I’ve seen you throwing the ball too, he says.
Are you awake that late? I ask him.
Sometimes, the boy says.
I ask him his name and he says it’s Børre.
You’ve also got quite a cool bike, I say.
Børre says it doesn’t belong to him.
He says it belongs to the kindergarten.
Børre is quiet for a while. Then he asks me whether I use a helmet.
I feel like lying and saying yes, but stop myself. I say no.
You must, Børre says. And he thinks I should buy a helmet as soon as possible, and preferably today.
He explains how one of the dads in the kindergarten crashed into a car while he was cycling. He didn’t have a helmet and had to spend several days in hospital.
You’re right, Børre, I say. I’ll buy a helmet.
Børre asks me if I’m going cycling now. But I’m not. I’m going upstairs to drink milk. He wants to know if I might be going cycling later. I don’t know. Maybe tonight, I tell him.
Børre wants to watch me cycle, but he’s not in the kindergarten at night, he says.
Maybe you’ll see me from the window, I say.
Maybe, says Børre.
He stands there looking at me as I walk towards the stairs. He waves when I turn around.
Later it strikes me that I should have put Børre on the bike and wheeled him around the courtyard.
He would have liked that.
The Master
Once I played until I fainted.
I had just got slalom skis and was so excited that I forgot to eat. I skied the whole day without eating.
In the end I fainted from exhaustion and crashed into a lamp post. I had concussion, and Dad had to take me to the hospital.
The doctor said that playing all day long was fine, but that I had to remember to eat in between.
I fainted because what I was doing was so much fun that I didn’t have time to take a break.
Something about that is incredibly good.
That eagerness.
It’s quite far away.
My mood has been varying these last few days.
I am trying to get a picture of my situation, but the pieces won’t quite fall into place. I don’t really know where I am.
A lot has changed over the last few weeks.
The days have become different. The nights as well.
But I don’t feel satisfied. Not yet. There’s definitely a handful of essential things missing. I have no idea where to look.
But I have the ball.
Fortunately, I have the ball.
Every night I throw the ball against the wall for quite a long while.
My brother is coming back in a month’s time. Then I can’t live here any more. I have a month.
I admit I am nervous about how this is going to turn out.
I am trying not to act tough. I could have lit a cigarette and acted as though nothing was going on. Maybe I could have fooled somebody. A couple of girls. Kim. I could possibly have fooled Kim. But sooner or later I would be sitting there again. On the grass, with my brother’s or somebody else’s arm on my shoulder, crying.
Because there’s something the matter. There is clearly something the matter.
What I could really use is an older man. A mentor. One who could tell me how things fit together.
He would have asked me to do chores that I felt were meaningless. I would have been impatient and protested, but done them nontheless. And eventually, after several months of hard labour, I would have realised that there was a deeper meaning behind it all, and that the master had had a cunning plan all the time.
Suddenly I would have been able to see great patterns. See various things for what they are. Draw conclusions about the world and people. I would also have become able to restrain myself and bring out the best in others and all that. And the master would say that he didn’t have any more to teach me and then he would have given me something. A grand gift. Maybe a car. And I would have said it’s too much, that I couldn’t accept it, but he would have insisted and we would have said farewell in a sentimental but sound manner. And then I would have driven out into the world and met someone, preferably a girl, and established a family and maybe a business that could have turned out some good products and services.
That’s how it should have been. Damn. It’s obvious.
It should never have been different.
But such masters do not grow on trees.
I’ve never met a single master.
Everything points to me having to take care of myself.
I am trying to think who I look up to.
There aren’t many of them.
These I admire:
– Laurie Anderson
– Gandhi
– The Salvation Army
– Carl Barks
– Astrid Lindgren
– Orson Welles
– Olav H. Hauge1
– Lars Lillo-Stenberg2
I am convinced that it’s all about eagerness. That it’s missing.
I must find it. Get it back.
It’s out there.
It’s probably pointless to talk about it.
It’s a bit Zen.
I’ll never make it as long as I try to.
Only when I don’t try, will I make it.
Fucking Buddhists. They think they’re so bloody clever.
1 (1908–94) Lyricist
2 Contemporary singer-songwriter and lead vocalist of alternative (naïve-) pop band deLillos.
Life
A human being weighing 70 kilograms contains among other things:
– 45 litres of water
– Enough chalk to whiten a chicken pen
– Enough phosphorus for 2,200 matches
– Enough fat to make approximately 70 bars of soap
– Enough iron to make a two-inch nail
– Enough carbon for 9,000 pencil points
– A spoonful of magnesium
I weigh more than 70 kilograms.
