Seeing South Africa

Tonight I saw the film ‘District 9’. It’s a “sci-fi thriller” that takes place in a contemporary Johannesburg hosting a refugee of aliens. Actual extraterrestrials, not the legal sort -- though the distinction is largely blurred as the film progresses. Anyway, I loved this film. It made me angry, embarrassed, regretful and lonely depending on the scene. Mostly, the film provoked an (I swear, this pun isn’t intentional) alienation: I miss South Africa despite never setting foot upon its soil or the soil of its mother continent. The characters’ strong English South African dialect, the Afrikaans names and phrases peppered into the dialogue (“tot siens, tot siens!”), the clicking of the Xhosa and Zulu speakers mixed with the clicking of the aliens. Where is Nico DeVilliers, I wondered? Where in Europe is the tall Afrikaner musician? Alles van die beste, my vriend.

Tonight I brought the most recent edition of Harpers to read. Ah, South Africa you’re there as well! A new short story by J.M. Coetzee; another essay from Breyten Breytenbach. Coetzee’s story makes me laugh -- the old, crazy man. When is your next novel? Will it be set in South Africa? I never finished reading ‘Slow Man,’ because it bored me to death. Can you maybe write -- for me -- another Elizabeth Costello? Breyten, I liked your March 2009 essay “Obamandela” so much that I felt a double thrill when the Very Old Man’s foundation nearly accused you of slander. You won’t mind, you terrifyingly smart ex-convict, that I use your ‘seven months pregnant’ joke. Ek kan, ja?. Mooi bly.

I miss South Africa, terribly. Ek nie kom van Suid-Afrika af. Ek leer die literatuur Suid-Afrikaanse in Amerika. Mooi bly.

Tot siens, tot siens!

Addicted to nuts

I cannot stop eating. I cannot stop eating the almond/pecan concoction made by the True North snack company. This is not a shill. These nutty snacks come in adorable squares. Five of the squares is a single serving. Each day at the office I eat at least two servings. I lock the drawer in which they reside to prevent over-eating. They’re fucking addictive. Healthy and delicious? Hell, yes! Overdoing it? Shit, please no. I’ve never smoked or freebased heroin but I am reasonably sure that these nutty squares compete with those things in terms of a person absolutely needing to have it in their bodies.

A colleague had a bag of these in a box during a recent office move. I saw them, was very hungry, and sneaked out a few cubes. Immediately hooked, I snagged a handful, leaving behind an apologetic note and a request for purchasing information. Sorry for taking your snacks and where can I buy my own? She noticed a week later, agreeing to pick up two bags for me when she next went to Sam’s Club. A beautiful arrangement. I get delicious snacks while avoiding the horrible breathing Hell mouth of Sam’s Club. Everybody wins! I’m reminded that I’ve yet to reimburse her for the bags. I win!

Comparisons

I performed some perfunctory, grossly unscientific research into which foods are ‘fat burners.’ Supposedly, some foods are the metabolic versions of Devastator: individually they do exceedingly little but together they form a piss-your-pants terrifying juggernaut of fat annihilation. I plopped the words “foods that burn fat” into Google, which kicked back some depressing results: lots of generic, bland websites with loudly obvious URLS: www.burn-fat-now.com, www.e-diets.com and others. These domain names are designed not to promote education amongst the web-browsing public but, rather, to generate revenue for the site owners and their greasy-slick revenue-mongering advertisers. Some “scientifically proven” weight loss pill that the Norwegian population uses since 1930 to be beautiful; a vaguely Latin or Chinese berry mixture that “melts” one’s stubborn belly fat. Anyway, the sites did contain lists of food somewhere amongst the spam (no pun intended). The lists were not terribly surprising in their content. What surprised me was the scant overlap amongst them. It seems odd that sites culled together by Google’s search algorithm for this admittedly un-precise criteria had so little in common. Here’s a list of the foods the sites suggested burn away body fat, presented in no particular order: beets, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cherries, orange-flesh melons, whole grains including oats, berries, asparagus, soybeans, apples, eggs, low-fat milk and cheese, beans, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, ginger, citrus, bananas, and garlic. The three items that made the list which surprised are the spices. Cayenne pepper? Look. I know that correlation is not causation but nowhere in my humbly huge breadth of experience is there a link to svelte bodies and Cajun cooking. Ditto for cinnamon (Cinnabon, anyone?). Ginger seems fine (in the interest of disclosure, I ate ginger stir-fry vegetables for lunch today. Please support Spice of Thai restaurant by purchasing their delicious foodstuffs. Tell Sue that Don sent you. She will not give a discount for any reason, so do not try). Anyway, the list is obvious. Eat fruit and vegetables, say school lunch posters and middle-upper class moms everywhere. Adhering to eating only the foods on this list requires one to be vegetarian, so, ahem, shouldn’t I be as thick as a toothpick? (now, in the interest of fairness, one site did mention lean meat but with the caveat that lean meat is expensive and likely outside the budgets of most people.) What interests me is the few items which overlapped from site to site: whole grains / oatmeal, 1% milk, apples, berries and soybeans.

