The Rewarding Things About Writing A Novel

/ Jared Louw / 1 Comment

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So I’ve written a novel. Still quite hard to believe it’s done. But it somehow is. A novel that started alone at home in Johannesburg and ended in a North East corner of London a year later. I wrote it in coffee shops, in bed, on trains, in restaurants and in living rooms. At 46 000 words it ended up being much shorter than I initially anticipated.

It’s called Better Demons and is set in the Karoo region of South Africa. Maybe one day I can link to it on Amazon from here. Maybe. The novel could be great, and it could be utter trash. That’s part of the fun though – creating something that you genuinely don’t know the quality of, but creating nonetheless. Such is life, sometimes you just have to do it.

While I look for an agent who might be interested, it gives me a chance to reflect on the experience, which was a rewarding one. And while the lengthy process of writing a novel is not really for everyone, I do think act of writing is beneficial no matter who you are.

In terms of my own experience, here are the things I took out of it:

  1. Your voice is your voice

About three quarters of the way through writing my book, I picked up Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Part of me wanted to just give up. How could I compete with this? Conrad’s eloquent use of language and his majestic, sweeping descriptions made me feel incredibly useless, and of course, next to a titan like that, I am a bit. But a week or two later I picked up Charles Bukowski’s first novel Post Office. In his typical style, it’s rugged, real and gritty. It doesn’t conform to any ‘style’ and certainly isn’t eloquent in the classic sense. Yet it’s utterly readable.

This was an important realisation for me. Every writer has their own style. Every artist, in fact. Writing is art, and art should be an expression of something within you. Why should one worry about conformity of style? I don’t care if my novel doesn’t read like complicated work of William Faulkner or if it isn’t the length of a Dostoevsky novel, complete with paragraphs two pages long. My style is my style. I’m willing to own it.

  1. You learn about yourself

I recognised early on in the novel that the main characters were essentially versions of myself. The interesting part about all writing is that the act of getting words down on the page requires you to dig deep into yourself to find the truth and the right words. The process leaves plenty of time for doubt. Is this really what I think? Is that right? That’s not always as easy as it sounds. Any fool can talk, read news articles and have thoughts swirling around their head about what they think is their point of view on things. But the act of writing forces one to put the microscope on those thoughts and worldviews and make them visible.

I couldn’t just have one character putting opinions similar to mine out there. These thoughts needed to be challenged by another character, which I realised was also me. In this way I did realise that some of the things I believed with certainty maybe weren’t so certain, when you’re finding the best possible argument against them.

  1. You have to love the process

If you want to do anything well, that is. Whether my work is good or not, I still don’t know. What I do know though is that I could never have finished it if I didn’t enjoy the process. I’ve realised you have to have this philosophy in order to achieve anything worthwhile in life. You have to love the process.

If you want a fit, lean body, you have to love the act of working out. If you want to thrive in your career, it will be quite difficult, if not impossible to do that if you hate your job or the work you do. If you want to raise successful, good kids, you probably need to enjoy the process of parenting. And so on.

Writing a novel was no different. In order to finish it, I had to love the process. Whether it gets published or not is a little irrelevant to me in the bigger scheme of things. I’ve discovered with certainty something I love doing, and something I will keep doing.

Notes From A Muddy Island: Transport

/ Jared Louw / 1 Comment

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It’s two months this week since we took the rather life changing trip from South Africa to the UK to come live and work here. Instead of one long post on everything, I thought I’d stagger it into bite sized chunks, dedicated to one topic at a time.

Let me talk about transport first, because it is one of the more iconic things about London, in some strange way. We’re spoiled in South Africa – because assuming we’re financially ok and in the workforce, we generally drive everywhere. Or are we spoiled? I’m not sure.

Back in Johannesburg I’d step out of my house at around 07:00, dodge a couple of somewhat large lizards around the car a few metres from the front door, and set off on the twenty minute drive to work. Comfortably lost in my own thoughts, until I pulled up in the parking lot of my office, to ascend the stairs and get to work. Total steps – probably 20.

London is slightly different. You have to be ready for a personal space invasion. I get on the tube at Buckhurst Hill station, up on the edge of town, and then get off at Holborn to walk to work. As the train gets closer to the city centre the train fills. And fills. And fills. Before you know it some big geezer in front of you backs further and further into you, to a point where you can study the hairs in his ears, make patterns with the wrinkles on his neck, or worse, smell that he may not have showered that morning. Total steps – probably around 6000.

Walking. So much walking. After just two days of going into work and back my trusted Woolies work shoes were badly wounded. A hole at the bottom and the sole coming apart. Off I went to buy new shoes, a massive grudge purchase for someone trying to limit spending. For the first time I was paying more attention to a shoe’s sole and heel strength than their design. This in itself was a mistake, as I should have been paying attention to how the shoe felt on the back of my ankle. Naively I decided to do the entire work journey the next day in brand new shoes. My feet were destroyed, specifically the back of the ankle. They’d even bled quite badly, to a point that I was worried the bleeding behind my foot might be noticeable.

