Rules of Engagement

I travel because people are interesting, and when you travel you get to meet all sorts of interesting people with different views of the world.

There was one night when I agreed to go to Zula in Town for a show, and whilst there a guy asked me why I kept up with 'the Jesus look', and at first I said I didn't know (it's a fairly common question). But then when he went to empty his beer-filled bladder, I thought about it in my half-cut stupor and realized that I did know why I did it: because I always feel weird going up to engage with randoms, but this look seems to pique plenty of curiosities and allows me to meet plenty of people. And it seems in some cases I don't just meet them, but they seem to somehow trust me implicitly and admit striking things to me about themselves.

"We all have secret lives/In our secret rooms/Living in our movies/Humming our own tunes" -- Bruce Dickinson

At one venue in Zimbabwe, I was at a pub where they were having a 'ladies night' with musical chairs and other things for prizes. After the spectacle ended and I was hanging around without a partner, the emcee of the session, who seemed strong and independent, came up and started chatting with me. She then took me aside to the patio where we could talk without shouting and asked many questions about my lifestyle of travel, why I did it, etc. She seemed very interested in me, and after the pub closed, we walked back to the hostel I was staying at to continue the conversation. At the gate the security guy asked which room I was staying and when I replied that I was staying in a dorm, he said that I couldn't bring a woman in with me, and I replied that that was not my intention. So despite it being quite late and very chilly, we sat by the fire and talked more about various things. And then she started to speak about herself, revealing to me that her father left when she was very young and her stepfather was happy to pay to put her through some of the best schools in the area, but was also molesting her. And all of a sudden this confident-looking woman (of 29) broke down and started telling me that although she had her job emceeing and such, that she felt 'totally useless' and that she felt her life was 'basically pointless' and she needed to find closure somehow, and really had nowhere to go.

In another instance, I was helping an individual prepare for exams, and it came out that she had been in a relationship with a very, VERY famous South African. I had barely known her a few days, and I probably would be unlikely to see her again after that, but as she dropped me back at my place, she told me all about how she felt during the relationship, living in his shadow, often being in a long-distance relationship, etc., but eventually having to break it off, and crying for a week because of it. Throughout the conversation I gave my input and at the end of it all she told me that she doesn't normally like to talk about it, but for some reason talking through the details with me made her feel better.

There are a fair few such stories of this type that have been revealed to me either by people making my acquaintance and telling me about themselves, or physically showing me and including me in various things that reflect the way they live: sleeping on floors of ghettos, 'showering' from a basin because there is no running water (luckily by the time I got to Mafeteng, I had plenty of experience of this in Chamanculo), and other things that most Canadians would have a difficult time even fathoming.

One thing that struck me as incredibly profound, however, was when my friend and I decided to spend an afternoon in the township of Langa. As black townships go, it is probably one of the safest in Cape Town. We had originally hoped to go to Khayelitsha for a day, but the weather was against us so we had to put it off. What was profound was not what we saw in Langa, but after, when he turned to me and said "we go to these places and lambaste the locals for being afraid and carrying stereotypes about how dangerous they are, but what about us? What about 'local tourism'? Would you hang out on a Native reservation when you get back to Canada?" My first thought was "fuck, no! That's way too dangerous, and what would be the point?" But then I realized the reality of the situation and it shows how much Ive learned from Africa, especially the manner in which the existential doors have been thrown wide open in terms of what I can and cannot do or should and should not do, and I realized that the correct answer was

"I can't wait. It's gonna be so amazing, and so absurd!"

Fly on the Sociological Wall

On Thursday night I went to one of my usual hangouts, and found a rather close acquaintance of mine who revealed to me that there was a fashion show on at one of the residences that she was involved in, and whether I would like to come, despite 'the VIP tickets being sold out'. Ever the yes-man, I duly assented.

As reflected by the tone of my latest entries which has, perhaps, been a bit subdued, Ive been in a bit of an odd headspace lately with those existential and teleological conundrums creeping in. However, this event turned out to be some very nice 'art therapy', though not entirely because of the event itself.

