Category: Post Untitled, volume three

FRIDAY, 9 MARCH 2007

[Background: When I was student, my older sister signed surety for me one year so that I could get a loan.]

Got a call from my mother today: “Has your sister called you yet?”

In the first place, my mother calls me from South Africa? I think crisis. Has my sister called me yet? I think crisis with my sister.

Turns out it is [redacted] Bank who has, as they call it, “tracked down” my sister, telling her they cannot find me anywhere, and despite the fact that I – who cannot be “found” – is giving them money every single month, they want more. And my sister has to give them more right now, otherwise they are going to make a complaint and open a case with the police and my sister’s employer will have to be notified and it will be a blot on her name and it’s one hell of a crisis. And then the inevitable: “Your sister is hysterical.”

I sat and I listened, and then after a few minutes, I exploded. I pay them each and every month and they have my email and I am tired of this, and I didn’t ask for the loan in the first place and I have already paid them more than R100,000 and what else do I have to do …

After an hour, a 7-Eleven chicken burger, a brown rice milk and two cigarettes I had calmed down sufficiently to call “Christina” and tell her to write me up for more money from the end of next month.

A few important points:

Point 1. Why did I lose my cool? Embarrassment, the shame that bears down on you when you are “caught out”, when you fail to do “what you are supposed to do”, when you want to play according to your own rules and it’s not yet working out. Oh, and because you are suddenly standing in front of the establishment again, hat in hand, to be reprimanded because you committed that primal sin: you took money from the bank – and you are not giving it back fast enough. (Forget about the fact that I have paid them back double the original amount a long time ago, because as a result of interest I still “owe” them money.)

Point 2. A bank is not much more than a government-supported organised crime syndicate, even when they play according to the accepted rules. Smiling, shiny faces on billboards notwithstanding.

Point 3. All of us – my sister, the bank, and I – have a leg to stand on. However, I believe throwing a poison pill in the soup by claiming they couldn’t find me was an immoral tactic for which someone at the bank should take responsibility.

Point 4. This situation reminds me of the film, The Crying Game, where the guy tells the story of the frog and the scorpion, with the frog agreeing to help the scorpion cross the river. Despite assurances and promises that he won’t do it, the scorpion stings the frog halfway across the river. “Why did you do that?” the frog asks. “Because it’s in my nature,” the scorpion replies. “What did you expect?” So, I think, it is with banks, debt, and the way banks deal with people who owe them money. It is, after all, a bank. It is in the nature of their business to do whatever they deem necessary, no matter how immoral, when it is in their interest. What else can we expect? (Ends: Monday, 12 March 2007)

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FRIDAY, 8 DECEMBER 2006

What I want to become, what I want to be, the lifestyle I want to make my own, the type of days and nights I would like to make typical of my life is not meant for everyone.

Here is my advice, to myself and any other person with a dream: Keep on believing, keep working on it, comfort yourself when you have to work long days and nights on projects with no end in sight, and with no fruit waiting to be picked and enjoyed. Ease your frustrations, especially those times when you think you are a Moses who would see the Promised Land but never enter it.

Things will come together. Believe in that … and keep working on making it a reality.

MONDAY, 11 DECEMBER 2006

This is what I want: A stone house on top of a hill, on an island a good distance from the nearest mainland. It must be windy – not necessarily all day, but it should pick up from, say, late afternoon, and the evenings must be at least cool if not cold.

All morning and afternoon I’ll be in my office working on my projects. At four o’clock or so – just as the wind starts picking up – I will take a break, first for some tea, then for a walk on the beach, then dinner. (Maybe I can also fit in a nap on the living room couch with the TV’s sound turned down.)

After dinner and a little TV, I will continue working. Weekends we will go to the mainland, stay in a small hotel, spend some time with friends and family, go shopping, walk around, eat at some decent restaurants … and by Sunday afternoon we’ll head back to the island.

Translation: I want to have enough money so that I can get on with what every soul on this planet would do if they knew of the possibility, or: if everyone had a desire to do more with their earthly existence than a pet or a vulture does with theirs. I would work on my own education, expand my knowledge and sharpen my abilities, and apply my knowledge and skills to work that fit my aptitude and personality.

How can this life ever be possible?

It can only be possible with a money machine that will generate income with the minimum of maintenance – year in and year out.