On the following day, equipped with two pairs of socks, at around midday I had to go with a colleague across town to an agency. A trip that involved lots of, you guessed it . . . walking. My feet screamed with each step. My rather good looking female colleague glided along like someone ice skating, while I struggled to keep up, trudging along like Big Foot holding one in on an urgent trip to the lavvy. Do all South Africans walk like this, or just this weirdo?  

In the evenings I have to make my way from The Strand through Covent Garden to get back to Holborn Station. The area is densely populated with tourists from all corners of the earth. It’s quite a thing walking through endless tourists while not being a tourist. There’s a rather annoying holiday euphoria about  them all, as they stroll along, in the high spirits one tends to be while travelling. It left me with an interesting question one day. Is the primary reason people travel more to do with getting away from their mundane lives or actually seeing interesting things? I’m starting to believe it’s the former. I’ve followed tourists over the Waterloo Bridge and noticed that they hardly looked up from their phones.

But it’s not all negative. Having worked out that I walk 5km per day, I feel quite good about the whole ordeal. I’m walking 5km per day more than I was at home. As a consequence I’ve actually lost weight, despite drinking more beer than I was in SA (see post on that in the next few days).

The issue of the shoes and feet was quickly resolved by using my orange trainers, and then swapping them out at work. I can pull off the look with jeans and a K-Way jacket. I haven’t attempted the orange shoes with a suit jacket yet. But hey, I’m in London, nobody knows me. Who the hell cares if I look like a spaz. Better that than broken feet.

Speaking of shoes, you notice them. Particularly in the underground, if you’re lucky enough to sit. Usually because you have nothing else to do and you’re tired of what’s going on on your phone. You don’t want to disturb the people sitting directly in front of you by looking looking straight at them, so you glance above them, or you look down . . . at their shoes. Old ones, new ones, vellies, loafers, work shoes, high heels, trainers, trainers trainers. So many trainers. But also, so many questions. Often I look at some shoes and wonder How the fuck do you walk more than 500 metres in those without ruining your feet? I never thought I’d look at shoes this way before.

For the first time in my adult life I’m not driving. And it’s ok. Actually, at times it’s great. No car repayments, no car insurance, no despondent Fuck! under your breath as you read about a petrol price increase next week of R1,73. No road rage. In Johannesburg driving was a bit of a schlep, often leaving me with serious doubts about my fellow human beings and their intelligence. Now a leisurely walk to the train in the morning allows some sort of reflection and peace. Similarly, the walk from the train in the evenings in the all too fresh air is often pleasant, and much needed after a day cooped up in an office.  Unless it’s windy and raining. Then give me the damn car.

This reliable public transport reminds me again of another thing South Africa has failed at. Comparing the busses that are always on time and the reliable trains to a dilapidated taxi veering around Johannesburg breaking traffic laws that haven’t even been invented yet brings me quite a bit of sadness. Also, in a tube carriage it’s quite strange to see people who could very well be some sort of high level director alongside, for example, a construction worker. Social classes mashed up together like woolly sardines. As if that would happen in SA.

So much to observe. Even on the trains. Especially on the trains. Often I observe the non-observance of others. I’ve noticed people who never looked up from their phone at all in a 30 minute train ride, their expression remaining completely unchanged. In the evenings I look at one or two faces and wonder what types of lives they’re going back to. What types of homes wait for them? Is he going back to a loving family for a wholesome meal, or is he going back to sit on his own in a dirty apartment, doing a little cocaine while death metal plays in the background?

Ordinary lives. And I’m one of them.

Bukowski – The Unlikely Hero

/ Jared Louw / 1 Comment

Discovering Charles Bukowski’s writing was a bit like discovering Pink Floyd. In both cases I didn’t know a great deal about the creative artist in question. But there was something that drew me to them. Some unseen force which made me pick up their product from the shelves and buy it. With Pink Floyd it was back in 2002 or so. Bukowski was more recent.

It was in Hyde Park’s Exclusive Books in Johannesburg. I remember it being December 2016, just before Christmas. It was the first book of poetry I ever bought. “Pleasures of the Damned” – a collection of his poems over a few decades. Ever since that moment I was hooked.

It’s worth pointing out that Bukowski is the archetypical example of a writer who is ‘not for everyone’. Not by a long way. Bukowski himself was an unattractive, crude, womanising alcoholic who spent most of his life in poverty, living one drunken bout to the rest, drifting in and out of endless dead end jobs. I think he was even homeless for a while.

His writing was as crude as his life. Brash, unapologetic, real. Despite everything about Bukowski, no other writer has ever given me the sense that the author knew exactly how I felt. At the worst times in my life, it was usually Bukowski that dragged me out. Not through some inspirational pieces or uplifting passages. You never found those in a Bukowski. Oddly, it was the opposite. He wrote about the downtrodden, the misfits, the outsiders. He wrote about life, death and absurdity of it all. He wrote with heart. With soul. He got it. He looked the shittest parts of life in the eyes and never flinched.

His writing sort of made me feel like Hey, its ok. I’m ok. Someone gets it. Someone gets me.  There’s a strange comfort in reading something and knowing that someone else just understood. They just understood. Even though it was written decades ago by a man now long dead.