And I remember a TV series called Cosmos. Carl Sagan would walk around on a set that was meant to look like space, speaking in large numbers. On one of the shows he sat in front of a tank full of all the substances human beings are made of. He stirred the tank with a stick wondering if he would be able to create life.
He didn’t succeed.
The Forest
It’s spring.
Suddenly it’s hot.
Today I found a pair of bicycle shorts in my brother’s cupboard. And a T-shirt.
I made myself a packed lunch and filled an old bottle with water. I also took the ball.
Then I cycled out into the forest. I’m in the forest now.
It’s completely quiet here. And it’s a weekday, so there’s nobody else about. They are at work. They are at university.
May they enjoy it.
I have, as I have mentioned, a pretty good bike. It’s got many gears. And big knobbly tyres. I cycle anywhere. I’m a hardcore rider.
Before I bought the bike, I read a whole load of brochures and catalogues from many leading bicycle manufacturers. I enjoy looking at pictures of bicycles, imagining what I would look like sitting on them. One of the brochures was by a guy called Gary Fisher. He lives in California. Gary boasts about being the one who invented the mountain bike. Chances are he is right. He has a large, expensive catalogue with pictures of lots of nice bicycles and their technical specifications, and he’s had his people put in quotes of things he’s said.
There’s one place where it says ‘Anybody who rides a bike is a friend of mine.’
I like that. I feel all those who cycle are my friends. One big family.
When I meet others who are cycling, I sometimes say hi.
But today I am alone in the forest.
That’s also nice.
As I was leaving the flat, Børre came over to me. He was asking whether or not I had bought a helmet.
I said I wou
ld get one when I had some money.
He reminded me what happened to the unfortunate dad in the kindergarten. I nodded and said I’d be careful.
But I’m not particularly careful.
Riding fast on forest trails is fun.
Sometimes I ramp off roots and rocks.
When I told Børre I was going to the forest, he said his father had seen an elk there once. He was proud.
I have also seen elks, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him.
We made an arrangement that I’m going to tell him about all the animals I see. So far I’ve only seen a horse and a squirrel.
I cycle myself to a sweat, and stop by a pond for a bath.
I’m having a bath even though it’s April and the water is cold.
While I lie in the sun drying, I throw the ball up in the air. I’m lying on my back, throwing it up in the air. I’m usually able to catch it, but every now and then it bounces away.
Then I have to get up and fetch it.
Now it’s rolled off for the last time.
I can’t be bothered to fetch it.
It can lie there until I have finished drying.
I’m thinking about where it went wrong.
It’s probably quite fundamental.
My parents have done a decent job. I don’t blame them for anything. I’ve also had good times in school. Nobody was ever mean to me. At least not over a long period of time. Occasionally it happened that someone said something nasty or something, but then I just kicked them on the shin, or punched them in the stomach. No big deal.
It must have been something else.
For some reason I suspect that I know too much about things it’s stupid to know a whole lot about.
I know a helluva lot.
This is what I know a lot about:
– Movies
– Literature
– The Media
– Politics
– Celebrities
– Art
– Advertising
– Aerodynamics
– The Information Society
– Roland Barthes
– Computers
– History
– Language
– Music
– Supermodels
– The Sahara
And when I say a lot, I mean a lot.
I know names, dates. Hundreds of them.
I know who was first on Mount Everest.
I know who directs the most unintelligent American sitcoms and soaps.
I know of a survey that shows that in 1957, one year after Brigitte Bardot starred in the movie Et dieu créa la femme, 47 percent of all French conversation was about Bardot.
I know that when air hits an aeroplane wing, suction is created on top of the wing, and that is what makes planes fly.
I know what Aristotle thought.
I know what other philosophers have thought about Aristotle.
I know how much Claudia Schiffer earns.
I know that time passes a little slower on the sun.
I know how long Christo and Jeanne Claude spent wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin.
I know the recipe for Coca-Cola.
I know a helluva lot.
I’m not the only one who knows these things.
Many people know more than I do. That’s fortunately not my problem.
My problem is what I am supposed to use it for.
What do I do with it?
It’s confusing.
I could of course appear on Jeopardy and win a trip to Greece. For two. But I don’t have a girlfriend. I would have to go alone. And what am I supposed to do in Greece? There is no reason to believe that I would feel any better there.
I am not so stupid that I don’t see the use of a certain amount of knowledge. But I don’t feel convinced about what is important and what isn’t. I lack direction. An overview. How does one get an overview? Maybe it comes with age. But maybe not.
Am I supposed to just go around waiting like any other idiot?
I should never have learned how to read.
The mother of a friend of mine told me that she used to go to some kind of club when she was little. I don’t know exactly what it was. It was probably a place where kids played or sang or something like that.
