Personal Agenda, Book Three – Page 2

A revolution of a different kind

THURSDAY, 12 FEBRUARY 2004

I am the Personal Republic; the Writer is the ruler with an iron fist. The Writer owns the most valuable resource, namely time (although he does allow the Teacher to earn enough funds to keep the Personal Republic afloat).

It has, however, become clear to all, including to the Writer himself, that the General State of Affairs cannot be maintained indefinitely under the current regime. The People have been complaining for too long. Problem is that talk of revolution has become so commonplace that no one raises an eyebrow anymore when someone mentions the possibility. Yet everyone knows that there is no other solution!

Unlike many other revolutions in the history of terrestrial civilizations, the structure is not the problem here. What needs to be changed, are the finances of the Republic. What is needed is neither a Cultural Revolution nor a Political Revolution nor a Spiritual Revolution. What is needed is a Commercial Revolution.

The Writer – clever as he is – is not qualified to set off or direct the course of a Commercial Revolution. No one doubts that the Writer’s Cause is a noble one, but One of Other Competency and Talent must be called in for the vital task ahead.

The People must be saved. The Teacher must be saved. The Student must be saved. And as things currently stand, the Benevolent Dictator must also be saved. It will indeed not be an exaggeration to claim that the Future of the Personal Republic rests on the shoulders of a Competent Commercial Leader.

The Writer knows what needs to be done. He Who Rules with an Iron Fist must do the one thing he fears like a rabid, emaciated hyena: He must abandon the grip he has on the hours that fill his days and nights. He must abandon his Exclusive Possession of Time, at least until things start looking better – on the financial front.

However, because Possession of Time is the key to power and to get anything done in the Personal Republic, this also means that the Writer will have to temporarily relinquish his position as Dominant Role Player. He will still be the Spiritual Leader, but for the sake of the Republic, the People, the Teacher and the Student, and for his own cause, time and with it the ability to do things rather than just talk about them must for a period of no longer than Three Months be handed over to One Who Does Not Write, to someone who will be in mind and spirit … a Commercial Dictator.

This Revolutionary Figure shall enjoy exclusive control of time. (Of course, the Teacher, to his regret, will still be nudged out the door every day to earn money for food and rent.) The New Leader will toil day and night for a Better Economic Order for All Characters. He will be dedicated to the Personal Republic – this everyone expects and knows, and he will do it for the Cause of the Writer.

The Commercial Dictator’s Revolution will be temporary as well as powerful. If he fails, the Republic risk going under. If he succeeds, it will be the beginning of a Golden Age. Measures that will be implemented during this period will serve as an Economic Model for a New Republic – ultimately again under the able leadership of the Long-term Dominant Figure.

The Writer shall assist the Temporary Dictator in the run-up to the New Time with propaganda banners, slogans and short speeches. But once the New Time has arrived, the Writer’s period of Self-imposed Silence shall commence. It will not be easy. The writer knows that he will have to shut his mouth and keep his typing fingers in his pocket. So it must necessarily be. Two dogs cannot nibble on the same bone at the same time. And two dictators can never at the same time rule the same republic with an iron fist. The Writer shall be silent, and his typing fingers shall only move when required to do so by the Commercial Dictator. So it will be for a period of Three Months.

Today is the Fourth Day of the Week, the Twelfth Day of the Second Month of the Year. In Eleven Days it is New Time.

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11 February 2004

It’s a beautiful day.

I stick my head out the kitchen window, look down into the alley, over the roofs of old houses in the adjoining block. The alley, just wide enough for two scooter drivers to pass each other, is filled with the orange glow of the late afternoon sun.

The apartment buildings are grey, but the paint peeling of burglar bars here and there gives the neighbourhood an optimistic colour. The potted plants in the windowsills bear witness of faith in a good life, even if things didn’t always work out as the residents had hoped years ago.

It’s not cold, but something in the air predicts it will be a cool evening. A light breeze starts picking up. An old war veteran emerges to collect his laundry from the balcony.

A perfect day it is not – what day is? – but it’s a nice day. It is Wednesday, 11 February 2004 – a winter’s day in Taiwan.

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Being a character

MONDAY, 9 FEBRUARY 2004

I have become a character in a book.