I eat these by quantity of buckets. Good for me!

Lo más triste

In March, I met an old acquaintance for breakfast in Saugatuck, as is our custom when I am single and our gets-together raise no (unnecessary) suspicions. He’s a writer but trained as an engineer and travels the country often for both career needs. He’s an amiable guy, makes for good company. With whom else can I talk about writing and learn about publishing? That’s the format for breakfast: catch up on events either one cares to share, followed by what books we read since and what news of his developing manuscript. This March morning, he surprised me by picked up a conversation from the year prior. We discussed one of his characters -- which is to say that I interrogated him about the character -- while strolling along the Singapore Yacht wharf. The day shone brightly. The sun’s light poured from the sky; it bounced from the water and boat hulls. My acquaintance justified his character’s behaviour, as my mind wandered. Half-listening to an imaginary biography, half-staring across the Kalamazoo River he caught me out: what are you thinking about? Your character is going to kill himself, I said, not directly at him but at a vague point on the opposite shore. What?! No he isn’t.. wait, why do you think that? The tone of his voice, an uncommon mix of scandal and pleasant surprise, should have woken me fully to my surroundings; rather, it made me more introspective, curious of the forming thought I shared prematurely. He persisted through my silence. Do you know Virginia Woolf? No, he says, should I? Yes. Your character reminds me of Woolf’s character Mrs Dalloway. A perfectly normal, good and reasonable person living her good life and doing good things. She’s so normal that when one wonders -- 50 pages in -- why Woolf dedicates a novel to the maudlin personality, *bang* Dalloway says that she’ll kill herself. It’s something nobody in her world will expect. So more shocking for the lack of intended explanation. It simply takes place. No rhyme, reason. Your character reminds me of her. A normal life, no tangible sources of discontent and certainly no suffering; the bills are paid, the lovely accoutrements bought and shown, acquaintances maintained but undeveloped: somebody so suffocatingly good and normal, it cannot survive. Whatever else I said to the poor writer is lost from memory. In all fairness, the reaction came out of Mrs Dalloway than my companion’s character description. I was being unfair again. My character won’t kill himself. I don’t want to kill him, he said. Than give the poor bastard a reason to live. Let him access to something -- anything -- to which he can anchor his life, even if that anchor is a goddamn lie. Shit, give him religion, I said -- again, unfairly.

Return to this March. Return to the mediocre Saugatuck restaurant. Do you still struggle with those feelings, he asks. Not since I read “The Bell Jar.” Do you know it? He shakes his head. It kills me that this writer is unfamiliar with the classics. No judgement implied or intended, simple wonder. He gets a brief review of Sylvia Plath’s novel about a charming, sophisticated young college woman working up the social and economic ladder. Then, her life falls apart. It swings in vicious circles. Her centre cannot hold. The artifices of her identity snap at the joints. She repeatedly fails to kill herself and repeatedly fails to offer an explanation to the one question asked of her: why? Why do you want to kill yourself? Why do you feel like this? Why do you make your mother suffer worrying about you? I read this novel early summer of 2008 and almost entirely on the patio of Lemonjello’s in Holland. At times, the book drove me out of my seat to pace the small concrete space (Paul Mason’s stories collected in Head Cases also had this effect on me). Plath’s book felt from then on like a bulwark to the creeping voice urging terrible action. The protagonist... I read so damned much of myself in her: the tedium of living irrationally in a rational environment. Being a successful person by nearly all objective standards yet actively jettisoning those standards as suffocating traps. The poor, barely white-trash child makes good in the competitive , socially divisive world. No, I tell the writer with confidence. I don’t have those feelings any more. “The Bell Jar” accomplished what the therapy and medication did not. Having said that, this salad is so shitty it makes me suicidal to have to pay for it. We laugh. It looks like a shitty salad, he agrees.

I spoke too soon.

