Category: Post Untitled, volume one

MONDAY, 26 APRIL 2004

[I started filling an electronic document with text that would become the FINAL CHAPTER on this Monday at the end of April 2004. The following paragraphs – that touch on an old theme – were thus the original beginning of what I thought would be the last piece of the “Personal Agenda” project.]

The idea of “exile” is still a useful concept to explain – to myself more than to any reader of this text – what I have been doing for the last 10 years of my life.

I recently thought that my exile had in fact started when I returned from a five-week trip to Europe in 1995. From the day I again put my feet on South African soil, I distanced myself – sometimes subconsciously, sometimes deliberately – from the world around me. A case of, “I’m not really here. I’m actually on my way somewhere else …”

In 1995 I realised that the time I had been fearing for years had finally arrived. I had to start making more money than I had earned with part-time work as a student, because I had entered the post-university world of responsible adults. I also knew that my struggle was elementary: it was either make money or sleep on the street.

To complicate things even more, I suffered from the somewhat arrogant belief that I was “special”, that to “simply” pursue a conventional life would mean that I will miss the true purpose of my life.

Two years in Korea and more than five years in Taiwan was how I tried to be responsible without getting caught up in the so-called rat race – or my own over-simplified view of it, and at the same time to make an attempt at sorting out exactly what the purpose and meaning of my life was, or what it was supposed to be.

It has been a long journey; not as long or as arduous as our former legendary president, but long enough in my own book – so to speak.

What is this book for which you, the reader, is sacrificing so many hours of entertainment? Is it worth reading about my search for identity? Is it interesting to read about plans that have absolutely no value for any person outside my intimate inner circle?

This book is ultimately a small window on the life of just another human-animal, in more respects like you as you may be willing to admit in broad daylight. It is a story that deals with one person’s search for identity, his place in the world, and what is important to him.

If I had not written this book, the world would most probably still have been exactly the same as it is now. No earth-shattering discoveries were made. No bizarre anecdotes were told that could have added a little entertainment. In more sombre moments one can even go so far as to say that this entire project has been a complete waste of time – in the Greater Scheme of Things.

The truth, however, is that our daily lives sometimes feels far removed from the Greater Scheme of Things. We live in the world of sour milk and screaming children and superficial pop music. We live in a world where criminals get away with their criminal acts, where people carefully assemble houses of cards that could be destroyed by a chilly breeze the moment they look the other way to watch the sun go down. It is in this world where I have been writing for the past 10 years, and it is in this world where I have to find my salvation.

Is my book important? Yes, because I think it is important.

Do you think this book is important? Because I do not intend to butter my bread with money I earn from this material I can honestly say that it does not matter what anyone thinks of it. It has been written. It can be read. It is more important than a Korean recipe book in the average South African kitchen, but less important than the Bible. If anything can have value depending on the person or the situation, then anything that anyone writes about his or her own life can also have value.

So it is with this literary project.

I do sit with new questions at the end that I [initially] thought I was not going to address in this final chapter [but which have already been mentioned in several notes]. These questions are related to issues that I have thought I had resolved for myself over the years, but which have slipped back through the window in the middle of the night with frightening new formulations.

How, to take one example, does one define the “self”? Do you “find” yourself, or you decide who you want to be, and then become it?

How do I define concepts such as “home” and “place” used so often in these pages, words one always assumes everyone understands in the same way?

And seeing that we are talking about this, what should one do with the idea that the framework and limitations of language are of utmost importance in philosophical issues? Does it mean “I” am much more a product of my cultural heritage and much more dependent on the Afrikaans and English language communities than I have previously thought? Certainly one can have a sense of “self” without language, can’t you? But can you give expression to your self-awareness if you have never mastered a language, if you have never been part of a community that agrees on the meaning of the sounds that make up a language?

What is a human being then but a highly developed mammal?

And why, incidentally, is it important to be more than just another mammal? I mean, rather a mammal than a reptile, right? Or am I being snobbish?

______________________

SUNDAY, 25 APRIL 2004

Statement: I needed a place, a home, in order to know who I am.

Presumption: Maybe you also need possessions to be able to say who you are – like a collection of nearly 200 movies that say, “I like movies,” or that can confirm what you claim you are, or what you like.

Question: Is the ideal to be able to say and to know who you are without a place of your own and without possessions?

