Assorted Notes

TUESDAY, 8 JUNE 2004

So that the masses know

Being in a loving relationship is what makes life worth living for many people. I am not in a loving relationship, so I have to try a lot harder to make my life worth living. My attempts may ultimately prove to be inadequate, but until that day comes, I plan to keep my collar to the wind. And continue walking.

Life is a joy ride

I reckon I may not make it.

I know what my teenage years were like. I know how my twenties played out, and I am currently ticking off my thirties one year at a time. What will my forties be like? My fifties? Will I even make it to forty? Do I even want to make it?

The fact of the matter is this, I bet everything I believe in, my hopes, the value and meaning of my life as well as what is still going to make my life worth living, I bet everything on the miracle of meaningful relationships with a few other people!

* * *

This is how it is: Adam lived alone in Paradise. He thought it a good place, but he felt lonely. Then God made him a wife. And then they were happy. That is where the story should have ended.

But when they did something wrong – they ate.

From the tree.

Of knowledge.

* * *

On my way back from town, and I reckon: I will make it. Many of the people I see every day are not going to make it, but I will.

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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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