Tag: exile

Man at a station

WEDNESDAY, 4 FEBRUARY 2004

A man at a train station asks the clerk behind the counter how far a certain amount of money would take him. I am sitting behind my computer, a day before I have to undergo compulsory medical tests as the first step to stay in Taiwan and I ask: How far can NT$50,000 take me?

I am desperate to go away. I am also desperate to go back to South Africa, as the ideal destination of the first action, but not necessarily the only possibility.

What are my options? What do I need to do?

I need to ferry back to South Africa about twenty boxes of ornaments and other items. I need a few thousand to give myself a reasonable chance of survival in the first few months in South Africa. I have made promises about visiting my sister and her first-born in England, and my good friend from long ago in the Netherlands.

[…]

Another option is to move to another city in Taiwan. That will get rid of the furniture; I can send at least half of the boxes to South Africa, and I can earn enough money after six months from the new position to ship the rest. I will first go back to South Africa, and then show my face in Europe for two or three weeks.

I can also get a six-month contract in China. That will also get rid of the furniture. I can send all my boxes to South Africa, teach English and study Chinese for six months, and work on material with a slightly different flavour than what I’ve been whiling my time away with the past five years. (“No exile essays?” you might ask. No. The protracted process of lifting my exile will, however, be a strong possibility.)

What would you have done? It’s a great pity that there’s no one whose advice in this area I respect enough to ask for it. Why this is so I can only speculate. Maybe it’s got to do with my peculiar situation, with all my previous uncertainties about life; where I come from; where I’m going; two years in Korea and then the lifting of that stay-away action; eight months of poverty in South Africa; the shock of enough money in the first few months in Taiwan to pay cash for a computer, and books, and music, and new clothes and an expensive watch; the security of a three-bedroom apartment that I only had to share with a few insects; mechanised transport which meant that I wasn’t dependent on anyone else to go to the movies; money to go to the movies …

It’s natural for the body to strive for a state of tensionlessness. I left Korea to ease emotional stress. I knew I had to do it, not because someone had offered it to me as a piece of advice, but because possibly after breakfast, before lunch, in a movie, or behind the controls of a video game I despondently thought, “I feel like going home … as soon as possible.”

The moment this idea took hold of me, my brain came up with specific plans and actions that had to be taken. The organism did not imagine servant’s quarters with pink walls and sponges for a bed, or a boring part-time job in an office in Johannesburg. The organism did not know how it was going to feel to pedal seven kilometres to office every day on a borrowed bicycle. The organism did not know he was going to be broke within a few months. All he knew was that the anxiety alert was flickering “Red! Red! Red!”

My anxiety alert is flickering red. It’s the easiest thing in the world to go piss in a paper cup tomorrow at the hospital, to get another stamp in my passport in two weeks that will allow me another few months to gently caress my unpacked ornaments and wall hangings as if they were photos of loved ones. Will it relieve my stress? I have twelve hours to make up my mind about that.

I almost wish this whole going back theme was just a literary ploy to make up for not wanting to write short stories. I wish there was someone who could advise me.

My time is almost up. It’s Wednesday, 4 February. I have to decide what I’m going to do. If I decide to stay … then that’s how it is.

I also solemnly pledge that the words “exile”, “boxes”, “ticket” and “plans” will not be used in any pieces that will be written between now and when I pack all my boxes, buy my plane ticket, and with half-baked plans finally end my exile. I don’t quite know what I’ll do, but I’m sure I’ll think of something to write about (the “Fauna and flora” idea fell through, the “Trip to the beach” took place but failed to inspire any writing, and how much more can I say on “Place and identity”?)

Verily, verily, I say to myself, I’m standing at a station. Forward or backward, left or right, jump over the rail or run away. Beijing, Middelburg, London, Amsterdam, Bronkhorstspruit, or Mountain of the Vulture Town. I know nothing.

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About friends, and other personal reasons

Background to the texts “Advice about staying or coming back,” “Slave to the word” and “About friends and other personal reasons”: A good friend of mine who was also living in Kaohsiung at the time mentioned via email during her vacation in Cape Town that she felt like staying in South Africa. I suspected that this was only emotion speaking, but I nevertheless took the opportunity to say certain things.

——————–

WEDNESDAY, 4 FEBRUARY 2004

[…]

Maybe you haven’t even read the last letter, but to entertain myself, and to clear up uncertainties in the one before that, I decided there was room for a Third Letter.

[…]

You mentioned in your email that friends are an important motivation in your possible decision to come back. What I want to say here and now is that friends are not a sustainable motivation.

[…]

We enter this world alone, and most of the time we go out alone. People – family, friends, spouses, lovers – are part of our lives, for short or long periods of the journey. We all know we need other people. We also know that we have to be good to each other while we share each other’s lives, partly because it says something of our own nature, and also because we have to carry both the pain and the fellowship with us on our journey.