Follow-up Question: What else defines identity? Relationships, how you spend your time each day, what you do for money, what you believe in, the topics you prefer to discuss in social conversations …

The above leads to an interesting question: If you have no home, no possessions, neither friend nor family, you do not do much while you are awake, you do nothing to make money, you hold no religious beliefs and you never have conversations or respond to what other people say, then who are you? What are you?

If you find yourself in an urban environment, you have no cash or credit, no place of your own, no income, and you just do enough on a daily basis to stay physically alive, in practice, it boils down you eating from garbage cans (which means you’re a “bum”), or begging for food (a “beggar”), and that you sleep wherever you can find some protection from the elements (again a “homeless bum”).

So, if you do not have a home, no possessions, no relationships with anyone, you believe in nothing, the only effort you put in is to find some edible scraps of food and a few sips of drinkable fluid once or twice a day before you again lie down in any place where you can stretch out your body, you do nothing for money, and you never talk or respond when someone talks to you, your identity is automatically defined by all of the above, and the community takes it upon themselves to define you accordingly.

In most cases, the result will be that you will be called a “homeless bum”, and will be accepted as such in and by the community. Because you have thus failed to define yourself in a similar fashion to how most other people define themselves – that is, by placing yourself within familiar categories and by using elements of identity familiar to most people in the community, you will be placed on the lowest rung of the social order.

Can one then come to another conclusion other than to infer that home, possessions, relationships, beliefs, activities (creative and otherwise), and words and reactions are necessary for us to be able to know who we are, and to present ourselves in a recognisable and comprehensible manner to the community in whose midst we find ourselves?

Who am I, then? Let’s see: Possession-wise, I am the proud owner of seven of pairs of underwear, two trousers, a few shirts and a pair of sneakers, a few pieces of furniture, a computer, a notebook and five pens (two blue pens, two black and a red one); I live in my living room; I dream of a relationship with Marilyn Monroe’s Taiwanese cousin; I have no faith in dogmatic religion; I write books that will never make money; I only respond when someone talks nonsense, and don’t say much otherwise …

______________________

SATURDAY, 24 APRIL 2004

Insights from Fight Club

[Fight Club is a 1999 movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton in which they/he starts a fight club where men can be men again, as the saying goes. The fight clubs – many branches were later opened – eventually developed into an urban terrorist organisation that wreaks havoc, including blowing up credit card companies’ head offices.]

Handy comment on identity: “I flipped through catalogues, deciding which dinner table would best define who I want to be …”

Says Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden: “I say ‘never be complete!’ I say ‘Stop being perfect!’ I say ‘let’s evolve, let the chips fall where they may!’”

Comment: To do so – to throw your hands in the air and “letting go” – would inevitably affect how the “chips” would fall. You thus still manipulate the outcome of your “evolution”.

Always a good one: “… working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history – no purpose or place, no great war or depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives.”

And a good question (perhaps more specifically for men, but the same can be asked about a good debate or argument with someone else): “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?”

The point, initially, is that participation in fights, win or lose, gives the men self-respect. This is why, when a sizable guy gets on a bus and shoulders the two main characters as he is passing them – deliberately, and with complete disregard, they do not respond, because it does not inflict any injury to their self-esteem.

“Tyler Durden” is also respected by the other men not because he is the best fighter (everyone loses from time to time), but because he can endure physical pain, and because he does not fear physical conflict.

However, there is no way that lack of fear of physical conflict can still be the only standard for manhood, right?! But why is it still so important? (I ask this with heartfelt acknowledgment that I am myself grouped among those who do not drool in anticipation of a good fist fight.)

It is still important because a) we are not that far removed from our primitive genetic ancestors, and/or b) fear of physical conflict suggests something else, namely fear of pain, and the end result of unbearable pain, death.

Know that you will die … yet we hold on to life for as long as possible.

In the final count, fear of physical conflict undermines a man’s image as one willing and able to protect. It also indicates a fear of embarrassment – the inevitable result of the inability to sustain yourself in physical conflict. This would also expose the man, as it were, as the powerless figure he probably already believes he is.

Insights from Altered States

[Altered States is a 1980 science-fiction movie in which the main character, played by William Hurt, uses various methods to return to his original genetic form. In the process, he also spends one night as a hominid. The first quote refers to the night in question.]

“I was utterly primal. I consisted of nothing more than the will to survive, to live through the night, to eat, to drink, to sleep. It was the most supremely satisfying time of my life.”

