On the Calculation of Volume, Book I

by Solvej Balle

It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences. That we wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for these curious twists of fate.

Our love has always been microscopic. It is something in the cells, some molecules, some compounds outside our control, which collide in the air around us, sound waves that form unique harmonies when we speak, it happens at the atomic level or even that of smaller particles.

We were living in two different times, our bodies were living in two different times. Not just our memories. Our bodies too.

Thomas was subject to the laws of forgetfulness, and I was accumulating too many days in my memory. Thomas was caught in eternity and I was slowly but surely moving toward my grave.

A fluctuating mood is rather like a dance, it really swings, even though there isn’t much room. There is room enough in here for my mood to shift. Now it shifts again.

It is merely time that is broken. We are together. With only some walls in a house separating us. No one’s dead, no one’s injured, and that is not something we talk about. Words are not necessary. There are syllables and there is rhythm.

That must be it. I am living in a time that eats up the world.

Or I am asleep in a bed in a hotel in Paris, dreaming that I am a monster, devouring my world in a time that stands still. When will I wake up? Wake me.

It’s good to know of a place where nothing can be accomplished.

I want names and patterns. It is good to know that I can come back night after night. That I can get to know the heavens. That I cannot damage the mechanism. It is good that the world stands still.

Am I a sheep that gazes at the stars or a very small monster clad in wool?

Do monsters knock or do they just barge in? As if it were less terrifying to be visited by a polite monster.

I told him how I had been conscious of another time underneath my November days, a year with a September and an October.

It was as if there was a hole in my congested universe and the details were trickling out, so all that was left of my world was the outline. Simple incidents. Ordinary objects.