Month: February 2004

Post-exile, part 001

MONDAY, 2 FEBRUARY 2004

Why can’t I go home at the end of this month – February 2004?

[…]

I can state categorically that I don’t need a home with a nice address to produce literary material. The issue of a car and house were until recently very important because one of the main reasons for repatriation was marriage-and-children. This issue has also been addressed. If I can’t help myself, and a woman finds me attractive despite her best efforts not to … then that’s just how it is. But I’m not planning to car-and-house anymore just to advertise it as such in an Only the Lonely Corner with a picture of me from ten years ago.

What is it that could possibly keep me here in March, and April … and December 2007? Is it the woman at the fried calamari place that has smiled at me a few times? Is it because I want to improve my Chinese? Maybe I’d like to travel to Japan, and China, and … what were the other places again? Maybe I first want to get my EFL publishing business off the ground? Better reasons? Worse reasons? This is, thank god, not an “Exile” essay …

The only reason why I’m not shoving my books into a box with one hand while typing with the other can be summarised in two words: “furniture” and “money”. And considering that if I didn’t have furniture, money wouldn’t be much of a problem, it comes down to one thing: FURNITURE!

“Leave the damn furniture right here,” would perhaps be your advice.

“I’ve got about fifty boxes too,” would be my pathetic attempt at talking back.

But let’s talk straight: It’s February. It’s the month of medical examinations to prove I’m healthy enough to live amongst the old and the crazy, and possessed taxi drivers and gangsters. It’s also the month that I have to renew my visa, for a period of what has amounted over the past five years to another twelve months.

I am painfully aware that I have enough money to pay for the plane ticket I booked with so much hope in December. The single ticket will cost me NT$15,500. This will leave me with enough money to keep myself going for a month or two until I can start earning money in some miraculous way in South Africa (as I continue to spend at least twelve hours per day writing material that few people will ever read).

I am aware of this state of financial affairs. I am also aware of the fact that I have suffocated most of my personal issues, or bored them to death.

So I know how much money I have, and I know how many things I will not be able to do. In theory, I can stay here another few months … damn it, in theory, I can stay here another few months and probably add a few thousand to the few thousand I have in the bank. I know full well I could probably sell my two sets of EFL material – did you really think I spend the whole day composing my personal agenda? – to a local publisher.

However, this takes nothing away from the fact that nothing is keeping me here but the need for a little more money, and a few tables and chairs. Can I walk away from the pieces of furniture that other people discarded on street corners over the years, and that I dragged to my own apartment late at night with great enthusiasm? There’s the old cabinet with drawers and gauze-covered sliding doors at which I make my notes; the small, low bedside table; the wooden cupboard in the kitchen; the large wooden table under my computer; other small tables. Then there are the musical instruments I bought in moments of madness in 2000, sofas and sofa chairs, my exercise bike …

You have to sacrifice if you want to move forward. Or you have to hope you get enough capital from somewhere that will enable you to spend thousands of rands or dollars just to put your computer on the same wooden table in your own country.

I’m always so eager to talk of revolution. Can I really do what I have to do if I become aware of the price? Or am I holding on to blades of grass while a large hand stretches out to me? Am I stupider than I think?

Do I know so many “answers” and still I stupidly rush in the wrong direction?

TUESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2004

For a long time, I have ignored, or sidestepped the idea of balance. Balance, as I recently discovered again, is essentially about lack of tension, or at least as close as possible to this ideal situation. The idea is central to many religions. A return to the tension-less state before physical birth finds manifestation in for example the nirvana of Buddhism, and the paradise of Christianity and Islam. The desire to return to a state of complete relaxation is, like the primal fear of disappearing into the void, one of the most fundamental aspects of the human experience of reality. No one can escape it. (Odd, this pursuit of complete relaxation, but also the fear of disappearing. Millions of religious people desire entry into “paradise” after their physical death, but at the same time they fear physical death – an essential prerequisite to enter paradise. The Buddhist nirvana, on the other hand, is to literally disappear into oblivion, but many lives must be lived before you get to this point. Isn’t it true that we all believe – deep in our hearts – that we are ultimately going to disappear into nothingness? Does it simply make us feel better giving a name to the place, or by believing the process is complex and protracted?)