[The second quote is from the end, after he succeeded in reaching his primal form.]

“I was in that ultimate moment of terror that is the beginning of life. It is nothing – simple, hideous nothing. The final truth of all things is that there is no final truth. Truth is transitory. It is human life that is real.”

______________________

FRIDAY, 23 APRIL 2004

Fasten the tent flaps

I am in the mood for people, and I am in the mood to be alone. I feel strong, and I feel weak. It feels as if I’m on my way, but I don’t know where I’m heading. Five to twenty years of keep on going and staying the course. Afraid of mediocrity; afraid of getting old. Afraid of waking up alone one morning in an apartment in South Africa and I’m 37 years old. Alternatively, things work out here, and I’m 37 and happy in Taiwan. Fight the battle where it matters. “Please come back!” Twigs after final embraces. “Next year, really!” Taiwan for no special reason, the place is all right. Be who you are or who you become, where it will matter. Money and women. Leave me alone, comfort me. More answers than questions, if I can only remember the answers. Jobs, projects, credibility. Antique cabinets and old tables. Sticky sweat, winter, barbecue, summer, movies. Saturday afternoons with friends and family. Book royalties, sex, girlfriends, marriage, getting old alone, going mad, holding hands, picnics, poetry, health reasons, old flats, new houses, cars, bicycles, penniless poets, things that work out, things that don’t work out, issues, problems, social acceptance, shyness, self-protection, friendships, cigarettes, email, boxes, money. Oh, and revolutions, civil war, and heavy artillery.

SATURDAY, 24 APRIL 2004

New Faith/New Identity

Conversion to a particular religion always implies a transformation of identity.

Question: If a person converts to a particular religion, does it necessarily imply that he or she is not happy with the person they have been up until that point? How much does this have to do with faith, or a particular “truth”, and how much with the human need to feel safe by means of identity – if not always in the immediate vicinity, for example Christians in certain areas of Pakistan, but “safe” in the Bigger Scheme of Things?

[Additional thought: Each person’s conversion and associated joining of a particular community of faith confirm the “truths” of that religion. Why? Because yet another person has considered it, and confirmed it with his or her conversion. This makes the “truths” of a particular religion even more valid for those who adhere to them, no matter what religion it is, and regardless of the specific doctrine that is preached.]

______________________

TUESDAY, 13 APRIL 2004

Statement 1: Eventually many people become aware of the fact that the odds are loaded against them, and even if things turn out okay for them, there are masses of others for whom it will never turn out well. People are also aware of their above-average intelligence in the animal kingdom – which, among other things, means that they know how to end their own lives. Reasons why a person does not do it include lack of courage to jump in front of a train, concern for loved ones, or even vague ideas about what might happen to their “soul”. Measures are taken to start “making things worthwhile” …

Statement 2: To say that good things are not possible, is just not truthful.

Question … How much importance should one attach to your ideal vision of how things ought to be, your ideal place and living environment, and your ideal role in society? How much premium should one place on things that are “always possible”, if the fact that it is not in the process of becoming reality is depressing you more and more every day? Or is this the “devil” whispering discouragement in my ear? (13:16)

And answer: Why does one have these “ideal” visions? Is it because your current situation does not meet your needs?! Or perhaps because the long-term sustainability of your current life is all too possible, and all too horrible?! (13:20)

WEDNESDAY, 14 APRIL 2004

Is it me, or is it Environment Z?

Social identity is more important than I would sometimes like to admit. In the light of this it is appropriate to mention that I am not too comfortable in typical male bonding scenarios; I am not much of a “man’s man”.

Does it bother me? No, I just want to mention it because I thought about it, and I wanted to acknowledge it.

Also important is that if you do not handle this type of situation in the right way, it can lead to a lack of confidence and reduced self-esteem in the type of environment where it happens to be the standard, or the main criterion for esteem and respect.

* * *

This can also be applied to a wider context. Personality Aspect X may not be one that defines you, or one with which you closely associate yourself, but this very personality aspect may be an important benchmark for respect in Environment Z. Because you do not carry a sufficient degree of X, you are not necessarily respected in that environment. It then becomes part of your self-perception in Environment Z, and it might lead to reduced self-esteem.

The secret? In Environment Q you may just be respected for precisely the absence of Personality Aspect X. So, it is quite probably a case of nothing inherently wrong with you, just with you in that particular environment.

______________________