Life Goes On And Other Garbage

This may seem like. a. bit. much. BUT- I read the following excerpt after reading your post and I had to share…it’s comical. The book, overall, is excellent.

From, “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge” by Rainer Maria Rilke
Note [49]
“One Sunday, this petty functionary next door had got it into his head to solve a singular problem. He took it that he would live for a good many years, say another fifty. The generosity he thus showed himself put him in excellent spirits. Now, though, he meant to surpass himself. He reflected that those years could be expressed as days, as hours, as minutes, even (if you could be troubled) as seconds; and he did his ums, and did some more, and in the end had a total such as he had never seen. It was dizzying; he had to rest a while. Time, he had always heard, was precious, and it baffled him that a man who possessed such a quantity of time was not accompanied by a guard. How easy it would be to rob him. But then his good, almost jolly spirits returned; he put on his fur coat, to look a little broader and more imposing, and made himself a present of the whole fabulous capital, addressing himself in a somewhat patronizing manner:
‘Nikolai Kuzmich,’ he said benevolently, picturing himself seated on the horsehair sofa, without the fur coat, skinny and wretched, ‘I do hope, Nikolai Kuzmich,’ he said, ‘that you will not let your wealth go to your head. Never forget that it is not the main thing. There are poor people who are thoroughly respectable; there are even impoverished aristocrats and generals’ daughters peddling things around the streets.’ And the philanthropist adduced a whole number of other examples that were well known in town.
The other Nikolai Kuzmich, the one on the horsehair sofa, the recipient of the gift, did not look at all puffed up and purse-proud, not yet; it was a safe assumption that he would keep his feet on the ground. In point of fact, he made no change whatsoever in his modest, regular ways, and from now on he spent his Sundays setting his accounts in order. But after only a few weeks, he found that he was spending an incredible amount. I shall economize, he thought. He got up earlier, he washed less thoroughly, he drank his tea standing, he ran to the office and was there much too early. In everything he saved a little time. But when Sunday came, there weren’t any savings to show for his efforts; and he realized he had been cheated. I should never have got small change, he told himself. How long a full, unbroken year would have lasted. But this blasted small change simply disappears, who knows where. And on disagreeable afternoon, there he sat on the sofa in the corner, waiting for the gentlemen in the fur coat, from whom he meant to demand his time back. He would bolt the door and not let him leave until he had forked out. ‘In notes,’ he would say, ‘ten-year notes, for all I care.’ Four notes of ten and one of five, and he could keep the rest, in the devil’s name. Yes, he was prepared to let him have the rest, simple to avoid difficulties. So there he sat on the horsehair sofa, irritable, waiting – but the gentlemen never showed up. And he, Nikolai Kuzmich, who just a few weeks before had seen himself sitting there so very much at his ease, he was unable, now that he was really sitting there, to picture the other Nikolai Kuzmich, that generous gentleman in the fur coat. Heaven only knew what had become of him; probably his frauds had been exposed, and he was already behind bars somewhere. No doubt he was not the only he had ruined. These confidence tricksters always operate on a grand scale.
It occurred to him that there must be a public authority, some sort of Time Bank, where he could at least change part of his miserable seconds. After all, they were perfectly genuine. He had never heard of any such institution, but surely something of the kind wold be in the directory, under ‘T’; or perhaps it was called the ‘Bank of Tim’ – It would be easy to check under ‘B’. Conceivably it might be under ‘I’, since it was presumably an imperial institution, as befitted its importance.
Later, Nikolai Kuzmich would always insist that on that Sunday evening, though he was understandably quite dejected, he hadn’t had a drop to drink. He was thus completely sober when the following incident occurred, so far as one can tell what did in fact happen. Perhaps he had briefly nodded off in the corner; one could easily imagine it. At first, this little snooze brought him a great sense of relief. I have been messing about with numbers, he admonished himself. Now, I don’t know a thing about numbers. But it is obvious that one shouldn’t attach too much importance to them; after all, that are only an arrangement made by the state in the interests of public order. No one has ever seen them anywhere but on paper. You couldn’t possibly meet a seven, say, or a twenty-five, at a social gathering. They simply weren’t there. And then there was this little confusion, occasioned by mere inadvertence, between time and money – as if the two could not be distinguished from each other! Nikolai Kuzmich very nearly laughed. It was definitely a good thing to have figured out what he himself was up to, and in good time, that was the important thing, in good time. Now things would be different. Time, there was no denying, was a delicate matter. But was he the only one affected? Did it not pass for others too, as he had worked out, in seconds, even if they were unaware of it?
Nikolai Kuzmich was not altogether innocent of rejoicing in the misfortunes of others. Just let it – he was about to think, when something peculiar happened. A draft suddenly wafted on his face, and breezed past his ears; he could feel it on his hands. He opened his eyes wide. The window was firmly closed. And as he sat there in the dark room with his eyes wide open, he began to understand that what he was no feeling was real time, passing. He could actually recognize each one of them, all those seconds; they were all equally tepid, one exactly like the other, but how fast they were, how fast! Heaven only knew what they were up to. That it should happen to him, of all people, who took wind of any kind as an insult. Now he would sit there, and the draft would be never-ending, his whole life long. He foresaw all the attacks of neuralgia that would result; he was beside himself with rage. He leaped to his feet; but the surprises were not yet over. Under his feet, too, there was a sort of motion, not just one motion but several, interwoven in a curious reel. He stiffened with terror: could that be the earth? Most certainly it was the earth. The earth did move. They had said so at school, though it was passed over rather hastily, and later there was a tendency to keep quiet on the subject; it was not the done thing to talk about it. But now that he had frown sensitive he felt this too. Did others feel it? Perhaps, but they did not shot it. In all likelihood it did not bother them, these sea-going folk. But Nikolai Kuzmich was somewhat delicate, in this of all respects; he even avoided taking the tram. He staggered about his room as if on the deck of a ship, and had to hold on with both hands. Unfortunately, he further recalled something to the effect that the earth’s axis was at an angle. No, he couldn’t take all these motions. He felt wretched. Lie down and rest, he had once read somewhere. And ever since, Nikolai Kuzmich had been lying in bed.
He lay with his eyes closed. And there were times, the less turbulent days, so to speak, when life was quite tolerable. And that was when he thought up the business of the poems. It was scarcely credible that it should have helped so much. To recite a poem slowly, with an even emphasis on the end rhymes, was to have something stable, as it were, that you could keep your gaze fixed on – your inner gaze, of course. It was sheer good fortune that he know all those poems by heart. But he had always taken a most particular interest in literature. He did not complain about the condition he was in, the student who had known him a long time assured me. But in the course of time he had developed an inflated admiration for those such as the student who walked about and endured earth’s motion.
I remember this story so precisely because I found it inordinately reassuring. It is not too much to say that I have never again had so pleasant a neighbor as Nikolai Kuzmich, who would doubtless have admired me too. “