There in bed, happiness comes over me. Not like something that belongs to me, but like a wheel of fire rolling through the room and the world. For a moment I think I’ll manage to let it pass and be able to lie there, aware of what I have, and not wish for anything more. The next moment I want to hang on. I want it to continue. He has to lie beside me tomorrow, too. This is my chance. My only, my last chance. I swing my legs onto the floor. Now I’m panic-stricken. This is what I’ve been working to avoid for thirty-seven years. I’ve systematically practiced the only thing in the world that is worth learning. How to renounce. I’ve stopped hoping for anything. When experienced humility becomes an Olympic discipline, I’ll be on the national team. I’ve never had any patience for other people’s unhappy love affairs. I hate their weakness.
Peter HøegMaybe I should give up and go back the way I came. But I stay. I detest fear. I hate being scared. There is only one path to fearlessness. It’s the one that leads into the mysterious center of the terror.
Peter Høegthinking about the way you remembered your past. What you remembered, she said, was a string of events and years stretching back from the point where you now found yourself. In other words, a line of time. This might be coloured differently, depending upon what had happened to you. For example, if you had lost someone then it would be black. Other spots might be lighter. On some sections of the line time would have passed quickly, on other sections more slowly. But, for a long way back, it would still be a line.
Peter HøegI've always enjoyed cleaning. Even though they tried to teach us laziness in school.
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So I was damaged. It said so, in so many words – that it was difficult, if not impossible, for me to establish stable emotional relationships – in other words, to have any deep feelings.
Peter HøegI saw how pure, in a way, they were – no matter what they had done. Each in their own way they had tried to stay what they were. Not like me, who had never been anything, and so had been trying all my life to be someone else. To come inside. I saw that they understood this, too. That they understood it and that it was okay. That, even so, I mattered, come what may.
Peter HøegMaybe a person can be born to the wrong people,” he said. “Maybe a person should have been put somewhere else.
Peter HøegShe said she had been thinking about the way you remembered your past. What you remembered, she said, was a string of events and years stretching back from the point where you now found yourself. In other words, a line of time. This might be coloured differently, depending upon what had happened to you. For example, if you had lost someone then it would be black. Other spots might be lighter. On some sections of the line time would have passed quickly, on other sections more slowly. But, for a long way back, it would still be a line. Though not all the way back – at any rate, not in her case – and what about me? She asked me to think about it. For her, she said, and maybe for everyone, if you went far enough back the line disintegrated. If you went all the way back to your early childhood it was no longer a line. Then there was a sort of landscape of events. You could not remember their sequence, maybe they had none, they just lay scattered about, as if on a plain. She believed that this plain belonged to the days before time had entered your world.
Peter HøegYou spend your whole life believing that you will always be on the outside or on the borderline. You struggle and struggle, and yet it all seems to be in vain. And then, suddenly, you are allowed inside and lifted up into the light.
Peter HøegIf you remember,” he said, “and have a past, then you can be given the blame and be punished. See – if you don’t remember anything, you don’t have time like other people. It’s a bit like being crazy, so you get taken into protective custody. Then there’s a chance.
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