Doppler

by Erlend Loe

I didn’t like things going on in the world which in effect reduced what I used my brainpower on to trivia.

Unless this niceness has already taken root within her and has taken complete control. I fear this is the case because niceness is habit-forming. Once you’ve become nice there are no limits to what you will do to continue to evince positive feedback from the world around you. It’s a self-reinforcing spiral that never needs to stop.

You don’t think about it when it’s there, but you can feel there’s something missing when it’s not.

life ought to contain more rhythms, more dance and music and abandon, and fewer of the normal, dutiful and tedious things,

Young people should be encouraged to exchange goods and services rather than buying everything in sight. The future of the earth depends on it, I say. For humans do not own the earth, I say. The earth owns us humans. Flowers are our sisters, and the horse, the great eagle, not to mention the elk, are our brothers. So how can you buy or sell anything? For who owns the heat in the air or the sound of the wind in the trees? And the sap in the branches contains the memory of those who have preceded us. And the gurgle of the brook carries within it my father’s voice and in turn his father’s. And we have to teach our children that the ground we walk on contains the ashes of our forefathers and that everything that happens to the earth will happen to us and that if we spit on the earth we are spitting on ourselves, and by the way, I say, while I’m at it, is anyone here willing to swap some fruit for elk meat?

It’s embedded in our DNA that we constantly have to be doing things. Finding things to do. As long as you’re active that’s fine, in a way, however mindless the activity. We want to avoid boredom at all costs, but I’ve started to notice that I like being bored. Boredom is underrated.

Enemies of the people who are about to smash the fragile illusion of community and meaning are sent away to have another think. To sea, for example, or to the mountains, or behind some locked door, or as in my case: into the forest. It’s a cunning form of punishment which feels like a kind of reward at the same time.

the human eye is almost always directed at other humans. In this way an illusion is created that humans are more important than those things on earth which are not human.