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About living a philosophical life

The Little Book on Life (Excerpt)
Daniel Krutzkoff Jacobsen is currently working on The Little Book of Life, published by Forglemmegei publishing house. Ny Tid prints an excerpt here.




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

What do you dream of as a young person? Yes, to live a philosophical life.

It is a quiet evening in Alta. A quiet Saturday night during the eternal day of Finnmark summer.

Well, it's been a shame since it's early August, and a magical winter awaits. Soon comes the first steel night, as Hamsun called it.

Life is philosophical because I feel good about myself. I am alone and do not stroll with friends down a gently sloping Champs-Élysées. Or eat supper in Kreuzberg with crazy hippies. I'm not even at Beskades, as Nordahl Grieg sang, magically up on the meadow somewhere behind the mountain peaks around Alta.

City, the center of the village, built on an old multi-ant, is where I am. Here are some square houses, a cathedral and a kebab-bu. But I listen to P2 on the radio and have a red wine for 109 kroner.

Eva Borgeteien rings, life bohemian, I thought from Cannes, but now she is in Oslo. An eternal wanderer in the night and day.

I ask her if she lives a philosophical life.

- To the extent that I am much alone, she replies, striking right at the nail.

Yes, exactly, that's what most often is, the philosophical life, in the mind of solitude. And rarely in anything similar to the myth; intense dialogues over coffee tables in postwar Parisian lounges with Sartre and his lady.

Philosophy of the day and earthly love with lovers at night. At cheap hotels because apartments were bourgeois.

To the extent that I am much alone (here, as elsewhere), it is a necessity. Created by me, but also for a cause I can't do anything about; of who i am to others. A result of "the other person's eyes," which Beauvoir and her men were so concerned about.

Of the other's lack of interest, and mine.

A philosophical life is a result of the willful and forced solitude; I didn't know that when I was young. That idleness is the root of all independent thinking. You are left to yourself and the last possible opportunity, which is just to reflect on why this is so?

City in Alta is a place that is not a place. Nothing is bourgeois here, but Sartre and Beauvoir don't live here anyway.

I don't see the mountains from my window. And when I speculate, no one is doing the same on the paved multi-ant between Kiwi and the mall.

City in Alta is a place that is not a place.

The world is full of other people's opinions; what is yours? It's time to find out now:

I believes that when no one is here, on the secret nights, it blooms in gold in all that the asphalt has done lifeless.

Yes I believe. For an old Sami man has come down from Beskades, from the kingdom of eternity, to pick – no, sprinkle! – spiritual gold in the parking lot. Small insights coming from Earth.

- Imagine if all the mountains and valleys could speak. Imagine if the Earth could lift its mouth, as it is called in an old Tatar song.

I walk at night in the City of Alta, in marvelous dreams, on old lost cloudberry bogs.

And eat lost insight.

I often think of him, the old man. He died one night because he froze to death up on the plateau. Was it at Beskades? Was it in the material moisture meter shows you the storm Nordahl Grieg felt the presence of the Earth's voice?

The earth speaks to me. It is in "In the Silence of Late Hours" that a beautiful hymn is called.

I walk in the footsteps of the dead man. I first met him in a story from Inner Finnmark, a folklore depiction by Richard Bergh. I do not know who he was or what his name is, but he is an acquaintance.

- We are the universe that looks at itself, it was said in a TV series about astronomy. We are also the Earth looking at itself.

And who speaks to himself. Old cloudberry dreams.

Living a philosophical life is a Saturday night during the eternal day of Finnmark summer, in the light shade of the midnight sun, not far from the mobile kebab booth at the shopping center in City in Alta. And soon the steel nets are here.

- Some say that life is hard. That's just nonsense-
talk, it's wonderful to live, Akira Kurosawa wrote in the script for the film about his dreams.

It is wonderful to live a philosophical life. 

krutzkoff@hotmail.com
krutzkoff@hotmail.com
Krutzkoff Jacobsen has recently been employed as a short film consultant at NFI.

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