Slow Wake

This article was orginally published at:

This past week has been a first step in very gentle and undramatic renewal. I've seen progress, hope, and possibility in myself to manage priorities, stick to a tasklist, and to write.

I would like to introduce you to two wives I'm married to unhappily at present. Yes, I am married. And polygamous. My two wives are Writing and Time. They are both very demanding and emasculating wives right now. They take up all of my inner time, my thoughts, and pepper every dream and anxiety I have about my future.

I have mentioned before that I have a complicated relationship with writing. To write is to stop my scurrying against time, trying to make up for lost time, and to take stock of what I'm thinking and feeling, to document and formalise the very point in my life. And very few know about my other struggling relationship, that with time, because I've never talked about it in any detail. The perceptive may have sensed it through my constant busyness and insistence on pursuing multiple paths, dreams, and goals all at once, at great expense and against great odds. And yes. I'm running constantly, fearing the moment I have to stop. It echoes what Carl says to Eric Bana's Avner in Munich. I'm constantly running, trying to overpower Time.

Writing is my first love, the original love, the one who found me many years ago in high school when I was so sad and so destroyed on a daily basis for years. Writing helped me make sense of my thoughts, dreams, visions, anger, and fear. And I loved Writing. As I grew up, Writing took on different forms, I left her, I went back to her, Writing found me, Writing went quiet, and many times I just ended up forgetting about Writing. When I served in ministry in London, Writing was going to put me on the map. Writing was going to bring me the recognition I thirsted for every day. But that never came. Writing failed me, I failed. Writing wasn't as good as others.

The formative, definitive phase of our relationship would come later, in those dark days in Oxford, the very basis for this very blog. I blogged about my parents, I sometimes documented my daily struggles in great detail, I would write when I conquered in Christ, and I would rant when it all went so wrong. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. But I wrote in seclusion, darkness, and despair. I had hoped that someone would read, like my parents, but at the same time, I felt shame for writing. What if they read it? What if they discovered that I hated them? What if they really saw how I felt and read about my explosive anger and bitterness?

At that point, my need to write and my need to censor and hide became intermingled. Writing grew sad and quiet. I would never let Writing speak freely, live without bounds, and just enjoy being my wife. I have to write, I have to get out what's inside, but I don't want anyone to know. Blogger, LiveJournal, and WordPress all can attest to my vacillation, moving my blog from platform to platform, hiding, exposing, changing titles, editing names, putting in names, talking in code, talking plainly. Constantly and in pain for a few years, this continued as I didn't know what to do.

When I stopped writing altogether, I started talking about it, talking about wanting to be a writer, blaming my parents for blocking me from studying English Literature in university. It seemed easier than actually writing. I would tell people and girls that I enjoy writing and that I'm going through a dry spell. I was lying; there was no fertile spell in the first place.

This changed slightly when I left England in 2007 and moved back to South Africa. I was writing and blogging more, talking about Writing even more, and dreaming more. Dry spells came, fertile ones would pass by, and then it stopped.

At this point, it seems like this is a personal historical narrative and all couples have those. But at this point, it's not all that pertinent to explain what happened. This is about having the Relationship Conversation: the customary one.

Writing, my love, I don't know what to do with you. My mother now speaks about us, saying how good we are together, how I need to work on you and get you out there into full view of the world. And that in itself is momentous and touching, deeply touching. My mother recognises how I show you and craft you from my side and heart.

But I struggle to spend time with you every day. I struggle to dedicate any time with you. I've fallen into the trap about talking about the relationship rather than working on it. I don't even talk about it with you. I'll write for a while in my journal, I'll blog, but all without any rigour and structure. You don't believe me, but I care about you. Just look at this. You will be always my first love, even as I spend all my time outside of my day job working on film.

I don't know how to spend time with you when only I'm faced with repression, censorship, and ambivalent goblets of feelings of both intense love and pronounced aversion. With every word I put down, I wonder if it's right. I can't enjoy our intercourse. I'm constantly feeling guilty, like I'm not meeting our needs, that I'm neglectful and callous. When I'm honest and still, you know that I know that I'm both.

