So Where Does This Come From?

I was lucky. I grew up in a very interesting household, in an interesting era, and in an interesting country undergoing unprecedented change. There were good times and there were bad times...but overall. I was lucky.

These were the dynamics that got my creative juices flowing, that stimulated my interests in art and music, and that compelled me to commit pen to paper:

MY MOTHER
Oedipus Rex was real in my youth! Growing up as an only child, in a small family in a relatively quiet part of a new suburb, my mother became my best friend. She was (and still is) the pragmatist in the family, the only one of the three of us who focussed on the practical, the logical and the rational. She was a bookkeeper who ran the family finances and ultimately the parent who ensured that there was enough money available to send me to a private (Catholic) school for 12 years during the dark days of government-driven apartheid education in South Africa. My mother and father sacrificed a lot to get me a good, "normal" education, and I have only them to thank for my achievements to date.

I have my mother to thank for every practical thought I have in my mind! Inherently a dreamer, practicality never came easy to me, and I had to work hard at becoming organised! As a well practised skill, it has become a well developed ability, and I am now very comfortable with bringing structure to unstructured ideas or processes. In fact, my compulsive nature us starting to manifest itself in this arena, and I now have databases to manage my databases! ;-) Phew!! Thanks mom!!

Mother was also good with her hands. Sewing, knitting, handcrafts and cooking all came very easily for her. Although I would say that my father was the more artistic of the couple, it was my mother who stimulated my interest in art and music, and who encouraged me to become more involved in creative pursuits. Likewise, although my father was the avid reader and writer of the couple, it was Joan who spent the long hours teaching me to read and write, taking me to the library and coaxing me to read. Although I enjoyed the pastime, I was and still am a lazy reader.

MY FATHER
Beaudry Glen was a journalist all his life. Only when I was compelled to buy an English dictionary following his death in1990 did I realise what wordsmith he was, and how I had come to rely on his counsel on matters of language and grammar. I had never needed a dictionary until then!

Beau was the dreamer, the raconteur, the idealist with his head in the clouds. Yes he was emotional and moody, and I think I've inherited some of that from him...but I certainly don't bear his pessimism and (sometimes) fatalistic nature.

Father's underlying dynamic was his creativity, his individuality, his all expansive sense of freedom, his passion for flying and his uncanny ability to win (and keep) friends and mesmerise a crowd. In this respect he was a showman, albeit a somewhat insecure one.

South Africa in the 1660's, 79's and 80's did not tolerate free thinking people like my father. He was a raving left wing militant in a cesspool of apartheid depravity, immoral totalitarianism and censorship. No wonder the man suffered from bi-polar mood swings, depression and agoraphobia.

But, my God, could the man write! He was such a good story teller that at EVERY party I can remember, he held the group in the palm of his hand as he eloquently spun yarns - both fact and fiction - of incredible complexity, beauty and humour. Jesus, the man could laugh! And when he laughed, the whole world laughed with him...it was infectious. I soaked it all up, carefully recording and categorising everything he did so well. I knew that I wanted to be like him, but I know that I still have a long way to go.

Domestically father was useless. Household chores, repairs and maintenance were left to others. I don't think the man ever touched a cooking utensil or washed the dishes in his life!

But he was surprisingly good with his hands - he was a wonderful sketch artist, had the most beautiful handwriting and signature, and could design and build some of the most elegant and well built model aircraft from scratch. Ever the glider pilot, when he did something, his focus was absolute, and he did it better than anyone else. Absolutely world class. I definitely acquired my perfectionist nature from my father.

Also acquired from my father was my sense for history. He encouraged me to study the subject in high school, and was himself a walking encyclopaedia. In fact as a child he was a bit of a prot�g�e, winning countless local and radio quizzes. Apparently it was only his winnings from these quiz shows that made him financially secure enough to date my mother! So, the importance of general knowledge and history, and the need to record things for posterity was passed on to me. It was because of my father that I started keeping a diary and saving a lot of what I wrote.

Both my parents encouraged me to take up photography, a passion that I have developed since getting my first camera at the age of six. Over the years, recording things in words and pictures has become second nature. I "blame" my father for that! I always encouraged him to write a book, but he never got around to before his untimely death. Maybe I'll do it for the both of us one day.

SOUTH AFRICA
My family were immigrants from Pomerania - peasant farmers who arrived from Europe with nothing in 1857, and who were deposited in a desolate part of Kaffraria as a human buffer between the Xhosa and the British imperialists. That they survived at all is a miracle to me.

Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Pautz was 18 years old when he arrived in East London with his parents and siblings. Shortly thereafter he joined the Cape Mounted Riflemen, and started keeping a regimental and a personal diary - journals that he maintained right up to his death in1907.

My father had told me of these diaries when I was a kid, and they always fascinated me...and motivated me to write accounts of my own experiences.

Of course, growing up in South Africa in the 1960's and 70's was a harrowing and life-changing experience. My father was a left wing, anti-government journalist during the 50's and 60's, and the whole family "paid the price" - Beau had a Bureau of State Security shadow for many years, and I believe that my BOSS file was opened before I reached my first birthday.

Growing up in a liberal home in apartheid South Africa......hmmm.....my parents decided that the Christian Brothers' College was the only school in Pretoria that they could (only just) afford where I would get a balanced education. I spent 12 years there, learned the words of "Nkosi Sikalele Afrika", and had the opportunity to mix with black kids (unlike my friends at government schools).

I was conscripted into the infantry for my two years of compulsory military service. I went out of naivety, thinking that I could keep a low profile, and avoid the lengthy prison sentences that awaited conscientious objectors. I was wrong.

