It is Monday, 22 December 2003, seven minutes past twelve in the afternoon. I got up about an hour ago, had breakfast, and then read about the relationship between Russia and Europe up to 1856. Then I took care of my laundry, washed my dishes, brushed my teeth, and turned on the computer. First, I counted the words of two pieces I wrote last week, and then I started playing a game of FreeCell. The latter became too complicated, so I thought it might be better to write this document about the changes that have to be made in my life in the new year.
Actually, I just wanted to put a few things on paper, and I wanted to type rather than write. My intention was specifically not to write a piece – I just wanted to gather my thoughts.
The moment I typed the first sentence, however, I knew what was coming. This type of text is how I express myself these days. I can’t help myself anymore. I sit down at the computer to write a harmless note to myself, and when I open my eyes, THE WRITER has rudely pushed me of the chair and has manically started throwing his two fat fingers across the keyboard.
My plans vary between two extremes. On the one hand, I am desperate to go back to South Africa at the end of February next year; on the other hand, I would like to stay in Asia for another seven years. Between these two extremes lie all my desires, my fears, my interests, and my hope for a life that is better than the one I now call my own.
I have to force myself to stare some facts in the face, though: a) I am not 25 years old anymore. b) My problem with a permanent position at an institution or corporation in my homeland has been well documented by now. The fact remains that I need money to survive and carry out plans, and I need to take steps to ensure that I can continue to buy food for – who knows? – the next forty years. c) My big dream is a three-bedroom house with a garden and a patch of grass, in a quiet suburban area in a town in South Africa (the country where I was born and where I grew up, otherwise this book would have been written in French or German, and my name would have been Dieter or Pascal).
Of course, it’s not good enough just to say you want a three-bedroom house. Of course I need to take certain steps to obtain such a house. But sometimes I feel like these things are all preordained, and if it’s not in your cards, you can try until you’re blue in the face. So, if it says in your tea leaves, “Apartment in Kowloon until you die of loneliness,” it won’t help if you scream back in desperation, “Three-bedroom house in a quiet suburb!”
It usually helps if my mind rushes in such a direction late at night when I’m considering lying down for a few hours anyways.
This morning I got up, and after my usual piece of history (the uneasy relationship between Russia and Europe until 1905), I decided that just because I apparently can’t be a socialist any longer doesn’t mean I can’t establish my own social system and associated relations through the use of rational thought and action. Which is a cumbersome way of saying that I don’t think I’m necessarily doomed to a lonely existence on a subtropical island in Northeast Asia.
But does this mean I can go back to South Africa next February – in a little more than two months? Can I go stand in line for a three-bedroom house in a quiet town or suburb? Clearly not.
The other day I was reminded again that one must be patient. It’s all fine to sort things out and to seek answers, but answers don’t drop from the blue sky just because you asked an intelligent question. Same with our ambitions. Just because I’ve been able to mutter the words “three-bedroom house in a quiet area” after all these years without thinking I’m betraying myself is not to say that I already have title deeds for a toilet and half a bedroom.
Anyways, I can carry on dancing in circles, talking about how I smoked a cigarette, about thoughts I had on the train about the beautiful mountains, how I eventually went to pay my phone bill, and how I came home to continue writing this piece. The intelligent reader can surely guess what’s coming next: I need a plan.
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I’ve been thinking for years that this profession of teaching Asian children the lingua franca of the world is better than sweeping the streets or moving papers around on an office desk. I also know all too well that the tedium of it can dry out your soul.
It has also not escaped my attention that the times I have been the happiest in the last few years were the times when I only had to spend two or three hours a day making money, with the rest of the time spent behind my computer working on my own projects.
When I do spend an hour or two in a classroom and cash exchanges hands shortly afterwards, I cannot ignore the implication: To be an expatriate English Teacher in Taiwan is ideal for people with unresolved issues that cause them to be unable to find peace in a nice middle-class suburb (or unable at the current time, anyways). There are other advantages to this way of making money – you can master a foreign language, first-hand contact with other cultures, and sometimes you meet people you never would have met otherwise.
In short, where else could I teach English for twelve hours per week and earn enough money to cover my basic living expenses? Where else could I, without having to draw a single line on a contract, move into an old apartment and nail my pictures to the wall? Where else could I eat even my oatmeal in the mornings with chopsticks – which doesn’t work, by the way, and have a conversation in Chinese with a beautiful woman outside the supermarket in the evening when she throws a fresh chicken thigh on her grill for me?
Where could I do all these things … while writing the one exile essay after another full of melancholy and longing for my people?
I have to finish up. I see short stories in my tea leaves, and Chinese dictionaries in my coffee beans, and if I cast my eyes to the stars, at least another seven years of teaching in Northeast Asia. The benefits have already been mentioned; the disadvantages are spread over this entire literary project.
One thing, however, has to go in the struggle that lies ahead: Exile!
For years I’ve been suffering from this feverish hope that the life I now call my own will not be the best I can ever bring about. This hope fuses to my fears and my desires through the burning fires of frustration and longing. That is what has driven me to write exile essays since June 1999. That is what has kept me from looking beyond the next six months. What else if you’re constantly looking, with narrowed eyes, for ways to get away from an unsustainable situation?
I am tired of exile.
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Are you as reader as confused as I am? It should speak of talent to say so much, and at the end get away with so little that is new. Am I going back to South Africa on flight CX1749 departing from Hong Kong on Thursday, 4 March 2004 at 11:50 at night? That is certainly what my travel agent believes.
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