I don't spend time with you because I'm really committed to Time. She has me by my balls and I will do anything to wrest myself from her grip. I want to beat her down, rape her once and for all, and destroy her. I want to see her resolve crumble in her eyes as I leave her violated and crying for mercy. I feel guilty that I'm 28 and I haven't achieved anything. And I don't know what I'm supposed to have achieved by 28 to not feel guilty and deeply dissatisfied. All I know that time is running out. I will turn 30 and my dreams left untouched and unfulfilled. And that queen of torture will continue laughing at me, goading me. God will never give you back those years lost to the locusts and he will never plant in you a feeling of contentment. You're doomed. And she laughs some more.

People have asked me recently about whether I'd write a book. I was never able to answer my question. I guess every writer feels that they have a book or novel in them. I don't know yet. I have tried to start preparing myself for a book, but the attempt was too phase-based, in that I was going to write a book during a phase in my life rather than digging inside to find material. I wanted to write a book about my moving into Melville in my life and viewing South African thruogh eyes free from the worlds of South African walled residential golf estates. The idea was to get a blog going on MyMelville and from there, build resolve and momentum to write a book. I was convinced I was going to do it. I never did it. I had forgotten that to write was to face difficult realities about my very personality and past.

When I was away for my solo retreat weekend, I wrote in my journal. And at one point I had to stop because the very words I imprinted into the page became like swords of fire, preventing me from continuing without delving into the immediacy of the realisation made. I knew you were there. And I knew you were asking me to return to your embrace because you know what I need to lay down my head. I haven't written much since my return from the retreat, especially in my journal.

What shall we do, Writing? What shall we do, my love? I can tell you that I raped Time at every possible juncture the past 2 weeks to diminish her stronghold on me. I raped her for you, my love. She is starting to convulse from fear, everytime I succeed and improve. She knows the end is here for her.

I haven't been able to write for months on the Enflesh Films blog because of the problems I was having there on every front. I reasoned that I needed something positive to write about, that I needed to wait until something was positive enough to go on the blog. But I learned the other day that waiting for the iron to cool is a form of avoidance. Now, thankfully, I have a lot to write about that is good and positive news. But I need to face what happened, not just for myself as a production company owner, but also to break the cycle, that writing only can happen when things are up and going well. I forget that I once wrote on this blog about my daily rage and nihilism. Writing then was catharsis and therapy before it became possible recognition and validation. After that phases, you became a reminder of how discarded and unimportant I am, that no one wants my writing, that other people's writing is more valuable than mine. You became an extension of my fraile self-image.

I just remembered another part of our history, Writing. Remember when I was active and unforgettable on these forums? You were then my strength and song, my very sword and spear, my power and glory. I would write and I would incite rebellions, anger. I would use you to fend off idiots and zealots, I would use you to make people laugh, go pale from shock, and make people remember me. You became my fame, even as people met me in person and realised that I am a very different person than my acidic words. Google remembered my words for a while. At one point, my words went dry. I had nothing else to attack or ridicule because I had run out of opponents. I would appear sporadically on there and shoot words. You became my weapon. Then, I disappeared from there. The fame wasn't longlasting. And the shame washed over me.

This post is entitled Slow Wake because I'm waking up to not just writing more regularly, but the realities of our relationship. I wonder why you haven't left yet and why you haven't confronted me throughout all these years. I know why. It's because you have no shape nor body nor mouth nor feelings nor heart nor ears. You are not a person although I'm eternally married to you. You don't share my bed or receive my kisses. You only appear in form when I sit down to escape Time.

I want you to appear in form every day and you, mi amor, will very soon for the day is coming when time will no longer be my worst fear, tormentor, and hated partner, no longer the wife I hate and never wanted to marry, but rather nothing more than a function in a equation:

f(time) = life

Life, my life of which I will dedicate to you, free from guilt, shame, and the past.