Cleaning out the drawers around the house, I find old charger cables, out-of-date medications, a Kindle we’ve never used, a toothbrush, a pregnancy test kit, letters, stones and figurines that S. says are important to her, and an old notebook of mine. It’s mostly blank. There are lines here and there, written in pubs, before the last time writing fizzled out:
Frightening thought: you’re an impostor who doesn’t know the extent of his own imposture. Worse, the imposture that stands between you and the world, that is your world.
The fear that everything is outside of itself. Buildings, trees, people, all scattered among each other, other than themselves. Nothing can come to itself because nothing really is. The world is one giant diversion from itself, an error.
The fear that everything is the same. That you’re a thing among things, emerging from sameness only to be swallowed by the same again. The days pass under the usual blind sky, unable to change or begin. Time, slowed to a crawl. Time, endless.
The pub toilet. Haze. The face in the mirror can’t see itself. You go back to the table and hear your mouth saying words, mouthing lies. Sudden plunges. Sinkholes of time.
But now a new urgency: shed all that like old scales. Find new words.
‘The Moment is the journal of a profound and moving endeavour: the attempt to renew a faith in life through the act of writing. Reflecting on everyday life in the Norfolk countryside as well as some of the richest literary, philosophical and theological ideas of the past couple of centuries, its narrator seeks to work through the legacy of his past by opening himself to the unknown and perhaps to the eternal. Life, Holm Jensen shows in his poised, lapidary prose, is best experienced as a gift, but one that must be received in the right way – by living and thinking beside the thought of luminaries old and new. This is a wisdom book, hushed and intimate, that will repay close contemplation.’
Posted onMarch 1, 2023|Comments Off on Review of The Moment
My translation of Jakob Kvist’s review of the Danish version of The Moment (Øjeblikket).
A powerful debut novel about approaching life’s mystery
The Moment is an original, thought-provoking and beautiful book by Peter Holm Jensen, a Dane who has lived abroad for most of his life, mainly in Britain. It was originally written in English and has been skillfully translated into Danish by Alexander Carnera with an intimate understanding of the book’s core concerns.
Øjeblikket Det Poetiske Bureaus Forlag, Copenhagen, 2022
By Jakob Kvist
Let me make it clear from the start: this is an unusual book. The Danish publisher calls it a novel in journal form. In diarylike entries, we follow the main character’s life in the Norfolk countryside, where he’s recently moved with his girlfriend, his meagre career as a freelance translator, his friendship with his neighbour, nature walks, pub visits, and wider thoughts about the relationship between thinking and acting in the world. The nature of time is a recurring question. The book examines lived everyday life through various theological, scientific and philosophical lenses. Existential questions are brought to light in a modest yet confident tone. Sensory descriptions of the author’s surroundings are complemented by quotations from, and reflections on, various thinkers such as Heidegger, Rilke, Mark Fisher and Kafka.
Everyday presence
The book closes in on things that are often buried under day-to-day life. What tends to remain unspoken is spoken here, in simple language. For example, a writing block is described as a moral defeat. One senses a forlornness, but it’s a forlornness that seems to be overcome by the way it’s presented in the journal.
Everyday life isn’t subjected to symbolic, psychological or self-help interpretations. What’s given most attention is what’s right in front of us, and so easily overlooked. By slowing down thought and focusing on the present, the book reminds us that we’re always in nature, and that in some sense it calls to us. The difficulty of realising this is hinted at in a very different passage from earlier in the narrator’s life that describes ‘a haze that began to gather between me and the world.’
As a freelance translator, the narrator thinks about the situation he’s found himself in: always looking at screens, waiting for jobs to pop up before they’re snapped up by other translators, and how this exploitative scenario has arisen and become accepted in the holy name of competition.
The moment
This book circles around ‘the moment’ as a different experience of time. An experience that’s foreign to us because it’s not born of haste and stress. When we’re busy, we do what we’ve got to do with blinders on. We’re absent, don’t sense the deep time that is the time of life, life-giving time.
By slowing things down and writing about what we often brush aside in daily life, you could say the journal is an example of what it preaches. By drawing back from contemporary working life’s invasion of time, the book enacts a particular way of being in the world. It says: by refusing to be distracted by the myriad forms of entertainment on offer today and managing to dwell where you already are, in this body, you can approach a different experience of time. A place where time almost stands still. This may sound abstract, but really it’s quite down to earth.
