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In Kafka In The Castle I fill in Kafka’s missing diary entries. It is believed that many of the gaps in his real diaries, he removed and destroyed.

14 March 1918

The past.

 And again the past.

Why can we not be rid of that which – moreso than practically anything else in life – is gone?

I am not even sure what I get from memories. Why do I stroll along the road, reach some humble heights, and imagine (by glancing in a particular direction) I can be closer to a person or event? For even if I reached that place, there would be nothing to recapture.

I am not the me of then.

Swimming in the lake; living in a shack by the shore; climbing the mountain. None of these would mean the same to me as they did.

Even if the Swiss girl were present, and had a new song. The new me – the new she – the new us, would be swamped by our old ghosts, making comparisons no two humans could defeat.

I think the ghosts are such, she could right now walk up beside me – yes, even singing her lively song – and remain unnoticed.

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