"... Their demands are very basic, there is nothing they like better than outings with the whole family, which are full of adventure: a trip to the Western Harbor on a sunny day, starting with a walk through the park, where a pile of logs is enough to keep them entertained for half an hour, then past the yachts in the marina, which really capture their attention, after that lunch on some steps by the sea, eating our panini from the Italian cafe, that a picnic didn't occur to us goes without saying, and afterward an hour or so to run around and play and laugh, Vanja with her characteristic lope, which she has had since she was eighteen months, Heidi with her enthusiastic toddle, always two meters behind her big sister, ready to receive the rare gift of companionship from her, then the same route back home. If Heidi sleeps in the car we go to a cafe with Vanja, who loves the moments she has alone with us and sits there with her lemonade asking us about everything under the sun: Is the sky fixed? Can anything stop autumn coming? Do monkeys have skeletons? Even if the feeling of happiness this gives me is not exactly a whirlwind but closer to satisfaction or serenity, it is happiness all the same. Perhaps even, at certain moments, joy. And isn't that enough? Isn't it enough? Yes, if joy had been the goal it would have been enough. But joy is not my goal, never has been, what good is joy to me? The family is not my goal either. If it had been, and I could have devoted all my energy to it, we would have had a fantastic time, of that I am sure. We could have lived somewhere in Norway, gone skiing and skating in winter, with packed lunches and a thermos flask in our backpacks, and boating in the summer, swimming, fishing, camping, holidays abroad with other families, we could have kept the house tidy, spent time making good food, being with our friends, we could have been blissfully happy. That may all sounds like a caricature, but every day I see families who successfully organize their lives in this way. The children are clean, their clothes nice, the parents are happy and although once in a while they might raise their voices they never stand there like idiots bawling at them. They go on weekend trips, rent cottages in Normandy in the summer, and their fridges are never empty. They work in banks and hospitals, in IT companies or on the local council, in the theater or at universities. Why should the fact that I am a writer exclude me from that world? Why should the fact that I am a writer mean our strollers all look like junk we found on a junk heap? Why should the fact that I am a writer mean I turn up at the nursery with crazed eyes and a face stiffened into a mask of frustration? Why should the fact that I am a writer mean that our children do their utmost to get their own way, whatever the consequences? Where does all the mess in our lives come from? I know I can change all this, I know we too can become that kind of family, but then I would have to want it and in which case life would have to revolve around nothing else. And that is not what I want. I do everything I have to do for the family; that is my duty. The only thing I have learned from life is to endure it, never to question it, and to burn up the longing generated by this in writing. Where this ideal has come from I have no idea, and as I now see it before me, in black and white, it almost seems perverse: why duty before happiness? The question of happiness is banal, but the question that follows is not, the question of meaning. When I look at a beautiful painting I have tears in my eyes, but not when I look at my children. That does not mean I do not love them, because I do, with all my heart, it simply means that the meaning they produce is not sufficient to fulfill a whole life. Not mine, at any rate."
— My Struggle: Book 1, Karl Ove Knausgaard
"But joy is not my goal, never has been, what good is joy to me?"
Often I can't tell when a piece of writing resonates, if it's because it lays out in succinct clarity my cluttered thoughts (and this comes with envy and the agony of knowing I am such a meagre writer in comparison), or if it's injecting ideas into my head.
I started reading Knausgaard's epic volumes of his struggles after a brief mention of it from a man I dated almost as briefly (but he introduced me to Sebald and bought me a copy of Vertigo as a first-meeting-after-many-long-drawn-conversations gift, so points for that). I say epic not in a conventional sense. There are no heroics nor great achievements. If any at all, he plays them down. Instead, he has blown life's minutae into epic proportions.
It is incredibly addictive, the step-by-step breakdowns of how he butters toast or makes tea or goes to the bathroom to pee. They bore into the consciousness the mundane, tedious grind of everyday life, the stuff that takes up our days and we attribute no significance to.
It is hubris typical of a man, who needs to be exalted for simply existing.
I swing wildly between my two opinions. My eyes are glued to the page and occasionally I raise my head to roll them before diving right back in.
"But joy is not my goal, never has been, what good is joy to me?"
We fought bitterly about it, the Boy and I. He, a former depressive, is of the camp that believes in denying negativity in an eternal quest for feeling good. I, on the other hand, am perversely attracted to melancholy. In other words, he lashed out at me for bringing him down when I moped and I accused him of not allowing me to think about and process my agonies my own way.
That blew over. We reached an understanding for co-existence. Instead of getting mad at me, he hugs me when I go quiet and tells me he loves me. It helps, even during those times when he is the cause of my gloom. I try to communicate better and when I don't have the energy for that, simply tuck my thoughts deeper into the folds of my being. I smile but sometimes my faraway eyes give me away and I have to remind myself not to let the act slip.
"But joy is not my goal, never has been, what good is joy to me?"
I just want to be happy. I wept when I said that to the Artist towards our tumultuous end. That was a child's plea, a base desire laid out in desperation when there was nothing else to say or do. But I was and am no longer a child, and happiness is a game with many layers. Not merely levels to unlock towards an ultimate goal, but layers to probe at and decode.
I need time to dwell in my despair and to examine my anger, I told the Boy. I can't just shut off the valves and make up my mind to be happy. What depth does happiness have when you disregard its antithesis, the precise conditions that give it value? Besides, pain is fodder for a writer. Or is it?
