Tag: relationships

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.

______________________

Time for calculations again | About potatoes and vegetables

FRIDAY, 25 JULY 2003

I have, seeing that I love calculations so much, counted my friends in this place: “four” is the number I came up with. Of these four, two are men and two women. I currently don’t have contact with any of these people.

It’s Friday night, already five past midnight (Saturday morning, then). A deserted plain of a weekend stares me in the face. I reckon my spirits will be in the gutter by early tomorrow evening. I’m going to want to watch videos all night while rinsing down deep-fried tofu and calamari with ice cold green tea. Then I’ll accelerate my metabolism with one Nat Sherman after another in the false belief that it would prevent me from getting fat from all the greasy food.

I’ll have to get out. Battle for the Soul. Battle for Survival. I know I need people, but sometimes you’re forced to make another plan.

The weekend is an empty canvass, unsullied by actual events. Time to get creative, otherwise reality may get creative with me …

SATURDAY, 26 JULY 2003

Eat potatoes or die – these are my only choices.

We all know what a balanced diet looks like – protein, dairy products, a variety of vegetables and fruits, and so on. But what do you do if you find yourself in a situation or environment that only has potatoes? Do you sit on a rock and cry, “I want fruit and vegetables, and milk and fish and eggs …”?

We all want to eat a balanced diet! We all know we need it! But there’s no fish or fruit or other vegetables at the moment! There are only potatoes! So eat potatoes or die!

Another thought: If you’re a millionaire, it is very likely the result of images you had nurtured in your mind at some point and actions that you had taken. Most “ordinary” people are convinced that they will always suffer. If they’re lucky, they keep their jobs until they’re 65 and then they retire with their aches and pains, and a small retirement policy or two. The fact is, if you imagine the right things and take the right actions, more than enough money can be one of the fruits you will reap.

______________________

The question remains …

WEDNESDAY, 18 JUNE 2003

I want to go back to South Africa. If it’s within the next six months, great. If it only happens three years from now, then I accept it. However, it’s important to know where you’re going. And to know this, and to know why you want to go there, it is important to know where you come from.

I know the answers to these questions. I know them a lot better now than six, and three, and two months ago. I thus know where I’m going, where I want to be – not only in terms of geographical location, but also in terms of the Great Hierarchy, and why specifically I want to be there.

I still have a question, though: What do you do when you’re alone?

Most people want to be surrounded by family and friends and be close to a person with whom they have an intimate relationship. I am no different. But what do you do if you find yourself in a situation where your immediate family are thousands of kilometres away, where you have increasingly alienated yourself from people you used to call friends, and no one is waiting for you at home with whom you could enjoy a cup of tea and discuss the day’s events? Perhaps this situation is the result of circumstances beyond your control, or maybe you yourself are fully responsible for it. (If the latter is the case, it doesn’t mean it’s not for good reasons.)

The question remains: What do you do if it is only you, and you don’t want it to irreparably cripple your moral or your mental health?

______________________

Reality, and a few other facts

TUESDAY, 17 JUNE 2003

“What I used to think was me/is just a fading memory/I looked it straight in the eye, and said goodbye/I’m up above it …” ~ Nine Inch Nails

I don’t have much of a choice other than to renew myself, do I? My dog is dead, and my friend and flatmate has decided to seek her salvation on a different continent. Some people first ignore me, then they decide they just want to be friends, and then finally they come to the insight that even that is too much for them. Other people play cat-and-mouse to show me who needs whom the most. The rest of my acquaintances avoid me for a variety of reasons – I never go on weekend trips, religious differences, and perhaps simply because I’m not fun enough to hang out with. My TV is broken. My computer is broken. My bicycle is only half of what it was a year ago. My scooter has been dripping oil on the porch for almost a year. My water bills haven’t been paid in months, and my scooter registration has never been paid. My student loans are also still outstanding. My apartment smells like a shack in the woods. Insects fly and walk all over the place like they own the joint because I killed the only predator, a giant spider. I don’t currently enjoy any female companionship because most South African women here are strictly group-oriented, and I walk in and out of places on my own. And Taiwanese women find me too bizarre – even for a foreigner. The old geezer who owns the school in the countryside where I teach twice a week thinks I’m a lousy employee because I cancelled a one-hour class because the train was late by half an hour, and I don’t want to start the class half an hour later because that would mean I would have to wait 45 minutes for a train back home. And the principal at the other school fails to understand why I have to leave two minutes before the scheduled end of my class on Mondays and Fridays, despite the fact that the owner said it was okay to leave five minutes early. In about ten days I’m going to South Africa for three weeks, but it already feels as if I am going to look, feel, sound and act like a failure, until I get on a plane back to Taiwan. In the meantime, the insects would have taken over my apartment as a new ecological system, my bike will be a rusty pile of junk, everything will be wet outside, and damp inside because of all the rain, and I will have nobody to call and say I’m back, let’s go have a cup of coffee. My computer will still be broken, and if I buy a new computer my savings will run out much faster, in which case I will probably, if I’m lucky, again have to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” to four-year-olds who either want to scream or sleep.

