The Dream of Vanishing
These are my sticky notes from Tramp by Thomas Espedal.
On living free:
The Dream of Vanishing. Disappearing. Going out the door one day and never coming back.
The wanderer is, according to Rousseau, a plain, peaceful man. He is free. He has left the city, he has left his family and obligations. He has said farewell work. Farewell to responsibility. Farewell to money. He has said goodbye to his friends and his love, to ambition and future. He is really a rebel, but now he has bidden farewell to his rebellion as well. He wanders alone in the forest, a vagrant.
On houses:
I'd never been fond of houses, they were too large and unaccomodating. A house is demanding, difficult. One must learn to master a house. One must learn to dwell.
... superfluous rooms, the hostile furniture, this semi-temperate interior that speaks to us of our wasted work, our misused moneys, our dull lives.
A quote from Henry David Thoreau:
"If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again,—if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk." Walking
On consumerism:
The idiocy of summer cabins and houses. The idiocy of excessive numbers of cars, How many cars does a man need? How many rooms does a house need? How much idiocy can a society endure? The idiocy of fast money. The idiocy of consumerism. The idiocy of greed.
A bit Mister Bob-like:
I like sitting on a train looking out of the window; seeing the landscape roll past while I tentatively read a novel: Vaksdal, Trengereid, Dale, Evanger, Voss, and the first snow, the first frost, the first kiss in the snow on the frozen stone wall down by the lake shore at Vangsvatnet; winter, summer, spring, and the train rolls past.
On Merih Gunay, an author he meets in Istanbul and whom he likens to Pessoa:
I'll write my way out of this dull job, he says. But I'm not complaining, the work doesn't demand that much of me, I rest and think, make notes and sketches, and when I get home, when I go through the door of my little first-floor flat with its view over the harbour, when I'm finally at my desk and get out my cigarettes, that's when I come to life, he says; I build myself up into Turkey's greatest author.
