Tag: exile

The last exile

It is Monday, 22 December 2003, seven minutes past twelve in the afternoon. I got up about an hour ago, had breakfast, and then read about the relationship between Russia and Europe up to 1856. Then I took care of my laundry, washed my dishes, brushed my teeth, and turned on the computer. First, I counted the words of two pieces I wrote last week, and then I started playing a game of FreeCell. The latter became too complicated, so I thought it might be better to write this document about the changes that have to be made in my life in the new year.

Actually, I just wanted to put a few things on paper, and I wanted to type rather than write. My intention was specifically not to write a piece – I just wanted to gather my thoughts.

The moment I typed the first sentence, however, I knew what was coming. This type of text is how I express myself these days. I can’t help myself anymore. I sit down at the computer to write a harmless note to myself, and when I open my eyes, THE WRITER has rudely pushed me of the chair and has manically started throwing his two fat fingers across the keyboard.

My plans vary between two extremes. On the one hand, I am desperate to go back to South Africa at the end of February next year; on the other hand, I would like to stay in Asia for another seven years. Between these two extremes lie all my desires, my fears, my interests, and my hope for a life that is better than the one I now call my own.

I have to force myself to stare some facts in the face, though: a) I am not 25 years old anymore. b) My problem with a permanent position at an institution or corporation in my homeland has been well documented by now. The fact remains that I need money to survive and carry out plans, and I need to take steps to ensure that I can continue to buy food for – who knows? – the next forty years. c) My big dream is a three-bedroom house with a garden and a patch of grass, in a quiet suburban area in a town in South Africa (the country where I was born and where I grew up, otherwise this book would have been written in French or German, and my name would have been Dieter or Pascal).

Of course, it’s not good enough just to say you want a three-bedroom house. Of course I need to take certain steps to obtain such a house. But sometimes I feel like these things are all preordained, and if it’s not in your cards, you can try until you’re blue in the face. So, if it says in your tea leaves, “Apartment in Kowloon until you die of loneliness,” it won’t help if you scream back in desperation, “Three-bedroom house in a quiet suburb!”

It usually helps if my mind rushes in such a direction late at night when I’m considering lying down for a few hours anyways.

This morning I got up, and after my usual piece of history (the uneasy relationship between Russia and Europe until 1905), I decided that just because I apparently can’t be a socialist any longer doesn’t mean I can’t establish my own social system and associated relations through the use of rational thought and action. Which is a cumbersome way of saying that I don’t think I’m necessarily doomed to a lonely existence on a subtropical island in Northeast Asia.

But does this mean I can go back to South Africa next February – in a little more than two months? Can I go stand in line for a three-bedroom house in a quiet town or suburb? Clearly not.

The other day I was reminded again that one must be patient. It’s all fine to sort things out and to seek answers, but answers don’t drop from the blue sky just because you asked an intelligent question. Same with our ambitions. Just because I’ve been able to mutter the words “three-bedroom house in a quiet area” after all these years without thinking I’m betraying myself is not to say that I already have title deeds for a toilet and half a bedroom.

Anyways, I can carry on dancing in circles, talking about how I smoked a cigarette, about thoughts I had on the train about the beautiful mountains, how I eventually went to pay my phone bill, and how I came home to continue writing this piece. The intelligent reader can surely guess what’s coming next: I need a plan.

* * *

I’ve been thinking for years that this profession of teaching Asian children the lingua franca of the world is better than sweeping the streets or moving papers around on an office desk. I also know all too well that the tedium of it can dry out your soul.

It has also not escaped my attention that the times I have been the happiest in the last few years were the times when I only had to spend two or three hours a day making money, with the rest of the time spent behind my computer working on my own projects.

When I do spend an hour or two in a classroom and cash exchanges hands shortly afterwards, I cannot ignore the implication: To be an expatriate English Teacher in Taiwan is ideal for people with unresolved issues that cause them to be unable to find peace in a nice middle-class suburb (or unable at the current time, anyways). There are other advantages to this way of making money – you can master a foreign language, first-hand contact with other cultures, and sometimes you meet people you never would have met otherwise.