My options are limited because I have to constantly make sure the options are consistent with what The Book says. It just so happens that I really do want to go back to South Africa, but even to say it in such an ordinary manner is loaded with meaning. Somewhere within me a voice hysterically responds: “Why does he say, want to go back to South Africa? Shouldn’t it rather be, yearns for it with every gram of fat in his body?”

This literary project is still months away from the point where I could walk away from it, to give to others to read. But The Book is already holy. Things have been written, so I can’t change it anymore!

Do you the reader realise that, like an old-school propagandist, I can remove all the instances where I mention going back to South Africa? I can replace it all with “want to establish myself in the wastelands of Patagonia” or “Every ounce of my being yearns to become an evangelist.”

What if I say I’ve already gone through such a process? That the first version of this project rattled on monotonously about my long-time desire to move to North Dakota? Because that is where my wife and two children live – I’m sorry, I wiped out all references to them as well – since my brother (the two sisters were also a fabrication) took them to America to join him on his ranch? Will you believe me when I say that my brother did it because I had embezzled money from … let’s say Standard Bank, and that I came up with the idea of writing a book about “self-imposed exile” during my seven years’ incarceration?

The other possibility is that I’m a creature from outer space.

Am I ready to start writing stories? Clearly not. What is true, is that I’m annoyed with the fact that I am writing myself more and more into a corner, that I feel caged in by my own writing.

And to think I wanted to start this piece with a plain question: What does my ideal life in South Africa look like?

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And the answer is …

SUNDAY, 8 FEBRUARY 2004

I don’t feel like packing in a mad rush. I don’t want to throw away stuff that has so far been important enough for me to keep. I don’t want to arrive in Bronkhorstspruit and not have my own place and be forced to make coffee every morning in my sister and brother-in-law’s kitchen. I’m not in the mood for arguments about why I didn’t bring enough money from Taiwan to rent a cheap apartment.

On the other hand, I don’t feel like staying here any longer, getting extra classes, and dropping them again after three months – or even to start the classes with the intention of quitting after so many months. (I hate lying or creating the impression that I might do something I know I’m not going to do, like implying I’ll stay at a school at least an entire semester.) I am also not keen on doing the medical – which I know doesn’t weigh up in terms of unpleasantness compared to any of the other things I don’t have an appetite for at the moment.

I’m tired of calling myself a coward. I’m also tired of fiery speeches to nobody other than my own reflection in the bathroom mirror. I am angry – at whom I don’t know – that this type of matter isn’t easier.

I wish I had a team of writers, and a whole tank full of thinkers. I wish, as I’m sitting here behind my computer on a Sunday evening, that I could hear people discussing things in the living room, with the occasional muted laughter, teaspoons jingling in cups of tea and cigarettes being lit on the balcony. Then someone would walk into my office with a sheet of paper in her hand and tell me that a new scenario had been worked out. Or a new plan. Or a new strategy to ensure that the most recent plan would go smoothly.

I hate that I have to do everything alone. Where are all the big mouths who always have so much to say, but who always had someone to help them get a project going? A husband who helped a wife as she was starting a small business from home. Or a wife who kept urging her husband on with a warm plate of food or a gentle message in the neck when the husband wanted to give up. Where’s my partner? Where’s my home-cooked meal? Where’s my neck massage? Where’s my cup of tea? I’m only human, for god’s sake! How the hell am I supposed to do all of it on my own?

* * *

Several hours later. I went to buy dinner in town (rice with meat and vegetables that were cold by the time I got home), tea from the most beautiful woman in town, and a newspaper at a 7-Eleven. I convinced myself there was some or other angle to this whole situation I’m not seeing.

I was thinking of something on my way back, but then I was jolted from my thought process by a teenager with well-groomed hair gliding past me on his bike. I imagined he was feeling good about the fact that he had slipped past me so casually – especially since he had such a good head of hair, and seemingly much more marrow in his younger bones.

Thoughts about the immediate future forgotten for the moment, I adjusted my gears – gently, lest he heard I was planning a comeback. While my bag of rice and vegetables and my bag with the cup of tea were swinging to the one side, I casually muttered something to the other side, and sailed past him. He audibly adjusted his gears, and just as we were rushing into my neighbourhood with the unpainted concrete apartment blocks, he tried to pass me again.