So it is with us who know each other here. We used to be strangers, but with the passage of time we began to need each other to remain standing for however long we decided to get stuck here.

But – this is not our country, and none of us has immigrated here formally. We must at some stage go our own directions, even if some of us stay here a bit longer than others.

My personal reasons for staying here have expired, although I’m still grateful for those who have kept me standing for the time I’ve been here. If I don’t get on that flight on Thursday, 4 March, it will be to give myself a better chance to visit my sister in England, and to be able to mail more than five boxes of books home.

However, as I mentioned yesterday, I no longer have any illusions about cabinets and tables and exercise bikes that have to be taken along for the journey forward. This is the new state of affairs – for financial reasons, and because the conventional sequence is to, at least temporarily, establish yourself first, and then to start collecting furniture. The simple fact is I’ve never been able to admit that what I’ve been doing for the past five years have, for all practical purposes, amounted to me having established myself here.

The price for the lifting of my self-imposed exile was exceptionally high until now, partly because I might have wanted, subconsciously, to get clarity about who and what I was before I continued my life in my own country. These questions have been resolved.

The price for repatriation is now lower than ever before. If I still choose not to pay the price now, it will mean that I attach a higher value to staying here, right? What value could I conceivably still attach to staying in Taiwan? Even more so if I lecture my best friends on why they should leave their own colourful walls behind for an undefined future in the Land of Family and Barbecue in the Backyard.

My own beliefs on the subject of “voluntary exile” in a foreign country, and the reasons why it is sometimes necessary have been well formulated by now and documented in dozens of pieces of text. Little remains to be said … on this subject.

A question does force itself on me: Can we, even though we are the best of friends, ever really understand why one person is so desperate to leave, and the other so convinced of the need to return?

[…]

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Slave to the word

Background to the texts “Advice about staying or coming back,” “Slave to the word” and “About friends and other personal reasons”: A good friend of mine who was also living in Kaohsiung at the time mentioned via email during her vacation in Cape Town that she felt like staying in South Africa. I suspected that this was only emotion speaking, but I nevertheless took the opportunity to say certain things.

——————–

TUESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2004

[…]

I hate the role I sometimes try to play. I hate to pretend I understand more than the average guy. I hate to hold up a picture of someone who knows what he’s doing. Regardless of whether this is what you think of me, it’s the caricature that I sketch of myself on the social landscape.

Here are the facts: I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to return to South Africa on March 4th or stay here for another few months.

I have two choices: 1) stay here but take on more classes; or 2) go back to South Africa next month and fill my place outside all socio-economic classes of which I am aware. It’s a showdown of enormous proportions.

I always say I have my finger on my own pulse, but I’m starting to get the idea and I have underestimated something the past few months. I am addicted to writing. And not in the romantic sense of the word. A heroin addict will go through 72 hours of excruciating withdrawal symptoms if he quits the drug. I believe I’ll slide into a bottomless depression if I write less for the sake of more classes, for the sake of shipping all my furniture and all my cups and mugs and kitchen towels and pillows and old jeans I haven’t worn in four years back to South Africa, and to then be able to afford a life that won’t catch too much wind.

I’m in a difficult position. I have sold my soul for the sake of my cause. And perhaps my cause belongs to a Supreme Being, and then it’s okay, I guess. But I can no longer turn back. I have considered other options and have found them all wanting. I don’t even believe love can help me anymore. (Maybe it will work for a few weeks until I start making notes on the bedsheets while the woman is waiting for something more exciting …)

(At this point, my fingers almost caught fire. I went to buy some instant noodles, smoked a cigarette, talked to [another friend], and read my history book. I now feel somewhat better.)

I don’t think it’s a good idea to send the above text to you.

The fact that I’m apparently writing this text to you at 00:55 on Wednesday morning, 4 February whilst not even sure if you’re actually going to read it serves as a clear indication of how holy I regard The Word. As I sit here writing this text to myself – at the moment, more than to you, I still believe it is relevant to someone other than yours truly.

I wish you and I could trade bodies for 24 hours. I would very quickly resolve your issues, and you could … bump my head against the wall a few times to shake out the loose parts that have caused me to sleep like a baby for the last several years, and to be awake like a madman.

I think I have given up on the idea to send all my furniture back to South Africa. What am I going to do with it anyway? A caravan is too small for it, and I can’t put it in a tree house. And it’s going to get wet on the lawn in somebody’s garden.

If my plans to repatriate myself could be compared to negotiations, the balance of power has definitely shifted over the past year or two. Initially, the one part said, “I want to go back to South Africa.” Then the other part that was mainly responsible for me coming to Taiwan in the first place, would say: “Okay, give me X amount of cash for a house, a car, a new computer, new clothes, a wig, a dog, a cat, and a lawn mower, Y amount of books written, and Z amount of Chinese mastered. Then we’ll consider repatriation.”

