Category: Post Untitled, volume one

TUESDAY, 23 MARCH 2004

My moment zero was a cold winter’s day in late July 1995. I started the day along a highway outside Port Elizabeth, reckoning I should get a lift to Cape Town “within the hour”. Eight hours later I was still waiting, this time on a bench across from the city library, with a bus ticket I had bought with my final claim to earthly riches. I could hardly string two words together on the topic of my future – and reality gnawed on my backside like a rabid street dog …

WEDNESDAY, 24 MARCH 2004

What was all the fuss about?

I feel a strange desire to ask myself why I was so eager to return to South Africa at the beginning of February. Here are the four main reasons:

1. I had a problem with submitting myself to tests to prove I am healthy enough to stay in this country.

2. I knew if I were to remain in Taiwan I would have had to start with new classes, which meant I would have had to start functioning again in an environment where I would have had to submit myself as an anonymous foreigner (or then as “Mister Brown”) to an employment relationship where I would have been the one selling my labour, and therefore I would have had to act according to a particular predefined idea of a “foreign teacher”.

3. I realized that I had just enough money in the bank to be able to go home within a few weeks.

4. Credibility (and possibly self-respect). I knew if I had decided not to implement the plan (as was the case at the end), I as main character in my own story would have to concede once again that “I decided to stay after all,” rather than “Revolution! The Writer Goes Home!” I desperately needed to call out in joy, rather than to whisper something in shame …

It is like one should expect: Life is a wild mare – she bounces like a crazed animal, and you’d better make sure you stay in the saddle.

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MONDAY, 15 MARCH 2004

A rediscovery of an ancient idea: Plato’s philosophy of “ideas” that are universal and timeless, the “original reality” and the “empirical reality” as manifestation of the original “form” or idea. “I, now” is thus a manifestation of the original reality/form/pattern/concept namely, “human”.

* * *

At the beginning we are only ideas in each other’s heads. Only later do we become more concrete manifestations of who we really are.

SATURDAY, 20 MARCH 2004

The spirit of ideas

To grapple with someone’s ideas is to engage with the spirit of that person.

Can it be said that to exist without proof is still to exist?

To have existed, without proof in the present for past existence, is still to have existed.

“Proof of existence”, in the sense of something that had been created by the one that existed, is an object in itself yet related to the creator of the proof – proving the past existence of something or someone, but also having an existence of its own.

It can therefore be said that Plato’s works are proof of his past existence, but the “Works of Plato” are also objects that exist independently of its creator … in practice if not in theory. I can read “Plato’s” ideas without ever being aware of “Plato-as-creator of ideas” or without ever having known the person that was called “Plato”.

Nevertheless, to engage with someone’s ideas is to communicate with the “spirit” of that person.

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THURSDAY, 11 MARCH 2004

59 words

A big house and a big car? Not my style. A three-bedroom house in a quiet suburb or a large town, and a life devoted to family, charity, study and creative works (specifically the Written Word). This is who and what I am; where and how I want to live; and what I want to do with my life.

(59 words – a decade to sort it out among all the possibilities)

SATURDAY, 13 MARCH 2004

Snakes shed their skin

To develop – to evolve – is to some extent similar to a snake shedding its skin (already said, I know).

What this means in practice is that opinions change, as do aspects of identity, hairstyle, and clothing style.

Sometimes it also happens that dysfunctional relationships are left behind, relationships that no longer are what they were at first and that no longer have the value they had at an earlier stage of your life. Sometimes it is a necessary consequence of personal development, and must be accepted as such by the person who is serious about not inhibiting his or her development as a human being, and who wants to enter into and maintain relationships in an honest way.

MONDAY, 15 MARCH 2004

On civilisation and barbarians

Some argue that one should do whatever you need to do to make your life worth living. In practice, this amounts to a conflict of interest, destructive rivalries, and sometimes mutually destructive eye-for-eye action and reaction. Constructive ways in which thousands, even millions of individuals in one geographic area manage the highest principle – to make one’s own life worthwhile – is called “civilisation”.

[The world, or worlds that qualify as “civilisation” in a common understanding of history and society were built and are still being built on “agreements”. In many cases these agreements mean that one person exploits another to the former’s advantage, an exploitation that sometimes leads to the destruction – directly or indirectly – of the life of the exploited person. Judgment may also be expressed in no uncertain terms against groups, communities, businesses, and political and religious institutions that exploit people for the sake of the survival of a more powerful minority.]

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TUESDAY, 2 MARCH 2004

We all have “files” on each other. My file on “Yolanda Y” might say she is this or that, that she likes this or that, behaves this way in this or another situation. “She has these strengths and weaknesses. Keep an eye on this or that …”

We all expect the people we know and call our friends (and on whom we therefore have “files”) to be the persons we think they are in order to facilitate our confidence and trust in them.

Sometimes our “file” versions of people do however tend toward simplistic caricatures, with certain aspects of personality emphasised for the simple reason that they fit us better than is the case with other aspects of their personality.

Beware of this – no one likes to be reduced to a caricature.

It is however true that we sometimes unconsciously encourage this process of simplification of ourselves. If a person is uncertain about his or her identity, it is usually comforting when people say, “You always say (X, Y or Z),” or “You always get angry when someone does something like that,” or even “I knew you’d say that (because you always do).”

It always annoys me when people sketch me in their own minds as a simple caricature. I know I do it myself sometimes (possibly to make who I am more tolerable to people I am with?), so I cannot always blame people if they play along. The truth is that I reserve the right to feel different than I did yesterday, to act differently than I did last Sunday, and to have other interests, or to focus on different activities than what the “files” others have on me dictate.

Of course there must be a degree of resemblance between who you are today, what you say, what you do and how you act, and what the case was the day before. But these things are liquid, and change over time.

A more ideal situation would be one where our “files” on each other remain open, with broad margins for new information and mental pictures that keep pace with changes. The alternative is that we will be “friends” with caricatures who are mainly our own handiwork, and who we may find in the course of time will become “unreliable” because they “suddenly” no longer look like they used to, or say this or that or behave or react in a certain manner in some or other situation.

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