Month: September 2003

I feel miserable and lost, and consequently threaten transformation again

TUESDAY, 30 SEPTEMBER 2003

While walking out of the Carrefour this evening with more cheap VCDs and two boxes of cereal, the idea formed in my head that I am to a great extent an unhappy person. Like everyone I have my better moments, but to be honest, I’ve been miserable since I finished high school (even that phase of my life wasn’t exactly a hedonistic hell ride). It shouldn’t come as too much of a shock for you as reader by now, and it was certainly no secret to myself.

The reason for my continued wretchedness is simple to pin down, since I spend most of my days and nights in deep contemplation looking for causes for just such dilemmas. I find it difficult, even impossible, to commit myself to the mainstream of life (or then, my caricature of the so-called mainstream) within which most of my contemporaries live out their existence.

Why this lack of enthusiasm? Long story short, I believe death is always imminent. And because of the shadows cast by my former beliefs I also believe that when you stand in front of the Gates of Heaven and Hell, you will be asked to explain what you have done with your life.

If you answered that you had a good job and had been an asset to the company, the response will, in my opinion, be that it’s not good enough. If you continue by adding that you were also involved in an intimate relationship, and that your relationship was a beautiful example to other people, the answer might spark a smile, but not much more. The initial reactions might make you nervous, and you might modify your story as a result. You could say that you and your partner had already produced a little descendant, and a second one was on its way. “Congratulations!” the Gatekeeper might say, “But please continue.”

If, on the other hand, so I believe, you were in a position to say, “I wrote a book about the meaning of life, and I felt really miserable most of the time,” you may just have half a chance of a place in paradise.

* * *

Here I am, then, with a bowl of fresh cereal, scribbling more notes about my miserable existence, searching for better answers about the purpose and meaning of my life than the ones I’ve already formulated.

The fact that I vacated the apartment I had lived in for 56 months at exactly 16:39 this afternoon doesn’t fill me with how I imagine an acid trip would feel like. I feel somewhat lost. And the cockroaches in my new headquarters are not conducive to a better mood. The dark green sheet I’ve draped in front of my living room windows also seems to have an unpleasant effect on me – an awareness of intense isolation.

Despite all this, I cling to the belief that a new phase of my life is ahead of me. I am indeed currently considering a transformation of my whole being – a complete metamorphosis. I’m fed up with being miserable. I’m fed up with not “knowing”. I’m tired of floating around like a charred piece of newspaper at a Saturday afternoon braai. I am even getting very dissatisfied with my current financial situation. I’m also tired of cockroaches, damp floors, air pollution, broken washing machines, toilets where the ring and the lid are different, equally nefarious colours, and of bathtubs just big enough to squeeze my big toe in.

I plan to finish this writing project and then to qualify myself as … an accountant. I would be unrecognisable to friend, foe and family. I will wear an expensive suit to the office, and a luxury watch will dangle off my left wrist. On my feet I will sport the best quality shoes – with socks. And I will drive a car, and occupy a new house – without cockroaches, in the right part of town.

Do I plan to sell out? Definitely. I plan to do everything in my power to renounce my current beliefs. I will do my best to cultivate shame for my years of poverty and creative ambitions. I will burn all my notebooks. I will never own a pen again, unless it’s a gold pen gifted to me by a company for years of faithful service. I will work late every night in desperate hope of promotion. I’ll get married and have two children, but I won’t even touch a lawnmower because it will be beneath my new status.

I will be a poster boy for perfect happiness. And I will forget that there was ever a time in my life that I didn’t “know”, or that I tried to “understand”.

At this point, I have to interrupt myself, though. My laundry needs hanging out, and I have to go to the 7-Eleven to buy cockroach traps. And after this latest eruption my notebook is getting dangerously close to its final page. Plus, I definitely need a new pen …

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Belonging and mobile membership

TUESDAY, 30 SEPTEMBER 2003

So I was thinking, I stayed in Number 15 for 56 months, of course I’m going to feel a little lost now that I no longer belong there. And I don’t really feel as if I belong here … in Benevolent Light. Then I realized I don’t have much of a choice: Eventually I would have to buy my own house or apartment where I will know I belong.