It’s happening again. That clarion voice speaking. You are going to kill yourself. Thursday at Meijer, while looking at peanut butter. It began a month ago, just before I signed the mortgage. Easily dismissed. If I die, who will pay the mortgage? The credit union would be furious. Chuckle, ha ha. Its intensity builds, as each time previous to this. Comparing peanut butter prices, the voice WHY NOT KILL YOURSELF was so loud that my head jerked sideways, the way it does when a fly comes near the ear, and then pinched the bridge of my nose as if to stifle a sneeze. These two movements, in rapid succession, disturbed me far more than the provoking thought. A perverse, psycho-somatic reaction. It keeps happening. The college administration would be furious if forced to find a replacement for my two already in progress summer courses.

I hope that the writer doesn’t ask me about this next time we have breakfast.

You're not going to lose more, right?

The woman who manages my gym asks me this on Monday, followed after a beat of silence by, “I haven’t asked any of my members that before.” “I’m not trying to lose the weight. I stopped back in May.” Which is true. I’ve donated five bags of clothes to the local Salvation Army and homeless shelter -- all perfectly fine clothes that simply no longer fit. Pants at size 34 to 32, large and medium sized t-shirts, dress/collared shirts at size whatever those sizes are, medium sized underwear.... no, gross, those went into the garbage. I’m not so callous as to pawn off my dick support to the needy. Around mid-May, when the closing of my now house was certain, I noticed that the total effect of the donations was an entire closet space. More importantly, an empty closet space once housing my office-appropriate garb. In other words, I gave away all my fucking work clothes. Off to the local Gap Outlet I went, gift card in hand. $150, and a ‘feeling’ of numb shock later, I came home with for all intents a new wardrobe. For the first time since 10th grade, I owned (and fit into) a size 30 pant, size small t-shirt and same for underwear. I’m a 30 year old in a child’s body, celebrating at his kitchen table with a glass of Spanish white wine. The next day, the gym scale read 147.

She wondered whether I wanted to lose more in response to the news that, according to the scale, I currently weigh 141. “Maybe cut out the cardio? Use that time on weights,” she suggests. That’s not bad advice. Giving up the 2.5 mile run isn’t a difficult choice if only for selfishness. I hate running. Hate it. But, because this world is goddamned cruel, the running played the largest role in shedding the fat. Switching over to a weight-dominant regiment makes me anxious that the fat will creep back under my skin. I’ll give it a shot, though; she’s a trained fitness instructor and I’m a lazy academic. Listen to the experts, eh?

Be safe, mate

Last week I saw a student from my Winter course at the Holland Farmer’s Market. She watched a stand for her employers, a natural/organic grocery store, while I feigned interest in hanging flower baskets. Her name slipped from memory, though I recognised her immediately. The twenty dollar bill, crisp and folded in my wallet, was the entire market budget. I walked up to an ATM, rocking on my heels between two cars waiting for the same machine. My former student’s booth looked expensive (as organic products are wont to be). I focused on market stalls adjacent hers, feigning interest in floral hanging baskets ($10!). That mental persecutor’s voice: I’m on the student’s territory, not a respected teacher but a common (perhaps miserable) man trespassing in barely clean clothes and dishevelled hair hiding under a hat. Because life is life, I made eye contact and we shared a pleasant but fabricated hello. Did I mention that she earned a ‘D’ in my class? Her store sells hummus, peanut butter and the like. I like both of these things. Of course bought one container of each. Why? Obligation. Of what? The prospect of seeing delicious things for sale at 8a, unseasonably cold for even the predictably unseasonable Michigan, and not buying them didn’t sit well. The sale took nearly half of my market budget. Our brief conversation limited to the immediate perspective sale, the sale, the subjunctive future of enjoying said sale. Yikes. Awkward. Over to an opposite stall, stood a handsome young man selling peppers. He struck a pose of self-aware boredom mixed with the effort to mask said boredom. Buying a pound of red peppers he made note of my being his first sale of the day, to which I wondered aloud what the hell these people’s problem could be to not buy such good looking peppers. He shrugged and asked if I’m from Western. “I left two years ago,” he explained, seeing the old WMU faculty id card when the remaining $10 came out from my wallet. “I signed up for the Navy. Leave in February,” he volunteered. Jesus, it’s too cold outside for June; the mug of coffee a waning miracle. “Be safe, mate,” is all I could offer.

