Category: Personal Agenda, Book Three

(My) Revolutions and (my) credibility

THURSDAY, 5 FEBRUARY 2004

What do I need, and what do I need to do for the March Revolution? I need to tell the three schools where I work that I am fucking off at the end of the month. I have to pack between twenty and thirty boxes and arrange for their shipment. I have to pay and cancel my phone bill. I have to confirm and pay my airline ticket. I need to call my sister and tell her I have problems she won’t understand. Then I have to withdraw all the money from my bank account and send most of it to my account in South Africa. Lastly, I have to greet my friends, write one or two final Taiwan pieces, and on the designated day storm the airport with my tired and battered troops.

[…]

This current incarnation of The Plan is obvious wild. It’s irresponsible, somewhat impulsive, with uncertain short, medium, and long-term consequences. But sometimes one needs something of this nature to normalise things that have gotten out of hand, or to take care of significant matters that have been delayed too long already.

* * *

I am currently experiencing something I’ve last experienced in 2000 when I imagined myself to be a musician: a credibility crisis. This time however, it is not about reality that is inconsistent with ambition; my identity as a writer is firmly entrenched behind enough finished text. The current crisis has been caused by too many plans formulated over the years and announced prematurely, and too much material written on the subject. If I don’t do something big now, it will make me appear to myself and to family and friends as someone who talks a lot, but whose guts completely abandon him when he has to act.

Some of my best friends become sceptical when I once again press on about my so-called plans, and why I believe an extraordinary life is within everyone’s reach in our own country. Even my family doesn’t get excited anymore when I recite dates and plans as if they’re serious business.

However, it is I myself who don’t know if I should believe myself when I say something like “Friday, June 4th” [the alternate date for March 4th]. This is dangerous. It is crucial that you believe yourself when you say something. How else can you expect others to take you seriously?

[…]

What, in all honesty, are the benefits of 4 JUNE? I will have more time to pack my boxes. […] And if friends and family have any patience left with me and my ever-changing plans, I will certainly have more time to convince them of the wisdom of my planned withdrawal from this part of the world.

However, there is a risk attached to 4 JUNE, just as there are risks attached to 4 MARCH. With the former I will definitely need to get a few extra classes to avoid seeing my existing capital dwindle to dust. If I do not improve my income over the next four months, and I fail to find a different way to accumulate more capital … then I won’t have much of a choice at the end of May other than setting ablaze all the material I have written the past few days. And as my most hated season begins in Taiwan – monsoon rains, drenching sweat, humidity – I’ll have to take on a lot more classes just to keep myself alive, with repatriation and trips to relatives in other countries not even a vague possibility.

Whatever I decide in the next few hours, one thing is certain: The price for the lifting of my exile has never been lower.

______________________

Man at a station

WEDNESDAY, 4 FEBRUARY 2004

A man at a train station asks the clerk behind the counter how far a certain amount of money would take him. I am sitting behind my computer, a day before I have to undergo compulsory medical tests as the first step to stay in Taiwan and I ask: How far can NT$50,000 take me?

I am desperate to go away. I am also desperate to go back to South Africa, as the ideal destination of the first action, but not necessarily the only possibility.

What are my options? What do I need to do?

I need to ferry back to South Africa about twenty boxes of ornaments and other items. I need a few thousand to give myself a reasonable chance of survival in the first few months in South Africa. I have made promises about visiting my sister and her first-born in England, and my good friend from long ago in the Netherlands.

[…]

Another option is to move to another city in Taiwan. That will get rid of the furniture; I can send at least half of the boxes to South Africa, and I can earn enough money after six months from the new position to ship the rest. I will first go back to South Africa, and then show my face in Europe for two or three weeks.

I can also get a six-month contract in China. That will also get rid of the furniture. I can send all my boxes to South Africa, teach English and study Chinese for six months, and work on material with a slightly different flavour than what I’ve been whiling my time away with the past five years. (“No exile essays?” you might ask. No. The protracted process of lifting my exile will, however, be a strong possibility.)

