Lysende steiner i ei nattmørk elv

[lysendesteiner]

The metamorphosis is about to begin. Objective: kill the hamster. You have been turning and turning blindly inside the wheel for too long, stuck inside the inertia of a Ferris wheel. Everything is (and has been) an absurd repetition. Some species of insects, amphibians, molluscs, crustaceans, cnidarians and echinoderms undergo transformations. But you don't visualise jellyfish, frogs or butterflies in the time you spend collapsed on the sofa. You see a snake that bites its own tail forming a circle: the ouroboros, a circle circling within a circle; a symbol of senseless struggle, the cyclical nature of events and the impossibility of something new beginning despite all efforts.

— Miren Agur Meabe. Burning Bones

[lysendesteiner]

I'm used to being there, in the gallery of heartbreak. Its walls are too slippery to climb, it's impossible to get over to the other side. If it were possible we would hit that invisible construction until it fell, but that's not something that can be done with hammers: it's the mind that must be changed through continuous effort in order to jump through the traps in the labyrinth. Happiness – the memory of happines we carry – is sticky and clings to the skin. And to everything else. I knew that I would have to take the pain and resentment with both hands, and that I would have to knead them, make a ball and swallow it until it became one with my metabolism and I expelled it little by little. I knew that I would be the one to pick up the bones of our history, the one to burn them.

— Miren Agur Meabe. Burning Bones

[lysendesteiner]

Those who seek the absolute must get used to coming up empty-handed.

— Miren Agur Meabe. Burning Bones

[lysendesteiner]

I have doubted a lot. Was it beauty or goodness? True or false? Should I go for it or should I give up? An unavoidable exercise: to doubt was to suffer for something. I still have the same attitude: to doubt is to suffer. And when I suffer, I become the protagonist.

— Miren Agur Meabe. Burning Bones

[lysendesteiner]

what is a lie if not the shield of a coward.

— Miren Agur Meabe. Burning Bones

[lysendesteiner]

Fear, nurtured and kept close, peeks out with the face of a burglar, takes him by the hand, and stares at him with the wide, adult smile of a monster.

Silvina Ocampo. Nocturne

[lysendesteiner]

I am left only with vague impressions of being solitary in the park of some vast city. Solitary in the sense that although life is going on all around me, the cords that could connect me in any way with the life have been severed, so that I am as alone as if I were a spirit returned from the dead. Traffic moves past at some distance from where I am reclining on the ground under the trees. The time – timeless. I know there are streets full of people behind the trees, but I will never be able to touch them. If I should open my mouth to cry out, no sound would come forth. Or if I should stretch my arms toward one of the figures that occasionally wanders along the path nearby, that would have no effect, because I am invisible. It is the terrible contradiction that is unbearable: being there and yet knowing that I am not there, for in order to be, one must not only be to one's self: it is absolutely imperative that one be for others. One must have a way of basing one's being on the certainty that others know one is there.

Paul Bowles. If I Should Open My Mouth

[lysendesteiner]

Ein-, zweimal grüßte mich einer, über einen Gartenzaun hinweg, aus dem Augenwinkel, mit zerstreuter Herzlichkeit, als sei es ihm gar nicht weiter aufgefallen, dass ich ja schon seit mehr als dreißig Jahren nicht mehr da war. Gleichzeitig wunderte es mich, dass man einen Wiedergänger wie mich am helllichten Tag überhaupt sehen konnte.

Klaus Böldl. Drei Flüsse

[lysendesteiner]

What separates a man from a wolf if it is not that a man wants to make a profit?

Jane Bowles. Two Serious Ladies

[lysendesteiner]

„Well,“ said Miss Goering, „perhaps my maneuvers do seem a little strange, but I have thought for a long time now that often, so very often, heroes who believe themselves to be monsters because they are so far removed from other men turn around much later and see really monstrous acts being committed in the name of something mediocre.“

Jane Bowles. Two Serious Ladies

[lysendesteiner]

I think he'll be able to live only in the hidden room. His soul is too dense. If he comes out, he'll dissolve into pieces, like a deep-sea fish pulled to the surface too quickly. I suppose my job is to go on holding him here at the bottom of the sea.

Yoko Ogawa. The Memory Police

[lysendesteiner]

And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor of pain, some bit of joy, a tear.

Yoko Ogawa. The Memory Police

[lysendesteiner]

Wenn es einmal ein spezifisch moralisches Fluidum im Menschen gegeben hatte – und die Lektüre alter Schriften ließ das als wahrscheinlich vermuten – heute war es völlig zur Ruhe gekommen. In einer Welt, in der so Ungeheuerliches geschah, die auf so ungeheuerlichen Prinzipien beruhte, wie es die neuere Forschung als erwiesen darstellte, war es wirklich gleichgültig, ob einige Menschen einige Tage länger lebten oder einige Nächte mehr schliefen, man beende endlich dies konfuse Gerede von Leben und Glück. Das stand bestimmt nicht zur Frage. Die Materie war Strahlung und die Gottheit Schweigen, was dazwischen lag, war Bagatelle.

Gottfried Benn. Der Ptolemäer. Berliner Novelle, 1947

[lysendesteiner]

Magnified and sanctified Be Thy Holy Name Vilified and crucified In the human frame A million candles burning For the help that never came You want it darker We kill the flame

Leonard Cohen. You Want It Darker

[lysendesteiner]

Every morning I woke up eager for night to come so that I could retreat from the chaos of the day; every night I went to bed dreading the fact that I would wake again to this terrible emptiness.

Yasmina Khadra. What the Day Owes the Night

[lysendesteiner]

I was living in a parallel world. I recognised familiar faces, but I was afraid that if I should reach out to touch them, there would be nothing but the wind.

Yasmina Khadra. What the Day Owes the Night

[lysendesteiner]

we take the time to live life to the full; it is something Europeans don't understand. To them, time is money. To us, time has no price. We can be happy simply taking the time to share a glass of mint tea, whereas nothing in the world is enough to make them happy.

Yasmina Khadra. What the Day Owes the Night