There – there’s the reality of my life on Tuesday, 17 June 2003 at 10:22 in the morning – at home, because the train to Number Nine Crooked Village was delayed by 35 minutes. However, my dishes are clean (for the first time since late April), and the washing machine is giving my bed sheets a final spin. A nap, therefore, sounds like an excellent plan.

(Finished napping, 12:05)

It’s just as well. You can’t start a new life if the old one is still kicking. I’ve tried it before, it doesn’t work.

[…]

What’s next? I don’t know. Anyway, isn’t it a bit like asking about the sex of the expected child if you’re not even pregnant yet?

Fact: Not everyone always needs to work for other people.

Bad news: At this stage of my life, I need to work for other people.

Good news: My life is not of such a nature that I need to be a slave to a rich man sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.

Fact: I do need to work for someone for a few hours every day (or five days a week) who will make money from my effort.

Fact: Since 1991 I’ve had an almost uninterrupted series of relationships with some or other employer (I counted about seventeen “bosses”).

Fact: I accept that.

Old fact: Establish yourself as an expert in some area and build up a professional reputation.

Thus, fact: Improve your chances of making money in a way that fits your personality and that keeps your interest by establishing yourself as an expert in an area in which you are interested, and by building a professional reputation in a market where what you deliver has commercial value.

Enough facts. Time for another poem:

I’m still wearing the clothes
of my former, discarded life
the same ass itching to go somewhere else
is still comfortably stuck to the same old chair

______________________

Vision of the future, possibility one

SATURDAY, 24 MAY 2003

Brand Smit lives in 273 Blue Stone Road. He is married to Elsa Kleynhans (now June it was seven years). They have two children: Marie is five and a half, and Ben is three. Brand works at a local newspaper as a sub-editor. They bought the house in Blue Stone three years ago from a work contact of Elsa’s brother (just before little Ben’s birth). It’s a nice house with a small garden and a tree in the backyard. Brand often says he bought the house because there wasn’t too much lawn to mow. Then Elsa would add, “And you liked the study.”

Last December the family went to Sodwana, and Brand swore never again. The children fell ill from drinking the tap water, and he and Elsa did not have a single night’s rest for a full week. Brand initially said they were going to stay home this December, but he and Elsa have talked about it again. They now plan to visit family of Elsa’s on the West Coast.

Every now and then Brand talks about his years in Asia. Elsa always listens patiently. Sometimes, like last April, someone whom he had befriended in Taiwan would pay them a visit. They would talk late into the night about this and that, about typhoons, pollution, epidemics, English classes, and Chinese.

Brand still remembers a few Chinese words, and he reckons if he ever had to go back to Taiwan or China, he would again pick up the language. In the bathroom (the one next to the guestroom) hangs a scroll of bamboo paper with large Chinese characters. If a guest uses the bathroom, Brand always hopes they ask him what the words mean. He usually goes on about it until Elsa reminds him that not everyone is interested in Oriental languages.

Brand turned forty last year, and as a gift to himself bought a book on Confucius. The book is on a side table in the living room next to his chair, but he has only read the first few pages.

He still writes, but most of the time it’s just material for the newspaper. He once wrote an article for a national magazine and was very excited about what he felt might become a new source of regular income. That was three years ago.

Brand loves his wife, and he’s devoted to his children. He hopes Marie will become an architect or a vet. Although it’s still too early to say, he believes little Ben may have it in him to become a writer. He says it to anyone who wants to hear, and looks embarrassed every time Elsa responds with, “Let the child become his own man.” All he then says before he starts talking about something else is that he can see it in the boy’s eyes. A writer, or perhaps a psychologist.

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