Borderliners (39 page)

If we say that "time has passed," then something must have
changed—if nothing else, then the
position of the hands on a clock,
otherwise we would not know that anything had passed. At
the
same time
something must have remained the same—if nothing else,
then time itself, otherwise we
could not recognize the new situation
as something that has sprung from the starting point. The
word
"time"
contains a unity of movement and changelessness.

The life of every person contains something of significance. No mat
ter how unfit you may be. The
significant factor is human nature.
Against
it you can perpetrate a fair amount of violence, but if it
becomes too much, then you are destroyed.

It is as though science has felt that human nature was
something within which you were confined.
Like being in
detention on a red form.
And so they have tried to push against it, as
though to break
out.
And then it has all gone wrong.

At
Biehl's you had to sit down for five to six hours every day— not including the
study period—five days a week plus Sunday for
the
boarders, more than forty weeks a year, for ten years.
While
constantly having to strive to be precise and
accurate, in order to
improve.

I believe that this
went against the nature of children.

There could be a veil of mist in the mornings at the children's home,
a white smoke ascending from the earth. At the point
where it met
the sunlight from heaven,
dewdrops hung in the spider's web—big, with curved, reversed reflections of the
white strands and the misty
grass
and your own face.
As though small globular universes were
being born where the water from the earth met the
fire from heaven.
And somewhere in the silent beauty of these
curved, looking-glass worlds you recognized yourself because of the crew cut.
The web, the light, the dew—all of this must have
been part of

the
spider's world and its
nature.
But not as a limitation, not like isolation.
We did not see it that way back then, and I have never,
later on, been able to see it that way. Nature is not a straitjacket
that
must be burst open. Nature is a blessing, an opportunity for
growth that has been bestowed upon all living
things.
Like a guideline in your life.

To Plato, God was a mathematician.
To Kepler, too, and
to Biehl
and Fredhøj.
I do not believe it was a
coincidence that their main
subjects were biology and mathematics. A purpose behind them,
the purpose that steered both
them and the school, had caused them
to align their own fates as closely as possible with God.

Mathematics is a kind of language.
The
only one in the universe
that spurns the
thought of limits.

Under duress, psychology and biology have admitted that
there
is a limit to the conditions to
which living creatures may be sub
jected.
That there is a limit to the amount of discipline, hard work,
and firm structure that
children
can bear.

Even physics has its limits.
The
cosmic and the atomic chronon.
The upper and the lower limit.

But mathematics is limitless. Because there are no lower
and up
per limits,
there is only infinity. Maybe this, as they say, is in itself
neither bad nor good. But there, where we met it—as a
manifes
tation of time, as figures measuring
achievement and improvement,
as an argument for the feasibility of the
absolute—it was not hu
man. It was unnatural.

Fredhøj and Biehl
never said it straight out, but I know now, with
certainty, what they were thinking. Or maybe not thinking, but
sensing.
What the cosmology was, upon which all of their actions
rested. They were thinking that in the beginning God created heaven
and
earth as raw material, like a group of pupils entering Primary
One, designated and earmarked for processing and
ennoblement.
As the straight path
along which the process of evolution should

progress
, he created linear time. And as an instrument for
measuring
how far
the process of evolution had advanced, he created mathematics and physics.

I have had the following thought:
What if God were not a mathematician? What if he had been working, like
Katarina and August
and
me, without actually having defined either questions or an
swers? And what if his result had
not been exact but approximate?
An approximate balance perhaps.
Not something that had to be
improved upon, a springboard to
further achievement, but something that was already more or less complete and
in equilibrium.
Like
two trees and the sun and the moisture from the earth,
between which all you had to do
was to spin your web to the best of your ability, and that would have been
enough, no more would
be
expected. And if any development should take place, then it would take place
partly by itself, there would be no need for you
to perform anything extreme, you could just remain
true to your
nature,
and it would take place. Now, what if that was the,
intention?

August and Oscar
Humlum and Katarina have paid me visits.

There are many ways of putting in
an appearance and being
heard without turning up in person.

Now I will say it.
What I, personally, believe about time.

To sense time, to speak about time, you have to sense that some
thing has changed. And you have
to sense that within or behind
this change there is also something that was present before. The
perception of time is the
inexplicable union in the consciousness of
change and constancy.

In people's lives, in yours and
mine, there are linear time se
quences, with and without beginnings and endings.
Conditions
and epochs that appear with or without warning, only to pass and never
come around again.

And there are repetitions,
cycles: ups and downs, hope and despair, love and rejection, rearing up and
dying away and returning
again and again.

And there are blackouts, time lags.
And
spurts of time.
And sud
den delays.

There is an overwhelmingly powerful tendency, when people
are
gathered
together, to create a common time.

And in between all of these, every conceivable
combination, hy
brid,
and intermediate state is to be found.

And, just glimpsed,
incidences of eternity.

When I was
isolated for a long time, or had stopped talking, or had
gotten brushed by the train, or lay and waited for
Valsang, or sat
close to Katarina,
or held August's hand, then time faded away, like
a sound growing fainter. When I was heading away
from the world
and into my self, or
in death or surrender or ecstasy, or in the silence
here in the
laboratory, then time departed from me. Then eternity drew near.

Time is inextricably bound up with language, with the sensory ap
paratus, and with human fellowship. Time comes into
being when
the mind encounters the world in a
normal life.

Without
contradicting anyone, I would like to take issue with
Newton, who thought that time runs through the universe regard
less
of man, and with Kant, who thought that time is inborn in the
mind. I believe that time is a possibility
inherent in all people at all times, but that teaching is required if it is to
unfold, and whatever
shape it takes
will depend upon the character of the teaching and
the environment.

Time is a sphere made up of language, colors, smells,
senses, and sounds, a sphere in which you and the world coexist, an instrument
with which to put the world in
order and comprehend it, one of
the reasons for your survival.

But if time grows too tight, then it becomes a reason for
doing away with
yourself
.

Time is not an illusion. Nor is it the only reality. It is one
possible,
widespread
form for encounters between the mind and the sur
rounding world.
But not the
only possible one.
If you are driven by
curiosity, or if you are ill and cannot survive
any other way, then
you can enter the
laboratory and touch time.
And then it will
change.

You could let your mind go blank in front of a dewdrop, and time
stood still. You could be waiting
to have your head shoved down
the toilet, and time went too fast, and yet not fast enough. You
could remember things from last
year as if it was today and fear something from tomorrow as if that, too, was
today. And you could
have
gone with Oscar Humlum for a weekend at the vacation home
for underprivileged children at
H0ve, because they did not know
what should be done with us and there was just him and me,
no
one supervised us, we swam, suddenly
two days had passed, and
where had they
gone?

The problem does not arise until language and society
and de
velopment and
science and school and we ourselves demand a
choice, demand one truth. The development of the past three hun
dred years has required linear time.

Linear time is
unavoidable,
it is one way of
hanging on to the past.
Like points on a line—the Battle of Poitiers; the Black Death, 1347;
Columbus discovering America; Luther at Wittenberg; the beheading of Struensee,
1772. And what I am writing here, this part of my
life, is also remembered in this way.

But
it is not the only way. The mind also remembers stretches,
fluid passages, connections between what has once
happened and