When one grows up in a place like that, as you probably will, at first one doesn't see this, and when one does, in one's teens, it represents everything that is wrong with the world, everything one longs to get away from, because it is so indescribably small, so indescribably narrow, and when one is young, one is full of big emotions and longs to knock down all this pettiness and get away, out into the real world, where the things one is interested in, and everything one carries within oneself, all that is great and important, new and open, can be found.

Then I grew older then I had children, then I suddenly found myself in the same environment I grew up in, only seen from the other side. I didn't choose it consciously, I never thought, I want to live the way I lived when I was growing up, if I had thought that, I probably wouldn't have done it.

No, it just happened that way. One day I was here. And if I hadn't liked how things were here, then one day I would have been somewhere else. So that must mean that I liked smallness, liked narrowness, that I liked sitting in the garden, far away from the important and principal places in the world.

In any case, what I was looking for was never the new, but the old truths as expressed by the new.

在那樣的地方長大——你很可能也是如此——一開始人是察覺不到這些的。等到青少年時期意識到時，它就代表了世界上所有錯誤的東西，代表了你渴望逃離的一切，因為那種狹小、那種局限，真的是難以言喻。而當人年輕的時候，內心充滿了強烈的情緒，渴望衝破這一切瑣碎，逃離到「真正的世界」中去——在那裡，有你真正感興趣的事物，有你內心所懷抱的一切，那些宏大而重要的、新鮮而開闊的東西。

後來我漸漸年長，有了孩子，忽然發現自己又身處在小時候成長的那種環境裡，只是這次，是從另一個角度去看它。我並不是有意識地選擇了這樣的生活，從來沒有想過「我想要過和小時候一樣的日子」，如果我真那樣想過，可能反而不會這麼做了。

不是的，一切就那樣自然而然地發生了。有一天，我就已經在這裡了。如果我不喜歡這裡的生活，那麼總有一天我會在別的地方。所以這大概意味著，我其實是喜歡這種狹小的，喜歡這種局限的，喜歡坐在花園裡，遠離那些世界上所謂重要而核心的地方。

不管怎樣，我所尋找的，從來都不是「新」的東西，而是那些「舊的真理」，只不過借由「新」的形式再次表達而已。（引自第149页）

（摘自《在春天》；作者: [挪威] 卡爾·奧韋·克瑙斯高[Karl OveKnausgård]；上海三聯書店；沈贇璐譯；2024-1； 240頁； 克瑙斯高「四季」系列）