The next thought almost immediately shoved the previous one aside: One cannot place so much value on physical address as your “place in the world”. Why not? As a principle, it can’t be applied universally and across all historical periods of human habitation on this planet!

Our earliest ancestors were unfamiliar with the concept of private property. They constantly moved from one place to the next. Every time the seasons changed or animals moved to greener pastures, they allowed the fire to burn out in their cave, perhaps gave their charcoal drawings on the walls a final glance, made sure all the older people and all the children were on tow, and then they started walking. And each individual member must have had a sense of how and where they belonged, did they not? What would have given them a sense that is more or less similar to the feeling that modern individuals have when they know they are where they “belong”?

The answer lies in relationships, in community with others.

Every time our ancestors tightened their furs and gripped their spears, they travelled in groups. There were husbands and wives, children, brothers and sisters, and maybe even a few cousins. The relationships that each individual had with the other – confirmed by daily contact – gave them a sense that they belonged to something bigger than themselves. What they had was a mobile foundation of membership and belonging.

If, during the current period of my life, I was involved in an intimate relationship, the change of address would have had a significantly less erosive impact on my “sense of belonging”. Why? Because the relationship would have given me a stronger foundation than physical address.

However, location still matters, doesn’t it? Even if I were involved in an intimate relationship with the love of my life, it wouldn’t be the same to live in Moscow than to live in, say, Pretoria or Johannesburg. Where she comes from and where I come from will of course also play a role. If she was a born and bred Muscovite she would certainly have felt more at home in Moscow than me, and I would have felt more at home in … well, any of the places in South Africa where I have fixed my pictures to a bedroom wall.

Environment and physical address do play a role in the extent to which you feel you belong. But I believe that relationships – close, meaningful relationships – play a more significant role, and provide a more solid foundation.

* * *

Relationships are institutions to which you belong. Examples that will illustrate this point include Romeo and Juliet, Spice Girl and Soccer Player, the Pope and the Catholic Church, Brand and his Apartment …

Romeo and Juliet is more than just Romeo, or just Juliet. Being in a relationship gives you a more concrete sense of belonging and identity than being alone. It’s one of the reasons why people feel so lost and vulnerable when a relationship comes to an end; when the institution that made you part of something bigger than just you, crumbles.

Of course, family relationships also provide you with a sense of belonging and identity. Why do I have pictures of my family on my wall? Because the pictures are visible symbols of membership to something bigger than the single me. Friendships also count under this classification. In an intimate relationship with another adult person, however, you experience a more tangible and definitive confirmation of belonging to something larger than just the single you.

The same value that the pictures on my walls provide, can also be found in rings exchanged at a wedding ceremony, photographs carried around in purses and wallets, and various other articles that might not mean anything to someone else, but for the two people who share an intimate partnership, these articles are symbols of their mutual recognition of membership.

To conclude: 1) Relationships – and especially for the adult person, intimate relationships – are institutions to which the individual belongs. 2) These institutions are not limited to a physical location, and are present wherever the person finds him- or herself (if not always in physical terms, certainly in ways that affect how the person feels and thinks). 3) These institutions are larger than the single individual, and contribute strongly to the consciousness that a person has of his or her place in the world.

Finally, I can only speculate what difference it would have made to my life here in Taiwan if “home” was here. Suppose my parents, my two sisters, my brothers-in-law, uncles and aunts, and cousins all resided on this piece of earth, would it still feel like I’m in exile? Would I still have clung so resolutely to the concept of SOUTH AFRICA AS HOME?

Certainly there will be people who will take a different position on this point, who will talk about culture and landscape and climate and things like that. It’s true that I miss the mountains, the sea, the wide open spaces, supermarkets where people speak Zulu and Sotho and Afrikaans, where you can buy biltong and milk tart with the same ease as you can buy bottled kimchi or rice wine in this part of the world. But all these things are salt without savour if you’re missing the main ingredient of meaningful personal relationships in your life.

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To ignore what is obvious

SATURDAY, 27 SEPTEMBER 2003

Outside my former hiding place, as I was hanging the last couple of plastic bags filled with dirty laundry on my bike, I heard a young kid from across the alley shout something. Too busy to respond, I got on the bike and shakily rode away.