Currently the latter party is begging for mercy. He’s willing to give up everything but the wig and the lawn mower, “as long as we can just go home as soon as possible”. And the character who was previously known for sentimental pleas must necessarily be the voice of reason – a role that is obviously new to him, but who else is going to do it if the arrogant one of earlier negotiations is on the point of losing his mind because of too many “plans” he has to keep track of?

Still, I hate to see you walking down a similar path: uncertainty, setting up home on the wrong side of the planet, strong opinions on the choices made by so many of our friends and contemporaries.

[Paragraph where I joke about setting up a business consulting lost souls.]

No, rather come back, finish painting your walls, and put fresh oranges in that bowl. In the meantime, I will burn all my furniture, barter my books on night markets, and acquire enough cash for a large caravan. When I finally return to our beautiful country, I’ll pester you with dozens of letters every week to make sure you don’t stay here longer than I did at the end. And to remind you to move your bowl of oranges every now and then. Small adjustments like that will make your eventual repatriation much easier on the soul.

______________________

Advice about staying or coming back

Background to the texts “Advice about staying or coming back,” “Slave to the word” and “About friends and other personal reasons”: A good friend of mine who was also living in Kaohsiung at the time mentioned via email during her vacation in Cape Town that she felt like staying in South Africa. I suspected that this was only emotion speaking, but I nevertheless took the opportunity to say certain things.

——————–

TUESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2004

My friend

[…]

You know my feelings on the subject of going home. I believe, and have believed it ever since my second year in this country, that the lifestyle we lead here makes it easy for us to deceive ourselves. We buy coffee mugs and lounge sets, and teaspoons and motorcycles; we paint our walls in strange colours, and we start relationships with people who can’t even find Stellenbosch or Pretoria on a map.

We do all these things in part because it’s natural, and partly to compensate ourselves for what we don’t have here: a community of loved ones. Some of us do find love here, and in such cases, things work out. But many of us know that the people who have always mattered most to us are far away. Too far.

Time goes on. We constantly formulate new plans, and we talk about buying a house, and about better socio-economic situations when we finally get so far to shift our teaspoons and paintbrushes to the Republic of Our Birth. Meanwhile, our lives go on, and we get older. On the other side of the planet our loved ones’ lives also continue, and they also get older. We become aware of this every time we go home for a few weeks, to among other reasons blow our hard-earned cash, in ways that would tell everyone who wanted to know that we are doing well in the foreign land.

Is it bad to go abroad? No. Sometimes we need to get away from people and environments that are important to us. Some of us do it because we have “issues”. Others do it because they are bored. There are also those who don’t do it because they necessarily want to but because the socio-economic prospects in their own country are such that they simply have to consider alternatives. Some of us do it for all these reasons, and a few others.

Each of us must, after the lapse of a few months or a few years, decide where our priorities lie. We have to decide whether this temporary arrangement will become permanent, and whether we’re willing to pay the price for it. Or we get to the point where we realise that, despite our personal issues, despite our view of a so-called conventional life, and despite the harsh social reality that will welcome us together with the customs officer back into our own country, we have no choice but to return because we are no longer willing to pay the price for the benefits of a life in whatever other country we have spent a few years.

You must decide where you stand with this issue. Maybe you choose to send an empty seat on that plane back to Taiwan. Maybe you decide to come back, but only for a few months. Or maybe you come back to fulfil your initial plan of another two years. Everything, as you well know, has a price.

As your friend, I repeat my earlier comments: I will miss your company, but if you decide not to come back, I will wish you luck.

[…]

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Post-exile, part 001

MONDAY, 2 FEBRUARY 2004

Why can’t I go home at the end of this month – February 2004?

[…]

I can state categorically that I don’t need a home with a nice address to produce literary material. The issue of a car and house were until recently very important because one of the main reasons for repatriation was marriage-and-children. This issue has also been addressed. If I can’t help myself, and a woman finds me attractive despite her best efforts not to … then that’s just how it is. But I’m not planning to car-and-house anymore just to advertise it as such in an Only the Lonely Corner with a picture of me from ten years ago.

What is it that could possibly keep me here in March, and April … and December 2007? Is it the woman at the fried calamari place that has smiled at me a few times? Is it because I want to improve my Chinese? Maybe I’d like to travel to Japan, and China, and … what were the other places again? Maybe I first want to get my EFL publishing business off the ground? Better reasons? Worse reasons? This is, thank god, not an “Exile” essay …

The only reason why I’m not shoving my books into a box with one hand while typing with the other can be summarised in two words: “furniture” and “money”. And considering that if I didn’t have furniture, money wouldn’t be much of a problem, it comes down to one thing: FURNITURE!