What would you have done? It’s a great pity that there’s no one whose advice in this area I respect enough to ask for it. Why this is so I can only speculate. Maybe it’s got to do with my peculiar situation, with all my previous uncertainties about life; where I come from; where I’m going; two years in Korea and then the lifting of that stay-away action; eight months of poverty in South Africa; the shock of enough money in the first few months in Taiwan to pay cash for a computer, and books, and music, and new clothes and an expensive watch; the security of a three-bedroom apartment that I only had to share with a few insects; mechanised transport which meant that I wasn’t dependent on anyone else to go to the movies; money to go to the movies …

It’s natural for the body to strive for a state of tensionlessness. I left Korea to ease emotional stress. I knew I had to do it, not because someone had offered it to me as a piece of advice, but because possibly after breakfast, before lunch, in a movie, or behind the controls of a video game I despondently thought, “I feel like going home … as soon as possible.”

The moment this idea took hold of me, my brain came up with specific plans and actions that had to be taken. The organism did not imagine servant’s quarters with pink walls and sponges for a bed, or a boring part-time job in an office in Johannesburg. The organism did not know how it was going to feel to pedal seven kilometres to office every day on a borrowed bicycle. The organism did not know he was going to be broke within a few months. All he knew was that the anxiety alert was flickering “Red! Red! Red!”

My anxiety alert is flickering red. It’s the easiest thing in the world to go piss in a paper cup tomorrow at the hospital, to get another stamp in my passport in two weeks that will allow me another few months to gently caress my unpacked ornaments and wall hangings as if they were photos of loved ones. Will it relieve my stress? I have twelve hours to make up my mind about that.

I almost wish this whole going back theme was just a literary ploy to make up for not wanting to write short stories. I wish there was someone who could advise me.

My time is almost up. It’s Wednesday, 4 February. I have to decide what I’m going to do. If I decide to stay … then that’s how it is.

I also solemnly pledge that the words “exile”, “boxes”, “ticket” and “plans” will not be used in any pieces that will be written between now and when I pack all my boxes, buy my plane ticket, and with half-baked plans finally end my exile. I don’t quite know what I’ll do, but I’m sure I’ll think of something to write about (the “Fauna and flora” idea fell through, the “Trip to the beach” took place but failed to inspire any writing, and how much more can I say on “Place and identity”?)

Verily, verily, I say to myself, I’m standing at a station. Forward or backward, left or right, jump over the rail or run away. Beijing, Middelburg, London, Amsterdam, Bronkhorstspruit, or Mountain of the Vulture Town. I know nothing.

______________________

About friends, and other personal reasons

Background to the texts “Advice about staying or coming back,” “Slave to the word” and “About friends and other personal reasons”: A good friend of mine who was also living in Kaohsiung at the time mentioned via email during her vacation in Cape Town that she felt like staying in South Africa. I suspected that this was only emotion speaking, but I nevertheless took the opportunity to say certain things.

——————–

WEDNESDAY, 4 FEBRUARY 2004

[…]

Maybe you haven’t even read the last letter, but to entertain myself, and to clear up uncertainties in the one before that, I decided there was room for a Third Letter.

[…]

You mentioned in your email that friends are an important motivation in your possible decision to come back. What I want to say here and now is that friends are not a sustainable motivation.

[…]

We enter this world alone, and most of the time we go out alone. People – family, friends, spouses, lovers – are part of our lives, for short or long periods of the journey. We all know we need other people. We also know that we have to be good to each other while we share each other’s lives, partly because it says something of our own nature, and also because we have to carry both the pain and the fellowship with us on our journey.

So it is with us who know each other here. We used to be strangers, but with the passage of time we began to need each other to remain standing for however long we decided to get stuck here.

But – this is not our country, and none of us has immigrated here formally. We must at some stage go our own directions, even if some of us stay here a bit longer than others.

My personal reasons for staying here have expired, although I’m still grateful for those who have kept me standing for the time I’ve been here. If I don’t get on that flight on Thursday, 4 March, it will be to give myself a better chance to visit my sister in England, and to be able to mail more than five boxes of books home.