I tend to think we all need a writer or two like this. The ones who speak to our darkest parts, the ones who recognise us humans as the imperfect creatures we are. The ones we feel oddly connected to. 

I sometimes think, in some ways, Bukowski saved my life.

Home is Temporary, Roots are Permanent

/ Jared Louw / 2 Comments

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There’s a novel by John Steinbeck, a famous one called The Grapes of Wrath. It centres around a family (and many other families), venturing thousands of miles westward to California in search of a better life, escaping the harsh dust bowl of Oklahoma in the 1930’s. One scene early in the book depicts how the women would watch their farmer husbands in the wake of devastating dust storms to see their reaction:

“The women watched the men, watched to see whether the break had come at last. The women stood silently and watched. And where a number of men gathered together, the fear went from their faces, and anger took its place. And the women sighed with relief, for they knew it was all right – the break had not come; and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.”

Yes, at the end of this month I am leaving South Africa for the UK. It is still difficult to grasp the fact that it’s happening, but it is. I was always one of those who saw the realities of South Africa, yet always remained positive that things would be fine, and that we could live happy lives here. But like the poor farmers in the Steinbeck novel, the fear for the future of South Africa has turned to wrath, one time too many. Needless to say, my wrath is aimed at the South African government. I never like being forced into something – ask my wife this, or any of my friends. This is a prime example. This feels forced.  I look forward to the adventure, and feel positive, of course. But still, if South Africa was thriving and hope was high, I wouldn’t be doing this.

This isn’t a political post, but this is unfortunately a political issue. Many of my political rants of the past (some on this blog) have argued against the ever increasing sizes and extents of governments and government interventions around the world. The concept of a government, I maintain, is one of the most dangerous entities operating around the world today, which is why they need to be kept to a minimum in size and kept in check. A bloated, morally bankrupt government with a bad ideology can destroy an entire country, which is what is happening in South Africa. There are many other examples of this through the 20th century which I won’t mention, for fear of making this a political post. This is why I always support the ideal of small government and individual autonomy.

You can take a lot of things from a person, and they can carry on almost perfectly ok. Little bits of freedom, little bits of safety, little bits of disposable income, little bits of patience. But as soon as you start chipping away at hope, you have someone who takes action. That action is to say goodbye to my country.

Contrary to my outward appearances, I’m actually an incredibly sentimental person, bordering on melancholic at times.  This is despite my rather awkward, somewhat cold disposition. I hate saying goodbye to things, it always leaves me with a sense of emptiness and sadness. When I drop relatives off at the airport in Joburg or say goodbye to them in Port Elizabeth as I leave, it usually takes me a while to recover from my gloomy stupor.

Leaving a country, your home country, will be no different, I suspect. Perhaps even more severe. I’m not sure what I’ll be feeling when the plane takes off from OR Tambo International, but I’m sure the sadness, albeit temporary, will outweigh the excitement. But what is it that I really love about South Africa? I don’t feel any particular affinity or sense of belonging with the people here. I don’t do the whole South African pride thing. I probably won’t wear South African apparel in the UK. A small, dark part of me is so angry I want to disown the place.

It’s the more permanent, non-human elements that I love and will undoubtedly miss. Some weird deep love of the land. Like an old oak tree, it’s like a fixed rootedness, an attachment to the land that’s near impossible to displace. I’ve always had a keen interest in where it is I came from. Who were the people who came before me, and what did they do? Maybe knowing that my forefathers landed here in 1690 and have been here since then has something to do with my attachment to this land, in a way that goes beyond sentimentality into the spiritual, energy side. I tend to think some have a greater attachment than others, and I tend to think my roots are very entrenched in this land. It’s quite hard to put words to this. Some will understand this, but many won’t. This isn’t necessarily a good thing. It just makes leaving that much heavier.

The smell of a braai as you light the firelighter and the relaxed feeling that follows. The beautiful severity of Johannesburg thunderstorm. The chorus of birds at 4:30am. The calm serenity of the Karoo at sunset. Driving 100km of road without passing a car. Reaching a royal hotel at 5pm after 8 hours of driving in the heat and the magnificence of drinking that ice cold lager. The feeling of entering Cape wine country after going over a Cedarberg mountain pass. These are the ways one’s roots speak to you. These are the odd things so hard to let go, because they’ve become part of who I am, and how I identify with my roots. Nature and the land are powerful things.

Unlike roots, which are permanent, home is not. Home is temporary. Home is moveable. When I moved to Johannesburg in 2012, one thing became very clear to me, and it’s something I seem to have forgotten in the few years that followed: Home is not a place. Home is where your family is. Home is a feeling. A feeling of safety and familiarity. A place where you truly are your real self. That’s why moving from your home country is so daunting. You go beyond the familiar into the unknown. But it is impermanent, because in no time the UK will be home, feel like home and be familiar. This is why I’m not at all worried about settling.