Disappointing as it may be, this theological introduction is just a way to get back to my latest plan: to return to my True Home possibly at the end of this month, without enough money, and without proper planning – where high tension is likely to be rife, and where I will likely disappear into the nothingness of an uncharted no man’s land. It is true that I dropped hints in December of airline tickets that had been booked and returning to South Africa at the end of February 2004 has indeed been the plan since last July. However, I have started taking it for granted that I would stay on for a few months beyond February.

My problem, as I have already explained in the first part, is that I realised yesterday that I have a small window of opportunity right now to risk a truly heroic escape. I don’t really have enough money, but I have enough to buy that one-way ticket.

Furthermore, I see no shipping containers in my coffee beans, which means I will finally get to do what some esoteric characters speak of with great conviction: I will have to travel light. No tables, no boxes, no chairs or comfortable sofas. I will have to throw my books, and a few small ornaments and pieces of cloth in boxes and mail them home. Then I’ll have to pack two suitcases, and load them together with my computer, my camera, and the body that houses my spirit on that Cathay Pacific aircraft on Thursday, 4 March.

Why would I lift my exile after all these years in such an almost impulsive and irresponsible way, after so many “better” plans, so many financial calculations, so many elaborate scenarios and backdoor options? Because the organism is experiencing tension. And when the organism experiences tension, when he sees there’s not going to be immediate relief, he smiles at irresponsible plans. Then the voice of reason is suddenly occupied somewhere else, because even this voice knows full well what its real purpose in life is: to ensure the organism’s survival for as long as possible.

If the tension becomes too great, a plan must be made to restore the balance. And if “better” plans, and more “responsible” strategies don’t line up with the primal needs of the organism, then it’s time for revolution.

______________________

To be all right

SUNDAY, 1 FEBRUARY 2004

It may occur to the ordinary reader that I have a peculiar talent for pointing out things with ardent enthusiasm as if I have made an exciting discovery which no one had ever known before, but of which everyone, in actual fact, is already fully aware of. It reminds me of a Far Side cartoon about two gorillas sitting under a tree, eating bananas. One gorilla breaks a banana from the bunch, looks at it with immense love and tenderness, and then says to his friend: “You know, Sid, I really like bananas … I mean, I know that’s not profound or nothin’ … Heck! We ALL do …”

As all intelligent animals know, certain requirements must be met in order to avoid unpleasant sensations like hunger. Human beings, apparently the most complex, most advanced and – in most cases anyway – the most intelligent among all mammals, experience besides the usual cravings also the need To Feel All Right, at least for the most part of most days we spent on this speck of cosmic dust.

Most of us accept that there will be times in our lives that will be quite unpleasant, days when we know we just have to survive one day at a time in the hope that everything will soon be all right again. We also know that there are times when we are more than just okay – times when we are ecstatically happy, when we even want to embrace the worst of our enemies, when we want to convince everyone we meet of the exceptional beauty of life. These times, however, never last, and that we know just as well.

When times are good, it also helps that we know even the dull days following the ecstatic, will be quite survivable. When times are bad, we can’t wait for the air to clear and for everything to just be okay again. We also know that this sense of “everything’s all right” is generally sustainable, in spite of better and worse times in between, if we do certain things on a regular basis.

What we do to maintain this general sense of well-being is as different as our faces. Some maintain this awareness through religious rituals, such as praying five times a day or doing Bible study every morning. Others maintain it with more secular activities such as hobbies, sports or gardening. With many people, spending time with loved ones is part of this process.

