Assorted Notes

THURSDAY, 14 APRIL 2016

Point 1.

It is difficult to say what I believe in.

Point 2.

It is difficult for me to commit to anything, because I would have to believe in it 100%, and I would have to constantly sell that commitment to myself.

Point 3.

I wish I could see more cosmic report-type writing: I am aware of my existence; I have learned to read and write; I’ve developed identity; I survive (how?); I function (how?); I write about what I think, how I feel and how I experience things.

If I do discover such a long-term writing project from someone else, I wouldn’t compare it to my own literary efforts. I would rejoice. I would be curious to read what that person thinks, how they feel, and how they experience life.

Point 4.

Ten or fifteen years ago I believed that I could write something, and someone will read it and think: “This guy is right. It needs to be so. I will act differently from now on.”

Point 5.

On Tuesday, 2 June 2015 I wrote: [Perhaps my life is not so different] from the next person’s after all, and I am indeed wasting my time with my so-called writing.

On the other hand, there is a slim possibility that I have lived my adult life so far in a way that has given me a unique view of human existence and the lives we live, and that a combination of personality and tertiary education could make it possible for me to write something that would make someone else say: “I like the wording of this. It’s not really something that I haven’t thought of myself, but the way he talks about it makes it easier for me to organise my own thoughts.”

Point 6.

On Friday, 31 July 2015 I rolled the drum for an important insight: We often say, “But someone else has already said that” or “Someone else is already doing that.”

Fact is, not everyone heard when that other person said whatever they had said; not everyone has seen that particular movie or read that specific book. And even if people have heard what that man or woman had said, or if they have seen a certain movie or read a particular book, they may have forgotten about the lights that had come on in their heads!

We all forget things. This, at the end of the day, is why important things need to be repeated.

Point 7.

On Thursday, 28 January 2016 I wrote: Perhaps the best novel that will ever be written in any language has already been written. But still, we have to keep writing. Perhaps the most generous human being who will ever live has been dead for decades or even centuries. But still we need to keep on giving.

MONDAY, 18 APRIL 2016

I have been thinking about this thing that I don’t really know what I believe in. Then it hit me like a thunderbolt this afternoon: I believe in trees.

Think about it: trees are aesthetically pleasing; they provide food and shelter to people, animals, birds and insects; in many cases a single tree is an ecological system in which some creatures live out their entire life cycles; trees clean polluted air and make it easier for people to breathe; trees provide wood for houses and huts and other shelters, and for furniture; trees provide wood for heat; trees provide paper for books; a person can become an activist for the cause of trees – in fact, many people are already devoting their lives to this cause; trees can keep growing for hundreds of years; and last but not least, if you suddenly find yourself standing naked outside one day, you can simply walk over to the nearest tree, gently break off a sprig of leaves, and cover your face.

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MONDAY, 11 APRIL 2016

As a child, I regarded the Great Trek (migration of thousands of Boers from the British-controlled Cape colony to the hinterland of Southern Africa) more as Biblical history than as ordinary history, and I knew very well that one thought differently about Biblical history, you talked about it differently, and you studied it in a different manner.

Like the Biblical stories, the Great Trek was filled with super figures: Piet Retief, Gerrit Maritz, Andries Pretorius, and the woman who said that she would rather walk barefoot over the Drakensberg than to suffer again under British rule. There were also arch-enemies of the calibre you could only find in the Bible – the most infamous, the most vicious of which was Dingane, the king of the Zulus.

Then there were events which were of such epic nature that as a child you had no choice but to think of them as Biblical type-stories. In the first place there was the trek across the plains and later across the Drakensberg mountain range. Then there was the murder of Piet Retief and his party by their arch-enemy and his Zulu impis. And finally there was the epic triumph at Blood River, when against all expectations the Trekkers defeated their enemy who had outnumbered them ten to one. To seal the Biblical quality of the Great Trek story, God was also there, on the side of the Trekkers, as he was on the side of Israel more than twenty centuries earlier.

Seen from this angle, the Great Trek was the Boers’ Exodus story; the Eastern Cape was Babylon; Natal and the Free State and later the Transvaal were the Promised Land; Piet Retief was Moses; Andries Pretorius – Joshua; the English were the Egyptians; and Dingane was the Pharaoh, or Goliath that had to be slain on the battlefield by the small group of farmers, or then, by the faithful warrior David.

As a young student in a changing South Africa in the early nineties, I became aware of a process under historians to demythologise the Great Trek. It was apparently not such a massive movement of people after all; only something like 10% of the descendants of the original European immigrants had actually taken part in the trek. The victory at Blood River was also not really a miracle at all; the Trekkers after all did have modern weapons, and the Zulus had only had spears and hardened leather shields to protect themselves from the bullets.