I’m also reminded, painfully, that nothing is permanent in this life. The sentimentalist in me keeps recognising the last times I’ll be doing things (for a while at least). The last time I put petrol in my car. The last time I have those amazing chips from that restaurant. The last time I drive a certain road across the country or see certain towns. The last time I jog down certain streets. The last time I have a get together with good people. The last time I look at my bookshelf before it’s sold and the books packed away. The last time (for a while) that I leisurely watch football in my own house on a Saturday afternoon, with the braai burning outside. Yet all the ‘last times’ experienced will inevitably be balanced out by a whole lot of first times as I do things for the first time. Everything changes. Always.

I could come back from the UK in a year after a failed experience and none of the above is relevant. I could love it and become highly successful there, staying long term. One thing I’ve learned in life is that you never know what’s around the next corner. And that’s ok. We’re ok. I’m ok.

What can one do but smile, put some classic rock on the headphones, some wine in the glass, and roll the crazy wave of life.

 

North Sentinel Island and the Paradox of the Modern World

/ Jared Louw / Leave a comment

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I try to avoid the news these days. ‘News’ as we like to believe it is not news anymore, but an interpretation of facts through the lens of the reporting entity’s worldview, beliefs or worse, ideology. It’s become a propaganda machine designed to make us outraged and sow division. It’s probably always been like this, but this modern, divided world has made it worse.

This has largely helped my level of happiness. Particularly in a South African context. The less I read about all of our problems and the stupidity at large, the better. So I try to stick to stories on culture and opinion pieces. Yet despite all this, every now and then a story pops up that I can’t help looking further into. One such story occurred last week.

A rather moronic American missionary, John Chau, ignoring all the advice and knowledge that he had, attempted to spread the gospel to the people of North Sentinel island. He paid off local fishermen to take him to the island. After a couple of tense and rather futile engagements, the fishermen returned to collect him one morning, only to find the islanders dragging his body along the beach to bury him.

What got my initial interest was that these hostile tribes still existed out there. As I often do I resorted to Twitter to get the general feel for this story. Of course, the usual overreactions and anger were coming from the usual corners. But it was on Twitter that I discovered one or two fascinating threads on the island which led me to dig deeper into this story.

To summarise (it’s all available on Wikipedia), the island has long been feared and avoided. In the 1880’s a European, Maurice Portman made a few trips to the island, probably angering them with his antics of measuring them and abducting them before returning them. In 1981 a cargo ship ran aground on the island. While the crew waited for help to arrive, they noticed, as the days passed that the tribesmen on the beach were building boats and seemed to be preparing to attack them. They got air lifted out just in time. The only thing that saved them were rough waves. In 1991 anthropologists got close enough to give fruit to the tribe. But it was promptly made clear to them by the tribesmen that they needed to leave, and quickly. In January 2006, two fishermen, fishing in illegal waters were killed by the Sentinelese when their boat drifted too close to the island. It’s got to the point that the Indian government has made it illegal to come within 5km of the island. It is worth noting that the murders of John Chau in 2018 and the fishermen in 2006 led to no charges. The tribe literally exists separate from laws. Nobody has come within touching distance of them and lived since 1991. After the tsunami of 2004, a helicopter flew over to check the island, and was met with arrows and rocks. Other than these encounters, nothing is known of them. Literally nothing. Through all of history there are less than 10 accounts of contact or sightings of them.

Here they are. In 2018. A tribe of people that the world has completely and utterly passed by. A people who’ve only interacted with the outside world four of five times in the last 150 years, usually very briefly and violently. A people more cut off and primitive than any tribe of people you’d find in the deepest bowels of the Amazon. This isn’t exactly an island in the middle of the pacific, thousands of miles from anything. It sits snuggly in the Bay of Bengal between India and Thailand, right alongside the larger Andaman Island.

Even their demographic appearance and skin colour is in stark contrast to the Asian region the island is situated in, indicating that the entire demographic development of the region and larger Asian subcontinent over the past couple of millennia has completely passed them by.

The most striking thing for me when thinking about this island is that the entire history of mankind has gone by and they’ve missed it all. The rise and fall of the Greek Empire, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, running water, the dark ages, colonialism, the industrial revolution, the telephone, medicine, electricity, motor vehicles, the two world wars of the 20th century, Hiroshima, the cold war, the age of the internet. Yet here they are oblivious to is all. Not knowing that these events even existed. Somehow the world has left them as is for thousands of years, living their lives as if in the stone age. Do they even know what the concept religion is?

Of course, the next question is what we do with this knowledge. I for one think these poor people should just be left alone. Completely. That seems pretty clear to me. But the deeper question that all my reading on North Sentinel made me consider was what would actually be best for them long term? Ignoring the immediate trauma of introducing them to an alien, modern world, what would benefit them most in the long run?

There’s no clear answer to this, even in my own mind. Twitter was divided, as it always is. The irony about my search on Twitter was that the same people praising the North Sentinelese and pleading us to leave them alone were the same types of people who express disdain at nations attempting to be as autonomous and independent as possible, labeling them ‘nationalist’ or something worse. My wife, on the other hand, somewhat a bleeding heart on certain social causes, surprised me by suggesting they be integrated into the modern world.  Clearly this isn’t an easy one to answer for anyone.