In short, where else could I teach English for twelve hours per week and earn enough money to cover my basic living expenses? Where else could I, without having to draw a single line on a contract, move into an old apartment and nail my pictures to the wall? Where else could I eat even my oatmeal in the mornings with chopsticks – which doesn’t work, by the way, and have a conversation in Chinese with a beautiful woman outside the supermarket in the evening when she throws a fresh chicken thigh on her grill for me?

Where could I do all these things … while writing the one exile essay after another full of melancholy and longing for my people?

I have to finish up. I see short stories in my tea leaves, and Chinese dictionaries in my coffee beans, and if I cast my eyes to the stars, at least another seven years of teaching in Northeast Asia. The benefits have already been mentioned; the disadvantages are spread over this entire literary project.

One thing, however, has to go in the struggle that lies ahead: Exile!

For years I’ve been suffering from this feverish hope that the life I now call my own will not be the best I can ever bring about. This hope fuses to my fears and my desires through the burning fires of frustration and longing. That is what has driven me to write exile essays since June 1999. That is what has kept me from looking beyond the next six months. What else if you’re constantly looking, with narrowed eyes, for ways to get away from an unsustainable situation?

I am tired of exile.

* * *

Are you as reader as confused as I am? It should speak of talent to say so much, and at the end get away with so little that is new. Am I going back to South Africa on flight CX1749 departing from Hong Kong on Thursday, 4 March 2004 at 11:50 at night? That is certainly what my travel agent believes.

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Factor X kicks in

[Briefly, the background to this piece: By September 2003, I was seriously considering leaving Taiwan for a large town in Gauteng, called Bronkhorstspruit.]

MONDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

Bronkhorstspruit is … a shit place, everybody knows that. But it is also the place where my youngest sister and her husband decided to establish themselves. The town has about fifteen funeral parlours, twenty “Eazy Credit” joints, a Wimpy Bar, and a stationery store that sells a few books. There is no music store. There’s no 7-Eleven that is open 24 hours a day. There’s no lively scene in the centre of town every weeknight at ten o’clock when people come out to enjoy a late supper at temporary pavement restaurants. There’s no coffee shop that stays open until after midnight. There is a huge temple and educational centre built by a Buddhist order from Taiwan. And in a neighbourhood about twenty minutes from town on foot, lives my beloved youngest sister.

Can you justify giving up everything that is familiar to you – or that has become familiar to you over the past five years of your life – just because you miss your family?

[…]

What is everything about at this point? What is the whole story of Taiwan, Bronkhorstspruit, South Africa, and the Far East about? What is the idea of “business”, and writing, and barbecue and dessert at “home” about?

It’s about being as happy as you can be. And it’s about regret, especially in my case not regretting later that I didn’t spend more time with my family. It’s about not just following a tedious script like a second-rate actor. It’s about being who you are (if you have finally sorted that out), rather than just being the by-product of all the measures that you implement to survive and to suppress your fear of the day when the gods strike you out of the blue with a bolt of lightning. (Or, realistically speaking, to express your real personality as much as possible after putting all the necessary measures in place. Everyone is afraid of lightning at the end of the day, aren’t we?)

Why am I writing this piece on this Monday at seven minutes past two in the morning? Because I’m moving to an apartment in Benevolent Light New Village in the Mountain of the Phoenix. Is it a bad place? No. Is it a bad neighbourhood? No. Is it a laborious irritation to scrape grease deposits off the kitchen walls with a potato peeler? Yes. Am I wasting valuable time having to suddenly pack rather than to work on my projects? Yes. But I console myself with the thought that I had to buy some boxes anyways to start packing; that I had to leave the dark dump I’ve been calling my home for the past almost five years at some point.

Why does my new apartment inspire me to write this particular text? Because I was reminded of the fact that my life in this country doesn’t follow a script; I write the story as I live. To name but one example, I most assuredly did not know two weeks ago that in two weeks’ time I would be sitting on all fours on top of a marble slab with a pair of surgical rubber gloves on, scraping off clots of grease with a potato peeler. (Sorry, I just had to mention that again.)

