Ik word nog steeds zo aangemoedigd door uw steun terwijl ik Nederlands leer. @BarbaraBB jij bent een van de lichtpuntjes van mijn 2020! Bedankt! Xo
"I have wrested a beautiful day from eternity. The sun has almost set. We'll see what tomorrow brings."
“You create a world of your own, you reject this and take a close look at that, you discover, you add more, and finally you see that it is good. And then the disintegration starts, slowly at first, you barely notice it and don't realise what's happening."
- The End
pickThe second story, "Young Titans" follows the group of friends introduced in the first story, which I was surprised to feel pleasantly surprised about. How quickly and unconsciously I'd become invested in their lives!
This one starts with the friends in their youth, showing their passion, vibrancy and naïvité, then flashes forward a couple of decades to show what became of all their expectations and promise.
pickIn "The Freeloader", Nescio sketches an alienated character, Japi, easily dismissed by polite society, but who I found deeply sympathetic. It would, I think, be hard to be his friend, because he struggles to connect deeply and feel the love offered him, whilst needing that so much. The end of the story has an inevitability which makes it all the more sad. Amongst this, there are some lovely passages. Got the feels for the stories to come.
“For the earth everything was simple enough. It just turned on its axis and followed its course around the sun and had nothing to worry about. But the people on it fretted out their days with troubles and cares and endless worries, as though without these troubles, these cares, and these worries, the day wouldn't turn into night."
- The Freeloader
“All through the night the sun that you couldn't see slid past in the north and the last light of day slid past in the north with it and turned into the first light of the new morning. One day touched the next, the way they always do in June.
- The Freeloader”
"I am nothing and I do nothing. Actually I do much too much. I'm busy overcoming the body. The best thing is to just sit still; going places and thinking are only for stupid people. I don't think either. It's too bad I have to eat and sleep. I'd rather spend all night just sitting."
- The Freeloader
A change in style from my last read. I bought this 3 years ago on a visit to Amsterdam. Didn't get the opportunity to read it while in the city (half my hand luggage was books!), but finally getting to it now.
Nescio (Latin for "I don't know") was the pen-name of Jan Hendrik Frederik Grönloh, a petit-bourgeois businessman, who's writing seems to tap into a bohemian aspect of his personality he had, of necessity, to repress. His output was ??
“I stood in the back of the tram, all the way in the back. It drove through the country and stopped and started again, it took hours, the countryside was endless. And the sky got bluer and bluer and the sun shone until it seemed like flowers would have to start sprouting out of the country bumpkins. But I got colder and colder. And the tram ran as long as the sun shone. It's a long ride and the days are short in #December.”
#winterwonderland
A little travel pre-reading #LitsyAtoZ #LetterN
Amsterdam Stories | 
