A Time for Everything

And it's a disquieting thought that not even the past is done with, even that continues to change, as if in reality there is only one time, for everything, one time for every purpose under heaven. One single second, one single landscape, in which what happens activates and deactivates what has already happened in endless chain reactions, like the processes that take place in the brain, perhaps, where cells suddenly bloom and die away, all according to the way the winds of consciousness are blowing.

There is only one thing children find harder to hold back than tears, and that is joy.

The tree was so old, and stood there so alone, that his childish heart had been filled with compassion; if no one else on the farm gave it a thought, he would at least do his best to, even though he suspected that his child's words and child's deeds didn't make much difference. It had stood there before he was born, and would be standing there after he was dead, but perhaps, even so, it was pleased that he stroked its bark every time he passed, and sometimes, when he was sure he wasn't observed, even pressed his cheek against it.

Perhaps they were dead and imagined they were living? Perhaps everyone was dead? Perhaps he’d always been dead? That what he’d always assumed was life was actually death?

Every attempt to understand this universe, whether by charting its motions, systematizing its products, or searching for its origins, is naturally vain and risible, and Pascal was making real fun of the science of his age. What he never grasped was that the real aim of science isn’t to understand the world, but to close it up.

Get caught up by life and follow it wherever it might lead you. Nostalgia was dangerous, it was in league with the past against you. And against life. For you can’t live in the past. There is no way back there.

Everything we know is inextricably linked with loss and oblivion. And what knowledge does conquer is so infinitesimally small in comparison with what it jettisons that we might reasonably suspect it of being in retreat: why else does it always set its abandoned landscapes on fire?

Av jord var de kommet, til jord skulle de bli, og i de få årene livet levde i dem, var det fra jorden det hentet sin kraft. Den eneste veien ut av det, var lenger inn i det. Lavt er pliktens himmel hvelvet, men det er en himmel. Under den gikk Lamek, og der fant han sin mening. Denne meningen hadde en fiende, det var lengselen etter noe annet, og den bekjempet han med det eneste middelet han kjente: mer arbeid. Arbeidet var således både flukten, og det han flyktet fra.