What is the most important thing in the world, I am asked, and I don’t have to think long. The most important thing in the world is obviously nonsense.
I love sense, I’m always looking for sense and whenever I get hold of something that could be sense, I look at it closely. Whatever thought I grabbed, I hold it up in front of my eyes and study it in depth. In the vast majority of cases, however, I have to realise, “damn, that’s nonsense again!” And then I throw the thought away, somewhere, with all the other nonsense. The nonsense that apparently makes up the whole world.
Every now and then I find sense and of course I don’t throw the sense away. I put each sense in a jam jar, with a pretty label with a name I’ve thought up for the sense, and I put the jam jars neatly in my jam jar cupboard. Every now and then I unscrew one of the jars and enjoy the enchanting smell, which triggers a strong feeling of well-being in me. Sometimes, however, I notice that an old sense has gone bad and I throw it away.
And so I spend my days looking for some sense to put in jam jars. I already have many jam jars, maybe a few hundred. They are all in the cupboard, I wouldn’t even know if I could list them all.
But as I said, sense is rare, most of it is nonsense. The world is made of nonsense and only now and then does a little sense grow on it. But nonsense is obviously more important. Nonsense is the stuff the world is made of. Sense is only the exception. It’s nice somehow, but it might not be useful for anything.