Life is a never-ending cross reference. ---Cees Nooteboom
Cees Nooteboom is a famous Dutch novelist, essayist, travel book writer and journalist, born in 1933. I was searching online for quotes about cross referencing and, lo and behold, this dude's name came up...I had never heard of him before. He writes in his native Dutch and has put out a lot of material. Unfortunately, I found nothing available of his...in any language...on Libby, the online library resource app. And my local Alachua County Library only had his 2022 essay book 533 Days, which I checked out (fortunately translated into English). He achieved renown in Europe but it never did seem to translate into popularity in the U.S., but I liked this and other quotes. He's also written stuff like "I am a hindrance to the world, and the world is a hindrance to me", "I find it unbearable to need a body in order to exist", and the topper, "I have never cared much for people. Most of them are cowards, conformists, muddleheads, moneygrubbers, and they infect each other". As for my selected quote, I have been considering going back in my blog articles and doing something similar to Wikipedia, the ultimate Internet site for cross-referencing. It's just that I have subject matters, like running, reading, constellations, music, etc., that contain interrelated articles spread over years and with my blog going back to 2007 it can be more convenient and interesting to "connect the dots", so to speak. On my cumulative running race list that I revised on December 10, 2023 I cross-referenced past articles about each race experience, and I continue to update that article even with races after that date. I found myself wanting to do the same with the books I read...I think that's probably going to be my next cross-referencing project on this blog...I already have the basic reading list from February 22, 2021 and I just need to add the later books and the cross-referencing links. As for Cees Nooteboom, I haven't yet read much of his one book to grace my library's shelves, but he does seem to have a pretty sharp sense of humor and insight...
"it('s) unbearable to need a body to exist". I really like that one. I love it each night when I go to bed because I look forward to what adventure my dreams will take me to tonight. I dream vividly every night and remember them most of the time. There were times in my life when I found that to be a real gift, I could essentially leave my body and escape to a place where my normal concerns didn't weigh me down. I no longer feel the need to escape my daily life, but I still love the wonder of dreams. I don't think this is what Cees Nooteboom had in mind when he wrote that, but I certainly related to it nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteUnless reincarnation is real, I didn't exist without a body for billions of years in the past...until I was conceived/born in 1956. Yet I don't seem to have a problem with that...only with the vast future stretch of time and where I stand in relation to it...and I guess Nooteboom's quote resonated with me for that reason. I remember the special dreams, too, like the flying ones and the few that seemed to predict the future...but I never had any degree of control over them.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall where I read this, perhaps it was here on your blog, but your comment here reminds me of somebody's thoughts on death. I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially, it was that death is just returning to how it was before you were born. I like that thought, makes death seem way less daunting.
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