From Solvej Balle's Volume books

From 'On the Calculation of Volume', some sentences I copy here:

"It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurences and imrpbable coincidences. That we wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for these curious twists of fate. That there are human beings on what we call our planet, that we can move around on a rotating sphere in a vast universe full of incoceivably large bodies comprised of elements so small that the mind simply cannot comprehend how small and how many they are. That in this unfathomable vastness, these infinitesimal elements are still able to hold themselves together. That we manage to stay afloat. That we exist at all. That each of us has come into being as only one of untold possibilities. The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences. Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable. But the opposite appears to be the case. We have grown accustomed to living with that knoweldge without feeling dizzy every morning, and instead of moving around warily and tentatively, in constant amazement, we behave as if nothing has happened, take the strangeness of it all for granted and get dizzy if life shows itself as it truly is: improbably, unpredictable, remarkable."

*

"I have had an eventful day and I am tired, but it's a strange energised tiredness. My brain is spinning. I seem to have changed speed and direction, but also and more particularly, size. I have regained my proper proportions. I am not sure if this is because I spend my nights looking at the sky or because I have gone further afield....I do not take much from this world, I think to myself, not when you consider its size, and I feel as though I have become lighter, more nimble. I can change direction....That's how little difference I make to the world. That's how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November."