But this little insight, and the photographic potential of the view from my new kitchen is not what is really important (or it’s just part of the larger story). What really bothers me is the fear of what lies ahead for me when I no longer hope for the day I return to the land of my birth. I think I’m afraid my life in South Africa will become … ordinary, caught between the fear that someone will break into my apartment while I’m out shopping for garlic sauce or biltong, and the fear that I would suddenly wake up one morning and I’ll be thirty years older.

[…]

“Anxiety” is for me more than just a psychological term. As long as I run around and struggle for a better tomorrow, as long as I faithfully make notes on THE PROCESS, I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. Then I feel as if I am on my way. I think I fear the day I’m supposed to declare that I have arrived, and someone jumps from behind a bush and shouts: “Surprise! In the end you did follow the script! You (also) win the prize!”

Then again, maybe the prize is happiness. Maybe the prize is that you feel you belong somewhere, and your life has meaning because it has meaning to people who are important to you. Maybe the prize is that you feel you can go ahead with your creative work, because you did arrive, but it’s still important that you say what you want to say.

Or am I just afraid that, despite the wide availability of garlic sauce to enjoy over your barbecue, I will still get bored with Bronkhorstspruit?

[…]

Am I trying to run away from what I already know? That we are highly developed animals that must try our best with our fantastic, yet limited capabilities to serve Good rather than Bad, and to carry forward the flame of Polite Civilisation until our time is up and we must pass the torch to the next generation.

I need to stop dancing in circles.

[Later on Monday, 15 September 2003]

I’m worried that I would feel my purpose has been served and I that I am rewarded with a “normal life”.

Why is my current life to some extent still okay, even if I want to get away from it? Because I am still fighting for a better life. But what happens when you reach that point of which you dream? Or do you keep moving the point further away?

What if someone were to tell me that life is never “normal”, and that a “normal life” is a dream beyond most people’s reach? “Everybody is constantly struggling for something better,” the person would say, “even though their lives on the face of it, to observers like you, might appear normal and ordinary.”

Still – I would ask, for what do they struggle? For financial security? That’s not good enough for me. The struggle for financial security is to me just a way to give a greater struggle a better chance of success.

Perhaps my opponent in this debate would then give a sly smile before he played his trump card. “You know what man,” he would say, “you’re just grumpy because you don’t have someone to brighten your day a little bit.”

In such a case I won’t have much of a choice with my counterargument: Is this the best we can do? Fifty thousand years of evolution since our ancestors huddled together in caves and bludgeoned each other to death with mammoth bones, and that’s the best answer that we can come up with? You just need a little love?

The question is simple: Am I on the right track with my current plans? Or is my face in the right direction, but my feet not quite on the right path? (Do I still reckon there is only one path that goes in that direction?)

I recently did some research on ways to make money without having to work for someone else. I concluded that even I might be able to be successful with a few ideas. Now, maybe it was all that scratching off grease in the new kitchen, or the fact that I was going to have an apartment with proper windows for the first time in nearly five years in Taiwan. Perhaps it was inevitable that I would have thought about it at one point or another. However, earlier tonight it struck me as I pedalled through the dark streets on my creaking bicycle, that I have never been in a position where I could say I knew how I could make money in South Africa, which is important considering that I have always regarded money as the main reason I couldn’t go back. I’ve never been in the position where I could ask myself whether this is truly what I wanted to do without any reservation; if I were truly ready to plant my feet in a piece of South Africa full of fresh cement; if barbecue and Sunday lunches with my family would truly be a panacea for all my ills.

These thoughts are the reason I’m writing this particular piece on this Tuesday morning, 32 minutes after midnight, rather than packing the dozens of pieces of junk I’ve accumulated over the years that I exhibit as “ornaments” in my living room.

[Tuesday, 16 September 2003, almost one o’clock in the afternoon]

As I was riding back last night from my new apartment, I asked myself an administrative question: Do I really want to stay in Taiwan? I was mildly surprised at my immediate answer: No.