TUESDAY, 19 DECEMBER 2006

Ideas are like butterflies, and I am like a child chasing all of them and therefore failing to catch a single one – despite the large number of possibilities.

FRIDAY, 22 DECEMBER 2006

Taiwan is not in my room – reflections from the inside

OR: A personal agenda: shortened, with added detail

THURSDAY, 28 DECEMBER 2006

Is spiritual development in the modern world possible without financial independence? Would son of a local ruler, Siddhartha Gautama ever have been able to start on the journey to become Lord Buddha if he didn’t come from a position of financial comfort?

SUNDAY, 31 DECEMBER 2006

One of many lessons learned during 2006: Two ways to make money:

1. You sell – your time, your knowledge, your skills, your experience, even your body.

2. You speculate – in shares, casino games, property, foreign exchange, horse races, a coffee shop, and other opportunities where there is a possibility to get away with a profit.

______________________

FRIDAY, 3 NOVEMBER 2006

[Background: In October 2006, I read in an e-book about a certain Roulette strategy that people apparently use to make money at online casinos. The strategy requires that you wait for something to not happen for a few spins and then you start placing a series of bets on that thing happening shortly. If you do not win on the first spin of the wheel, you increase your stake a little bit. If you do not win on the second spin, you do it again. In theory, you are supposed to win after a few spins, and because you progressively bet more with each spin, you should win all the money back that you have lost until that point. The progression of increasingly higher stakes goes up to eleven bets. But, explains the guy from the e-book, don’t worry too much about this because the progression of bets rarely goes that high.]

I’ll be quick.

Last Friday I made a deposit at [an online casino], and by Wednesday I started “working”. Thursday (yesterday) I deposited R200 at [another casino], and half an hour later I started playing there as well.

One thing did make me a little nervous: What happens if the column where I place increasingly higher stakes still hasn’t come up after eleven spins? I knew this was technically possible, and the e-book guy who initially brought the Roulette story to my attention said something about 94.6%.

Third session at [the first casino], it happens: seventh spin, eighth spin (I gulp), ninth spin … tenth spin … “Now it has to work …” I place R67 on the column for the eleventh and hopefully final round of the series. Click “Spin” … and it loses.

“Okay,” I thought, “the other day I worked out you play R101 if you lose eleven times in a row.” Place the bet. Click. Spin. Lose. White in the face. Move a R25-chip with a shaky hand to the edge of the offending column. Spin. Win. R75. I have R99 left in my account. I just lost R241.

MONDAY, 20 NOVEMBER 2006

I am tired. I am tired of so-called money projects that either never get done, or that move three steps forward, and 2.999 steps back.

I want – I need to and I want to forget about money for just one evening, or for just one night and a day, or maybe even for one night and the rest of the week. Because at this stage, tonight, even success may be too much for me.

WEDNESDAY, 22 NOVEMBER 2006

Brand thinks his life is boring and he doesn’t spend enough time doing what he enjoys. The only way he can make his daily life bearable is to convince himself that things will be different in six months’ time. In six months’ time his life will be more exciting; in six months he will spend more time on the things he enjoys – writing, studying, and so on.

What Brand does not realise – or maybe he does realise this, but he is apparently powerless or unwilling to do anything about it – is that “six months” is renewed every six months. Every six months he swears anew: “In six months’ time …”

Or, closer to reality: Every day a previous six-month period ends. Every day he solemnly commits himself to the following six months.

Every day, every month, every year. Every six months.

Is he powerless to break this seemingly endless cycle? Is he going to turn 37, and 40, and 45 and 50 and still believe that everything will be different in six months’ time?

No one can be blamed if they thought, “I sure am glad I’m not this Brand fellow.”

I don’t have that option. I have no choice but to look myself in the mirror and say: “It is me, this ‘Brand’. It is I who cannot turn my goals into reality.” Or can I? (Just had to ask, otherwise it looks like I don’t have any faith in myself.)

FRIDAY, 24 NOVEMBER 2006

The students are busy with their writing exercises, so I am sitting here doing nothing. I have nothing to say. I am tired, and a little discouraged. I am 35 years old. My biggest writing project thus far is finished, and I know how to reach my target audience – I even how to get them to pay for what they read. I do have to raise a shitload of money to pay for proofreading and stuff like that, though. I also have to raise a shitload of money to pay for – and here I am sincere when I say I am blessed – Natasja’s and my wedding [we had gotten engaged recently]. I also have to raise a shitload of money to have my teeth fixed, pay off my debt, sort out my stuff in South Africa, and go on vacation early next year. I also have to raise a shitload of money to try and alleviate my parents’ suffering. I also have to raise a shitload of money to invest in projects that can continue to earn me lots of money in the future so I can continue to be what I am now: a free man.

