Notes for an autobiography: Living in South Africa

1. He remembers drowsing on a large woman’s back in a blanket as she walked. She was talking very loudly to other women. He was often on her back, warm, safe, but not his mother’s back.

2. Drinking Coke on a beach in Durban, often hearing the words Umhlanga Rocks, Amanzimtoti like the tree-sounds outside his window at night. Wind-driven beach sand searing his skin, the way the bubbles of Coke sandpaper his throat and stomach. Mom slapped him for some reason. Shouting. Too young to distinguish between the three. An infant, he linked stinging beach sand with burning Coke and being arbitrarily slapped.

3. Boarding school, Bloemfontein, January 1971, Standard One. Left alone in an empty dormitory, watching his parents’ car disappear out the gate. Walked around looking at all the neat single beds, the lonely smell of fresh linen. Stooped, wrinkled black man called Timothy who, with old watery eyes, tenderly helped the exclusively white children cover books and let them steal sugar off the staff tea tray which he was always taking to the upstairs “out of bounds” staff room for all the white teachers. It never occurred to him to wonder why there were no black teachers. Timothy became a disturbing figure in his dreams, especially after he died in about 1976.

4. School education in primary school an obstacle that interfered with climbing trees, making tree-houses and reading Just William, The Secret Seven, The Famous Five and later, Tolkien. Bullied mercilessly, dreaded the cane.

5. School education in high school an obstruction that interfered with reading books, including Wilbur Smith, The Destroyer and The Punisher series, other Pulp fiction, Gerald Durrell, James Herriot, Thomas Bulfinch, then poets like Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. And oh, of course, Scope magazine. Began writing poetry. Regularly got 95% -100% for English and history essays, usually failed maths. Bullied a lot until Standard Nine, still dreaded the cane. Life seemed to be defined by pain.

6. Started to find the distance between white and black people disturbing at about age fifteen. Vivid experience of his father, drunk, driving a car out of a petrol station, stopping and yelling at a black man, calling him a “kaffir”. He was revulsed. And this was his dad using the word. He had heard the word before, and began to see — no — feel, some words as vicious, ugly things with a life of their own.

7. Matric year: father and sister died in separate incidents. Dad did not provide for anything. He and his mother moved from lovely home on a huge smallholding in Boksburg to a small flat in Boksburg. Started to associate anguish with the look on black faces. He felt the gut pain of it, its acidity, its ability to hollow one out, and with a jolt remembered in early childhood not being able to distinguish Coke burning down his throat, getting slapped and scalding beach sand. He did not understand this. Began to realise there were many things in life he will not understand. Battled with guilt over feeling relief at father’s death, as he was a violent alcoholic, a man he much later comes to realise was terrified of himself, of life. Later on he will come to understand one way of accepting these experiences is through what the poet John Keats called negative capability. So handy to put mysteries into gorgeous paradigms, switch them on, and watch the paradigms illumine themselves with their own brilliance, not really saying anything to illumine the mystery of things.

8. Two years’ compulsory military service a burden that interfered with reading highbrow literature and psychology and a growing love for art. Read a rattle-bag of writers including Anais Nin, Dostoyevsky, Freud, Jung, Kafka, Wordsworth, South Africa’s literary journal Contrast magazine. Could mention loads of other writers, but that sounds bombastic now. Continued to write poetry and dreamed about living in a faraway country with an easy job and enough time and money to just write and write (China never occurred to him).

9. In the army he stowed away on a ship headed for France with a friend, gave themselves up and spent two months in detention facing charges of illegal emigration and general desertion. Eventually released with only suspended sentences and decided it was time to be responsible.