She thought the name of the club was Barnas Sus3, and she was proud to be part of it.
She thought it was a grand name. When she learned to read, she realised she had been wrong and that the name was Barnas Hus4. She was terribly let down.
I feel the same way.
It must have started as early as when I used to watch Play School. All the stuff about today’s number, and that when the little hand is close to five, the time must be something to do with five. The hostess, well-intentioned and tremendously optimistic though she was, didn’t exactly do me any favours. Today I know all the numbers and letters. I read as fast as anything.
What I’d like to know is what I’m supposed to do with it.
It’s a little late to talk about this now. Maybe a bit silly.
The damage is done.
I can’t pretend that I don’t know what I know.
But it’s crap. It really is.
Give me a ball.
Give me a bike.
Those are formats I can handle.
On my way home from the forest I see the horse again. It’s brown.
3 Lit. ‘The “Buzz” of Children’; connotes a joyous atmosphere of children playing.
4‘The House of Children.’
The Animals
As I am locking the bike, Børre comes over to me again.
Kindergarten is over for the day. Now he’s playing by himself. He is building a castle in the sand pit, and wants me to help him.
I tell him I am going upstairs to change and have a bite to eat, but that I’ll be down afterwards.
Fax from Kim.
It’s been a while since I heard from him. He writes that he’s been busy. The weather conditions have apparently been quite extraordinary up there. But now it’s over. The conditions are dry with a north-easterly breeze. Variable cloud cover.
Kim has spare time.
The list of things that used to excite me when I was younger has inspired him to write his own.
This is Kim’s list:
– Detective stories
– Tarzan
– A girl in kindergarten whose name was Jannicke, who had long eyelashes
– Another girl in kindergarten whose name was Vibeke, who also had long eyelashes
– Spying
– Pinching apples
– Lego
– Outer space
– Superman
– Radio plays
– My birthday
– Presents
– Theatre
– Christmas calendars
– A blue pedal car
– Climbing trees in summer
– Building a cabin
– Setting fire to Matchbox cars
– Another girl whose name was also Vibeke, who lived one house away from us, and who was older than me and who taught me how to cycle
– Cycling
I think Kim’s list is good.
There are several items there that should also have been on mine, but I feel I can’t change it now. And take from Kim. It’s a bit uncouth. But cycling and detective stories ought definitely to have been on my list. I don’t understand how I could have forgotten them. But everything related to girls was completely out of the question as far as I was concerned. I remained indifferent towards them for a very long time. I had girl friends, but never thought of them as girls, much less about them having long or short eyelashes.
I think the awakening came when I was on the bus once and some guy asked me whether I was a boy or girl.
Idiot.
We both have Lego and Outer space. They’re given. But I don’t believe Kim not having been concerned with poo and pee. He’s probably just forgotten.
> It happens.
Børre is still sitting in the sand pit when I come down. He’s humming a song I am unable to identify. He’s wearing his bicycle helmet. Maybe he has strict parents. Børre has built several cylindrical houses. He has probably filled the bucket with sand and beaten the sand hard and turned the bucket upside down. You get houses that way.
He is asking if I could build a system of roads and bridges.
Of course I can.
We sit there for a while, building and chatting. It’s quite pleasant. Relaxing.
Børre thinks I’m good.
I tell him he’s good too.
We’re both good.
Then he asks me what animals I saw in the forest.
I tell him I saw a horse and a squirrel.
Only two? Børre says.
He figures it’s not a lot. The forest is full of animals.
The conversation revolves more and more around animals.
A small element of competition arises. Who has seen the most animals?
I say I’ve probably seen more animals than he has, but that it’s perfectly natural. After all, I’m 20 years older.
Before he was born, I had already seen tons of animals, I tell him.
He asks if I’ve seen beaver.
Yes.
Reindeer?
Yes.
Pheasant?
Yes.
Bear?
No.
Børre has seen a bear. In a zoo.
In the zoo, all right, I say. I have also seen bears in a zoo. But I thought we were keeping zoos out of it.
Then, we might just as well include animals we’ve seen on TV, I tell him.
Børre asks if I’ve got cable TV.
After we have discussed a little back and forth, Børre agrees to abandon the thing about zoos. We agree to find out what animals we’ve seen in their natural surroundings.
First I suggest that we should include animals we’ve seen in real life, but Børre soon fouls me, pointing out that animals in zoos are also in real life.
True.
And to compensate for the age gap, Børre is allowed to include animals his dad has seen. I figure it’s fine. I was the one who suggested it. I still feel pretty sure I’ll win.
When I ask Børre whether he knows what animals his dad’s seen, he just nods. He finds it unthinkable that his dad might have seen animals without telling anyone about it.