The Ancient Shark Of Despair's blog

Thursday, December 11th 2008

The landlord:
“You wasted a lot of electricity. The lights were left on all day, all night for three days before I came in and turned them off.” The lights were the only thing he was allowing himself to get angry about. Everything up to then had been said in his sad voice but this was different. It was money and it was real.

“I nearly even called the police, I was in such a state. I thought you'd gone for good. I thought you'd end up dead somewhere. That's what I thought.” Now he was mixing sadness with anger. He wanted to force me to feel how sad he was. “You could have left a note, Shark. One bloody little note. If you absolutely have to run off to Plett or Timbuctoo or wherever, you should leave a note.”
“I thought you wouldn't like it.” I said. I really wish he hadn't found out about me going. I should have done the tape. “At least now you know that I can make it out there on my own,” I said, looking away from him. “Like I'll have to do when you sell my house to developers.” His face dropped and he got very quiet.
“It won't be like that, Shark. We're not going to kick you out on the street.”
“What will it be like?” I asked.
“We'll make a plan.” he said after a while. I thought about this and he thought and this and then he looked around and said, “I'd better call the kind. I haven't told him that you turned up again.”
“He must be so worried,” I said. There was a bit of joking in my voice because the kid (my son) isn't the worrying type. It's the Japanese in him. I don't think the Japanese even have a word for 'worry.'
“He was worried, Shark. We all were.”
“His name is Michael now.” I reminded the landlord. He just looked at me suspiciously.

It was good to have that talk with the landlord. Even though he tried to get me to feel sad and bring me down to his level, I got the feeling that we said more than we normally do – quality wise, if not quantity wise. I thnk it's more real between us now.

Tomorrow I'm going to go through that box of stuff from the landlord's mother's flat. That's going to be a big step towards getting my pad sorted out. I'm taking a lot of steps now. It feels good. Man, I hope the kid comes to visit again. We could really tear the place up, me and him. We'd play Scrabble and start a television company. That would be a step, too.

Friday, December 12th 2008

So I ordered pizza and one of those pizza punks came over to give it to me but this time it was different. Plett made it different. Not only did the pizza punk stop and talk to me – properly this time – but he told me some secrets.

“We thought you were dead, Ancient,” he said from the other side of the door. He shortened my name wrong. Nobody calls me Ancient, usually it's Shark. I didn't tell him that though. “Every week you order pizza, last week – nothing. Thought you were dead, man.”
“No, I just went away,” I said.
“Aw, where'd you go?”
“I went on an adventure,” I said and I smiled so hard you could hear it in my voice.
“For real, for real. You've got to have adventures, man.”
“This wasn't even that big of an adventure. I've had bigger ones.”
“Adventure is what keeps a man alive,” he said.
“Actually, I can't die.”
“Yeah yeah, me neither,” he said. That was surprising.
“Are you a shark too?” I was joking.
“Yeah yeah, I'm a shark, man. I'm a shark too.” I got up off the floor and looked through the letter flap but he was standing really close to the door. I tried sniffing but all I could smell was pizza and I was so hungry.
“You're not a shark,” I said. I was bluffing.
“Yeah I am man, I'm a shark. I come from Sharkania and I came to planet Earth on a spaceship. I used to see you back in the old days but we never talked. There was never the opportunit, you know?”
“How long have you been here?” I said, trying to get a view through the letterbox.
“Since the beginning, yeah? Look, here's your pizza, I'm dropping it by the door just how you like it. I got the money from the plant, thanks for the tip.” I suddenly wanted to give him a bigger tip. I haven't been tipping as well as I used to since the landlord introduced the R100 rule. I told him to wait but by the time I had gotten a few bucks from my money stash and gone back to the door, he was gone. I opened the door to check but there was only pizza out there. No shark anywhere. Not even a bird.

I tried calling Shark Of Wisdom to tell him about what had happened but he didn't pick up the phone, which is just typical of him.