This time I wasn’t going to fall for his childish game, though, and turned in between Blocks 5 and 6.

“Did I come up with something?” I asked myself as I saddled off and slung the food over my shoulder. I replied that I was busy thinking of something, but then got distracted.

“By what?” I asked in a different tone as I made my way upstairs, meaning to pretend like I’m arguing with someone from my think tank.

“By something that motivated me to adjust my gears, and as it turned out, that ended in me getting home a little earlier.”

* * *

I know enough about advertising and marketing to realise something is wrong with the approach to my situation I’ve been following the past week or so. If I – the one who wants to go home – were a consumer, and the plan the product I was supposed to buy, the marketing is hopelessly wrong. I believe I should be willing to give up my life here for the joy of being closer to my family and being in my own country. My idealism dictates that this ought to be sufficient. It makes sense, does it not? My parents and my sisters’ company over a plate of barbecue or a bowl of pudding would make me “feel I belong somewhere”.

And if you have written hundreds of pages on the subject of “going home” you become aware of your credibility suffering damage because you are spending yet another Sunday night in Taiwan nibbling cold rice while you’re supposed to be frenetically throwing excess baggage out of the window.

* * *

To go away from here will have a negative effect on my mind. The pros and cons of my life in Taiwan have been articulated ad nauseum, but it should again be noted that certain positive aspects of my life here should not be ignored or underestimated.

I live alone in a three-bedroom apartment (for the sake of argument this is a positive). I don’t need my own motorised transport. If I want to go downtown, I ride my bicycle to the train station and take the train. If I want to go somewhere else that can’t be reached within thirty minutes on my bike, or that isn’t within walking distance of a station, I take a taxi (and smile apologetically at all the people who swing their fists at us). At night, I sit until what time writing, or playing card games on my computer. I regularly buy video CDs at three for R20 [$3.00] and watch them on my second-hand Toshiba colour TV. I remind myself every now and then that Hong Kong is just an hour’s flight away (the border with the rest of China is about an hour’s journey by train from Hong Kong), and Tokyo about three hours.

If I wake up at three o’clock in the morning and I’m in the mood for cereal but my milk has gone sour, or if I feel like a packet of crisps or a salad, or a box of dumplings, I walk three minutes to the nearest 7-Eleven. And most of the time I don’t have to look over my shoulder for someone with a knife or a club jumping out from behind a bush.

(I could go on.) If I want to go to the movies on a Saturday night, I ride my bike to the theatre, see what movies are showing, go to McDonald’s for an apple pie and a vanilla milkshake, leave my bike there and take a short cut through the dark alleys back to the theatre. Or I first have a cup of creamy coffee at the place around the corner. I don’t need a car to get to the movies, and there is no need for someone to come and me pick up.

When I go on a date, it is not only perfectly acceptable to be car-less, it’s also not a problem. Once again, I pedal into town, leave the bike against a wall, meet the woman at a restaurant or at the movie theatre and enjoy the rest of the night without having to worry about my car.

I am aware of the lack of 24-hour cafes in the South African towns where I want to unpack. If there are such places, I’d probably need a car to get there. If I can go there on foot, it means I probably live in a part of town where you have to look over your shoulder. The need for motorised transport also does not end with going to a shop at three o’clock in the morning.

I don’t want to sound cynical but meeting the love of my life in South Africa is also not high on my list of expectations. It may even happen that I later decide to go away once again from my family and my country.

Nevertheless, despite the things I will miss about Taiwan, and despite the fact that I know I’m not on the way to a sweet earthly paradise in my own country, every fibre of my body and each volt of electricity in my soul are drawn in only one direction.

But why, considering this strong desire, and knowing that it is feasible to fly to the country of my origin in full glory on the 4th of March, am I not packing or making arrangements?

If I launch my so-called “revolution” on Thursday, 4 March, I’ll be staring a first month or two in the face that would compare very poorly with the life to which I have become accustomed here. I will probably have to spend the first few weeks in my younger sister’s spare room or at my parents’. I would be forced to kick my feet under other people’s tables until I eventually find my own footing again.

Unlike the last few years my visits would not be as a guest who came back to show his face again and whose wallet ensured that a pecan pie or a bottle of red wine showed up every second or third day on the kitchen table. It would be as the brother who has returned from afar who has to be assisted for a while until he’s back on his feet.