We’re very quick to condemn this modern world of ours. I see this expressed all the time. People lamenting this a ‘toxic world’ or ‘troubled times’, or complaining about all the ‘damage we’re causing to the world’, or suggesting that inequality is worse than ever. Oddly enough I’ve found myself defending this modern world we live in. We’re almost certainly living in the greatest ever period of prosperity, peace and health in the history of the world.

I’ve just read Steven Pinker’s book, Enlightenment Now, where he makes specific arguments around the astounding progress we’ve made in the last century or two.

Some of the key points Pinker makes are the following:

  • Life expectancy is up. In the 1700’s it was less than 30. It’s now over 70.
  • Globally, inequality of income has been steadily declining over the past couple of decades.
  • The portion of the world living in extreme poverty has declined from 90% of the world in 1820 to just 10% of the world today. This decline seems to be accelerating.
  • Work hours have decreased from over 60 hours per week in both the US and Western Europe in 1870, to around 40 hours today.
  • It’s nearly 80 years since war broke out between great powers. This kind of peace hasn’t existed in centuries. (My suspicion is that you’d have to go back to a period in Roman history called the Pax Romana to find when this last happened)
  • Two thirds of the world now live in democratic societies, compared to one percent in 1816
  • Most of the fatalist predictions through the past few decades about the environment haven’t materialised at all.
  • In addition, hunger and famine have drastically declined. Child mortality and maternal mortality rates have been turned on their head. Deaths from all types of accidents have been reduced. Literacy rates are on the rise. Young women have closed the education gap with men in Western countries, often surpassing men in percentages attending universities.

In addition to this, a point I often make is that knowledge is now easier to attain than it’s ever been before. By far. We’re all walking around with super-computers in our pockets, utilising technologies we didn’t know existed 10 years ago. In 1956 about 6 men were needed to move a 5mb hard drive. Now 128 gigs sit comfortably in your pocket, with all the information we could ever want about any topic.

We live in relative luxury compared to 99,9% of the history of human beings. So why do we all think it’s so shit? Why are we all complaining about how bad humanity is and how toxic our world is?

Don’t mistake me from an optimist. Far from it. I for one don’t see the world with rose tinted glasses. I don’t see it as moving towards this amazing utopia. Not one bit. Yet my reasons for this and causes for concern with the world may be different from the next person. I think to myself, if I were to somehow to engage with these people of North Sentinel (and live to tell), and convince them to stay on their island and reject the modern world (which they seem all too ready to carry on doing), what arguments would I make?

I could easily ask them if they wanted to live in the kind of world that makes them slaves to debt, or to their jobs. Where they have to commute for two hours a day to work 8 hours a day just to survive. I could ask them whether they wanted to work half their waking lives behind a desk, working for somebody else, month after month, year after year, looking forward only to the two weeks at beach at year end. You know, the kind of place where the North Sentinelese live their whole lives. I could ask them if they wanted to live under a government. When they enquired about what a government is I’d explain that, you know, it’s a bunch of people you usually don’t choose to lead you, but who make decisions that you need to abide by. I could ask them if they wanted to live behind gates walls and electric fencing for fear of their fellow man breaking in and killing them (Assuming they don’t kill their own people, and I’m pretty sure they don’t. As a side note, Marco Polo did write that he thought they were cannibals. But I’m assuming they’re not.) Maybe I’d ask them if they wanted lose their edge, become fat and stare at a screen all day, in fascination with celebrities. Would they want to live in a world of people that lost sight of life, death and living to an extent that they spent their time outraged by trivialities they see on the news which don’t apply to them?

Maybe the North Sentinelese are living the dream. Maybe they’re happy. Maybe they wake up in the morning and do exactly what they want to do. Maybe, despite creating a better world, we need to ask ourselves, are we creating better lives? Are we really free people, living lives as we wish, like the North Sentinelese do every day? It feels to me as if we’re slowly but surely eroding one piece of enjoyment after the next, all in the name of protecting ourselves. First it was smoking. Now they’re coming after sugar. How long until our overlords decide red meat is bad for us and start making it harder to attain? Then alcohol. There’s already a move to make comedy so politically correct that it’s no longer funny. Our governments’ are increasingly telling us what they think is good and bad for us. It’s not inconceivable that in 50 years’ time we’ll be living like robots in an utterly joyless society, controlled on what we eat, what we watch, what we say and what we do.

Despite all the progress, we perhaps need to remind ourselves that the progress of humanity does not need to coincide with a declining ability to live life. After all, life exists to be lived, to be savoured, to be experienced. Maybe the North Sentinelese know this better than we do.

 

 

Romancing The Ordinary

/ Jared Louw / Leave a comment

It’s an interesting thing being a father to a two year old. Interesting for many reasons, but one of the primary ones being the amount that the two year old teaches you.

A few days ago after a downpour of rain we were walking around outside. She exclaimed at having seen something interesting, and proceeded to run over to look at a snail making its way across the outside tiles. She crouched over it for ages, eagerly observing its every slow, tedious move.

I lost interest a lot quicker, and moved away, but it made me think. How amazing it must be to live in a world full of wonder. Where interesting phenomena and creatures are there to be observed every day. And yet I quickly realized that that same world was the one that I inhabit.