However, as I mentioned yesterday, I no longer have any illusions about cabinets and tables and exercise bikes that have to be taken along for the journey forward. This is the new state of affairs – for financial reasons, and because the conventional sequence is to, at least temporarily, establish yourself first, and then to start collecting furniture. The simple fact is I’ve never been able to admit that what I’ve been doing for the past five years have, for all practical purposes, amounted to me having established myself here.

The price for the lifting of my self-imposed exile was exceptionally high until now, partly because I might have wanted, subconsciously, to get clarity about who and what I was before I continued my life in my own country. These questions have been resolved.

The price for repatriation is now lower than ever before. If I still choose not to pay the price now, it will mean that I attach a higher value to staying here, right? What value could I conceivably still attach to staying in Taiwan? Even more so if I lecture my best friends on why they should leave their own colourful walls behind for an undefined future in the Land of Family and Barbecue in the Backyard.

My own beliefs on the subject of “voluntary exile” in a foreign country, and the reasons why it is sometimes necessary have been well formulated by now and documented in dozens of pieces of text. Little remains to be said … on this subject.

A question does force itself on me: Can we, even though we are the best of friends, ever really understand why one person is so desperate to leave, and the other so convinced of the need to return?

[…]

______________________

Slave to the word

Background to the texts “Advice about staying or coming back,” “Slave to the word” and “About friends and other personal reasons”: A good friend of mine who was also living in Kaohsiung at the time mentioned via email during her vacation in Cape Town that she felt like staying in South Africa. I suspected that this was only emotion speaking, but I nevertheless took the opportunity to say certain things.

——————–

TUESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2004

[…]

I hate the role I sometimes try to play. I hate to pretend I understand more than the average guy. I hate to hold up a picture of someone who knows what he’s doing. Regardless of whether this is what you think of me, it’s the caricature that I sketch of myself on the social landscape.

Here are the facts: I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to return to South Africa on March 4th or stay here for another few months.

I have two choices: 1) stay here but take on more classes; or 2) go back to South Africa next month and fill my place outside all socio-economic classes of which I am aware. It’s a showdown of enormous proportions.

I always say I have my finger on my own pulse, but I’m starting to get the idea and I have underestimated something the past few months. I am addicted to writing. And not in the romantic sense of the word. A heroin addict will go through 72 hours of excruciating withdrawal symptoms if he quits the drug. I believe I’ll slide into a bottomless depression if I write less for the sake of more classes, for the sake of shipping all my furniture and all my cups and mugs and kitchen towels and pillows and old jeans I haven’t worn in four years back to South Africa, and to then be able to afford a life that won’t catch too much wind.

I’m in a difficult position. I have sold my soul for the sake of my cause. And perhaps my cause belongs to a Supreme Being, and then it’s okay, I guess. But I can no longer turn back. I have considered other options and have found them all wanting. I don’t even believe love can help me anymore. (Maybe it will work for a few weeks until I start making notes on the bedsheets while the woman is waiting for something more exciting …)

(At this point, my fingers almost caught fire. I went to buy some instant noodles, smoked a cigarette, talked to [another friend], and read my history book. I now feel somewhat better.)

I don’t think it’s a good idea to send the above text to you.

The fact that I’m apparently writing this text to you at 00:55 on Wednesday morning, 4 February whilst not even sure if you’re actually going to read it serves as a clear indication of how holy I regard The Word. As I sit here writing this text to myself – at the moment, more than to you, I still believe it is relevant to someone other than yours truly.

I wish you and I could trade bodies for 24 hours. I would very quickly resolve your issues, and you could … bump my head against the wall a few times to shake out the loose parts that have caused me to sleep like a baby for the last several years, and to be awake like a madman.

I think I have given up on the idea to send all my furniture back to South Africa. What am I going to do with it anyway? A caravan is too small for it, and I can’t put it in a tree house. And it’s going to get wet on the lawn in somebody’s garden.