Can I construct an idealistic argument that would make me feel better? Yes, I can. But one that would truly mean something five weeks from now?

Is this just about me, or are even loved ones going to be just human and after six weeks start whispering that “the guy really could have come back with a little more money”?

It is possible to make all the calls and pack all the boxes that will ensure that a March repatriation will be the last chapter of this writing project. But would it not, if I can maintain confidence in myself and ignore the credibility crisis, be more prudent to approach the issue a little better? (Although it seems almost provocative to say I can do with another three or four months, and “There’s no need to rush things.”)

Is shaky confidence in myself, and a credibility crisis sufficient reasons to pack up a life of five years within less than four weeks, and to go and exhibit my arrogant person on a new landscape with more faith than business acumen, if I can do it better in three or four months’ time?

Repatriation, or then the Lifting of My Exile is a product. This past week, I tried to sell it to myself at a ridiculously low price, with sentimental music in the background and threats of losing confidence in myself. But if I don’t approach it in the right way, and consider all the possible side effects, I’m going to drag my feet longer with the take-down of a single wall hanging than is currently the case with the process of renewing my visa.

The product is one that I need. It’s the pill I need to swallow to continue with my life. But to expect that I shouldn’t be at least a little nervous about leaving without much ceremony a place – and a life – that has helped form my identity and personality for the last five years, is to reduce me to the caricature that I’m so keen to sketch of myself.

This is unfortunately how it is, and these are my last words on this particular matter.

It’s Monday, 9 February 2004 at two minutes to one in the morning. I have to go to bed, otherwise I won’t make it to that medical examination tomorrow. How long can I, after all, endure this manic ping pong in my head?

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Blatant lies, compromise, change, and a bunch of other stuff

FRIDAY, 6 FEBRUARY 2004

It’s a blatant lie – I never said I was going back to South Africa at the end of February! I did solemnly announce it as my plan last July, but when I resigned at the one school at the end of August, the explicit implication was that I would possibly not be able to execute the plan. That was the agreement with myself, and I accepted it as such.

It is also true that I started making noises last December about the end of February – and I did begin brandishing half-woven banners with pencil-written propaganda on late at night, when no one was looking.

I also plead guilty to mentioning to a friend late last year that I had booked a plane ticket for Thursday, 4 March this year and that I felt like “shaking things up” a bit. In January, though, I admitted to the same friend that my plan was not going to work. It would be understandable if she questioned my credibility because I suddenly started referring to the March plan as a possibility again this week.

Furthermore, it can be stated that it is somewhat unrealistic to go back to South Africa at the end of February. After five years in Taiwan I would be leaving with about R3,000 – where other people make enough money in two years to buy property in South Africa. And my financial obligations – student loans and, believe it or not, a life insurance policy – is approximately R1,700 per month.

I’m not afraid of being poor again. I am also not interested in creating an artificial ego with expensive clothes and an extravagant hairstyle. But there’s a time for propaganda and speeches, and then there’s a time to recognise real limitations.

If financial constraints is one important issue to confront, my inability to stay in Taiwan longer than one more week is another. There is surely something like mass that reaches a critical point, that then serves as a catalyst for something else. I am ready on all fronts to leave Taiwan – in all areas, except money.

I can compromise. I can go do my medical on Monday and renew my resident visa. I can take on more classes for three or four months, perhaps get lucky with other projects, and arrive in Middelburg with more than the current three thousand …

The awful reality that may not jump out between the lines and grab you as reader by the throat is that I haven’t been this close to giving up in a long time. Why am I doing all this? Because I want to eventually publish my own literature? So what? I swim upstream – but to where? An “extraordinary life”? Alone?

Last night I got angry with the six-year-old twins I teach every Thursday evening and Saturday morning. I like these two kids – they’re clever and endearing like six-year-olds can be. And their father fixes scooters for a living, which means I’m not employed by a wealthy businessman who raises his children to emulate his arrogance when they take their places beside him as adults one day; I provide a service to a blue-collar worker who wants to give his two smart kids a good education. It’s a class I approach with commitment, which I enjoy most of the time, and which I even find rewarding when I see how their English improves. But when they weren’t paying attention last night, my internal alarm began its lament that I was wasting my time at that moment, and therefore wasting my life.

