Exactly one year ago, I thought it a bright idea in another corner of this apartment to write a last piece of the year rather than to go out and get drunk with other foreign residents. I wrote (and would have written more if I had not decided after all to join the other foreigners for a couple of beers) of plans that had come and gone, and plans yet to come, of literary projects, ideas to make money with … and of the toilet that dripped water into the bucket under the pipe.
It is Friday, 31 December 2004, three minutes after one on a wintery afternoon. The reason why I am starting so early to produce this piece of text is because I am making an appearance tonight at a New Year’s party hosted by my friend N.S. at her residence, and therefore would not be able to sit at my computer around midnight with my fingers solemnly dangling above the keyboard, as I sometimes think it behoves a possessed, or obsessive writer.
This is thus in addition to the list that I have started putting together in my notebook about the things that define who you are or want to be the last text I will produce this year. (Of course there are still a few hours left before I have to go teach my two classes, but I had this crazy idea to drag a broom over the floor here and there, and to brighten up the surfaces where I display ornaments and books. Since this type of activity can be drawn out unnecessarily long with smoke breaks and more notes on definitions and labels of human existence, I reckon my time behind the computer during this particular calendar year … has been counted.)
The year 2004 has been good; and if not always good, mostly conducive for good things.
Next year? Who knows what nobody can know? Earthquakes, disease, war; income generating endeavours, and then endeavours that will help you accomplish good results of a different kind; leaking pipes in the bathroom, new computers, and unforgettable movies; the best pizza I’ve ever had in my entire life, new theories, and more poetry that doesn’t always rhyme; lots of money, little money, laundry, dirty dishes, broken TVs and washing machines on the verge of breaking; CDs that will be listened to over and over, birds chattering outside and bats that are going to wonder how they can break into my kitchen again; bicycle tyres that will go flat at the most inopportune moments, new technological discoveries, medicine that will make people better who thought they were going to die, and long postponed visits to the dentist; coffee with friends, twelve kilograms of fat that are going to disappear almost overnight, and expensive American cigarettes that will wait for days or weeks on the counter at the 7-Eleven for someone else to buy them; days and nights that will be spent in deep contemplation, questions, answers, community, togetherness, love …
May readers and writers, and dentists and engineers and servants and business people, and sisters and brothers and parents and children, and all other family members and friends enjoy a next year that is conducive to a good consciousness, and for mostly good end result of their lives.
May 2005 be a good year. And so also 2006, and 2007, and 2008, and … if you have established a pattern, why mess up a good thing?
A few pages ago I solemnly said GOODBYE. Now I’m sitting here behind my computer, wiping the sweat from my brow in salute to the reader who has made it this far.
The first part of this final INTRODUCTION starts with a piece that I wrote as people were filing into drinking establishments for New Year’s parties (2003/2004). In the second part I refer to a few dreams that have gotten stuck in my memory over the years. The last part is taken up by administration for the third part of this literary project.
I. What I planned for this year/What I plan for this year
It is Wednesday, 31 December 2003, 25 minutes past 11 at night. There are 35 minutes left of this year. Because it has become a habit to write something at this hour, because it is usually a good idea, and because I’m not in the mood to pay a fortune to get drunk with a bunch of strangers, I am sitting where I’ve spent most of my time this year: behind my computer, writing.
As the title [of this part of the “Introduction”] indicates, I decided not to write about trains, women, teaching English, or the fact that you can buy cheap alcohol at the 7-Eleven on New Year’s Eve. This piece will cover plans.
There were plans at the end of last year, and there were plans at the beginning of this year. There were plans in May, and there were plans in July. There were also plans in August, September, October, November, and December. And then, as befits a New Year’s Eve, there are plans tonight.
My plan at the beginning of this year was to lift my exile and return to South Africa at the end of February [2003]. That was what I now call a “liberal plan”. I didn’t have enough money, and I didn’t really know what I would do in South Africa. I did like the “revolutionary” nature of it, though. Because the plan was a bit crazy, it set off a reaction I now call the “conservative response”. I (once again) thought, “Actually this place isn’t so bad,” and that staying in Taiwan until the end of 2003 would probably have a positive effect on my financial well-being and professional development.
By May, I had come up with the idea that I was never going to make enough money here in Taiwan, or with English teaching. “I need to do business!” I cried out. And went off on a coughing fit brought on by five years in a windowless apartment.
By June I was fed up. I propelled myself forward on the ink fumes from my notebook in which I furiously offered up notes and poems as compensations for all that wasn’t good in my life.
By July, I was determined that I was going to lift my exile in February 2004, and to haul a caravan into my family’s backyard in Bronkhorstspruit or Middelburg. Information was collected, pledges made, and dry twigs solemnly broken off from a tree in the garden – and planted in a vase back in Taiwan to remind myself of my promise just in case I forgot.
The tree on a farm outside Middelburg
August brought the brilliant plan to quit my job at the pre-school and make all the money I needed with “Business!” End of September saw me in a new apartment, finally, after nearly five years in Number Fifteen.
All the free time I saw stretched out in front of me every day eventually made one thing clear: I am, in the first and final place, a writer. The project entitled “Personal Agenda” was my main project from February onwards. It remained my main project throughout the year. It was also what I kept myself busy with in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings when I was actually supposed to do “Business!”
I did finally start working on a few ideas that could be classified as commercial projects and continued working on a few others I had placed on ice earlier. After some months I actually completed one project. My Chinese also benefited from more time I had at my disposal. I have generally felt happier over the past few months, as I was in the first half of 2001, when I also spent most of my time in my apartment, hard at work on my own projects.