“Leave the damn furniture right here,” would perhaps be your advice.

“I’ve got about fifty boxes too,” would be my pathetic attempt at talking back.

But let’s talk straight: It’s February. It’s the month of medical examinations to prove I’m healthy enough to live amongst the old and the crazy, and possessed taxi drivers and gangsters. It’s also the month that I have to renew my visa, for a period of what has amounted over the past five years to another twelve months.

I am painfully aware that I have enough money to pay for the plane ticket I booked with so much hope in December. The single ticket will cost me NT$15,500. This will leave me with enough money to keep myself going for a month or two until I can start earning money in some miraculous way in South Africa (as I continue to spend at least twelve hours per day writing material that few people will ever read).

I am aware of this state of financial affairs. I am also aware of the fact that I have suffocated most of my personal issues, or bored them to death.

So I know how much money I have, and I know how many things I will not be able to do. In theory, I can stay here another few months … damn it, in theory, I can stay here another few months and probably add a few thousand to the few thousand I have in the bank. I know full well I could probably sell my two sets of EFL material – did you really think I spend the whole day composing my personal agenda? – to a local publisher.

However, this takes nothing away from the fact that nothing is keeping me here but the need for a little more money, and a few tables and chairs. Can I walk away from the pieces of furniture that other people discarded on street corners over the years, and that I dragged to my own apartment late at night with great enthusiasm? There’s the old cabinet with drawers and gauze-covered sliding doors at which I make my notes; the small, low bedside table; the wooden cupboard in the kitchen; the large wooden table under my computer; other small tables. Then there are the musical instruments I bought in moments of madness in 2000, sofas and sofa chairs, my exercise bike …

You have to sacrifice if you want to move forward. Or you have to hope you get enough capital from somewhere that will enable you to spend thousands of rands or dollars just to put your computer on the same wooden table in your own country.

I’m always so eager to talk of revolution. Can I really do what I have to do if I become aware of the price? Or am I holding on to blades of grass while a large hand stretches out to me? Am I stupider than I think?

Do I know so many “answers” and still I stupidly rush in the wrong direction?

TUESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2004

For a long time, I have ignored, or sidestepped the idea of balance. Balance, as I recently discovered again, is essentially about lack of tension, or at least as close as possible to this ideal situation. The idea is central to many religions. A return to the tension-less state before physical birth finds manifestation in for example the nirvana of Buddhism, and the paradise of Christianity and Islam. The desire to return to a state of complete relaxation is, like the primal fear of disappearing into the void, one of the most fundamental aspects of the human experience of reality. No one can escape it. (Odd, this pursuit of complete relaxation, but also the fear of disappearing. Millions of religious people desire entry into “paradise” after their physical death, but at the same time they fear physical death – an essential prerequisite to enter paradise. The Buddhist nirvana, on the other hand, is to literally disappear into oblivion, but many lives must be lived before you get to this point. Isn’t it true that we all believe – deep in our hearts – that we are ultimately going to disappear into nothingness? Does it simply make us feel better giving a name to the place, or by believing the process is complex and protracted?)

Disappointing as it may be, this theological introduction is just a way to get back to my latest plan: to return to my True Home possibly at the end of this month, without enough money, and without proper planning – where high tension is likely to be rife, and where I will likely disappear into the nothingness of an uncharted no man’s land. It is true that I dropped hints in December of airline tickets that had been booked and returning to South Africa at the end of February 2004 has indeed been the plan since last July. However, I have started taking it for granted that I would stay on for a few months beyond February.

My problem, as I have already explained in the first part, is that I realised yesterday that I have a small window of opportunity right now to risk a truly heroic escape. I don’t really have enough money, but I have enough to buy that one-way ticket.

Furthermore, I see no shipping containers in my coffee beans, which means I will finally get to do what some esoteric characters speak of with great conviction: I will have to travel light. No tables, no boxes, no chairs or comfortable sofas. I will have to throw my books, and a few small ornaments and pieces of cloth in boxes and mail them home. Then I’ll have to pack two suitcases, and load them together with my computer, my camera, and the body that houses my spirit on that Cathay Pacific aircraft on Thursday, 4 March.

Why would I lift my exile after all these years in such an almost impulsive and irresponsible way, after so many “better” plans, so many financial calculations, so many elaborate scenarios and backdoor options? Because the organism is experiencing tension. And when the organism experiences tension, when he sees there’s not going to be immediate relief, he smiles at irresponsible plans. Then the voice of reason is suddenly occupied somewhere else, because even this voice knows full well what its real purpose in life is: to ensure the organism’s survival for as long as possible.

If the tension becomes too great, a plan must be made to restore the balance. And if “better” plans, and more “responsible” strategies don’t line up with the primal needs of the organism, then it’s time for revolution.

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