In the pre-e-mail and cell phone era, the isolation of the Bourke's Luck and Phalaborwa military camps quickly made me realise the importance of letter writing and committing my ideas to paper. With the atrocious public phones in the camps (in the pre-phone-card era), letters were the primary contact with home, and were eagerly awaited. Officers and NCO's used to withhold letters and parcels as punishment, and used to subject mail recipients to physical misuse to "earn" their mail.

I started writing...and writing a lot. I filled up my free time writing letters to family and friends, endeavouring to capture my experiences, trials and tribulations without alarming my readers too much. I was living through a personal hell, but I didn't need to depress others. Keeping a diary was contrary to military law, but I kept it up for the full two years. I also started writing for myself - my first tentative efforts at capturing the time and place in simple poetry, and pointed observation. It wasn't good, but it was real. I have learned that when I'm stressed, my writing improves....for me it's a great release valve.

The racist army almost killed me, and I ended up serving time in a godforsaken place called Katima Mulilo. During that time I smuggled my diaries to a friend for fear that they would be found, and continued my journal on scraps of paper. I later transcribed these observations into the diary. For me, they are a very important record of my life and my times.

TRAVEL
When I started travelling extensively in 1989, I maintained my regular correspondence with my parents and friends. I found that the stimulation of new places and things brought out the best in both my photography and my writing.

Living in London, I rediscovered the postcard, and the joy of letters as living diaries. I could not afford long distance phone calls, e-mail was still five years away, and pen and paper were just so convenient. I wanted to share my life experiences with those who I loved, but could not be with me and be part of the things I was experiencing. I put a lot into my correspondence. My mother tells me that she kept all those letters - it will be great to revisit them one day.

My travels in the late 80's and early 90's took me through interesting places at probably the most exciting time of the 20th century. Turkey, which was still relatively untouched then. Greece. Italy. Switzerland. Germany - just in time to catch the fall of the Berlin Wall in November-December '89. Luxembourg. Holland. Austria, and I'm sure other places I've forgotten! One of the crowning moments was the release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990 - a group of friends and myself joined 70,000 other people outside South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, London for one of the best impromptu street parties of the century! All of these experiences I captured in my writing - I guess they will be historical documents one day!

Since then I have travelled to over 50 countries and seen some amazing things. I have used various mediums to capture my thoughts and feelings while on my journeys including film, video, audio cassette, pen & paper, computers and PDA's, and have accumulated a lot of material. For me, travel is a constant inspiration, and I love writing about it.

STRESS
Some of my most interesting efforts have been born out of adversity or been a coping mechanism in response to stressful situations. My father's sudden and unexpected death in mid-1990 (while I was still living in the UK) was one such precipitating event. Beau's passing wiped me out, and changed the way in which I viewed the world. I became more focussed and more interested in my roots and the family history. Since then genealogy has become one of my many passions and I believe my research has enhanced the awareness of the German settlers to Kaffraria in the mid-19th century. There's a book in there somewhere!

In the year's following my father's death South Africa also went through fundamental political and social change. As the country moved towards its first true democratic elections in 1994, crime and violence increased, and the country became incredibly volatile. I responded to the angst inherent to my environment by writing about it. What I wrote was simple poetry - my first, faltering attempts to capture a slice of my time and life in metrical form. For a few years I became fascinated by rhyme and verse and worked on one-page pieces that frequently took me many months to complete. I usually wrote late at night after far too many drinks! Reading these pieces now takes me back to a time and place very different to where I find myself today (in safe Central Europe). We were certainly living on a razor's edge back then�and we were bleeding.

Towards the end of 1995 I relocated to the Czech Republic, soon after Débra and I got married. We decided that I would establish a base in Prague while she continued working in Johannesburg, and she would eventually join me once the dust had settled on my new job. We were eventually apart for a year. The stress of moving, changing jobs, developing a new service line, adapting to a new climate and culture, and the strains of separation from wife, friends and family drove me back to the pen. For the first time in my life I had a notebook computer that I took home every night and on which I produced voluminous letters addressed to my wife, mother and friends. I now call these letters my "relocation diaries". I also started writing poems that focused on the difficulty of separation. Generally it was a creative time. With no friends or television to distract me, I became engrossed in reading and writing. It was a stressful but rewarding time.

THE INTERNET
In Prague I discovered the Internet. The World Wide Web and e-mail changed my life. It opened up a new, vibrant, dynamic and stimulating communications medium that I quickly became addicted to. It also brought me into contact with a whole new circle of acquaintances, some of which have become friends in real life. By early 1999 I had taught myself HTML and produced my first simple web page, and my writing was out there for the world to see! If I never have children, the Internet will be to blame! But it is a creative and challenging medium that has revolutionised communication and that has given everyone the opportunity to be an author.

As a techno-junkie himself I know my father would have embraced the new technology as I have. What has been great for me has been scanning some of the short stories that he wrote back in the 1950's and 60's and posting them to the web. Thanks to the Internet, Beau Pautz lives again through his writing. The timelessness of the written word meets the wonder of technology�remarkable.

Where this is all going I don't know. I'm not a good writer, but I enjoy capturing the moment and I will continue to do so. If people enjoy what I produce, that's fine with me. If they don't, that's fine too�I'm not fussed. I enjoy creating something from nothing and as long as I am able to do so I will continue to commit my (sometimes crazy) thoughts to paper or pixel.

MARK LYNDON PAUTZ
Prague, Czech Republic
Sunday April 22, 2001 (03h15)