As we grow out of childhood something inside of us dies – that excited way in which we see the world as a thing of wonder. We stop taking it all in. We stop observing.

There’s a Charles Bukowski poem called “Something for the Touts, the Nuns, the Grocery Clerk and You”, where he rails against all the types of people he despises in the world. A fairly common theme for Bukowski. One particular line has always stayed with me: “Men who stand in front of windows 30 feet wide and see nothing.”

I’ve known a few men like this in my time. Men who would never notice the sweet sound of birds before dawn. Men who could never enjoy the smell of rain after a period of dryness or the way the light hits the trees at a certain time in the late afternoon.

Sometimes I want to grab my daughter by the shoulders and say “Don’t ever get old. Don’t ever grow out of finding romance in the ordinary. Don’t ever stand in front of a 30 foot window and not see.”

The Owl

/ Jared Louw / Leave a comment

It’s strange how some random moments can pull your mind right back to where it should be and remind you what life should be about.

It was Saturday. I was a single parent for the morning with my two year old daughter Gem. I decided around mid-morning to go out for a walk around our large complex with her. It’s always fun for us to spot lizards, cats and look at dogs behind fences. Little things along the walk have become like rituals. We have to stop at the house where the Mickey Mouse garden ornament is so that she can observe it and say hello. We have to jump up and down on the storm drain covers so they make a noise. We have to wave at ourselves in the convex mirror that guides vehicles around the corner.

On this morning I noticed a commotion of birds in a particular tree above a roof. I pointed and told Gem to listen to the birds. As we moved closer though, something much more interesting caught my eye. An owl. There it was, perched on the bottom part of the roof near the gutter. Really? At first I even thought it was a fake, put there by the home owner for some reason or other. But then it turned its head and looked at us. An owl, a matter of metres from us, in broad daylight. It was beautiful and almost mystical, but seemed a little out of place. This was exceptionally rare in South Africa.

I stood with Gem in my arms for ages, as we just stared at it. Gem was fascinated with the way it kept blinking, and she proceeded to imitate it, saying “Owl, blinking, blinking” while she was doing it. I was still fascinated by our luck in discovering it. She smiled at it. I smiled at her. The moment sort of hit me. There we were, just her and I, soaking in this moment with smiles on our faces, observing an owl together that nobody else in the world could see. She talked about it all the way home. When my wife came home both Gem and I couldn’t stop talking about the owl.

Little islands of beauty like this. Moments in life that make the bridges in between the islands seem completely worth the journey, no matter how long.

 

Johannesburg – City of Contrasts

/ Jared Louw / Leave a comment

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Virtually any place in the world can be ‘home’ if you have your loved ones with you. Humans are incredibly adaptable in this regard. This week marks five years since I made the arduous move from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg. I couldn’t let the opportunity pass without some observations about my adopted city. Many have asked me whether I prefer Port Elizabeth or Johannesburg. This question always seems impossible to answer. It’s a bit like comparing a good steak to a scrumptious crème brûlée – you know you like both, but for very different reasons. After a baptism of fire involving vehicle theft, separation from family and much confusion, Johannesburg slowly started revealing itself in the months and years which followed. In that time the primary thing which has struck me about the city is that it’s a city of sharp contrasts. Contrasts which seem to be prevalent in all areas of life and living.

The first contrast that strikes one is the weather, which isn’t immune to this theme. Never in my life have I seen a complete 180 in weather conditions in the space of 15 minutes, from torrential downpour to calm sunshine. The short, intense bursts of rain itself is somewhat symbolic of the Johannesburg ethos of firm decisiveness, and getting the job done quickly and efficiently in a bold, no-nonsense approach. The general stillness and beauty of the weather always seems the perfect antidote to the buzzing, bustling and grinding city.

Before you know it, you start noticing other sharp contrasts, primarily economic ones. Nothing demonstrates this more aptly than the neighbouring suburbs Hillbrow and Houghton. A mere couple of blocks separates one of the most affluent, status orientated residential areas from one of the more infamous suburbs on the continent. This always seems a little absurd to me. Drug lords and their subjects living literally a few football fields’ distance away from CEO’s and directors in their mansions.

I’ve been fortunate to have worked in Braamfontein, basically an area which is an extension of the old CBD, which has gone through something of an urban renewal over the past few years. I say fortunate, because it’s allowed me to understand this place so much more, and dare I say it, become more cultured in the process. Here the Johannesburg contrasts confront you even more intently. There have been many times when I’ve walked past sleeping bodies on the pavement outside coffee shops where hipsters sip R35 Cappuccinos and where suits and ties discuss profits and bottom lines. R45 craft beers are drunk in sidewalk cafés while beggars roam looking for the next slice of bread or handful of change.

The contrasts go deeper than the surface. I think the loneliest, most isolated moments I’ve ever felt in my life were in the throngs of Joburg people or traffic. I’ve realised that even in the middle of one of the world’s biggest sprawling masses of people, it’s still difficult to find like minded individuals you can relate to. In a city connected to everything, human connection is still elusive. It’s still difficult to find the ‘real’. A bigger city has made people in general even more of a mystery to me. The more I see of society, the less I tend to like it. I see more from people here that I don’t understand, no matter how hard I try. Perhaps big cities aren’t conducive to uncovering humanity’s big questions.