Why do we not take this sense of well-being for granted? The answer I would suggest is the banana to which the other Far Side gorilla will respond: “I know. You tell me nothing new.”

The reason why most of us fail to take this sense of okay-ness for granted and why we must take steps to maintain it is because more things threaten our daily existence than is healthy to count. There are viruses, criminals, accidents, and genetic diseases that can hit us out of the blue, to name but a few.

The idea for this essay came to me while I was on my way home from the Carrefour with a bag of “groceries” (my new word for four different boxes of cereal) hanging from my handlebar. Since I was on my bicycle late at night in the dark back streets of a Taiwanese city, the main danger I could think of was that someone would suddenly crash into me from behind or that a taxi with a possessed driver behind the wheel will come speeding out from some darkened alley. The thought of people still crushing pieces of breakfast cereal into the road days later understandably did not overwhelm me with a feeling of well-being.

I did indeed arrive home safely, and I felt quite all right when only minutes later I could spill an overflowing bowl of fresh cornflakes and muesli on my Sunday newspaper. But I was also aware of the fact that I would also be rushing past narrow alleys the next evening, and then there are the epidemics which one has almost become accustomed to in these parts.

Besides these obvious threats are the things that have made one tread with caution for many a year and counting: age, creeping closer like a hungry rat to a box of muesli in the middle of a busy road; poverty, and all the nasty consequences that go with it; loneliness, if you fail to earn enough money to be able to go on romantic dates, and so I can continue.

These fears are not unique to me. Most people are at least a little cautious when they go on the road. Everyone is annoyed when a sick person coughs in their direction. Few people get excited when they detect the first gray hair on a head that was covered with significantly more hair just a decade ago. And most people think poverty is worse than the plague.

We all take measures to give ourselves a fighting chance against these threats. All of us also place a high premium on a sense of well-being – or at least to feel all right. For many people, religion plays a vital role as a measure against visible and invisible threats. Life and disability insurance also make us feel much better about the ever-present risk of accidents and other misfortunes. And to underestimate the numerous benefits of financial well-being speaks of outrageous ignorance (“What’s that?”), even inexcusable irresponsibility (“Was I not busy doing something else?”).

However, there is one last threat I want to point out – a dormant, yet ancient dread terrorizing human beings ever since our brains were developed enough to weave two rational thoughts together. This threat to our well-being is the idea that we are going to disappear into nothingness the moment our physical existence comes to an end. That we will not be remembered. That everyone will get on with their lives, almost … as if we were never even here.

Again, we put certain measures into place. Again, religion plays a role. There are also children who can carry on our genes, who may even perpetuate our names.

For the religious measures to work, we need to perform certain rituals on a regular basis; for example, people who believe in it, have to confirm their membership to the Great Salvation Plan as a matter of routine to be certain of Something More Than Just This Earthly Existence. People who have children know that they have to work hard every day to keep their children alive. For some people – religious people with children, or people with no descendants, who are also not adherents to any traditional set of religious beliefs – there are (also) other routines and rituals that should be actively pursued as often as possible to keep this latent fear at bay.

Like other people, I also have a ritual, a primary measure, an essential routine that I follow as often as possible to keep from being overwhelmed by the above-mentioned primal fear. People try various measures, they explore a variety of activities for potential value in maintaining a sense that they are okay, and with the passage of time, certain activities stand out as exceptionally suitable for this important task. So it happened that I identified after many years a pattern in my own life – that to be actively engaged in the process of stringing words together serve as a powerful sedative when I get nervous about the end of my physical existence.

When I write, I feel all right. Even if I don’t spend every waking hour behind the computer or with a notebook in front of me, as long as I know I’m working on a literary project, I know my lamp of personal well-being still has some oil left to burn.

To not write on a regular basis, is to run the risk that my lamp will start burning weaker and weaker. For me, it’s an almost religious ritual, an activity that can almost be regarded as sacred.

To write, is my insurance.

______________________