And I’m talking about taking on more classes? Am I barking mad?!

(Bob the Fool built a boat from the remains of his half-burnt furniture and guitars, flew to the moon and founded an organisation by the name of Al-Qassandra. He threw stones at robots that forced him to urinate into a test tube, but the stones kept floating in the air …)

I think it would be good to deconstruct my current situation, throw half of it in the garbage, cast the other half out the window, and put what’s left on my head and hum folk songs while I look for work in Mainland China.

I miss my sisters. I miss my parents. I believe everybody needs me, and everyone’s lives would be colourless if I don’t make wild promises that not even a rich attorney could fulfil.

I have a thankless task I must perform. First I have to convince myself that there is hope in the world, and then I reckon I have to convince other people that they don’t need to cry themselves to sleep at night because they have to get up at six-thirty every morning to maintain a life they don’t want. And that while most people have already sorted things out for themselves, have already devised answers they are satisfied with, and never needed to ask so many questions in the first place.

What does it mean when someone greets another person on the street? I know! But who the hell cares?!

You don’t need to have children to feel that your life is worth something, because …

“We want to have children.”

Oh, well, but what do you do with your free time?

“We watch TV.”

Exactly! And that’s the point I want to make …

“We like watching TV. It makes us happy.”

Oh.

I think I’m going to start stealing money from the poor and giving it to the rich – in the hope that they would like me. Maybe they’ll invite me to their luxurious beach houses to have a barbecue with other rich people. (“It’ll just be a few of our good friends,” they will say.) Then, after the potato salad and grilled sandwiches and the best sausage in town, they’ll ask me to provide the evening’s entertainment. I will tell stories of years in foreign countries, but I would tell it in such a way that it would be funny. I won’t add anything about emotional wretchedness, because it won’t make anyone laugh.

I will also, to their great amusement, tell them of bailiffs and the policemen who keep them company while they calculate the value of former middle-class people’s furniture and frying pans and other household items that were bought on credit but were never paid because someone said something to the boss and then he got fired. They will laugh about it at first, but then the host will put a stop to it. “Go fetch us more beer!” he’ll say, before slowly lighting a cigar.

I’ll scurry away, not noticing the tomato that was thrown at my head by one of the boys.

What is the purpose of my life? To stay alive. But I am slowly committing suicide by smoking too much, and by failing to give myself the basic pleasures of intimate communion with significant others.

Am I doomed to failure in all the endeavours I have started the last five years? Is this the only possible outcome, because I don’t have the guts to do what I have to do? Am I doomed to failure because I don’t want to give up what little comfort and security I have managed to scrape together over the past few years? Is it because I don’t have faith? Is it because I don’t have the slightest fucking clue what is really important? Is it because I don’t want to play by the rules … but not because I’m a rebel, just because I can’t stand other people telling me what to do? Is there a place in this world for a so-called writer who refuses to write short stories or articles, is too proud to sleep in the street, and too stubborn to do more commercial work to make sure his next repatriation plan works out?

Do I take the polarisation between rich and poor too far? Do I take my own life too seriously? Is it starting to count against me that I’ve been using old fears and unresolved anger and who knows what else for inspiration?

Maybe I died an untimely death without any value in a previous life, and I’m still angry about it. “I” am thus trying to hijack “my” life in an attempt to regain something that “I” lost in a past life. What was it? Bullet between the eyes in a trench during the World War One? Murder in an alley in a previous century? Stone to the head when I walked past a group of protesters?

Am I paying for the sins of a previous life? Is it about redemption and reconciliation? Or is it just about weaknesses in my personality that make me unable to do the right things for the right results?

Are the “right” results a “meaningful life” or an “extraordinary life”? Am I a crazed, wounded animal that wants to tear the world to pieces, but because I’m afraid the world would tear me apart, I half-heartedly produce literature in an attempt to escape and in the process retain at least an iota of my dignity? Will one plus one end up being two?

The price for repatriation – whatever that means – have never been lower. But the price for my happiness has never been higher.

The cards are on the table, and the dice loaded. The Truth consists of five trillion, three-hundred-and-eighty-two billion, seven-hundred-and-ninety-one million, nine-hundred-and-twenty-three thousand, six-hundred-and-forty-five pieces. I contributed my two or three pieces. May I go now?

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