Then there’s the South African question. Nowhere else in the country will you see the good and bad quite this clearly. You see what South Africa is capable of – The Gautrain, the business innovations or the cutting edge architecture of Central Sandton are prime examples. You unfortunately see all the problems with the country, accentuated and more in your face than anywhere else. A great example is when drive on the N3 northbound, at one point you can look to your left and see the towers and brilliance of Sandton glittering on the hill, while closer to you in the foreground are the shacks of Alexandra. More importantly, I’ve seen with my own eyes just how the media and politicians are have distorted and misrepresented the racial moods situation in the country. Johannesburg has shown me that South Africans are generally very good at just getting on with each other and getting on with it. The average Johannesburg person is just here to make a living, support his/her family and live a little. This is such a hotbed of cultures and ethnicities that I think the average Johannesburg person doesn’t even notice ethnicity that much anymore. There are of course unfortunate exceptions.

One thing the Eastern Cape does have firmly in its favour is an ease of access to natural beauty. You can drive for an hour and be as the most picturesque beach or game reserve far away from anything. An hour’s drive in Johannesburg merely gets you to the outskirts of the city. Other than the Parks suburbs of Johannesburg and the Eastern regions of Pretoria, most of the urban area of Gauteng is unattractive, to say the least. The outlying areas of the city are largely industrialised, dusty expanses you just want to get through as quickly as you can. When you combine this with the continual concern over crime that seems to seep under your skin, you sometimes wonder what exactly you’re doing here. Are you part of the problem? But there is a positive to all of this. Things that I might have taken for granted in the past are now a great deal more special. I appreciate life more. Living for today is now far more sacred to me than it was five years ago. Beaches are that much more majestic. Open space and quiet are things of beauty. Mountains are more alluring and mysterious. Wide open vistas are like some form of instant medication. Quiet, open roads are cherished beyond words.

What Johannesburg unquestionably makes you feel is this sense of being in the midst what’s happening and at the centre of a melting pot. Even if you’re not concert-going or shopping at retail flagships every weekend, you do get the feeling that you’re connected to the essence of SA society. But linked to this, there’s an evil ugliness bubbling under the surface of this city, and I’m not referring to crime. I’m referring to the ugly side of normal people. One example of this is people’s conduct in traffic. You didn’t think I’d write a post about Johannesburg without going into traffic, did you? Traffic has become an ongoing social observation for me. I’ve learned that in the hours of big city traffic boredom (and moments of panic), so much can be explained about human nature. On the one hand, when simple traffic rules are ignored with gay abandon, what does it say about that society? When laws are broken and lives are put at risk in order to get ahead of some cars and save a minute, what does that say about people’s attitude to law and order? What does that say about our attitudes to each other? For me, this is a small, but significant symptom of a society going morally bankrupt.

More perplexing is the irresponsible recklessness that I observe. This element I see on the roads cannot be explained in simple terms. If I do approach it too simply I come to the quick conclusion that people are stupid, which although partly true, isn’t the answer. Henry Thoreau once said that “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them”. This quote explains what I see in traffic perfectly. What I see are people so highly strung, wired and filled with tension from pursuing career, status and money, often with their backs to the wall. They’ve learned how to make money and grow their career. They’ve learned how to ‘hustle’. But they haven’t learned to reflect, switch off or let out energy. The result is that all the anger, rage and pent up frustration is forced out when behind the wheel of a car, whether it’s reckless speeding or screaming and shouting, this is their only channel for that energy release, but they don’t know this. In amongst all this you can’t help but confront your own ugliness, question your own views and face your own demons, and while humanity continues to mystify me, the past five years have given me a far greater understanding and acceptance of myself. I also tend to think there’s something about the anonymity of a big city and the sheer volumes of people that leads one to care so much less about what others think of you. I’m far less bothered about how others perceive me than I was five years ago, to the point of indifference. That’s a big city effect.

The contrasts you witness aren’t constrained to within Johannesburg itself. In the times that I’ve traveled out of Johannesburg across the country over the past five years, I’ve taken particular interest in small towns and their surroundings.  What I notice more than anything is this sense of decay and abandonment. While Johannesburg is endlessly filled with construction, building, upgrading  or renovating, the small towns by contrast are blatantly being neglected and deserted.   Driving over the endless plains of the Free State and Eastern Cape Karoo recently gave me the feeling that a great deal of careless disregard had been taking place here, as was evident from what was visible from the road. Countless farmhouses gone to decay, old outbuildings which hadn’t been lived in for years, overgrown football fields with the goals missing and small towns where, other than a couple establishments newly maintained, were generally going to rust and ruin. An image still sticks in my mind from a drive to PE in April this year. About 60km north of Uitenhage, on the outskirts of a small village, I spotted a broken swing, lopsidedly hanging by one rope attached to a rusted structure that was leaning miserably to one side. A symbol of hopelessness and decay – something that was once new and once brought joy.

