Fannie’s fanny pack
Resting
on the middle
Front
or
Back
The Coronavirus makes strange bedfellows. Or – maybe not. World wide doom, and destruction, and Jesus perhaps go hand-in-hand. The One is there to cancel out the other.
At any rate, yesterday I was in search of a mailbox. To mail an actual letter. It is possible it was the first *actual* letter of the year. And a bit time sensitive. There was no going to the Post Office, it being Sunday and a Pandemic to boot. So I went searching for a local mail box.
I imagine at the best of times I’m not fully aware of the closest mail box. There used to be one at the closest gas station, but that had been totally renovated and the mail box removed. The next closest was at the local Mall, but walking there revealed the Mall was closed, since everything inside was closed. So a search began.
It made sense that any area where there was a grouping of buildings might have a mail box. Passing a Donut Shop (open to take-out only) and a Library (closed) and a bar (closed) yielded nowhere to mail a letter. However – in the distance – down the hill and across the road, there seemed to be a stark red box. It was in front of a large Seniors Complex. Perhaps Seniors mail more letters. Investigation eventually showed it was a Mail Box, and into its maw went my tiny envelope. To be picked up next day. So I hope that has now happened.
On the way back, after a well-deserved sit on a bench in a small park (more than two meters / six feet away from anyone else), upon coming closer to home, music filled the air. Guitars and drums and female voices singing (at the first encounter) what sounded like Joan Baez songs.
However, upon entering a new street, it was apparent that the large church, with its commanding view of the city, was having an outside church service in their expansive parking lot. Cars parked a safe distance apart, with men wearing orange safety vests making sure the rules were enforced. The musicians and singers were under a portico at the front of the church, and they were belting out hymns aplenty. Heard, I am sure, across much of the city..
I’m sure Jesus was clapping along.
{Books by Franz Kafka]
A burrow offers security and comfort, and Kafka found both in his sister’s tiny house on the Golden Lane.
Ottla – his sister – had rented it so she could spend time with her lover and not be bothered by parents and comments. Her lover was a Christian and ready to go to war. Time was precious.
However, she rarely had opportunities other than the weekends, so she offered Franz the use of the tiny house for most of that time. And use it he did, though he never stayed the night.
Through fall, winter and spring Kafka wrote a whole book of short stories. For one single block of time, it was one of his most creative periods.
When I visited, even under Communist rule, it had been converted to a book store. Of course (which he would have appreciated) there were no books by Kafka for sale. Today he is displayed in the windows.
It was only when I went thorough the small rooms, and looked out the window into The Stag Moat, that I realized how important the house would become in my novel about Kafka. It was cozy – even with the space cramped by tourists. It had been little altered and I easily imagined Kafka looking through the same glass and walking through the same doorways. No doubt stooping because he was tall. Research met reality.
One of the last stories Kafka wrote, during his final year in Berlin, was called The Burrow. A version exists and is published, though a longer version is supposed to be among his ‘missing’ papers.
In it, a tiny animal keeps incessantly burrowing to keep away from an enemy. A vague noise convinces the animal to burrow deeper, and deeper, and deeper.
Something Kafka himself attempted to do.
(Image) https:/cdn.myfonts.net/s/ec/cc-201503/kafka-books.png
Happy Earth Day!
Except
(If I may intrude
With the slightest touch
Of a cat’s paw)
The Earth is NOT happy.
The earth has not been happy
For
Oh, let’s say,
Two hundred (200) years,
Give or take..
Two hundred years ago
(Give or take)
Is when Humans started
Fucking up the place
Big Time
(No cat’s paw here)
And all this is known,
And all this is getting worse.
(Everybody knows)
(That’s how it goes)
Leonard Cohen knew.
Though there might be
(Right now)
Just the slightest
Smile
On the face
Of the Earth.
For the air is getting better.
The water is getting clearer.
And animals
(Yes, Homo sapiens sapiens included)
Breathe a little easier.
Do we thank
The killer virus
For shutting down
The killer economy?
Or
Will we,
In celebration,
Have a killer flight
On a killer air plane?
Or
Take a killer cruise
On a killer
Cruise ship?
That cat’s paw
Has claws.
It is possible,
Because we are told
(are we not)
That everything is possible.
So, it is possible that, when
I turn on the porch light,
Bright enough to illuminate
The new, blue crocuses in
The front flower bed,
That that light
Can
Go down to the shore,
Skip across the waves,
Slide past the Lighthouse light
On Partridge Island
And whirl over the waters
Of
The Bay of Fundy.
My tiny light
(Remember, we are told
It is possible)
Takes a sharp,
So very sharp,
Left turn
To reach the wave-lapped
Coast of Nova Scotia
Near to the
Cumberland shore
And can be seen,
Not so far inland
By both the living
And the dead.
It brings inside it
Pain and remembrance
Prayer and hope
A tiny light
Shining as bright
As it can.
Since everything is possible.
[Hermann Kafka]
In my novel, Kafka In The Castle, I fill in the missing entries of his actual diaries. There are many days to fill, as he either did not write during these days, or he destroyed the record.
Franz Kafka had his famous conflict with his father. He even wrote a book about it. In reality, his father was almost as harsh and disdainful to Franz’s sister, Ottla. She eventually left the Prague family home, and moved to a small village. But, also in reality, her father never seemed to understand his part in it.
Here I have their father, Hermann, talk about his daughter to his son.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
17 April 1917
Father greeted me at the supper table today, and even – over the course of the meal – asked if I had heard from Ottla.
If it were anyone else, I would have admiration for his guile. But I honestly don’t believe that father has the cunning for such a thing.
Because his belief in his narrow opinions is so absolute, I think that our words slide off him like melting snow.
And because this happens, he does not realize the destruction his own words cause.”They are just words,” he would say. “You can’t eat them, and they don’t keep you warm.”
Just words.
He asked me to say hello from him when I next write to her.
Then Came Each Actor Upon His Ass
And it was good.
So very good.
And each had food
Unto itself
And unto himself
The feedbag was full
The groaning board groaned
The drink was abundant
The water trough quenched
The wine barrel quenched
And it was good
And so the first day passed.
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