Category: Post Untitled, volume one

MONDAY, 7 JUNE 2004

A new approach?

I hear there’s cool Mexican hip-hop, but even if I buy some of it there will still be cool Uzbek music that I’ll never hear. And even if I get to listen to some of it, I’ll never be an Uzbek. And even if I marry an Uzbek woman and live in India, I will never be Indian. And even if we immigrate to America, I will never be a born and bred American. And even if I live in New York City for thirty years, I will never be a Frenchman. And even if I live in Paris, I will never live in Sweden. And even if I live in Stockholm for ten years, I will never live in Japan during the fourteenth century …

Precondition for commitment: Once you accept that you are a particular human being, you can commit yourself to a particular kind of life.

TUESDAY, 8 JUNE 2004

Accept yourself – even if it’s only to save time

I accept the particularity of my background. I think and write most of the time in Afrikaans, my skin is “white”, my facial features mainly dictated by the genes I have received from my mostly Germanic ancestors.

I can change how I look. I can even be difficult and abandon my linguistic background – because I have not chosen it, and force myself to think and write only in English. I can be even more radical and choose another language (other than English), master this language, and eventually think and write exclusively in that language. At the end of such a process – that will take years of hard work – I will be a splendid example of a so-called self-made man.

However, I am willing to forgo such a radical process for the sake of time and energy, and largely accept the particularity of my physical appearance, my mother tongue and cultural background as they stand, and to regard these things as good enough instruments to facilitate the process of self-discovery and self-invention.

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SUNDAY, 6 JUNE 2004

Confidence in yourself
A good opinion of yourself
I have found myself
To be yourself
I don’t feel like myself
Love thy neighbour as thyself
Know yourself
Unsure about yourself
Embarrassing yourself
Loathing yourself
I laugh at myself
Look inside yourself

“Ky-malixino-wo.”

“What?”

“Ky-malixino-wo. You mean you don’t know what that means?”

“Nope, no idea.”

“It’s a central concept in the understanding of the human being!”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“You’re kidding, right? How on earth can you function as an intelligent human being without knowing what the ky-malixino-wo is?”

“Well, I do not know. And yet I function …”

“It is English you know? It’s not Russian or Spanish or Japanese!”

“Can we talk about something else?”

Self-love
Self-reliance
Self-control
Self-awareness
Self-sacrifice
Self-respect
Self-glorification
Self-defence
Self-preservation
Self-worship
Self-confidence
Self-blame
Self-denial

Suicide – the killing of the self
Believe in yourself
Free yourself

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SATURDAY, 5 JUNE 2004

The past year I vacillated a lot between business and free creativity, free creativity and business; more business, less creative work; more creative work, less business …

What I am saying now is that, for me, the optimal target is free creative work.

Some would suggest that that may mean one would have to spend eight hours a day or even more in a dull, uninspiring environment to earn a salary if you don’t earn a sufficient income with your creative work. Would it not be better then to try harder to make some money with your creative endeavours?

My answer: If your creative work is free and you can still make a profit from it, then great. But if you have to compromise the free expression of your creativity in order to profit from it, then you are losing too much.

Then I say, if you cannot avoid it, do your eight hours a day for a salary in an environment where you wouldn’t have been if it were not for your financial needs. If the result is that your creative work is free expression, it would be worth it.

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None, or few notes do not mean I am not working. I’ve been busy the past few days … I did have the insight yesterday that people, if you consider them one-by-one, are only defenceless animals who try their best to stay alive and perhaps taste a little happiness between all the disappointments and failures and all the things that are not working out quite as they would have liked them to work out. (And then there are the “vulnerable” criminals, the “vulnerable” corrupt politicians, the “vulnerable” oppressors and exploiters of other defenceless animals …)

***

In March, I thought 4 June was going to be D-Day. It would be the end of the Commercial Dictatorship, and close enough to the beginning of my life back in South Africa.

The real 4 June was eventually dominated by the fact that my printer wasn’t working, so I couldn’t produce twenty copies of my collection of poetry that I had wanted to hand out to friends and family. So come and go the days of our lives …

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TUESDAY, 1 JUNE 2004

Self-knowledge, identity and the Dalai Lama

The “current” Dalai Lama was born Tenzin Gyatso. Six decades ago he was enthusiastically busy being just an ordinary boy when one day some monks arrived to tell him he is not who he thinks he is, but rather the umpteenth incarnation of someone else. Imagine that.

WEDNESDAY, 2 JUNE 2004

[My conversations, real or otherwise, with the Mormon missionaries go back to my first year in Taiwan when two young, well-dressed, clean-cut Americans visited my apartment every Thursday evening for a few weeks. Their visit was by invitation – I saw them one night while I was smoking a cigarette on my porch, and since there weren’t that many Westerners in the area to talk to, I seized the opportunity for a little theological chit-chat. Our discussions took the form of question and answer: I asked questions, they tried to answer, I replied with fresh questions to their answers, and when they no longer wanted to answer or when they longer had an answer, I came up with possible answers on their behalf. After a few weeks, the two decided to part ways with me.

On the particular Wednesday of this piece I was heading back to Fengshan by train when two Caucasian men entered my field of vision: young, wearing black pants, white short-sleeved shirts with name badges on the one breast, cleanly shaven, short hair. I began to wonder what I would say, were they to target me for conversation. The trip lasted only about ten minutes; the discussion would therefore have been short, and to the point.]

Conversation with Mormon missionaries on the train

(That did not take place on Wednesday, 2 June 2004)

“Hi.”

I nod.

“Are you a teacher?”

“Yes.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Couple of years.”

“Have you heard of the Church of the Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ?”

“There’s no point in me having this conversation with you.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t know who you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you know your names, and you know to which religious organisation you belong. But these are mostly things that you’ve been told about yourself during the first two decades of your lives. You haven’t really made any personal choices that would indicate to me that you truly know who you are.”

“We’ve chosen to follow Jesus Christ.”

“How could you have chosen something if you’ve never had any choices? Where did you grow up? Utah? Salt Lake City? If you were an Arab who grew up in a Muslim environment, with all the environmental data that would have given you an identity in that context, and you then chose the Church of Latter Day Saints above Islam … then you would have made a choice. So far you’re nothing but a human body carrying around a lot of data about yourself. These things – your physical appearance, your name, your language, where you come from, your nationality, and the fact that you are missionaries of a particular church – are all identifying marks that tell you and anyone else how you fit into your environment.

“You, sitting there, cannot tell me anything that you haven’t been told. Have you ever had an experience that could possibly undermine your beliefs? How can you know the truth about yourself or anything you believe in if you’ve never questioned the validity of the facts that you’ve been fed? What are your criteria for telling truth from a lie?

“I cannot have an intelligent conversation – about religion no less! – with someone who is nothing more than an emulator of other people in order to know how he should function as a human being.”

“How do you know what we think, or what we’ve experienced? I experience God every day …”

“Yes, you have experiences, and I’m sure you’ve been told how to interpret them. And the words you use to give expression to these experiences … are words that you did not invent, am I right?

“My station’s coming up. Listen, I cannot, in the final instance, judge the validity of your experiences. I do not claim to possess the powers of mind or spirit which would certainly be required to either confirm or refute the source of your experiences.

“If I made certain assumptions about you that are incorrect, please accept that I did so to make a point that might be applicable to your life, or it might not be. If my assumptions cannot in entirety be dismissed, then please consider it for a minute or so. Either way, have yourselves a good day.”

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