Category: Post Untitled, volume one

FRIDAY, 3 SEPTEMBER 2004

(Johannesburg)

It is simple, it is obvious, and everyone knows it, but it is nevertheless useful to mention: in order to survive, you need to function. Identity (all those answers to the “Who am I?” question) serves a purpose, and that purpose is to enable you to function in a particular environment, at a particular historical time.

The question is then, is this who you really are?

The suggestion appears to be that to truly find yourself, you should lose yourself. This is a risk in the particular environments we live in and at this particular historical time. In order to survive, we must be able to function, and in order to function, we need to be able to introduce ourselves to others in our environment (we must identify ourselves, and for that we need what is called “identity”).

It can further be said that the environment (or environments) in which we are expected to function – and then within certain established boundaries of acceptability – is not conducive to taking such gigantic steps like “losing” oneself. (If there were a map of the psyche, such a place where you could lose yourself would be marked with the warning, “Here be dragons!”)

The only way a person could thus discover his or her “true self” in this life would be to withdraw to a place where they can still survive, but without functioning in fellowship with other people (for which they would need so-called identity).

Interesting to see what two specific religions have to say on this subject.

To some extent this is what Buddhism proposes – to withdraw from society, to not get attached to the material world, and to focus your energy on preparing for the eventual release of the immortal element of your person from the seemingly endless cycle of life and death.

Christianity tells of Jesus who had a particular identity and who functioned relatively well at the time and in the place where he had been born, as both a carpenter and a preacher – the latter being relatively successful up until his death. He lived according to his beliefs, and ultimately died for what he believed in; or to put it differently, when the choice was put to him to water down his beliefs or die for them, he refused to deny himself or to renounce his beliefs. Jesus then sacrificed himself – who and what he was as a person; he died in, and according to the Christian faith, for this world, and eventually became, according to Christian doctrine, who he really is – God. According to Christian teachings, he therefore died as a particular man … and became Universal God.

[Certain theologians and clever preachers might point out that Jesus as Particular Human was concurrently Universal God. Although this point is of great theological importance, this text is not the right platform to give this topic more attention.]

* * *

Perhaps the purpose of this life is not to go where the dragons lie, that is, to “lose” yourself, but to get involved, to take sides, and to offer yourself, as it were, for a “good cause”.

Apply yourself therefore in this life to the realisation of good things, and prepare yourself through that for whatever awaits beyond your earthly existence. (I am aware of the dramatic new direction I am taking here.)

* * *

“I’ve converted to a new faith.”

“Oh? What’s it called?”

“It’s called … oh heck, I don’t know what it’s called. Does it matter?”

* * *

I repeat what I wrote in a previous note: Perhaps the purpose of this life is not to lose oneself in order to find your truer, purer self, but to apply yourself, who and what you are right now, to a good cause.

[Why not just “apply” yourself to your own happiness?

I know my own reasons, my own motivations, what is good enough for me and what is not. I can therefore not answer this question for anyone other than myself … for now.]

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(Also read: Some afterthoughts to “Lose yourself, or apply yourself”)

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MONDAY, 30 AUGUST 2004

I can solemnly declare that my stomach is churning at the thought of once again, in four days’ time, exchanging this reality with my “real” life. I look forward to being back in my own home, in my personal headquarters – but that’s about all I am currently positive about.

What else is there to my life in Taiwan that I can look forward to? Deep fried on a Saturday evening? Cheap VCDs? Dates at the coffee shop? Lunch boxes with oily vegetables? My bicycle? All these things can be replaced with other, similar things right here in this place.

What I am looking forward to is spending time again in my own headquarters. I miss the comfort and familiarity of my own place.

I have been walking around for three weeks with the idea that I can find happiness here, in Bronkhorstspruit. What I need is money, a house, and a comrade who understands my cause. There is also the idea of the “island”* and the question of what mainland you’re connected to. Six months here, six months there …

———–

* [The concept of the “island” refers to the place you create for yourself. This home – house, apartment, or whatever – is then the island where you live. The “mainland” is the town or city where you will go when you need supplies, or when you need to spend some time in a spot other than your island.

The idea came to me when my sister, my brother-in-law and I made a brief visit to someone in the town of Vryheid in northern Kwazulu-Natal. This man lives in a fairly new part of town – I am not really a new part of town type of person, and this fairly new suburb is just outside Vryheid – and I have never been too keen on settling down in this particular town.

Still, the man’s house was warm and pleasant, and I realised that one’s home is like an island – when you are there, amongst your own stuff, and under your own palm tree, so to speak, it doesn’t matter that much if you don’t care for the nearest “mainland”.]

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TUESDAY, 24 AUGUST 2004

11:34

I am currently happy in Taiwan – although I am in Bronkhorstspruit at the moment. I believe I could be happy in Bronkhorstspruit. What is important is that all my possessions and my income-generating work are in Taiwan.