10. Attacked literature and psychology at Rhodes University and UCT like a shark ramming into its prey. That all eventually got spat out, too much intellectual indigestion, and realised he was not cut out for academia. JM Coetzee, his honours degree supervisor, the most intelligent man he had ever met, was frigid, taciturn, seemed unable to be happy. Read Sartre’s Nausea and other existential literature. Could not believe the hell Sartre consigned himself to. Glad he did not have to have that empty, flatland view on life. Flirted again with forms of Christianity. Joined Nusas, body of rebellious, anti-apartheid students, but he was too cynical. Surely their politicking and pamphlet distribution were just fashion statements, like wearing Nike, just lip service to the idea of genuine struggle against the white racist pigs whom he truly abhorred, met often in the army? Black faces are associated with more anguish, resignation, defeat, weeping and a deep, simmering rage.

11. First job: taught English in a black township school outside Cape Town, Langa High, for two years (1989-90). More flirting with Christianity. ANC unbanned and he proudly wore an ANC badge on his jacket when he went to Langa High. Wrote a novel to do with apartheid seen through the viewpoint of a blind man, endless rejections cause him to give up sending it out more.

12. Odd-jobbed when not unemployed, the latter too often the case. Scary stage, in his late twenties, in the early Nineties, writing poetry did not bring home the bacon. What career? All his peers seemed to have comfortable jobs, were financially stable, were getting married, buying homes. First book of poetry published. Relationships? A relationship with a woman that lasted a few months over there, a one-night stand over here … problems with partners about sexual guilt even though it was top stuff at the time. A big taboo in Christian churches. His hormones could not grasp that.

13. Career takes off in Johannesburg as he found he was brilliant at marketing and teaching motivational and personal growth courses to primary and high school children. Lots of friends, but the bachelor loneliness started to frost, to deepen. Hated apartheid, cynical about politics, and of course he voted “Yes, apartheid must go” in PW Botha’s “yes-no” referendum in 1992.

14. During the run-up to the first SA democratic elections, he was most positive. He did not buy candles and tinned goods to stow away in case of civil unrest. Did not think of fleeing to Zimbabwe for a bit to see how things would turn out. This country is going to work, yebo! Still wrote a bit of poetry, wavered between prose and poetry. Read less, drank more, loved pubs and his mates there. Still went to church. Sex, booze, church. Walking contradiction. Tried to be a righteous, Jesus-eyed Holy Joe and failed miserably. Tried to convert pretty chicks on more than one occasion and ended up getting laid. Lots of funny stories there for the bio. Not much writing in his thirties. He lost belief in his ability to. But at least his appreciation of life became more mystical, more inward as he went on various ecumenical and Buddhist retreats. Wrote a journal extensively. Meditation caused a huge burst in writing activity but he still just did not believe in himself, though he taught children to believe in themselves. Business fairly successful, though he escaped bankruptcy on three occasions.

15. At age 39 met the Chook and she soon moved into his home, his life. She’d had traumatic experiences with crime. She wanted to leave SA. She had a UK passport, he had an Irish passport, both EU passports of course. He remembered the itch of wanting to live in different countries, not just a holiday. England did not work out. Not a single poem written about England. China worked out, wrote reams of poetry about China.

16. His relationship with his wife, Chookie, deepened. He was and is terribly fond of her but to his horror he had to be brutally honest and admit he can be very selfish to her. He learned not to be so selfish and to respect her. Realised he actually began to put her needs first and this was a major personal growth point. Bachelor ways were not easy to change. He drank less.

17. Nowadays, in China, he writes extensively; the strange culture has caused a surge in his creativity, with several unpublished books, the Thought Leadership and Book.co.za blogs and of course the memoir, Cracking China.

18. Reflects back on his life now in SA and China and wonders at the mysterious way things always worked out, be not anxious, be of good cheer, even though he sometimes was not sure where the next meal or even where the next country he could live in was coming from. Things always just worked out, provided he had a “willing to work” attitude. This reflection on his life is done with awe, even reverence. Seeing oneself in the third person, a method which JM Coetzee sometimes employs, is a striking experience.

19. Wonders about changing the title “Notes for an autobiography: Living in South Africa” as he has lived outside SA now for five years. Does not change it. South Africa now lives inside him. This strange metaphor is one of his certainties, a keepsake. He burnishes the keepsake and it burnishes him.