A short distance down the street, past the general store where the beautiful woman hits the till, past a few old gents sitting outside someone’s miserable home drinking rice wine, past the deserted morning market area that smells of rotten tofu, comes the follow-up question: Do I want to go back to South Africa? The tentative answer: Yes, but …

Beyond the military base with the overgrown wall I first thought was a castle, into the last stretch of road before you’re back in a part of town where fruit sellers are still open shortly before midnight, and where lonely men chant songs about lost love in cheap KTV parlours, I repeated the answer: “Yes, but?”

“But,” I said out loud under the leopard skin mask covering my mouth, “two weeks after I had found an apartment in Bronkhorstspruit, after I had unpacked my books and hung sheets over the windows, I want to go to Mainland China. For three months.”

Back at home I was annoyed because it seemed as if I had come up with a new plan. I got comfortable behind my computer and wrote the previous page (including the fact that I’ve never been in a position where I could say I know how I could make money in South Africa).

Just as I was considering the merits of last night’s final paragraph, my phone rang. When I saw it was an international call, I realised it must be my friend L. I knew why he was calling. Fifteen minutes later I chucked the last drops of gin from the little airline bottle down my throat, lit up a cigarillo, and repeated the words to myself: “Born at eight minutes past three … a little blue in the face, but doing well … four kilograms.”

I felt happy for my friend, his wife, their families, and especially for the little guy who finally saw daylight. I thought by myself the timing was interesting. Suddenly the whole idea of being a grown-up and having your own children, and the huge financial and moral responsibilities thereof were no longer just an issue that could fill up a piece of writing. It happened to my best friend! And I had no choice but to mumble through the cigar smoke, “It’s fucking profound.”

The few drops of gin weren’t really enough to celebrate the great news, so I jumped on my bike and raced to the 7-Eleven to buy a half-jack Jim Beam – which they no longer had in stock. Fifteen minutes later I was sitting with a can of Qing Dao and another cigarillo at my dressing table. Good thoughts about my friend and their firstborn led to renewed speculation about my own life.

I wondered again if I had come up with a new plan with the three-months-in-China remark. Meaning to spoil my fun, I wondered what I would do after the three months.

I was hoping that I would say I would go back to South Africa then, to plant my knees – rather than just my feet – in some fresh cement. But I realised that I was still not sure about “what then”.

That’s when I lost it and whispered menacingly in the direction of my reflection in the mirror: “Your life is a wheel! It’s going to continue turning and turning and turning! Round and round and round!”

My life is a wheel. And it will keep turning until I throw a spanner in the spokes. Or until someone else does it for me …

______________________

Dark Tuesday | Lighter Thursday

TUESDAY, 29 JULY 2003

You don’t want to unnecessarily keep hammering on the same note, but I think one of these days I’m going to be in deep shit. My suspicion is strong that I have estranged all four of my friends at different times, and for different reasons. (Is this better than to alienate them for the same reason?) More than that, the suspicion is developing that they’re even going so far as to avoid me. Can you believe it? Innocent old me who always carries on in discussions about “struggle and creation” and who delivers such well-meaning lectures to anyone within earshot about how their lives are worth bugger-all if they can’t stand away from their own creations and like the God of Genesis say, “It’s good!” (And to think I’m just trying to help them lead more fulfilling lives.)

In all honesty, I don’t think my theories and sermons are the only blunt swords that scare off friends and potential acquaintances. I am, except for my highly original theories and associated monologues, a highly boring individual. To be sure, I can join in the conversation around the barbecue fire if the conversation is about history or religion, but I might be tempted to be too clever, and maybe to know too much for the other people to also feel good about their general knowledge. So, unless the conversation is about sin, the Iraq war, Hitler, Stalin, or the Middle Ages, I am in trouble. I don’t have a motorcycle (can’t even ride one), and I don’t go along to beach resorts on weekends. I never tell dirty jokes beside said barbecue fires (can never remember the damn things), and I never do anything on my own that will cause people to tell others about it so I can build up a healthy social reputation.

But let’s stop staggering around the nettle tree. The primary reason I’m persona non grata is because I always arrive at events alone, and I never leave with anyone (mainly of the opposite sex). I am, therefore, by definition, a loner. And as people have known since before the time of John the Baptist, everyone shits in their pants when it looks like a loner is heading in their direction.