It is Wednesday, 31 December 2003. It is two minutes to midnight. Two minutes before a new year. Two minutes left of a good year …
* * *
It’s Thursday, 1 January 2004. It is one minute after midnight. It’s the beginning of a new year. Fireworks rattle like machine guns in the distance. Water is dripping from my toilet. The computer’s fan is making a noise, and my fingers are dancing epileptically across the keyboard. Welcome to a new unit of time in our lives.
Wednesday, 7 January 2004
Here are my plans and intentions for the next three years:
[…]
That being said, I would love to lift my exile as I have always hoped it would happen – by transporting my possessions and my person back to the place from where I departed on 16 January 1999. How things will work out, is how they will work out. We make plans, and then there’s reality. But we must continue making plans, otherwise we might just end up waiting day and night for a bus that may only arrive in fifty years. We don’t determine everything that happens to us, but until things do happen, we need to keep ourselves busy productively. This way we can also influence what will happen to us, and maybe even when.
II. Three dreams
I was very young, maybe five or six. I dreamed my parents and my sister (my youngest sister wasn’t born yet) and I were driving in our station wagon through some city. It was evening. We had become aware of someone following us. Later we were in an apartment. Everyone but I was asleep. The people that had followed us tried to break into the apartment. I was the only one who could hold them back, but all I had to protect myself and everyone else in the apartment was a box of matches.
As a teenager I used to have a specific type of dream. I would be in danger. I knew someone could help me … if I could just give a good shout. The problem was, I could never produce any sound.
The third dream is still conjured up by my subconscious from time to time with different backstories. I’ll be among a large group of people – say at an outdoor wedding, and then I start walking off on my own. After a while, my steps would become longer. Eventually my steps would become stretched to the point where I would float in the air for a few seconds. I would be so chuffed with this ability that I’d purposely stretch my steps as far as I can. It usually doesn’t take long before my feet no longer touch the ground.
III. Administration
The introduction of the final part of this literary project is shorter and more modest than the introductions to BOOKS ONE and TWO. The content is also organised differently.
February yielded a plan. Chapter One follows the development of this plan over the course of just more than a week. Chapter Two contains a few notes from January and February. February was not only the battlefield of a plan, it also brought a new, temporary order to power. Chapter Three contains the official history of this Commercial Dictatorship. I also arrived at a certain insight during the first week of the new regime. Its development can be viewed in Chapter Four.
It’s Monday, 31 December 2001 at 23:40. In the remaining twenty minutes I’m going to try to make a summary of what I did this year, to articulate a short opinion, and also to specify some things that for now is important for the year that will commence in twenty minutes. (It is of course appropriate that I exit this year in the same way that I have spent so many thousands of hours over the past twelve months – behind my Toshiba Satellite 2180 CDT.)
I continued building this year on what I started last year – by not talking anymore about what I was going to do, but to talk about what I’m currently doing. Or better yet, to not actually talk about it, but rather to show what I have done. I earned less money this year than what I thought would be the case. On the other hand, I wrote a lot more, and tackled more projects and finished more than I thought I would.
I worked hard this year – on my own projects. I sat or stood around until five o’clock, six o’clock in the morning in my “office” or in the living room or on the porch giving birth to more ideas. Sometimes I would buy breakfast at McDonald’s, and by the time most people were already in their offices, I would go to bed. I spent hours, days, and weeks working on things that ended up in brown envelopes, excluded from the projects for which they were intended. I learned a lot about myself and about things I want to do.
I also (once again) realised that I have a real interest in language studies. I spent a lot of time putting together material that I used to study Chinese, and I actually ended up with a few additional words and expressions in my head.
In short, I’m proud of myself. I had a good year – and I worked hard to make it a good year! (Funny that I almost feel like thanking someone.)
There’s still six minutes left. Ideas for 2002? Pay off my student loans, buy a house in South Africa, become a millionaire, master Chinese, fly around the world in my own Boeing with a dozen mistresses to keep me company, do a master’s degree in History, buy my parents a house, get married and have children, see the hair grow back on my head …
Time is up. I have to go pour myself a Muscadel and roll my first cigarette of the new year.
* * *
Okay, the new year is already fourteen minutes in progress. Let the work begin!
Brand Smit in his office behind a computer that cost him way too much
I’m sitting in room 1102 in the New Cathay Hotel in Hong Kong. It is 30 December 1999.
[Note on 31/07/2022: Honestly, this piece of text is not good enough for publication. Looking back on that night, I probably could have predicted it then. I had no motivation. I had no inspiration. And I think physically and emotionally I was not in a good place. I had no confidence to produce a proper piece of text. However, the editor in me forced the writer in me: “It’s the end of the year, and of the decade! You simply have to write something!” This watered-down bowl of soup is the unfortunate result. I would rather see a gap in the end-of-the-year pieces than to let this weak effort see the light of day. Or … keep the first paragraph, and the last paragraph, and put this explanation in the middle.]
May the life ahead be beautiful; and if not always beautiful, then fertile; and if not always fertile, well … at least let there always be life!
1999 – Two days before the end of the world1999 – Boat Hong Kong1999 – View of Hong Kong2000 – At least five men in a picture2000 – Hong Kong, first morning of the new year
I feel compelled to say something about 1995. I’ll keep it simple and short. It was a year of extremes. Days like Tuesday, 14 March, searching the cold streets of Paris for an apartment where I was supposed to stay over for a few days (or weeks). Ecstasy, and then … uncounted, date-less days. Days filled with fading self-respect, vague dreams, delicate happiness … May all that is good await me in 1996.
* * *
“I know you are sceptical, but […] join in with the ordinary current of life, and it will take you somewhere. Whither, you ask? Have no care on the subject, you will land and take root somewhere yet! Where? I cannot say, I only believe you have yet long to live.”