Monday, December 15th 2008

There was a power cut today so I couldn't use my computer for a while. At first I thought it was horrible because I had lots of websites opened that I still needed to read and I had been talking to my friend, @groombridge, about Sarah's mix-tape. But then I remembered that the grocery kid had brought me the right juice yesterday (guava is the right kind. He normally gets me orange, which is too sour) and I still had some of it left and I also had some cigarettes that weren't so old so I decided to do something I hadn't done in a long while. I decided to meditate.

When I had that idea I got kind of excited. I ran as fast as I could to the kitchen and poured myself a big glass of guava juice and then came back into my room to get some cigarettes out of the cupboard. I found quite a few half-empty packets hidden in pizza boxes in there, but they were crumbly and gross. I sorted through them until I found the freshest box. I didn't want to throw all the old boxes away because the landlord might find them and ask me why I was smoking so much so I only threw one away and kept the rest all in the same pizza box. Then I sat down on the bed, opened the window as far as I could (they can't open too far because of the burgular bars on the outside), took a big gulp of juice, lit the first cigarette, positioned myself so I could see out through the gap in the curtains and just let my mind do what it wanted to.

I feel pretty sorry for people who can't smoke. Every now and again you just need a break to let your brain adjust back to the flow. You don't get to have as many breaks if you don't smoke. I kept an eye out for David like I always do even though I know that he's gone to live in the attic now. To be honest, I haven't been doing a lot of meditating or been keeping tabs on the courtyard since David left. There was an old lady sitting out there while I smoked but she didn't look like she was thinking anything insightful or interesting, she was just listening to the radio station where old people call in to talk about about things they'd heard about on other radio stations. She left after a while anyway. It was just me, my mind and the world. Were we fighting or were we dancing? It is hard to tell at any distance.

A lot of ideas for sitcom scenes and even whole episodes hit me before I'd even finished my juice. In this one episode – which will have to happen in the second or third season because it's pretty advanced – Ric takes his family to Florida (it's set in America so this part isn't such a big deal to them) and they go to the beach and see a whale and drive around the town and the kids sit on the stoep having a braai in the braai pit while Ric and Carolyn take the cover off the pool. Burzum calls up from back home because only Carolyn knows how to use the office computer and there could be a lot of jokes about Burzum not getting it. And then Ric drives his car into the pool. I'll figure out the reason why later but I think it'll be a really funny situation and the pool cracks open and underneath the pool is this big NASA facility with a rocket-ship in it. Oh yeah, the house they were staying in belongs to one of Ric's old NASA buddies, who was one of the higher-ups, which explains why there'd be that whole thing under his house. After they explore the facility and find the rocket-ship, Ric gets this idea that he wants to take his whole family to the Moon in the rocket-ship so that they'd know what it had been like for him out there. His family isn't so keen on the whole idea though. They love Ric but they're a bit afraid of becoming like him. Anyway, he doesn't listen to them – he's actually looking quite forward to going back to the Moon. He says he can beat the Moon now, so long as he has his family by his side. So he spends most of the episode loading up the rocket with stuff and food while his family look at each other and make sarcastic “Uuhhh” sounds with their mouths open. In the end they confront Ric about not wanting to go to the Moon with him. It would destroy them, being surrounded by -nothing,- even if they were together. -Nothing- is bigger than their family. -Nothing- is bigger than all the families. If all the families in the world all held hands and spread out in a circle and did their bravest faces, -Nothing- would still just laugh and break their minds, one by one.

But Ric manages to talk them into it anyway. They get inside the rocket and Ric presses all these buttons and pulls all the levers but the rocket doesn't take off. Turns out it was a fake rocket and the underground facility was actually a museum about the Moon missions that just hadn't opened yet! Then during the credits, Ric and his family have to run around putting everything right before Ric's friend comes back home. It's an important episode because it shows that Ric is finally ready to face the Moon and that his family loves him enough to go with him even though they had some doubts. The rocket was fake but the emotions were real.

I'd finished my third cigarette and two cups of juice and I was feeling pretty worn out from all thr smoking. Without really thinking about it, I undid the safety pins that keep my curtains together. I knew that I'd have to call the landlord to help me put them back in and there'd be a conversation about it, but I didn't care. I wanted to shake up the past and get into a whole new groove. I opened the curtains wide and I stood up. People could see me if they wanted to. What did it matter? I'd been to Plett. There are other sharks out, people. You don't have to freak out and go making up stories just because you saw one at the window once.

