Tag: life path

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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(Initially about) The fauna and flora of Taiwan

SATURDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2003

Taiwan has many beautiful flowers, and bees too. There are also trees, and every now and then one sees mountains. The air is quite dirty, though. There are also many dogs roaming the streets that bark at people with long noses. Some of the dogs are green.

What really bothers me about this story is … why am I so desperate for answers? Why do I have so many questions? Is it because of my education – religious environment where one was regularly preached to by those who were supposed to know? And if you didn’t know, you could go to hell! I mean, no one could ever use it as an excuse that they didn’t know! You were either one of the lucky ones who knew, and therefore could go to heaven, or you didn’t know, and was therefore temporarily condemned to eternal torment in Satan’s hell. I say “temporarily condemned” because there was always the possibility that you could acquire the necessary knowledge before you breathed your last, and as one of those who then knew, you could enter eternal utopia – not because you were a good person, or because you died while saving your neighbour from drowning, but because you knew!

(I promise I’ll come back to the fauna and flora.)

Round about ten years ago I wasn’t sure of what I knew anymore. I panicked for understandable reasons. I had to start from the beginning to sort out what I knew, because even though I was no longer sure about heaven or hell, I still thought you were in quite a predicament if you didn’t know certain things.

This resulted in me not following the conventional priorities over the past ten years of someone with my socio-cultural background and tertiary education. I decided that I couldn’t give immediate attention to such mundane things as financial wealth, position and status in the community, and whether or not I might end up in the madhouse one day. All I knew was that I didn’t know.

I met many others who apparently knew, or just pretended they knew, or for reasons I’ve never been able to figure out, did not care whether or not they knew. I, on the other hand, was in a position where everything I had known had lost credibility. I therefore had to postpone all conventional priorities until the day of liberation when I could finally announce that, after years of uncertainty, I finally knew again.

Very soon I was confronted with a harsh reality. Banks that are so kind to lend money to ignorant young students, grocery stores, and the owners of rooms and apartments simply refuse to wait for payment until you know or understand what you believe is necessary to know or understand. Everyone wants money now, whether you know what you need to know, or not.

That’s how I ended up in Northeast Asia. Here I am able to earn money without pretending I have the type of “knowledge” I previously possessed. Here it is good enough that you look different, that you come from another part of the planet, and of course that you can speak English. What a paradise! I’ve been wandering around for years in this part of the world in my apparently endless quest for answers.

To not acknowledge that there are advantages to ignorance would make me a liar, though. One advantage is that one can reflect your ignorance in your appearance. Indulge yourself a bit by standing on a sidewalk in the town centre and staring at passers-by. I surmise that the well-dressed pedestrians with clean-shaven legs and faces can explain in well-articulated sentences what they know. The other part of the crowd, those with furry legs and cheeks and dressed in old jeans and dirty T-shirts, will probably fail to explain what they don’t know in long boring monologues.

Now, here’s where ignorance comes in handy: If you find yourself in this second group, and people look at you and think you look like a homeless person, you can simply drop your shoulders and tell them you know how you look, but it’s because you don’t know! In some cases, they’ll understand, and they will sympathise. Other people – who one can only conclude have always known – will not understand and will probably never have any sympathy.

There is a third group: Characters who don the fashionable uniforms of people who have answers to key questions and who therefore know, but who stare uncomfortably at the ceiling when they are required to make a definite statement in this direction or the other.

By the way, the factor of financial resources, which allow people to buy a pre-assembled and pre-packaged uniform that would give them the appearance that they possess all the important pieces of information can never be underestimated. The same is true for community. If everyone in your group wears the same uniforms and recites the same rhymes, the likelihood is slim that anyone in the room will ask awkward questions – except of course if one with a dirty beard and a T-shirt that advertises shoe polish stumbles into the coffee shop, and accidentally plonks down at the wrong table.

* * *

A more liberal attitude towards your appearance, and other advantages of living in the Far East such as eating Chinese takeaways every day, cannot be overlooked. I nevertheless look forward to the day when I had gathered enough knowledge to again be able to proclaim: “I know.”

There are always alternatives. I can say that I give up or try to convince myself that I don’t care anymore. This could just make it possible to use my time and energy to pursue wealth and material comfort, although it would surely require a transformation of incredible dimensions. The odds are always that I would be confronted later in my life with the fact that, despite appearances, I still don’t know. For me this is a great dilemma.

As I already mentioned, the grocery store, the bank and the landlord don’t really care whether I know or not. As long as I continue to stuff cash in their hands, they remain polite. This is not a desirable situation for the long term. I must either quickly get to the point where I can declare convincingly enough that I possess the most important knowledge (and that I therefore know), or I need to get my hands on more money I can legally call my own. In the latter case, I would be able to buy more time in order to formulate questions better, and to find an appropriate set of answers.

The ideal result is that, without blinking an eye or staring at the clouds, I can declare that indeed, after years of ignorance, I know again – though it would not necessarily be the same as what others think they know. I would again be able to grow my beard, and I wouldn’t feel compelled to dress in a more or less fashionable way, even if I could afford it. Why? If people then comment on my appearance, and speculate about my ignorance, I would be able to straighten my shoulders with a renewed sense of pride, and politely inform them that I might look like a homeless person, but I know.

Now, about those green dogs …

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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 …

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