It seems to be a question of opening your eyes up to where you already are, where our surroundings seem to speak to us with a renewed presence. ‘It’s moments like these I want to write about. Moments when you’re stopped on your way and made to see where you are with new eyes. As when you work on a problem that seems unsolvable and all of a sudden the answer comes: it was there all along, why couldn’t I see it?’ One way to approach the world is through questioning it, even if ‘words flow through you in an unceasing stream.’
A sculpture made of scrap metal by a local artist is described as ‘so elaborate I have to walk around it for a while to take it in.’ It’s when we allow ourselves to be amazed by the things around us that we can begin to face the world openly. The things that are closest to us become ‘visible’, and the weirdness of their being takes centre stage. It’s easier said than done: ‘Sometimes the nearest things are the hardest to see’, because when we get used to them they lose ‘all mystery, all presence’.
Balancing between the personal and the impersonal
This book is a fine description of how one can use the stuff of personal experience to reach for what Jensen calls ‘the impersonal’. You yourself are the starting point, but the aim is to get beyond yourself to the light of being itself. By dwelling on the commonplace, we might allow it to show sides of itself that are usually hidden to us: ‘Doesn’t being lurk most mysteriously – nearest and furthest – among the things we move around every day, in the fact of their being here at all?’ But we don’t see the secrets of the everyday because ‘perhaps only our impatience obscures them.’
The narrator also asks: ‘Is there a way to seek the truth and be in the world at once?’ Does it make any sense to talk about truth in an atomised, individualist age of fake news? Is there a vantage point for observing the truth, or is everything just a construct?
Perhaps the truth consists in an ability to undergo the things that happen to you. The truth might emerge when we turn language inside out and let truth do its work on us: ‘Not pursuing it like a goal but trusting it without second-guessing, and going humbly about your life.’
Another line from the book: ‘Writing is a house of being under construction; sometimes you feel you’re living in rubble.’ Masterful way to bring Heidegger’s thought down to earth. When we live truly, we’re turned towards life. To sum up one of the book’s many insightful reflections, we might be the only species that can truly experience time, and this may be our chance to reconnect with the planet we inhabit. Maybe the ‘moment’ happens when we wake up to where we already are. A daily repetition that ‘makes the same new and lets you face the future, lets you function in the world.’
The Moment is a powerful book that shifts our habitual way of thinking towards a wider worldview. It’s a healthy alternative to the kind of self-help literature you see everywhere nowadays. You might even risk getting wiser about life by reading it. It’s simple, sure in its style and arguments, and open to the world. It finds a language for the enigmas of ordinary life that we so easily pass over.
This book reminds us that life takes place here and now, not in some abstract future. The moment, it says, is a different experience of time and an experience of another time. Or in the narrator’s words: ‘The moment lurks inside everyday time. It waits to give you back your life, like an event long prepared without your knowledge, like an act of fate. It needs you: your ragged past, your timid present, your whirl of thoughts, your hoard of words. It waits for you to step into the light of day, where it can find you and let you come into your own.’
For skandinaviske laesere, en anmeldelse af min bog, af Jakob Kvist:
Øjeblikket
Bogen kredser om øjeblikket som en anderledes erfaring af tiden. Her ikke blot tale om en anden erfaring af tiden men erfaringen af en anden tid. Den er en erfaring af tiden, som er fremmed for os, fordi den ikke trives i stress og jag. Når vi har travlt, suser vi derudaf med skyklapper på. Vi er fraværende og registrerer dermed ikke den langsomme, dvælende og frie tid. Den tid, som er livets tid.
Ved at sænke tempoet og skrive om det, vi overser i hverdagen, kan man sige, at dagbogen praktiserer, hvad den prædikener. Ved at trække sig tilbage fra arbejdets invadering af tiden praktiseres en særlig måde at være i verden på. Når man ikke lader sig forstyrre af samtidens mange underholdningstilbud, men netop formår at dvæle dér, hvor man allerede er, forankret i en konkret krop, bevæger man sig mod erfaringen af en anden tid. Her hvor tiden står stille. Det lyder måske abstrakt, men er uhyre praktisk.
Det handler om at slå øjnene op dér, hvor man allerede er. Det er her, hvor omgivelserne henvender sig til os i et forstærket nærvær: ”Det er øjeblikke som disse, jeg gerne vil skrive om. De stunder, hvor du stopper op på din vej, og som får dig til at se, hvor du er, med nye øjne. Som når du arbejder på et problem, der virker uløseligt, og ud af det blå kommer svaret. Det var der hele tiden; hvorfor kunne jeg ikke se det?”