All of this makes me wonder, does progress and success require the ugly urban sprawl and all the contrasts that go with it? As we move further into the 21st century, will we see more and more of this urbanisation, as rural communities move further and further behind, losing their sense of place, purpose and value? This seems inevitable. Since 2011 Gauteng has seen an influx of about 1,2 million people. To put that into perspective, that’s 240 000 people per year making their way into the urban mass. That’s 20 000 new people every month. According to the United Nations (UN), 54% of the world’s population currently live in urban areas, a statistic set to increase to 66% by 2050.

Perhaps what doesn’t need to be as inevitable is this disregard of simplicity of life. When out of Johannesburg I’ve also found myself marveling at times at the homes and lives of small town or rural dwellers. As I drive past houses where chickens run around vegetable patches in yards free from high walls and electric fences, I think Have we got it all wrong? Was there a more pure way of living that we’re forgetting? Maybe. Have we come to measure individual progress as solely money and career related, at the expense of quality of life? The complex seems to have triumphed over the simple.

So while Johannesburg remains my home for the foreseeable future, my love-hate relationship with it will undoubtedly remain. I’m sure the city will continue to serve me with conflicting visions and ideas. I have no doubt that all contrasts around and within me are a good thing. How else do we come to understand the world, and ourselves?

But I don’t think of you

/ Jared Louw / 2 Comments

One of the most profound lines I’ve come across in literature is a remarkably simple one – “But I don’t think of you.”

About half way through Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, our ‘hero’ and antagonist, by chance, eventually come face to face for the first time outside a building at night.

Ellsworth Toohey, the antagonist we’ve come to distrust immensely by this point, is a scheming media personality who’s developed fame and a large, positive reputation through his writings and teachings of selflessness, brotherhood and altruism. He teaches that happiness can only be found in serving others, and seems hell bent on control over people. He goes to great lengths to destroy individuals and professionals who think differently or show real ability against the grain. He is ultimately a bully whose goal is dominance, yet is loved by all as some sort of saintly figure of virtue.

Howard Roarke, the protagonist of the novel is a contrast to Toohey.  Roarke is an achiever who finds meaning and fulfilment in his work and doing what he loves. His happiness is found in serving his own purpose first and foremost. He’s utterly uninterested in any negative public opinion of him. A man who refuses to bow down to what was popular or the fashion of the time. He isn’t afraid to be different and never compromises on his own values. He lives his life and crafts his work the way he sees fit, not by the demands of society.

When they eventually come across each other and exchange words, Toohey finally asks Roark “Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.”

Roark replies “But I don’t think of you.”

And so the conversation ends. I stand corrected, but I recall it being the only conversation between the two in the book.

I’m fairly familiar with the essential themes of the philosophies of Stoicism, Zen and Objectivity. All three have very useful lessons and ideas to incorporate into modern life. Of course, they all differ from each other and none of the three are perfect. Yet in this single short response – But I don’t think about you – Roarke had, in my opinion, expressed the best aspect of all three philosophies and successfully found the sweet spot where all three meet.

At the cornerstone of these philosophies is this idea that your happiness can be derived from no other place than within yourself. They just express this a little differently. In simple layman’s terms:

Stoicism – control what you can control – don’t stress about the rest

Zen – be mindful of the current moment and what you are doing and feeling now – nothing else matters

Objectivism – pursue your own happiness as your highest purpose and moral aim

Toohey had slandered Roarke in the press and actively worked against him for years, yet Roarke found no reason to waste time thinking about him. Roarke was too busy pursuing his own goals and devoting himself to the things he loved. How many of us look for happiness from external influences rather from within ourselves? How many of us spend ages thinking about people we don’t like – even enjoying the feelings of anger, jealousy or bitterness that arise? And what good does it do? How much time and thought do we devote to things that are not essential to our happiness or the achievement of our purposes in life?

I’m as guilty as the next person when it comes to falling into these traps of the mind, and I’m still figuring life and living out as I go. I’ve made a habit of continually asking myself the simple question “Is this worth my time and thought?” You’ll be surprised at how often my answer is “No” and how much clutter I can throw out of my life and mind. I’m still learning.

Maybe one day I too can stand in front of everything I oppose and say “But I don’t think of you.”

 

Human Truth Dancing Before Your Eyes

/ Jared Louw / 1 Comment

I’ve stumbled on a major human truth in the last year or so.

Anyone who’s had children will know that long before the children start talking they’re able to dance and move to a beat. My own child was no different. Long before uttering her first words she was bobbing her body to music. Before coherent sentences she was dancing with utter delight, stamping her feet and waving her arms.

Each time I observed this I found it particularly profound. Before even communicating properly and coherently, us humans are able to dance, express enjoyment and respond to spontaneously to music we find appealing. We know how to live before we know how to talk.

The human truth is this – the idea that most important aspect of life is the simple enjoyment of it. If you fall into my trap, you spend so much time thinking about the meaning of life and finding fulfillment that you end up forgetting to live. For so many of us, life eventually trains the living out of you.

If you want to dance, dance

If you want to crank up the ACDC and sing along as loud as you can, do it

If you want to live, live