On the one hand, then, you had the Great Trek as mythology that had been used for decades by politicians and the ruling elite to foster ethnic nationalism; on the other hand, discredited history, something that was not really as one had always been taught.

As I recently rediscovered, the truth is much more interesting than any inflated propaganda. If you look at the history of the Great Trek with an open mind, you will discover men and women and children of flesh-and-blood who had fears and doubts; people who loved and who lost people that had meant the world to them; people who ultimately hoped to settle down to a simple life once the dust had settled.

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From an overview on The Great Trek Uncut: Escape from British Rule – The Boer Exodus from the Cape Colony 1836, by Robin Binckes: “The author distances himself from the noble characters stereotyped for the past two centuries and portrays them in their true light: wonderful, courageous people with human feelings, strengths and failings.”

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THURSDAY, 7 APRIL 2016

Earlier this evening I read a note I had made on Friday, 28 August 2015. The note is about success, but as the story often goes, it is more about failure. I really like the piece. I was annoyed when I confirmed what I had suspected: I haven’t yet finished editing the text so it hasn’t been published.

I reckon the reason for my procrastination is that the part about failure leaves me a little too naked, too vulnerable.

Suddenly a thought pounced on me like a crazed cat: Own your failures.

I am already honest about my failures, but I have been thinking for quite some time about the discomfort I still experience because of it.

The fact is, failure in my efforts to make more money since 2006 is an integral and important part of my life. I shouldn’t try to cover it up nor should I coat it with sugar. I shouldn’t try to talk it away, or talk about it as if it isn’t quite true (that is anyway too much of a challenge).

Just like I accept other things I have done that I am happy about as part of my story, so failure is also part of my story. It is my failure. It has been my process. They are my lessons learned. It is my emotional discomfort and my disappointments. I have paid dearly for this, and I should do with it what I want.

I have failed in many endeavours I have embarked on in my life. This too, is part of me.

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MONDAY, 4 APRIL 2016

By the time you’re a young adult, eighteen to early twenties, the people who will become the next generation of young adults are seven to twelve years behind you – at that time children, or at most teenagers to whom you pay little attention.

By the time you are thirty, that next group of birthlings are ready to take over the spots you and your age group had recently vacated as “young adults”.

By the time you are 35, that group of people are themselves between 23 and 28, which means it’s not uncommon for you to warm your hands at the same barbeque fire as at least the older members of the next generation. Friendships might be forged, and you may even get romantically involved with someone from this generation.

Time goes on. You hit forty. If you haven’t worked it out or noticed it yet, it will hit you soon enough: Yet another generation has made their appearance; people who are between seven and twelve years younger than the generation that had followed on your peer group. These new members of adulthood are at this stage ranging from high school age to mid-twenties.

And you know: If the world belongs to people with the most energy and vitality and ambition and even naïve idealism, the world now belongs to this group of young adults.

You reach the ripe age of 45, and the oldest members of that whole second generation who had reached maturity after you are now 30 years old. Some of them are married. Some have children. Chances are that they work for you, but it is also possible that you work for one of them, that a member of this generation is giving you instructions on what to do and what not to do.

You are mostly a stranger to this “second” group of new adults, but you have a reasonable idea of what’s important to them. References to their tastes and preferences are commonplace on TV and in everyday conversations, and it is their musings and ramblings that are pushed to the top of literary websites.

Chances are slim that your social circles will ever overlap. You shuffle past each other in crowded pubs. If you find yourself in a situation where silence would be awkward, they might be reluctant to say too much because they might expect that you’ll be as critical as their parents about their appearance and the choices they make. You may also not be too talkative because you wouldn’t want to sound old, and heaven forbid you create the impression you’re trying to be cool.

And so time marches on. The forties, remarked someone who had gone through the strange process years ago, mark the old age of your youth – your fifties being the youth of old age.

One thing about this fifth decade of your earthly existence is nothing new: If you’re lucky enough to slow down every now and then in the rush to stay alive, you might just find yourself once again trying to sort out who and what you are and who you want to be, more or less based on who you were ten and twenty years ago, and considering who and what you hope to be in the future – provided you’re still to be found in the land of the living in another two or three decades’ time.

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MONDAY, 28 MARCH 2016

The Byzantine Empire is a good metaphor for human life: power in youth, vanity because of it, decline as time passes, betrayal by people you trusted, last desperate attempts to save your legacy and do something worth remembering, and then, the inevitable end.

Read more about the Byzantine Empire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire

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