Nighttrain to Lisbon (2)

"I praise the words of God, because i love their poetic power.
I detest the words of God, because i hate their cruelty.
The love for God's words is a very complicated love, because she has to continuously behold the lightning power of the words, with use of that same words, the predominating by a presumptious God.
The hate is a very complicated hate, because how can you allow yourself to hate words that belong to the melody of life in this part of the world?
(...)
Words which we wouldn't be the same without?"



Now they had laughed together, for minutes.
It had had something of a touch.
A light, almost unnoticeable touch without resistance, something that would have made every other touch look like a plump, almost ridiculous manoeuvre.



"Life isn't the life we live,
it's the life we think we live."



" In our youth we live as if we are immortal.
The consciousness of that immortality hangs around us as a thin ribbon of paper that barely touches our skin.
On which moment in our life changes this?
When begins that paper ribbon to become tighter around us,
till it finally strangles us?
Whereby do you get to feel that inexorable press,
that lets us know that it will never be less again?"



The universe is just here.
And the universe doesn't care at all,
at all,
what happens to us.



"It feels like thirst, he had said,
when it surprises me, the homesickness, then it seems like an unbearable thirst, maybe i have to know all the trainconnections because i want to be able to go home at every time, i wouldn't stand it in Siberia, imagine: the chatter of the wheels all that days and nights, it would remove me further away from Lisbon, continuously further away."



"Although, what you did,
touched me deeply,
whatever it was."



"Then you hugged me, the only time after i had left my tender age.
I smelled the tobacco and the soap on your face.
I can still smell it and the pressure of your arms,
that didn't let go of me for longer than i expected.
I dreamed about that arms,
and in my dreams it were begging, stretched out arms with the severe request to the son as a mild magician to release the father from his pain."



"I needed one year to find out how long a month is.
It happened, what happens every year, but what nevertheless attacked me as if i had never witnessed it before: the new, pale light of the morning announced the winter.
No more radiant shine, no blinding light, no more semblance of heat which makes you shelter for shadow.
A soft, gentle light that already carried the shorter days in it.
Not that i saw the new light as an enemy, i am not someone who makes an idiot of himself by declining and fighting it.
It's better for your energy when summer loses it's sharp ends and treats us with vaguer outlines that force you to be less thorough."
(...)
So the question wasn't: how long is a month?
The question was: how can you make something for yourself with the time of one month? When do i have the impression that this month was completely mine?"



" I often thought that Amadeu's mind was mainly language,
that his soul consisted of words, like i had never experienced with someone else."



(Translation from the Dutch book by me, so there could be English mistakes in it.)
(Pictures from weheartit)