I suppose in a manner akin to first- and second-order logic, one can consider first and second order observation. What struck me, as a few hiccups at the beginning and a late start were duly remedied, was the second-order absurdity of the spectacle: the 'mingling' of people with their drinks, the VIP tags on certain individuals ('very important person'? because they paid an extra R20 for their ticket, get free alcohol, get to sit in the front row, and get some goody-bag giveaway item? How does one define importance in this manner?). Then during the show, there was the DJ, the lighting, the catwalk, the emcees, the catcalls and screams from the audience, and, of course, the models. I summed it up to a friend of mine in a text as 'a bunch of youngsters trying to emulate Western high society' though that may be a bit unfair. It WAS interesting as a first-order observer, though I still don't and probably never will understand what is fashionable about giving the white models giant bed-head afros and slopping them all over with strange make-up, but maybe that's just me.

I suppose this sort of second-order observation comes to me more often than perhaps it does for most, and maybe it is a reflection of the interest I take from seeing not necessarily how people act in given situations, but rather how they REact to given situations; i.e. what makes them tick and why.

All in all, I will not deny the organizer my kudos for the fact that she did a wonderful job and I thoroughly enjoyed the event, both first-order and second-order enjoyment, and I was very dismayed that there was a police raid that shut down the night-club that all attendees were supposed to get free cover for that night.

Talk about bad timing...

Ebb and Flow

It's sometimes funny how quickly we find ourselves at the top of the world after crashing down, or vice versa. A friend of mine once described his own approach to the world (psychologically speaking) as a 'sine curve' of peaks and troughs that reflected his brain state at the time. Sometimes, he said, there was much euphoria and he would get giddy at the drop of a hat. At other times (as I've been witness to), he has plumbed the depths of depression even when he 'should' have been really enjoying himself, e.g. on the beaches of India.

I won't hazard a guess as to the method behind his madness, but I will say that during my time in Zimbabwe, I often felt completely original especially in the Dionysian sense a la Nietzsche (the individual that says Yes to everything questionable). On the other hand, since Ive returned to Cape Town, it just hasnt been the same... I've gone out to my old haunts—even though they've changed somewhat—and thought to myself 'what the fuck am I doing here? At one point I thought I could extend this stay and was really enjoying my time here, and now I just want to get this degree over with.' Ever the party pooper, I guess all of a sudden my return has hit me with a small token of claustrophobia helped by the financial situation that is niggling at the back of my mind and the manner in which there seems not to be an easy solution in the near future.

And then of course there is the problem of alternate realities, either in the form of drug intake or in the form of movies. Watching Jason Statham go psycho on everyone in Crank 2, and then returning to the humdrum and mundane of reality often makes one thirst for a bit more. But then on the other hand, beginning in such a position as his (in the movie, anyway) may leave at least a bit to be desired. Anyway, no big deal.

In the end, the main thing is, obviously, the same thing that always arises in these sorts of introverted moments of doubt: what the fuck is the point of it all? I remember during my early days of studying philosophy, I went to the university library and got a copy of 'Classic Philosophical Questions', by James Gould I think. It was set up in such a manner that each section had some major philosophical topic: reality, knowledge, science, religion, etc., and within each section were two to four essays by classic authors defending certain opinions about the topic in question. The only section I really remember was one near the end about teleology. It contained two essays, the first by Tolstoy which he wrote near the end of his life when he had been taking religion (especially Christian anarchism) quite seriously; in it he argued that God gives us meaning (or something like that). The second essay, written by Albert Camus, argued that it is up to us to give ourselves meaning through what we do everyday and how we go about interacting with others and achieving according to our own wishes and desires.

I take the position of the secular existentialist (i.e. that of Camus') to heart... there is no doubt that I feel that I have created a whole bunch of doors and windows in my sea of reality that I can crawl through or explore within if I should get bogged down or what have you. However, sometimes you can't help but feel in the back of your mind that until you get back into some sort of a routine that provides you with a means to some sort of end, that you start to squirm.

I remember feeling a similar thing in the last few days I spent in Gokarna. As much as there were many ex-pats who switched between six months in Himachal Pradesh while the monsoon was on, then six months in Gokarna (or Goa or Kerala or some such) when the monsoon was no longer, when my time was winding down and my three weeks were nearly up, I got that claustrophobic feeling that I have learned to recognize when I feel like its time to move out of a certain headspace. I guess the best way I always find to sum up that feeling is to quote Jack Nicholson from a certain movie, when he is in a similar situation of confusion and indecision and utters those fatalist words:

"What if this is as good as it gets?"

