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True Life Walter
I love dogs. I am in love with, in particular, large dogs like Rhodesian ridgebacks, mastiffs and Labradors. It seems to me they have such wonderful qualities. For example, if you’re unkind to them, they don’t want any apology but only an opportunity to come back and love you again. They don’t reserve themselves, but commit to a full-blooded hug-and-kiss greeting every time you get home. My dog, a Jack Russel, knows when a family member is sick and curls up next to him. And I can’t help but admire that attitude of his of, ‘Why not have as much fun as possible, right now, because who knows what will be tomorrow?’ attitude. You can see from dogs that the more you give of yourself to loving others, the more you imprint yourself in their heart forever. Whoever forgets their dog? Revered author Rudyard Kipling also loved dogs, incidentally. My MA dissertation was on his work and his writing has been a big influence for me.
I love hiking. Here in Johannesburg there are plenty of beautiful places you can walk. Just to set off in the morning, alone, on a long trail in the silence of the forest soothes my heart. I talk to myself as I walk. I’m not embarrassed at all. That’s unless I’m caught in a moment of heated argument by my fellow hikers or caught singing loudly. I usually start by lecturing myself on what has been bothering me, in order to get it out of the way. Then I’ll move to a topic I wanted to discuss with myself: often the next chapter of what I’m writing. The best thing, though, is to let your mind go, and you’ll often find it leads to an issue you didn’t realise you needed to discuss. I’m convinced a person must go for walks. It clears the mind like nothing else.
I am a rabbi. I was fortunate enough to study for many years in various institutions in Jerusalem and earn my rabbinical ordination there. This was not a natural move for someone like me, who grew up on the beaches of Cape Town in a rather different atmosphere. But I’m quite proud of myself because I made the new culture, in particular the value placed in learning (the Talmud), my own and succeeded in my studies. I was introduced to a culture of learning so all-encompassing and demanding, so permeated with endless self-sacrifice, it took its permanent place in my world of aspirations. I study every day and I have my approach to studying fairly well worked out. I’m not a community rabbi. I once thought I was suited for this career, but at the moment I think otherwise. Things change, though, so who knows?
I love music. I’m permanently addicted to music and I need it every day. I love the early Genesis music, in particular Wind and Wuthering; also Peter Gabriel, The Beach Boys and Boney M. What makes me unique, I think, is how seriously I take music, which is a little abnormal. When I arrive home, I often will remain in my car until the song on the car radio finishes. My kids will stand and watch me through the gate. ‘Why were you just sitting there, Dad? That’s weird.’ I close my eyes and focus entirely on listening, (though not when I’m driving!). As far as I’m concerned, music is nothing less than a sort of medicine. It heals the soul. In fact, in the Torah world, it is viewed that way. It’s important, now and again, to dance to the music you love, too.
I hate weddings. I dread weddings with a severe brand of dread. I cannot bear the whole idea of a planned evening of fun. You arrive, the band is ready, the tables are set, you have been placed with a particular bunch of people due to the hostess’s judgement that you have something in common with them. You feel nothing toward them, though, or nothing more than you would to a rabbit, and that’s just the way they talk to you, with rabbit-like timidity. The speeches are horrific. All of a sudden, the groom’s family views him as a legend in his own time, though the day before they certainly didn’t, nor the day before that. I’m sorry, I lost control for a minute there!
I am clumsy. I drop things. The things I say are frequently inappropriate, and one wonders in retrospect how they could have been said, given the surrounding context. I have a one-in-a-million knack of going home in order to fetch something and leaving again with several irrelevant articles I had not intended to bring. Applying for a tourist visa, I once assured the embassy for a certain country that I intended to work as soon as I could on arriving, but found out later that the exclusive purpose of the interview was for them to be convinced I would not work at all. I am incapable of putting on a façade of self-confidence and irresistibly reveal my self-doubts, which is not so beneficial in business-type situations. But I do believe that naivety, clumsiness and bashfulness are unfairly laid low in our society. The towering Russian novelist Dostoevsky shows, in his novel The Idiot, that a righteous man among us would come across as naïve and as a little bit ‘in his own world’. Not that I claim righteousness for myself. My point is that the qualities our society promotes might warrant some questioning — a theme I explore in my novel, True-Life Walter, where the protagonist rejects social expectations to find his own, authentic and more rewarding mode of living.
I was not fond of school. Primary school was okay, but in high school I found myself out at sea. The new social rules, with the higher number of kids, seemed to me to be prematurely adult; innocence and simplicity were lost; social success was life, and so I felt lifeless. I wish someone would have told me that that little world is very short-lived, and then real life begins. But teenagers don’t feel that. They feel the permanence of their situation, and in a certain way it is permanent, because the only thing that’s real is the present moment, and all this social madness constitutes their present moment. Kids rightly sense that this moment rings out in eternity and doesn’t simply end. I know of a boy who killed himself recently due to this kind of social pressure. It would seem to make sense that some steps were made by schools to soften the social pressure facing kids. For example, schools might take steps to set the social atmosphere on their terms. And it should be such that even a shy boy, an unsociable boy, feels he has a place and is not harassed for being different. The results of wrong social pressures in schools can be awful and permanent. The main thing is for the teachers and administration to themselves understand that it can’t be true that only one kind of student is a praiseworthy student. As for me, I can’t claim that, despite those awkward years when peers and teachers could see little of interest in me, I turned out normal. But I do know that many people are born with natures that make them outsiders, so why should they be made to feel that it’s their fault? When I wrote True-Life Walter, it was an expression of my private mind, my private personality, which had no place in any environment with rigid social expectations. When anyone says anything of value, anything new, offering a novel vision of our world, he is a loner, for the reason that people have not thought this way until now. We should not police unconventional thinking but rather encourage it. Schools, and we all, should have more flexible ideas of what defines a successful person.
True-Life Walter by Steven Romain is available on Amazon priced £3.47 in paperback and £2.46 as an eBook.