The young thinker ambles through the narrow streets of his assembled city, his mind churning constant flourishes of philosophical abstracts - sticking his leather gloved finger into the soiled commons of existence, and smelling nothing, he sequesters the questionnaire eternal, the gilded irony of an earnest life...
He sits awhile on the curved stone bench, sheltered from pithy elemental assaults - but not the stench of abject humanity - and yet the textual flourishes assail from behind, the backward comprehension of things that cannot be understood but for a curious twist of the fountainhead...
He passes by a grand portal of bronzed archaic contortions and observes the exuberant youth as yet uncrushed by the storms of life - they who smile their expectant smiles, with no need for the nightwatch explanation of the flourishes of profane love...
"Inasmuch as in being published it is in a figurative sense starting a journey. I let my eyes follow it for a little while. I saw how it wended its way down solitary paths or walked solitary on public roads... - On the other hand, inasmuch as in being published it actually remains quiet without moving from the spot, I let my eyes rest on it for a little while. It stood there like a humble little flower under the cover of the great forest, sought neither for its splendor nor its fragrance..." Copenhagen, May 5, 1843
[the above partial quote is excerpted from the Preface to 'Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses' by Soren Kierkegaard (1843-44), as translated by Howard V. Hong (1990)]
"once you label me you negate me"
[he continues to sit in the tranquil courtyard garden of the Royal Library where the birch trees still flourish into the late fall and where youth's exuberant expectancy passes him by daily in its unceasing attempt to understand which are the things that cannot be understood...]