16:31

It is the seventeenth day of my holiday in South Africa. I have nine days left. Some thoughts on the issue of “return” have been jotted down. The matter is, as usual, somewhat annoying because … do I take some books back to Taiwan, do I leave them here seeing that I might soon return?

So I ask myself solemnly for some illumination on the subject. [Why do my notes sometimes look like prayer? And why do I sometimes kneel down when I write … just joking.]

It is Tuesday afternoon. I have just smoked a Nat Sherman under a tree, in the late winter sun, on a smallholding just outside Bronkhorstspruit. I am currently here, in South Africa. My older sister and her six month-old baby boy are sitting on the bed in the room across from me. She’s browsing through a magazine, and the little guy is making soft groaning sounds. My younger sister is sitting on the other side of the house in the office of my parents’ business. I am lying on the bed in the other spare room, on a yellow bedspread, making notes in my notebook.

But, I currently live in Taiwan. And yet I am currently in South Africa. What’s the problem?

The fact that I am here, in Bronkhorstspruit, with my family, is one hundred percent part of my life in Taiwan!

My main point about the issue has already been noted: I am currently happy in Taiwan. I have a good apartment there. I have a few friends. I have a job that provides me with a reasonably good income. I spend time every week on my personal literature, and I study Chinese (some weeks more than others, but still). It is a good life, judged by my own standards.

An ideal life would include my parents already being in financially comfortable retirement; my younger sister and her husband living in town, as they do now; my older sister and her family in Pretoria; and myself either residing in a pleasant home in Pretoria or in Bronkhorstspruit, with a pleasant and attractive woman. This is the ideal – with everyone healthy, everyone enjoying their jobs, and everyone generating sufficient capital to be able to afford a good life.

I don’t tend to look at present reality and exclaim, with a hint of bitterness, “That’s life!” But it is not as simple as me just shipping my things here and moving into a three bedroom house in Bronkhorstspruit. Doing so will, ironically, be selfish, if my path does cross with a woman with whom I want to spend my days on this planet, and even more so if we were to conceive children.

The life I now call my own, and from which I am creating a future, is the best chance I have, at this stage, to be who I am and do what I do; and then, if it is on the proverbial cards, the best chance I have to persuade someone to share her life with me.

My present life contains the seed from which a good future can spring – for myself, and for any other person or persons for whose welfare I may be at least partially responsible in about five years’ time.

This is my current life, in Taiwan. (Thus are my words, on a smallholding just outside Bronkhorstspruit on Tuesday, 24 August 2004.)

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MONDAY, 23 AUGUST 2004

[A necessary repetition of previous thoughts to clarify the meaning of certain concepts.]

Identity serves a PURPOSE; this purpose is SURVIVAL.

To survive, a person needs to FUNCTION.

In order to function, a person requires IDENTITY.

Why? The reasons include so that he can identify himself to others in the community to enhance the probability that his needs will be met.

Identity is compiled from information provided by a particular environment, at a particular historical time.

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FRIDAY, 20 AUGUST 2004

Afternoon, between four and five, under a tree; light-brown socks, old leather shoes, green shorts, yellow underwear and a red short-sleeved shirt with white speckles.

Just walked back from town to the smallholding, last stretch on a dirt road. In town, I purchased three books at the total cost of one R5 coin: When White People Were Poor, a Truman Capote book and the screenplay for an Italian play with the title, Six Characters In Search Of An Author. Paid a visit to some second-hand furniture stores, did my banking at Standard Bank and Postnet, and had lunch at the Spur Steak Ranch.

At the Spur, I sat in the smoker’s section. An elderly woman was sitting alone at a table behind me. I don’t know what she was drinking, but she yelled “One more!” in the direction of the nearest waiter soon after I had arrived. Also sitting alone was an attractive young woman at a table across from me. She was talking on her cell phone the entire time, drinking iced coffee and smoking one Paul Revere after another.

I ordered a Spur burger for R23.95, extra garlic sauce for R7.95 and a Black Label for R9.95. I read the County News (R1) and lit up two Nat Shermans with Lion matches.

In the middle of town, I read some interesting facts on a notice board: Pretoria is 50 kilometres from Bronkhorstspruit, Cape Town 1,380 kilometres, Johannesburg a hundred kilometres, Taipei 11,620 kilometres and Hong Kong 10,800 kilometres. Then I walked back to the smallholding.

Now, I’m sitting under a tree, and I’m thinking: Life is … pigeons cooing, cars driving past, the wind blowing through the leaves, something between my teeth, footsteps in the background, small birds and insects making a commotion in the trees, the smell of vegetable soup from the kitchen, a radio playing lounge music from the sixties, a telephone ringing …

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