My Brilliant Dream Goes Bung

I’ve been thinking about dreams a lot lately. Not the ‘go to sleep and fly’ type, but the ‘one day I want to’ kind of dream.

When I was young, I was obsessed with the written word. I read a lot and I wrote a lot. Pretty much all I spoke about was books – they were my passion. I loved everything about books – their musty-old and peppery-new smell, the smoothness of the paper, the patterns that the words make on the page. Being a pretty lonely and nerdy kid, I loved their ability to transport and transform. I know that its a teen lit cliché, but books were my best and most constant friends.

I dreamed that one day books would be my life. My profession. My career. I had plans. Like Martin Luther King, I had a dream. I was going to write and write and write until I finally produced a great novel.

I dreamed about being the kind of writer that reached people. That touched them. That let them know that they are not alone and that what they are feeling is ok. Unique to them, but all part of the complex human experience. I wanted to make people laugh. I wanted to make them cry. I wanted my writing to be an expression of who and what I am, but also of who and what we all are. I really thought that I would get there one day. Because back then I was Confident with a capitol C. At least, I was confident about my writing ability.

But somewhere along the line that dream began to fade and doubt made its stealthy way into my mind and heart. I’ve been trying to figure out when and why this happened.

At first I thought that I began to let go of the dream at varsity; where I discovered sex, alcohol and a heady independence that meant I could stay in bed all day if I wanted to. But when I think back on that time in my life, I realise that I was just as passionate and naïve about a career in literature as ever. Sure, I was completely distracted and did nothing to take me closer to actually accomplishing the dream, but it was still alive and visible through the alcoholic and post-coital haze.

I think that the reality has more to do with the fact that it was at varsity that I began to truly doubt myself. Suddenly everyone seemed smarter and more talented than me. This is probably why I dropped out of the university that I had spent my teens dreaming about. Well, that and the fact that I never went to lectures. But even after I’d left the dear little university town that introduced me to a host of new experiences, the dream lingered.

Then life took over. I started making more and more compromises and sacrifices. More bad decisions. I kept changing my goals to suite what was expected of me. What was normal. What was reasonable. Until one day I woke up to realise that I was a stay-at-home mother who had lost her dream.

Sure, I do write today and it does pay me. But I’m not writing what I expected to be. And that great novel is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the writing I get paid to do is about products that I often find it difficult to get excited about. Sometimes I am lucky enough to write about something that does resonate with me, but for the most part I write its just work. Instead of writing about the things that should and do matter to humanity, I write about things that don’t. I write for businesses and help them make more money. My writing has come to be about greed instead of giving; spinning and massaging the truth, instead of honesty. And when you surround yourself with those words all the time, they become your reality. Because words have power. I understood this as a kid, why do I understand it less now? I think my teenage self would be a little disappointed. She would wonder what had happened to get me to this point. I don’t think I’d be able to give her a satisfactory answer.

Its difficult for me to say that I regret any of my decisions though, because I love my life, I do enjoy my job and I adore my family. But I do still find myself wondering what happened to that dream of contributing something meaningful. If I’m honest with myself I can admit that its still buried somewhere deep down inside. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line I decided that it wasn’t possible for me. The dream became unattainable in my mind and I gave up.

I let go of my dream for things that seemed more realistic and reasonable. It was worn away by monotony, routine and the need to put a roof over my head. I wonder if that is just the reality of life and growing up, or the saddest thing in the world? I think its both.

So what do I do now? Is it too late? Sadly, I’ve lost confidence in my ability to contribute to the literary world. The dream is kind of blurry and because I no longer have a clear picture in my head I no longer know if I can do it. I don’t even know if I should – if I have something important to say. I’m not sure that I can reach out to people in the way that I would like to, or that I even have a story to tell.

I suppose that’s the great thing about being young – you think that everyone wants to listen to what you have to say because you are so convinced that it Is important. As an adult, you realise your own insignificance. You understand that your story has been told before, and you realise that the world isn’t really all that interested in listening to it.

Title adapted from “My Brilliant Career goes Bung” by Miles Franklin.