Med sproget henvender vi os til naturen, fordi: ”Ord flyder gennem dig i en uophørlig strøm”. Det er ved at spørge, at vi nærmer os verden. En skrotskulptur beskrives i dagbogen som: ”… så detaljeret, at jeg er nødt til at gå omkring det i et stykke tid for at kunne tage det til mig.”. Det er, når vi lader os forbløffe af tingene i vores omgivelser, at vi gør verden åbent i møde. Det, som er nærmest, bliver synligt og tilværelsens gådefuldhed kommer i centrum. Det er lettere sagt end gjort: ”Nogle gange er de nærmeste ting de sværeste at få øje på”, fordi når vi har vænnet os til dem, så mister de ”al deres gådefuldhed”.
At balancere mellem det personlige og upersonlige
Bogen er en fin beskrivelse af, hvordan man kan bruge det personlige til at nå frem til det upersonlige.b Man er selv udgangspunktet, men formålet er at overskride sig selv for at nå frem til værens lys. Ved at dvæle ved det almindelige, giver vi det almindelige mulighed for at vise anderledes sider af sig selv og dermed erfare, hvordan: ”Ligger væren ikke på lur på gådefuld vis – nærmest og fjernest – blandt de ting, vi bevæger os omkring i det daglige?”. Men vi ser ikke dagligdagens hemmeligheder: ”Måske er det kun vores egen utålmodighed, der skjuler dem”.
”Er der en måde at søge sandheden på og samtidigt være i verden?” reflekteres der over i bogen. For giver det mening at snakke om sandhed i en relativistisk tid præget af fake news og individualisering? Findes en ophøjet position for iagttagelse af sandheden eller er alt blot en konstruktion?
Måske sandheden består i evnen til at nedlægge sig i de begivenheder, som sker med én. Sandheden viser sig måske, når vi vender sproget på vrangen og åbner op for: ”Ikke forfølge det som et mål, men stole på det uden at spille bagklog, og bevæge sig ydmygt gennem livet.”.
Andetsteds hedder det: ”Skrivning er et værens hus under opførelse; af og til føler man, at man bor i en bunke murbrokker”. Mesterlig måde at hive Martin Heidegger ned på jorden. Når vi lever sandt, vendes vores eksistens mod livet. Vi er måske den eneste art, som kan opleve tiden på en dybere måde og det er måske vores mulighed for at forbinde os med planeten igen – sådan lyder en af bogens mange flotte refleksioner. Måske er øjeblikket der, hvor vi forbinder os til verden ved at vågne op der, hvor vi allerede er. Øjeblikket er en daglig gentagelse, som: ”gør det ensformige nyt og lader dig gå fremtiden i møde, lader dig begå dig i verden.”.
”Øjeblikket” er en stærk bog, som bevæger vores verdensbillede mod en større mening. Bogen er et sundt alternativ til den allestedsnærværende selvhjælpslitteratur. Man kan faktisk risikere at blive klogere på livet ved at læse Peter Holm Jensens dagbogsroman. Bogen er enkel, stilsikker, velovervejet og åben overfor verden. Med bogen er der skabt et sprog for hverdagens gådefuldhed, som vi så nemt overser.
Med bogen i hånden bliver vi mindet om, at livet foregår netop nu i dette øjeblik og ikke i en abstrakt fremtid. Øjeblikket er en anden erfaring af tiden og erfaringen af en anden tid. Eller med forfatterens skarpe pen: ”Øjeblikket ligger på lur inden i hverdagens tid; altid nyt, altid det samme. Det venter på at give dig dit liv tilbage, som en længe forberedt begivenhed, du ikke har været vidende om, som en skæbnehandling. Det behøver dig: din lasede fortid, din beklemte nutid, din hvirvlen af tanker, dit forråd af ord. Det venter på, at du tager næste skridt ind i dagens lys, hvor det kan finde dig og lade komme til dig selv.”
Peter Holm Jensen er noget så sjældent som en dansk forfatter der har fået sit gennembrud på engelsk og derfor nu er blevet oversat til dansk af Alexander Carnera, med støtte fra Statens Kunstfond. Løsningen på gåden er at Holm Jensen er et ægte verdensbarn vokset op i Tanzania, Canada, Indonesien og Danmark – og som senest har boet mange år i Norfolk, England, hvor han har ernæret sig som oversætter, fra hvilken periode hans debut, dagbogsromanen Øjeblikket (en. The Moment) om en freelanceoversætter der flytter på landet, stammer.