At the traffic lights I thought the kid probably insulted me, because the sounds he uttered were very similar (except for one word) to the words in the Taiwanese dialect for “fat, lazy woman”. For a moment I regretted that I didn’t have anything appropriately offensive to bark back. By the time I got to the next traffic light, I had dropped my regrets in favour of the idea that I ignored him, which I regard as a greater insult.

“Why so?” I wondered.

By ignoring someone, you deprive that person of your recognition of his or her existence. And who is so sure of him- or herself that they’re not just a little uncomfortable when they are among people who do not acknowledge their existence?

You could argue that people must see that you fill a particular space in their immediate surroundings, or that they have to know you exist, even if they don’t react to your presence.

The thought that someone should know, in theory, that you exist is not good enough. Who doesn’t get annoyed, at times angry and sometimes violent when your presence, and therefore your existence is not recognised?

We all need regular confirmation from other people (even from animals such as a dog or a cat) that we exist. It could be nothing more than a smile, the nod of a head, or an “Excuse me” when someone accidentally bumps into you, albeit without making eye contact.

Intimate contact – and even better, regular intimate contact – is the ideal suppressor of the latent anxiety (or uncertainty?) about our existence. Would this be the underlying motivation behind the desire (or instinct) to pamper a baby – to give the little person who had only recently become a separate physical entity assurance of his or her existence?

Being a Westerner in some Asian countries naturally give you more visible recognition of your existence as would be the case in your own country. One example is the insolent lout who insults you in a language that he thinks you don’t understand, just because he was an eyewitness to your effort, as a highly visible outsider, to balance your bicycle with half a dozen plastic bags hanging from the handlebars. Another example is the girl who hides behind her mother in the supermarket while she points her finger at you as if you’re a distant cousin of the Elephant Man. Also people who, long after you had passed them, shout “Hello!” at you like you’re famous. All these incidents confirm your existence at that particular moment and at that specific location, and in ways that are not necessarily the good (or bad) luck of the ordinary Taiwanese (in my case) with whom you share your street or supermarket aisle.

Would this perhaps explain the desire of some people to be famous or infamous – the desire for as many people as possible to nod their heads in recognition of your existence?

Another question: Why do strangers greet each other?

One reason is mutual recognition of their existence.

Why therefore, would someone not greet you?

One possible reason is that the person does not need your recognition of his or her existence at that particular moment, or in some cases may not consider it desirable.

Reasons why someone might not need your recognition? Other people in the immediate vicinity that already acknowledge their existence, like friends, or a child who is being held by the hand?

That they fail to greet you doesn’t necessarily have to be seen as offensive; it’s just that they already have what you would have given them, namely visible acknowledgment of their existence.

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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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End contemplation, part two

THURSDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER 2003

Is the issue of “exile” still relevant?

The end of this project is not only imminent because I have typed and written enough pages for the result to be called a “book”. I believe (perhaps because I really want to believe) that I now have a better understanding of how things work than was the case ten years ago. I have identified some principles I believe are valid for all people, and across all time. None of these insights or principles are original. It was nevertheless important that I sorted them out for myself, in my own time, and put them in my own words. I now have a more sophisticated appreciation of my own name (so to speak), and I have developed a vague idea of how I fit into the mass of life outside my apartment door.

Is the issue of exile, so central to the “story” of this project, still relevant, though? Is it still important that I go “home”?

This project has undergone an evolution. I did not originally undertake the writing process with the idea of a book as an end result. All I knew was that I wasn’t sure about certain things in my life, and that it helped to write things down. To write is also a good way to spend long days and nights productively if you tend to avoid the world outside your front door. Writing has been, and remains, my main source of entertainment, in addition to the fact that it takes me from point A to point B in matters of the soul.

Likewise, I did not force this second round of exile [after the first one in Korea] on myself for the purpose of finding answers to questions. This project began as scribblings in notebooks and on scrap paper, and as letters to friends and family. My journey to Taiwan began as the best route out of an office job and servant’s quarters. But what do you do when certain questions impose themselves on you, or even worse, when a book knocks on the inside of your skull, and “exile” turns out to be the only way to deal with them?

Am I, for the third time, still in exile? Do I still need to go home?

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