The gift of connection through creative practice

Revisiting my father's notebooks

Earlier this month, as I was packing up our storage locker for our upcoming move, I came across a box containing two yellow spiral bound notebooks. I immediately recognized them as a present from my father, that he gave me back in 2004, when I visited him for the last time at his home in Pretoria, South Africa. That visit turned out to be the last time I saw him alive — he died in 2005 from complications of non-hodgkin’s lymphoma.

In them, my father’s messy handwriting outlined his intellectual interests from 1980 up to 1998. Most of the books he summarized in them, he read between 1980-1981 and 1996-1998. In some of his entries, he even noted where he was — the earlier entries were done during a trip to Hawaii, when I would have been just a toddler. I remember being told we’d travelled there, but have no recollection. Clearly for my father, that was a time of great intellectual stimulation. It was also a time rich with new possibilites — my family moved from their homeland of South Africa to Canada in 1980.

Almost as interesting as the notes themselves is getting to have a glimpse into my father’s creative practice. My father loved to read, and our house had bookcases filled with Encyclopedia Britannica, books on history and mythology, Afrikaans literature, art books, Russian literature, philosophy, etc. Growing up I had no idea how fortunate I was to be surrounded by so many literary artefacts. I simply took it for granted, as a child does, that this was what an adult’s house looked like.

I am reminded of something the writer Umberto Eco purportedly claimed about owning books:

“It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read […] There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion.”

I’m sure my father would have agreed. Though, finding the space for all the books can be an intellectual challenge in its own right.

Now an adult myself, I too have piles of books. One thing I love is that Athena appreciates books almost as much as I do. Our combined library is filled with multi-lingual fiction, non-fiction, and creativity-related books. Whenever moving time rolls round, though, I am none too pleased about it. Moving books is a pain. But I remind myself that some pains are worth the trouble, despite my occasional grumblings to the contrary.

In my father’s notebooks, you can see the reverence he had for the great intellectuals of Western thought. In his messy doctor’s handwriting, on yellowing pages, he quotes his favourite thinkers: philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietszche, as well as psychiatrists like Paul Watzlawick and Victor Frankl. The second spiral notebook is almost entirely filled with his notes on Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Thought, all the way from the Greeks to more contemporary times. His last entry, written in 1998, seems apt. It’s from Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s book Memories, Dreams, Reflections:

“Life is — or has — meaning and meaninglessness … The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship to all things.”

His handwriting worsens with the passing of time. And you can tell he returned to these notebooks himself, writing in pencil words that were illegible in their original script. In his scribblings, which are in English and Afrikaans, I travel through memories of moments where he shared these same ideas with us, his family, in verbal form. He adored, for example, the ideas of Martin Heidegger on the interrelatedness of being and time and would bring them up frequently.

When I, years later, found a translation of Heidegger’s writings in a bookstore, I purchased it on the spot, thinking it would be a fun book to sink my teeth into. I found it unreadably difficult and promptly put it back on my shelf.

That pretty much summarizes my relationship with my father. We had similar loves on the surface — books, music, arts, culture. But when it came to specifics, our paths diverged. Where he loved the Ancients, the classics, the founding fathers of Western thought, I was drawn to more modern works — the rebels, poets, outcasts, and troublemakers. We did share a love for Canadian writer Robertson Davies, steeped as his books were in mythology, history and irreverence. But my father was more drawn to thinkers than creative writers. Ideas were his passion.

All that to say, these past few weeks I have been painstakingly typing out his writings into a simple Notes file on my computer, trying to decipher his handwriting word for word. I’ve enjoyed the challenge. I wish this task could go on forever, but I’m nearing the end. Most recently we’ve been travelling through the writings of Bertrand Russell to Greece, exploring the ideas of Plato and Aristotles. My father notes that the latter lacks emotional richness in his thinking, whatever that means.

The exercise has me feeling close to my father in a way I haven’t felt in years. It’s fun to revisit the ideas that animated him throughout his life. These notebooks have revived some of my most precious memories of my father: his love of history, his thirst for knowledge and wisdom, his desire to understand the meaning of existence. It feels like he is here with me, living on through these notebooks.

It only took over 20 years for me to delve into his gift. But as they say: when the student is ready, the teacher appears. They - whoever they are - might just be right.

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Stefan is Tilted Windmills’ clinical counsellor, generative coach and a self-described wounded healer. If you’re seeking support, consider booking a free 30-minute consultation.

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