It's in a red notebook

The stuff that should be on this site are going into a red notebook. I bought the red notebook last Christmas at the Barnes and Noble store in Grand Rapids. Not only is it red, it is made in Spain. There are any number of ready-made excuses for the posting avoidance: busy with house projects, entertaining guests, attention to the present summer course combining with preparation for the second. Any or all of these. But none, really. The red notebook is without the public air.

Derrick and I talked about homeownership over a vegetarian dinner: pride, prejudice, responsibility, cost, night sounds, neighbours. He’s an invaluable connection in this especially lonely summer. He stayed for five days. The Tigers won and lost their series games against the White Sox. Shayla finished a “Flowers in the Attic,” and maintained social connections on social network sites from my laptop plopped in the kitchen not socialising much with her father and I. We together took on a handful of improvement projects: replaced the original, late 1930’s electrical outlets (which prior owners painted over with the walls), removed the cabinet doors, built bookcases, filled those bookcases, shopped home furnishings outlet stores, swapped old incandescent bulbs with higher-efficiency spirals, moved furniture from room-to-room, tackled the lawn, ran wires from room-to-room, and others I shamefully overlooked completing this morning. I learned to appreciate, and come to rely upon, the employees at Home Depot and Lowes. The advice received from the various folks in those stores is high fucking appreciated, if not a huge savings in avoiding unnecessary work. I realise now that a house is a living thing. Its pipes, a circulatory system (a little rust), electrical wires/sockets the neurologics, the middle wall it’s spine. Put in the context of owning and caring for a life is simultaneously terrifying in its responsibility and a huge source of pride. Reckon this is the nearest to parenting I’ll get (unless a dog enters the picture), so enjoy it. How I feel about being a single parent is a continuing development. On that note, fuck HGTV. That network is yuppie propaganda. Each show I saw about finding/buying one’s first house centered on 20-something straight couples whose criteria, every time, was “enough room to start a family.” Ugh. The realtor made a similar comment to me. Thanks, society, for adding a dash of inadequacy to my once-in-a-lifetime achievement.

Ryu Inu

Ryu Inu is asleep to my right. He’s a four year old male (neutered) Shiba Inu. He came to Holland today from Newaygo. His owners posted a message on Craigslist. I responded, not believing the luck - having wanted a Shiba Inu for a decade. The owners and I agreed on the details of the adoption during a few email messages and phone calls. They gave me two grocery bags of Ryu’s toys and snacks, a folder of veterinary history of immunizations, and his country registration. Now he’s asleep to my left. Tuckered out. We ran a mile in the neighborhood. Before that, we ran three blocks; that is, I chased him for three fucking blocks after he wiggled under the back yard fence. We were home 45 minutes when he made his break. A family of 12, maybe 15, witnessed the chase from point-blank range as Ryu and I tore through their family picnic. I apologized at full speed. Finally caught him, carried in one arm, back from a stranger’s impressive back yard garden. The picnic people applauded as we made our way back to my house. I had no choice. My shoes fell off next to their garage. Those two and a half miles I run at the gym nearly every day paid off in spades. Ryu and Ciela get along famously. By that, I mean they sniffed each other’s butts and afterwards walked in different directions. This is a huge relief. Shiba Inu are hunters. He pulls like a bottle rocket on a string when he notices a smaller animal during our walks. Ciela is fat, lazy, and defenseless. Compared to what Ryu wants to chase, Ciela is an unprotected chocolate cake.

Tonight is the first one. I hope it’s a quiet one. Tomorrow is his first day alone from either previous owners or me. Multiple web sites warn about Shiba Inu predisposition to separation anxiety. Being at the office will suck, I’ll feel anxious leaving him solo. For now though, bedtime. Two animals and a grown man who isn’t a pervert.

update: Ryu shows nearly zero signs of separation anxiety: some minor squeals for a few seconds after the door closes. Nothing what i’d feared: destroyed, chewed up things, pee stained floor, angry neighbors. What a good dog!

Breathing people said.

The Telegraph (UK) published in March a list of twenty ridiculous complaints made by tourists (I presume the British holidaymaker variety). The majority centre around accommodation, animals and perceived bait-and-switch tactics (“the sand in your brochure is white but the actual beach sand is yellow.”) Comments like these are depressingly run-of-the-mill from the mouths of tourists on their first foreign outing. The sorts of people who imagine their vacation destination in terms of a carefully controlled paradise operating on the engine fuel of happy service to the tourists whims; not, God almighty, aware that the dream-land is in fact called by many others as ‘home’ by the Two specifically are walking the line of ludicrous: "There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners." and "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned."

Eulogy

I am terrified that somebody will describe my life better than I lived it.