'Desperate Times' and all that

On my way to and from my place in Rondebosch, I must pass by a huge office complex that has been newly built. There are always a couple of black guys who are wearing foam arrows on their hands and wearing signs about the Open House that's happening to try to rent out office space. It reminds me of the high school dropouts in Canada who get jobs where they stand by the side of the road wearing signs advertising the $5 'Hot n' Ready' pepperoni pizza outside of Little Caesar's joints.

But what really got me was another pub experience at my usual watering hole. I swear that if there were more places like that around the world, everyone would feel so much better, because it seems no matter what youre looking for, everything happens there.

Anyway, I was doing my usual intermittent observing of the local fanfare and my eyes kept falling back on two quite attractive ladies who were decked out in flashy green habits (hooded cloaks) and apparently just standing at one end of the bar, sometimes talking to people, but mostly minding their own business.

My first impression was that maybe they were part of some religious cult and had just come from some service or were doing some sort of recruitment drive (believe me, its no so far-fetched given the amount of times I've got onto a train in Cape Town and some individual is going on in an apparently psychopathic fever about how Jesus saves). I didn't really want to get into a religious argument, especially with two beautiful women, but finally my curiosity got the better of me and I walked over to inquire. And I walked away absolutely astonished.

You see, these two individuals were actually there promoting Marlboro's new brand of cigarettes. They told me that advertising regulations made it so that they could not do 'forced advertising' of tobacco products, so they basically had to stand there and wait for people to come to them after they became curious enough (like me). The one of them asked if I smoked, and I said 'well, not tobacco', and after that point she said that she was bounded by the guidelines of her job that she could no longer talk to me because I wasn't interested in her product. When I protested and said that I wanted to know about it so that I could tell my friends, she calmly replied 'then tell your friends to come over here, i am not allowed to talk to you while im working'. And I walked away absolutely astonished that corporations could so badly objectify people, exploiting the fact that there is so much unemployment in South Africa that people will pretty much do anything. And the rest of the evening, I watched as her and her comrades (there were also two smartly dressed guys who I hadnt noticed before) moved about the crowd, sometimes posing for photos with people who wanted a pic of the girls, but ended up getting a pic of the girls with a giant green packet of Marlboros in the middle of the shot.

Wow.

In Praise of Idleness

"To have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre." -- Albert Camus, A Happy Death

In truth, the quote above has been cheaply lifted from wikiquote. I've never read A Happy Death, nor have I read Bertrand Russell's essay from which I stole the title of the present topic. However, the notion of idleness is one that has become increasingly meaningful in the hustle and bustle of the present 'Western world' ruled by corporate imperialism and the prospect of get-rich-quick schemes.

Firstly, one should make sure to make a distinction between 'idleness' and 'laziness', although contemporary definitions have often blended the two. For example, if I allow my car to idle, I have not shut it off, nor have I made it in any way lazy; I have merely put it in a state of temporary stasis, neither entirely dormant, nor entirely active.

My interpretation of the above quote (and, since I have already admitted that I do not know the context in which it is written), is simply to say that there are those that treat idleness as a from of evasiveness or procrastination, while others treat idleness as a means to gather ones forces for a final onslaught.

Although the depiction of the battle of Stirling in Braveheart is entirely fictitious (it is usually referred to as the Battle of Stirling Bridge, because rather than being an open plain, there existed a bridge which was of tactical importance to the Scots in their victory), one could refer to the Scots as being 'idle' in the manner in which they wait for the English attack, but one could hardly accuse them of begin 'lazy'. It is the same, for example, with Fanon's depiction of the black man in The Wretched of the Earth, with muscles constantly tensed for an attack against the enemy, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually an attack will be inevitable.

And so, it seems that the problem with the 'mediocre' is that they submerge themselves in idleness in order to shirk from or avoid their duties. On the other hand, those that have a more 'advanced' idea of the tactical advantage of remaining idle for a period of time only to use the power reserved by this idleness to explode into vigorous action at a later date, are able to exploit 'idleness' as an opportunity.

In other words, it is the difference between how one approaches one's situation: i.e. it is the difference between 'we must avoid' and 'we must prepare'.