A Cape Town boy.
Facing yourself.
Writing a memoir, I've found, is a scary business.
'Wolf Hall' author Hilary Mantel calls it 'a process of facing yourself'. She's right. For those of us who've kicked around the planet for several - or in my case - many decades, there's heavy baggage to pick up; a lot of 'facing up' to do.
Stacy Schiff, who wrote a magnificent biography of Cleopatra a few years back, goes even further when she says 'a memoir is a battle to become someone; when the potential and actual selves lay down their arms, when they begin to commiserate with and complement each other, the battle abates'.
For me, though, coming from sifting through the first 20 years of my life, the process has been epiphanic. New York Times columnist Carl Zimmer's explanation comes closest to matching my feelings: 'Memoirs are drilling expeditions, in which writers mine their experiences to gain a deeper understanding of themselves'.
That's me in the picture, aged fourteen. It's 1954 and I'm on an Italian cruise ship called 'Patria', heading up the east coast of Africa to Lourenco Marques. This is years before the Frelimo rebels de-colonized Portuguese East Africa, re-naming it Mocambique, and changing the capital from 'LM' to Maputo. That voyage is not recorded in my memoir; the only part of it I remember was, for the first time in my life, eating prosciutto and cashew nuts. Hardly an epiphany.
What I have written about - and this is the scary bit, making me feel as vulnerable as walking home on a dark night in Johannesburg - are the events in those first two decades that helped make me, for better or worse, who I am.
In the five decades since, I've been blessed with many life-enhancing friendships. Some have been short, even fleeting, but most have been of some duration. If you're reading this, you've given me one of those friendships, and I thank you for it.
Today, most of my friends are scattered. That's the result of being born in China, moving to Britain as a child, growing up in South Africa, working in Europe and, finally (I think) settling in America.
Sometimes, I envy the old geezers I see clustered every Friday morning in my local diner; chances are, they went to high school together and have lived in the same town all their lives. But then another part of me says 'What? Never live anywhere else? Shoot me first'.
If I had riches untold, I would - a la Sinatra - fly in my pals to the Hamptons or, better yet, Cape Town and have one wing-ding of a partaaay! But I don't, so I can't. Yet the internet has given us access to a global diner, if you will, where friendships can be fed and watered any time we choose.
Friend, your younger self must have undergone some formative experiences. And there may be every reason for keeping them private. But Carl Jung suggested that, as we become older, we become more and more of who we are. He called the process 'individuation' and deemed it absolutely necessary for the integration of the psyche. Most of you, I'm sure, are on such a self-examining path - private or shared.
After all, what do we do when there's no one left who remembers us as 'that irritating little kid'? Perhaps it falls to us to remember. I believe our own kids, if no others, deserve it. Well, that's my excuse.
If you haven't yet put those early years under a microscope, you may be surprised to find how seminal they were. I was.
'Only connect' was novelist E.M. Forster's prescription for a rich life.
I'll leave you with this thought: only connect - with others, with your self.
'A Cape Town boy, a memoir of growing up', is on Amazon web sites.
© Brian Clewly Johnson
Amagansett, NY 11930
USA
June 2015
'Wolf Hall' author Hilary Mantel calls it 'a process of facing yourself'. She's right. For those of us who've kicked around the planet for several - or in my case - many decades, there's heavy baggage to pick up; a lot of 'facing up' to do.
Stacy Schiff, who wrote a magnificent biography of Cleopatra a few years back, goes even further when she says 'a memoir is a battle to become someone; when the potential and actual selves lay down their arms, when they begin to commiserate with and complement each other, the battle abates'.
For me, though, coming from sifting through the first 20 years of my life, the process has been epiphanic. New York Times columnist Carl Zimmer's explanation comes closest to matching my feelings: 'Memoirs are drilling expeditions, in which writers mine their experiences to gain a deeper understanding of themselves'.
That's me in the picture, aged fourteen. It's 1954 and I'm on an Italian cruise ship called 'Patria', heading up the east coast of Africa to Lourenco Marques. This is years before the Frelimo rebels de-colonized Portuguese East Africa, re-naming it Mocambique, and changing the capital from 'LM' to Maputo. That voyage is not recorded in my memoir; the only part of it I remember was, for the first time in my life, eating prosciutto and cashew nuts. Hardly an epiphany.
What I have written about - and this is the scary bit, making me feel as vulnerable as walking home on a dark night in Johannesburg - are the events in those first two decades that helped make me, for better or worse, who I am.
In the five decades since, I've been blessed with many life-enhancing friendships. Some have been short, even fleeting, but most have been of some duration. If you're reading this, you've given me one of those friendships, and I thank you for it.
Today, most of my friends are scattered. That's the result of being born in China, moving to Britain as a child, growing up in South Africa, working in Europe and, finally (I think) settling in America.
Sometimes, I envy the old geezers I see clustered every Friday morning in my local diner; chances are, they went to high school together and have lived in the same town all their lives. But then another part of me says 'What? Never live anywhere else? Shoot me first'.
If I had riches untold, I would - a la Sinatra - fly in my pals to the Hamptons or, better yet, Cape Town and have one wing-ding of a partaaay! But I don't, so I can't. Yet the internet has given us access to a global diner, if you will, where friendships can be fed and watered any time we choose.
Friend, your younger self must have undergone some formative experiences. And there may be every reason for keeping them private. But Carl Jung suggested that, as we become older, we become more and more of who we are. He called the process 'individuation' and deemed it absolutely necessary for the integration of the psyche. Most of you, I'm sure, are on such a self-examining path - private or shared.
After all, what do we do when there's no one left who remembers us as 'that irritating little kid'? Perhaps it falls to us to remember. I believe our own kids, if no others, deserve it. Well, that's my excuse.
If you haven't yet put those early years under a microscope, you may be surprised to find how seminal they were. I was.
'Only connect' was novelist E.M. Forster's prescription for a rich life.
I'll leave you with this thought: only connect - with others, with your self.
'A Cape Town boy, a memoir of growing up', is on Amazon web sites.
© Brian Clewly Johnson
Amagansett, NY 11930
USA
June 2015
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