank and the landlord don’t really care whether I know or not. As long as I continue to stuff cash in their hands, they remain polite. This is not a desirable situation for the long term. I must either quickly get to the point where I can declare convincingly enough that I possess the most important knowledge (and that I therefore know), or I need to get my hands on more money I can legally call my own. In the latter case, I would be able to buy more time in order to formulate questions better, and to find an appropriate set of answers.

The ideal result is that, without blinking an eye or staring at the clouds, I can declare that indeed, after years of ignorance, I know again – though it would not necessarily be the same as what others think they know. I would again be able to grow my beard, and I wouldn’t feel compelled to dress in a more or less fashionable way, even if I could afford it. Why? If people then comment on my appearance, and speculate about my ignorance, I would be able to straighten my shoulders with a renewed sense of pride, and politely inform them that I might look like a homeless person, but I know.

Now, about those green dogs …

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Vision of the future, possibility one

SATURDAY, 24 MAY 2003

Brand Smit lives in 273 Blue Stone Road. He is married to Elsa Kleynhans (now June it was seven years). They have two children: Marie is five and a half, and Ben is three. Brand works at a local newspaper as a sub-editor. They bought the house in Blue Stone three years ago from a work contact of Elsa’s brother (just before little Ben’s birth). It’s a nice house with a small garden and a tree in the backyard. Brand often says he bought the house because there wasn’t too much lawn to mow. Then Elsa would add, “And you liked the study.”

Last December the family went to Sodwana, and Brand swore never again. The children fell ill from drinking the tap water, and he and Elsa did not have a single night’s rest for a full week. Brand initially said they were going to stay home this December, but he and Elsa have talked about it again. They now plan to visit family of Elsa’s on the West Coast.

Every now and then Brand talks about his years in Asia. Elsa always listens patiently. Sometimes, like last April, someone whom he had befriended in Taiwan would pay them a visit. They would talk late into the night about this and that, about typhoons, pollution, epidemics, English classes, and Chinese.

Brand still remembers a few Chinese words, and he reckons if he ever had to go back to Taiwan or China, he would again pick up the language. In the bathroom (the one next to the guestroom) hangs a scroll of bamboo paper with large Chinese characters. If a guest uses the bathroom, Brand always hopes they ask him what the words mean. He usually goes on about it until Elsa reminds him that not everyone is interested in Oriental languages.

Brand turned forty last year, and as a gift to himself bought a book on Confucius. The book is on a side table in the living room next to his chair, but he has only read the first few pages.

He still writes, but most of the time it’s just material for the newspaper. He once wrote an article for a national magazine and was very excited about what he felt might become a new source of regular income. That was three years ago.

Brand loves his wife, and he’s devoted to his children. He hopes Marie will become an architect or a vet. Although it’s still too early to say, he believes little Ben may have it in him to become a writer. He says it to anyone who wants to hear, and looks embarrassed every time Elsa responds with, “Let the child become his own man.” All he then says before he starts talking about something else is that he can see it in the boy’s eyes. A writer, or perhaps a psychologist.

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