”Øjeblikket er en dagbog over et dybsindigt og bevægende foretagende; forsøget på at genskabe troen på livet gennem det at skrive. Idet han reflekterer over hverdagslivet på bøhlandet i Norfolk såvel som over nogle af de seneste århundreders righoldigste litterære, filosofiske og teologiske idéer, søger fortælleren at arbejde sig ud over sin fortid ved at åbne sig for det ukendte, og måske for det evige… Dette er en visdomsbog, tyst og intim, som det vil betale sig at kontemplere koncentreret over.”
— Lars Iyer, forfatter til Spurious-trilogien, Wittgenstein Jr og Nietzsche and the Burbs
Peter Holm Jensen, Øjeblikket, paperback, 138 sider, udgivet 2022, støttet af Statens Kunstfond
Posted onOctober 23, 2022|Comments Off on The huge night and the slow dawn
A sleepless night. The huge night and the slow dawn. The sound of the binmen tipping our tins and bottles into their lorry, interrupting the birdcalls. The same old sense of final emptiness, which makes the thoughts I formulate in the day in front of my computer, with my grownup books around me, seem contrived and forced onto something almost helpless—onto what Gombrowicz called a furtive childhood, a concealed degradation. Completely unacceptable, I think, like the wronged consumer I am: why should anyone be made to deal with this, day after day?
There’s something to it, I tell myself, the old idea that despair is a seductive sin, a sickness unto death. That’s one thing the Christians always understood, that there are feelings we indulge at our own risk. But when the feeling is this long-lived, this unshakeable?
Posted onOctober 22, 2022|Comments Off on Doesn’t the commonplace hold its own secrets?
Tree surgeons and reed-cutters are making room for new growth, opening up the landscape. The birds, flushed out of their hiding places, are everywhere. Pheasants flap and squall in the brush at the end of the field. In the garden a pair of magpies are madly nest-building. In the woods, green shoots are growing through blankets of dead leaves and brittle bracken. The hedges along the road are flowering and S. says she spotted her first bumblebee yesterday. By the river we see a blue tit hacking open a bulrush and spitting downy wisps to all sides. What’s it after, we wonder: nest bedding? seeds? insects? We move close but it’s too busy to care about us. Today I feel no need to leave this place. Spring is here in the nearest things, in the smell of the grass and weeds and air, as the Earth lavishly renews itself.
In everything well-known something worthy of thought still lurks, wrote Heidegger. Something can take hold. There are crocuses among the empty lager cans and crisp packets on the patch of grass beside the Co-op. There are primroses under the bare fig tree in the cemetery.
Writing about conservation, the Norfolk-based naturalist Mark Cocker says it’s the commonplace that should be protected, not the rare:
Our inherent orientation towards the rare has often distorted the way in which we look at the environment. How often one finds conservation policies built around a few charismatic species, such as the tiger, polar bear or, more parochially, the Eurasian bittern or corncrake. Singling out the flagship animal is often a way of simplifying a project for public consumption… when what truly makes an ecosystem flourish is the very opposite of its flagship representative: the sheer bio-luxuriance of its commonest constituents.
Moreover, he says, a preoccupation with the exceptional is almost hardwired into the human imagination. As with flagship nature programmes, it’s increasingly difficult to escape the lure of the exceptional and marketable over what’s right in front of us. The familiar is harder to appreciate.
I move between the bedroom and bathroom, the study and living room, the cottage and the Co-op, day in, day out. I grow too used to the world again. I make it too familiar, let the moment veil itself in the everyday. I become a burden to myself.
Sometimes the nearest things are the hardest to see. We see them too often to see them fresh, and understandably seek to escape them when they seem to have lost all mystery, all presence. Too much home and home becomes opaque, flat. I’m a body walking through the same rooms and fields and shops. No mountain peaks on this plain, no vantage point. The same, the same. The impulse is to look for a quick escape into the new and exciting, or a slow escape into resignation and resentment.
But doesn’t the commonplace hold its own secrets? Perhaps only our impatience obscures them. If we had the endurance of animals we might be better able to accept the familiar and simply wait, day after undistinguished day, until the day, unmasked, surrendered.
Doesn’t being lurk most mysteriously—nearest and furthest—among the things we move around every day, in the fact of their being here at all? Now on my walks I sometimes stop and look at one thing for as long as I can, a squirrel, say, or a flowering bush, until I see its strangeness again, the essential strangeness of its being, to which I’m somehow linked.
— The Moment
Comments Off on Doesn’t the commonplace hold its own secrets?
If such things matter, and they don’t, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I wrote in April, it’s one in which the writer seeks “a modest, self-effacing place within the intersection of time and eternity” and can be read again and again for this reason, as one’s deepest concerns, otherwise diluted by public pantomimes, take form in the patience of attention. To recognise this again is always a surprise.
Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one's ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.
