«On the Calculation of Volume I» kitabından alıntılar, sayfa 2

There is nothing odd about that, apart from the fact that every morning, when it grows light, the leek is back where it was

There is nothing to be done about it. It can be relied upon. It never changes. I cannot influence it and I cannot spoil it. It brooks no intrusion by me, it does not care about monsters on steps

Maybe my brain had been rearranged, I said

Often, we would simply come to the conclusion that you cannot know everything, that you have to accept some displacement in life, that you have to expect inconsistencies, and that was what we encountered: patterns and inconsistencies, two worlds trying to merge.

I sit in this room overlooking the garden and a woodpile. I don’t do much. But still I am using up the world while Thomas lives in a world that restores itself. I leave a trail. I have become a ravening monster, a monster in a finite world. A swarm of locusts. How long can my little world endure me?

because suddenly he thought he had been asleep

returned to the predictable patterns of the night sky

If I wandered about at the end of the year. With your gifts, he said. Your eye for detail.

For the first time I found it frightening. Not merely bewildering and odd and a little bit sinister.

. A monster rumbles. It rampages. It cannot be still. It cannot play in a quiet orchestra. A monster is slow and heavy. The days begin to go more slowly. I fill. I do not flow. It is me who is slowing things down.