If my plans to repatriate myself could be compared to negotiations, the balance of power has definitely shifted over the past year or two. Initially, the one part said, “I want to go back to South Africa.” Then the other part that was mainly responsible for me coming to Taiwan in the first place, would say: “Okay, give me X amount of cash for a house, a car, a new computer, new clothes, a wig, a dog, a cat, and a lawn mower, Y amount of books written, and Z amount of Chinese mastered. Then we’ll consider repatriation.”

Currently the latter party is begging for mercy. He’s willing to give up everything but the wig and the lawn mower, “as long as we can just go home as soon as possible”. And the character who was previously known for sentimental pleas must necessarily be the voice of reason – a role that is obviously new to him, but who else is going to do it if the arrogant one of earlier negotiations is on the point of losing his mind because of too many “plans” he has to keep track of?

Still, I hate to see you walking down a similar path: uncertainty, setting up home on the wrong side of the planet, strong opinions on the choices made by so many of our friends and contemporaries.

[Paragraph where I joke about setting up a business consulting lost souls.]

No, rather come back, finish painting your walls, and put fresh oranges in that bowl. In the meantime, I will burn all my furniture, barter my books on night markets, and acquire enough cash for a large caravan. When I finally return to our beautiful country, I’ll pester you with dozens of letters every week to make sure you don’t stay here longer than I did at the end. And to remind you to move your bowl of oranges every now and then. Small adjustments like that will make your eventual repatriation much easier on the soul.

______________________

Advice about staying or coming back

Background to the texts “Advice about staying or coming back,” “Slave to the word” and “About friends and other personal reasons”: A good friend of mine who was also living in Kaohsiung at the time mentioned via email during her vacation in Cape Town that she felt like staying in South Africa. I suspected that this was only emotion speaking, but I nevertheless took the opportunity to say certain things.

——————–

TUESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2004

My friend

[…]

You know my feelings on the subject of going home. I believe, and have believed it ever since my second year in this country, that the lifestyle we lead here makes it easy for us to deceive ourselves. We buy coffee mugs and lounge sets, and teaspoons and motorcycles; we paint our walls in strange colours, and we start relationships with people who can’t even find Stellenbosch or Pretoria on a map.

We do all these things in part because it’s natural, and partly to compensate ourselves for what we don’t have here: a community of loved ones. Some of us do find love here, and in such cases, things work out. But many of us know that the people who have always mattered most to us are far away. Too far.

Time goes on. We constantly formulate new plans, and we talk about buying a house, and about better socio-economic situations when we finally get so far to shift our teaspoons and paintbrushes to the Republic of Our Birth. Meanwhile, our lives go on, and we get older. On the other side of the planet our loved ones’ lives also continue, and they also get older. We become aware of this every time we go home for a few weeks, to among other reasons blow our hard-earned cash, in ways that would tell everyone who wanted to know that we are doing well in the foreign land.

Is it bad to go abroad? No. Sometimes we need to get away from people and environments that are important to us. Some of us do it because we have “issues”. Others do it because they are bored. There are also those who don’t do it because they necessarily want to but because the socio-economic prospects in their own country are such that they simply have to consider alternatives. Some of us do it for all these reasons, and a few others.

Each of us must, after the lapse of a few months or a few years, decide where our priorities lie. We have to decide whether this temporary arrangement will become permanent, and whether we’re willing to pay the price for it. Or we get to the point where we realise that, despite our personal issues, despite our view of a so-called conventional life, and despite the harsh social reality that will welcome us together with the customs officer back into our own country, we have no choice but to return because we are no longer willing to pay the price for the benefits of a life in whatever other country we have spent a few years.

You must decide where you stand with this issue. Maybe you choose to send an empty seat on that plane back to Taiwan. Maybe you decide to come back, but only for a few months. Or maybe you come back to fulfil your initial plan of another two years. Everything, as you well know, has a price.

As your friend, I repeat my earlier comments: I will miss your company, but if you decide not to come back, I will wish you luck.

[…]

______________________