I breathed in deep and I smelled all of the air that sat in all of the apartments in the building then I sat down on the bed again. I felt dizzy and sick. I got over to cupboard, moved the landlord's mother's box out of the way, stood inside it and shut the door. It was dark and quiet inside. The curtains were still open. I could see then blowing in the wind from the crack between the doors. There was so much light that my room looked weird and small. It looked like someone else's room.

While I was in the cupboard I thought about all those things that Sarah had told me about the old ladies who thought I was a ghost or a statue. All of them were wrong. They'd listened to lies and believed them and had probably made up their own lies by the time they passed them onto Sarah. It was so unfair because the original version of those lies was me. Me and my truth. I wanted to get them all in a rocket-ship, the landlord, the old ladies, Monopoly, Clar, the whole building and show them what it was like up there. I'd be able to handle it. I've been up there before. I was born up there, everyone. I've got a perspective that could move all of your minds and you just make up stories about how I'm not even there. This is why I try not to talk to many people. They don't get it and never will.

After a while in the cupboard I heard my computer come back on so I got out, fell onto my bed and closed the window and the curtains too. I don't think anyone saw me.

Thursday, December 17th 2008

The message that the landlord left on my phone this morning was full of special promises. I'm going to write the whole thing out because I've still got the message and I can play it as many times as I want. The landlord said:

-----___0000___-----

Good morning, how are you today? Knocked on your door earlier but you weren't up yet so I'll just tell you now rather. I spoke to the kind last night and he says he'd like to come over for christmas if that's all right with you. We could have a nice big dinner on the day and we'd all get together. He wants to know if he can bring Henrietta too. Okay, talk soon. Bye.

-----___0000___-----

We haven't done christmas for a lot of years, mostly because I've never been really very comfortable with having too many people who know me all in a room together. Each one of them has a slightly separate version of me in their heads that they refer to and it's down to me to make all those different versions add up. It's very stressful and I normally just go to bed whenever the whole family gets together and that happens. But I think I've learnt a lot with my blog and with all the new people I've met and become friends with that it's not such a big deal to me anymore. It's actually kind of exciting, because everyone who will be in the room for dinner (me, the landlord, the grocery kid, the kid, the kid's wife, Celene, David) will be there because of me. I've achieved them. I don't think it's bad to be proud of all the people you've caused to be in one room together.

So I'd played the message a few times and had some breakfast (I made some beans) I called the landlord back and he came over.
“When's the kid coming over?” I said and I was shifting my weight around because I wanted to get to the big question that I really had to ask him.
“He hasn't booked a flight yet, he says it's up to you.” said the landlord. He was wearing overalls and I think he'd been painting, which is something he hardly ever does. “We don't want to make any stress for you, so you must decide.”
“Monday.” I said. “That'll give me time to get ready.” He laughed.
“Okay, I'll tell him Monday.”
“What about his wife?”
“Sorry?”
“What about the kid's wife, I thought he broke up with her?” I said. That's what he said had happened.
“Yes, they got divorced.” he said, warily. “But they're still friends and she's got no family to be with on christmas so she's coming with.”
“What's she like?” I said. I wasn't too hot on the idea of new people but I thought that maybe it would be a good challenge.
“You've met her lots of times! She's the same!” he said. This was true, she had come over a few times a bunch of years ago. I couldn't remember much about her though so I decided to jump to the big question.
“Is there space for David to come?” I asked. The landlord kind of chewed his tongue for some seconds and then said,
“I think David would like to spend christmas with his own family rather, don't you?”
“No,” I said, “David lives up in the attic now. He's left his family. He's come to see me again but he's too shy. You know how David is, he's such a lame-o sometimes.” This came out all at once and the landlord recoiled. He turned his head sideways and I knew that was a bad sign. “I know he's in the attic because he left the trapdoor open and a bird got out.”

The landlord sucked in a lot of air.