SATURDAY, 25 NOVEMBER 2006

If you strive for personal freedom, but at the cost of another person’s quest for personal freedom, then you are not serving the cause of freedom; you are merely serving your own selfish needs.

WEDNESDAY, 29 NOVEMBER 2006

My writing projects served a purpose in the past – they had to provide proof of my existence in a period of my life when there was, for the most part, no one to verify it – or no one that meant much to me or to whom I meant anything. (The idea was inspired by the 2004 film Shall We Dance? Susan Sarandon’s character explains in one scene that in a marriage the two people agree to be witnesses to each other’s lives.)

My question is: When I return to fresh literary projects, what purpose will they serve then? Possibly the same? Difference in degree with some other motives?

______________________

THURSDAY, 12 OCTOBER 2006

Natasja is the type of person who makes one believe in life again, and in love.

We all weigh ourselves up against other people; we watch what they do with their lives, and how they see themselves. Based on these observations and accompanying self-criticism, we determine our own value. In many cases, the picture doesn’t look all that encouraging.

Still, it is in relation to other people that our value is actually manifested. The above statement about Natasja places her in an elite class of noble earthlings: One Who Makes Another Person Believe in Life and Love.

The strange thing is, we often fail to appreciate our own value until we become that person for someone else.

* * *

[On the back of a piece of junk mail, with no date, but I stapled it to a page with notes from Thursday, 12 October 2006]

You cannot claim to be a moral person, nor to live a moral life, if you are incapable of immorality to begin with. It is only when you are capable of an immoral act, and you choose not to turn possibility into action, that you can claim whatever reward awaits a moral person.

(To use a simple religious metaphor: One cannot go to “heaven” because you didn’t commit any “sins” if you were incapable of sinning in the first place.)

FRIDAY, 13 OCTOBER 2006

At around 04:00 this morning I went to the bathroom. As I was standing there, a thought formed in the blood vessels that are my brain: “I am an unsuccessful entrepreneur.”

Startled, and a little confused, I tried to make myself feel better by reminding myself that before I became an unsuccessful entrepreneur, I was an unpublished writer.

So much for that.

* * *

Perhaps the author of that one e-book is right: the natural condition for human existence is happiness.

That means to feel miserable and constantly under stress is unnatural and must be resisted at all costs as an abomination.

WEDNESDAY, 25 OCTOBER 2006

If one isn’t always two, do you really need a chip on your shoulder to see that?

______________________

TUESDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER 2006

I am becoming increasingly aware of the shortcomings in my understanding of life and how things work – and I don’t think it is because I have forgotten anything that I have previously understood!

It is like reading a book; then you turn the page … and nothing. You go back: there’s the text and the beginning or the first part of a sentence, but the sentence doesn’t continue on the next page – as if it hasn’t been written yet.

That tells me that I have to go look for the rest of the text, or I have to locate the right author – or I have to wait for the rest of the text to come to me so that I can fill in the rest of the pages myself.

MONDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER 2006

17:33

I have to get myself another place to live. It feels like I am living and working in my office. Weekends are a little more special because then Natasja comes to visit – but it is still my office! Then she watches TV, and now and then I watch TV with her – in my office. And since I also have sleeping quarters where I work, we sleep there – in my office.

On weekdays, I get up somewhere between nine and ten o’clock. An hour later I am working. Maybe I break for lunch, and at about four o’clock I take a shower, go out to teach a class, get dinner on the way home, eat the dinner while watching a little TV, and then I continue with my work – until two or three o’clock in the morning. I do this Monday to Friday. Saturday is the same, except that I have no classes. Sunday I try to watch a little more TV.

Seven fucking days a week – in my office.

18:03

What then of the idea of a home office? No problem, even ideal. But what I have learned is that your workspace and your living space should be properly separated. That is why I have to find another place – not because there is something terribly wrong with my current apartment, but because it is no longer a home. I therefore do not have a home-office; I have an office-home.

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