Is he still in prison? Deluded, paranoid, confused? Aware of few but himself while all the while wishing to transcend himself. Religion only complicated this labyrinth. Or perhaps he is exaggerating – what is his suffering compared to so many others? But he could only really be inside himself. What of his woman? Did she not offer an escape route; is she not the soul mate he has yearned for all these years? Yes, she offers him a new world. She offers him a path of golden light. He is no longer a lonely young man crying for warmth and life and security. He is no longer on a path of self-destruction, trying to obliterate the self he felt had stooped to such low moral depravity. Yet still, life finds holes in him to salt his wounds and the agony of that inarticulate sense of not knowing….not knowing.

His name is Vladamir. Vladamir Petrovic Nastarovia. The year is 2008. He remembers eight years ago when it all began. Or did it begin a few years earlier in 1996 or 1997?

He had just graduated from University where he did an undergraduate in art, specifically painting, art history and philosophy. Vladamir enjoyed the university. Not in the sense that he had many friends and certainly not because he had many woman. He enjoyed the intellectual growth, the freedom of exploration and the on going development as a painter – an artist. He did not really fit in, whether at the art school or the university in general. But that had never phased him. He was self-assured, intelligent and strong enough to argue with the lecturers during art crits. He did find one woman particularly attractive. She was in Vladamir’s philosophy class. They would exchange notes during lectures and discuss philosophy together. He found her intriguing. She once came to stay with him at his parent’s house. He tried to sleep with her. He pleaded that she give him a chance. She said “it is not about a chance”. He felt defeated at this rejection. He burned wax for many hours into the night after that.

Some time later, he went to University and he felt as if the walls, the facades of the campus were falling in on him and that people were talking about him and staring at him. The rejection started to warp his perceptions. But this feeling did not last long and her memory faded.

Vladamir began trying marijuana at this stage, mainly with a friend of his in art school. He enjoyed these experiences. His friend suggested he seek out a prostitute when Vladamir insisted that he needed sex. Vladamir, always the seeker of truth, sought advice before making such a decision. He went to a psychology lecturer and explained his dilemma, to which he got the response: “Do it if that is what you want.” The psychologist, in true liberal style, saw nothing wrong with it. So he did it! He went to a street corner near his parent’s home at a time his parents were away, and brought the Black Woman home. He sketched her first and then fucked her. At the moment of climax, he saw the vision of his geometric Mandela-like painting. It was bliss. He paid her R50 and dropped her where he had picked her up. That was June/July 1996. He was no longer a virgin. He was about 22 years old.

After graduating, he thought a trip to the art centers of Europe may be a good idea. But then a cheap tour to Israel came up and he thought to himself that it may be a good proposition and a cheap way to get to Europe. He had always had strong feeling for Judaism. But these were, in the main, negative. He went to a Jewish day school but was repulsed by the lack of spirituality, the materialism and the herd mentality both in terms of career choice and the superficiality of the religious or spiritual aspect. He thought that he would go to Israel, prove the Rabbis wrong, then promptly go to London, stay at his uncle and aunt, see the art galleries there and do the same at the other art centers of Europe. Curiously though in 1995, he had painted many Judaic images. These images were inspired by Rabbis and Vladamir had actually done a bit of searching there. But always as an outsider, an artist. It was like his research into the mentally insane that he did for his final art project in 1996. In both cases, he felt something in him akin to both the mystical and the insane spirit, and yet would not fully surrender himself to either.

Off Vladamir went to Israel. There he was bombarded with lectures on Judaism, interspersed with a bit of touring. At first, it did not make sense. He ran out of a lecture on the basis of it being racist and argued with some of the Rabbis. But, as time went, and a few friendships were forged, he took a liking to the Yeshiva. He was particularly convinced by the work done on the codes of the Torah, the Hebrew bible. It indicates with mathematical precision the beyond-human brilliance of the Book, an uncanny numerical sequence that defied logic unless one purports that the Book is of Divine origin. “I am wrong!” Vladamir would say at the yeshiva, perhaps the Book was more profound than he had given it credit for. He was also impressed by the argument that Judaism is the only religion where it is claimed that G-d was revealed to a multitude, whereas other religions claim to have started with one prophet or the like, and this is a difficult claim to fabricate as you would have to begin by convincing a whole nation that they experienced G-d – unless that indeed occurred at Sinai (besides many of the other Great Religions do nor refute this revelation to Israel, in the first place some 3000 or more years ago). So, the truth seeker that he is, Vladamir decided to stay on and learn at the yeshiva. He stayed for seven months.