The Loner babbles on about things that only he understands and finds interesting. The Loner is a leper. The Loner is a hunchback. The Loner has a skin disease that causes his scent to be picked up from a distance. The Loner has tuberculosis, or AIDS … that drips blood from open sores on his hands that threatens to infect all those standing around barbecue fires telling dirty jokes.

The Loner is a fucking genius. It can’t be any other way. I mean, even if he didn’t hold a degree in history and religious studies, even if he hasn’t written a book of several hundred pages about his own life, even if he wasn’t already working on his second volume of poetry (which, like the first, would be an unpublished masterpiece), even if he hasn’t formulated his own principles of a Meaningful Life, he must necessarily be exceptional: An unknown prophet who are not even recognised in a foreign country, let alone in his own backyard (if he could ever afford such a thing in the country of his birth).

He must be something special, someone who is just not understood and appreciated by the plebs that he would have liked to call his friends. Why? Because god only knows, if he isn’t, he’s nothing. Then he’s a rotting carcass avoided even by other intelligent, sophisticated, enlightened people he had once called “friends”. For instinct forces even the most enlightened among us to turn away from what is dead. To flee away from that which once lived, but that has since first taken a turn for the worst, and then went to die a slow death in the half-lit solitude of his private quarters, somewhere in a neighbourhood where no one who speaks his language ever shows their face.

Oh well. Fuck everyone, then.

THURSDAY, 31 JULY 2003

Who read my piece on hammering on the same note?

Since Tuesday, 29 July 2003 at 1:32 in the morning my one friend phoned to ask if I had time – he wanted to show me a new bicycle shop in town. Later I called one of my other friends. We talked for over an hour about work, and about the uncertainties she struggles with every day. And so on. She’s apparently really busy. She apparently really has more friends than yours truly, and some of her friends keep her busy with up to twenty mobile text messages per day. This morning just after breakfast, my other friend called. She was sorry she’s been so quiet recently, but until the end of this week she’s busy from Chinese class in the morning until half past nine in the evening with work. So, she asked, how about coffee tonight at her place.

Oh well.

______________________

Reason for uncertainty, and a new mantra

THURSDAY, 10 JULY 2003

I’ve identified a weakness in my future plans. Financially it can work, but there is an uncertainty that shines through in my idea to perhaps set up home in Bronkhorstspruit, and then to return to Taiwan for a few months.

In my usual scientific way, I worked out that it had to do with identity. I know who I am, how I want to live, and what I want out of life. As long as I stay in Taiwan, this is all possible. As soon as I set up home in Bronkhorstspruit, so I reckon, I’ll be a little uncertain about whether who I am, how I want to live, and what I want out of life is still going to be so anchored in External Reality.

I took a nap, and the message came through: Be who you are – a writer.

The uncertainty disappeared almost immediately, like a playground bully would vanish when his victim’s older, bigger brother arrives on the scene.

The reason for the uncertainty is that I have a terrifying anxiety to live an aimless, meaningless existence. Just living in Bronkhorstspruit and making “enough” money is not good enough for me. In Taiwan I’m a teacher, a writer, and a student. If I make it clear to myself that I will continue to be a writer in Bronkhorstspruit, then I am saying that I will also there know who I am, how I want to live, and what I want out of life. And there it will also be rooted in external reality.

* * *

I look through my old photos (1990, 1991, 1997), and I read through old journals (1996, 1997) and I begin to wonder: Have I at least done something with my life in the past seven years, and perhaps more specifically the last four and a half years?

The answer is: “Yes.” (I asked a similar question a few days ago, so fortunately I already knew the answer.) I have learned over the past seven years who I am, how I want to live, and what I want out of life (thanks to Steven Burgess and his book SA Tribes: Who we are, how we live and what we want from life in the new South Africa for this line I recite like a mantra these days). I also specifically worked on being a writer for the past five years, not merely wanting to become one.