“Okay,” he said, then went on very slowly and carefully. “I'll get the ladder and I'll go up into the attic and ask him.” Then he went outside and he left the door open so I moved into the kitchen just in case anyone came by and then after a while he came back past the door carrying his stepladder. “Just a minute,” he said as he passed the door. Then he walked all the way down the corridor, around the corner and (I could hear this) put the ladder down against the wall under the trapdoor, climbed slowly up the ladder and opened the trapdoor.
“David, do you want to come to our christmas dinner?” he said, very loudly. He was such a fake.
“Oh?” he said. “No you don't? Why's that?” then he paused. “Oh, you want to go back to your family for christmas? No, that's fine. You must call them. I'm sure they're very worried about you. Bye now David.” then he got down the ladder and came by my room again. He leant on the doorframe, still carrying the ladder. He put his head in but didn't put the rest of him in. “David says that he doesn't want to come, he says that he's going -”
“I heard you.” I said. I knew he was just faking it so I didn't say anything else. After a while he left.

Friday, December 19th 2008

This time when he came I was ready for him. I'd asked for him specifically from the name I'd read off last week's bill. Here's how you do that:

(Phone) Butler's Pizza, how can I help you?
Oh, hello. It's that time of the week where I get my pizza.
(Phone) And what would you like to order?
Oh, my usual.
(Phone) And what is your usual?
It's two large Groovy Greeks but without the Butleritos and I'll have the Double Deal.
(Phone) We don't offer that deal on Fridays.
I forgot about that.
(Phone) The pizza should be there in forty five minutes, is there anything else you'd like?

This is where you say it.

Yes, I'd like Francois to bring it.
(Phone) Okay, I'll check – yes, he's on tonight. I'll see that he brings it.
Is he a shark?
(Phone) I'm sorry?
Francois.
(Phone) Sorry?
Is Francois a shark. Like, the fish.
(Phone) Hang on a second.

Then there's some talking. She wants someone else to talk to me. Then another girl comes on the phone. She sounds bigger.

(Phone) Hi, what's your phone number, sir?
I tell her what it is. She passes the phone back to the first girl and I hear her say, “Yeah, that's the guy.”
(Phone) Okay, goodbye!

And that's how it works. So then I waited. I had to psych myself up to a confrontation. If it went badly then I would have to open the door and scare him. I'd figured out that he wasn't a shark. I told the whole story of last week to @groombridge (I haven't told him about my blog yet but I will) and he said that Francois was probably just some kid playing tricks and not actually a shark. I was pretty disappointed when I knew that this was probably true. But I think I understood why Francois would do something like that. Moe had probably told everyone at the pizza place all about me and the kind of stuff I get up to. That's cool, I didn't tell him not to do it so I guess it's my own fault. I imagine that Francois isn't the coolest of the pizza punks. He doesn't have long hair like Moe and probably can't really do anything. Yeah, he can walk and talk and drive a car and give people pizza, but that's nothing when you stack it up against the whole mind of humanity. He probably didn't have many friends at the pizza place because he didn't really understand what it is a person -is- and why. When you're not that good at being a person yourself, it's hard to know what other people are all about. So he decided to tease someone so he could show the other pizza punks that he was a real person, that he had thoughts and feelings and ways of doing things and they were strongly directed towards this one guy. That guy was me. This happens all the time.

When he got to the door I was so quick. “Francois,” I said and I sounded big too.
“Yeah yeah, hi Ancient, yeah. You're waiting behind the door for me there, hey?”
“Listen, I just want to know – this is really important.”
“Okay yeah what is it?”
“You're not a shark,”
“No man, I'm not. Look, here's your pizza, I've got to go, all right?”
“Francois.” I said. But he was gone. The pizza was there. I had won.

I told @groombridge but he really wasn't that interested in the fact that I had won. He wanted to talk about how bad the education system is, which was fine I guess. I shouldn't really brag about winning because it's over now and we've moved on, but I think it changed me. I'm feeling a lot more assertive now. I didn't even have to open the door and scare or bite him. I think I could definitely do christmas with this mindset. Nobody can get on top of me.

I'm going to invite David over.