Of Race and Cultural Identity

As I get older, I am grateful for the peace that comes with having a few more years under your belt. Mostly, I am pleased about the dwindling relevance of the angst of my teens and early adulthood. I no longer feel the need to question who I am, why I am here and how I want to be be perceived. Yet some questions linger. Perhaps it is because my circumstances and cultural reference points today are so different to those of my youth and childhood, but one of the things that I just can’t seem to shake is the question of racial identity. I know that this is a minefield in South Africa, and probably everywhere else in the world. Its just not something that I have ever been able to answer adequately. Perhaps I never will. Perhaps the fact that there are no easily identifiable answers points to the fact that race really shouldn’t be an issue at all.

Over the years, I have had many discussions with family and friends about what it means to be coloured and what the coloured cultural identity is. I have had as many answers as discussions.

I have heard, “Of course there is a coloured culture! It can be difficult to explain, but coloured people can recognise each other.” Coloured koeksusters are different to Afrikaans koeksusters. Our roti is different to Indian roti. ‘Play-whites’, ‘twanging’, Jack Purcells and Bomber jackets – worn together. These things are (supposedly) ours alone. While I recognise that there is some truth in all of this, I also know that there are so many similarities between various South African cultures that the differences are almost completely cancelled out.

Some say that there is no specific coloured culture because coloured people are by nature so diverse. Our cultural references are tied not only to the languages we speak at home, but to which part of South Africa – or even a particular city – we grew up in. “Even the slang is different,” I’ve been told. These differences can be distilled down to the suburb and street you grew up in, the school you went to and the amount of curl your hair holds. Then again, isn’t this true of everyone regardless of colour? And yet we wouldn’t argue that there is no such thing as culture At All, would we?

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been told that there is no such thing as a coloured person. Supporters of this theory are particularly fond of citing the fact that ‘coloured’ is a created race that exists only in South Africa and no other country. ‘We are all black,” I’m told. “Calling yourself coloured is to take on the false racial stereotyping of the apartheid regime that sought only to divide and conquer.” Again, I can see a kernel of truth in this. But I can’t ignore the fact that there Are coloured people in South Africa and we Are a separate racial group and this Has led to a whole new set of cultural references. Perhaps the way in which it happened was false and engineered, but it did happen and to deny that is to deny our history. Also, I must admit that this response makes me really uncomfortable because – to my mind – it is inflammatory in its implication that an entire group’s existence and experiences can be negated by saying, “It should never have happened, therefore the consequences do not exist.”

Being exposed to such diverse opinions since childhood has left me confused and unsure of what to believe a lot of the time. So its probably easy to understand why Chris van Wyk’s Shirley, Goodness and Mercy and Eggs to Lay and Chickens to Hatch had such an impact on me. Here, I am presented with literature that speaks not only to the human in me, but the South African and – undoubtedly – the coloured.

Van Wyk grew up in a time and place separated from my own youth by a few decades and a considerable distance. Yet I understand the picture that he paints of a Riverlea in the 60s and 70s, that goes beyond his proficiency with the written word or our common ground as South Africans. I recognise this place. I recognise the dog tied up in the back yard while children play in the street. I have tasted the somewhat bizarre combination of roast chicken, roasted potatoes and biryani served on special occasions. I close my eyes and can smell a multitude of curries being cooked in a dozen different houses as I walk up the street with my friends. What I will always think of as ‘the five o’clock smell’, because that is when most of the mothers came home and started the cooking. My jaw aches in sympathy at the horrific surprise of biting into an elachi seed cleverly disguised in a lamb curry. I know how to play kennekie. Perhaps there are white and black people who know these sights and smells as well as I do. And yet the special way in which they are combined, I am convinced, is particular to coloured people.

When I first heard of van Wyk upon the the release of his first memoir, Shirley, Goodness and Mercy; I went straight out and bought a copy of the book – just as I did with Eggs to Lay and Chickens to Hatch. Here was a man who grew up in a suburb not too far from my father’s home in Coronationville. A man who was what I had always looked for while growing up – a coloured literary role model. These books have meant a lot to me. They have connected me to a people from whom I have often felt disconnected in my later years. They have provided a sense of familiarity, recognition and comfort that I have rarely experienced in my years of reading books produced by Americans, Englishmen and even white South Africans.

And so I say thank you to Chris Van Wyk for answering a question that I have been asking for close to 30 years. Clearly there is a coloured cultural identity, for I share it with you, across time and space.

But I am still left wondering, “Is race really important and should it define us, colouring our interactions with each other?” I don’t know. Perhaps that’s a question for another book… If you know what that book is, let me know.