______________________

The poet learns to be smart

[The next piece was initially recorded in my notebook on the weekend of Friday, 27 June to Sunday, 29 June 2003, in my favourite place in this region, Hong Kong.

There was a problem with the booking of my flight between Hong Kong and Johannesburg. I arrived in Hong Kong on Friday morning at eleven o’ clock, but because I immediately had to meet an old friend at the airport, I didn’t confirm my flight to Johannesburg later that evening.

After brunch in the city my friend had to rush back to the airport. I walked around for the rest of the day and enjoyed myself thoroughly. At around nine o’clock in the evening back at the airport, a lady at the check-in counter courteously informed me that they were overbooked. She further explained that I had no choice but to wait for the next flight – which would only depart on Sunday night.

At first, I was taken aback. I had only had two hours sleep the previous night, and I was exhausted from all the walking around that afternoon and early evening. The lady assured me that they would provide a room in a good hotel, and a limousine that would take me directly to my lodgings for the weekend. And if I still thought about writing angry letters to the airline, they also conveniently had HK$2,500 on hand with which I could amuse myself (a sum of money roughly equal to so many South African rand, or about USD300).

I said I was very angry because it was my birthday on Sunday, and what now? But the fun I had had during one day in Hong Kong weighed heavily on my mind, and who was I to be rude when a big corporation wanted to pay me to spend an extra two days in one of my favourite cities? I said, okay fine, get my bags and show me where to get that limo.

I started writing the following note shortly after my registration at the counter for which I truly thought was going to be a long, luxurious car that would transport me to the hotel.]

SUNDAY, 29 JUNE 2003

I find myself in one of those absurd situations where I, the “poor white” poet, has to be treated like I’m rich and important. All the parties, myself included, are somewhat confused.

“But everyone can see there’s a tear in his shirt,” I imagine the young lady whispering to her colleague.

“I know. Shush …” the older man probably replies.

Telephonic confirmation is made in hushed tones. Sweat is wiped from a brow. Eventually everyone realises the unpleasantness simply has to be endured.

“Please come with me … sir,” the man with the sweaty brow reluctantly commands.

The Poor White Poet hesitates for a moment, first heads in the wrong direction, and is then called to a row of comfortable red chairs. An orange sticker is stuffed in his hand. He correctly interprets the label as a badge indicating his new status as someone who should be treated like other people who spend time at luxury hotels. He plasters it on his light blue “Tokyo III” shirt. It keeps peeling off. The other stickered individuals are several chairs removed from the poet. He speculates that it may be because of the small tear in his shirt, and doesn’t immediately consider the possibility that, after a day’s walking around in hot, humid Hong Kong, he no longer smells of the cologne he had so arrogantly sprayed under his arms that morning.

After fifteen minutes, the man who had given them the stickers approaches again. “This way please,” he friendly winks to the waiting group. This time the Poor White Poet walks out in front. Then he remembers the deodorant spray he had thrown in his bookbag and is suddenly annoyed with himself for making notes rather than refreshing himself.

Over the next two days the poet wised up to one important thing: One learns. In fact, the whole fancy hotel business, like the fancy restaurant business and certainly all the parts of a luxurious life are a game. You can figure out the rules and tricks of a complex video game and master it to some extent after a few practice runs. Even more so with the fancy business.

It’s about confidence. The more you are exposed to situations where you have to make certain “movements”, like in a video game, the more you learn to do it right. And the more you learn, the fewer mistakes you make. And the fewer mistakes you make, the more your confidence increases – and the less your sensibility becomes to being a stranger in an environment where you don’t really belong.

——————–

[After two days and three nights the poet reached the town of which he had been dreaming for months – Bronkhorstspruit, fifty kilometres north of Pretoria. Forgotten were the months of adolescent humiliations and growing pains (have I mentioned that he had spent his primary school days here?). The school where he was prefect in his day, looks different, smaller. The Vetkoek Corner is still on the corner, but with a different name. The town seems generally shitty, but there was a joy to being back. And it was winter, the man’s favourite season. Dead yellow grass, a chill in the late afternoon air, and the smell of coal all overwhelmed the senses with a bashful question: “Welcome home?”]

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