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Dream Of Death And Ghosts [from “Kafka In The Castle”]

21 March 1917

Dreamed I was standing in a balcony with him. In a town in Northern Italy. We could see across the rooftops, to a plain slipping gently toward the foothills of the mountains. The day was clear – a cool spring morning – and the touch of sun was welcome on our skin.

He pointed to a laden waggon passing beneath us. A curtain of dust rose from its wheels as it squeezed through a narrow lane. We watched it for awhile, then he turned to me, his body a silhouette against the vivid sky.

“I enjoyed my funeral. I wish we could have talked about it after – it was one of those things to share.”

“We did share it,” I pointed out. “I was there.”

“But I was not,” he said.

Then he eased himself over the balcony, and without effort, we were sitting in the back of the waggon, perched upon boxes and equipment. We rattled out of the village toward the countryside.

“I loved the outdoors,” he said. “I still remember my last walk in the fields.”

We moved slowly through the country side, the waggon rarely being jostled along the rutted road. The teamster must have been an expert, but he never turned his face to us. Intent upon his business, I suppose.

“You forget that I am dead; for which I thank you.”

“Sometimes I do,” I replied.

“It is at those times, I sometimes think I’m still alive.”

He occasionally pointed to things behind me. Once there was a rabbit. The countryside spread endlessly, without another person in sight. I mentioned this, and he nodded.

“It will be crowded at our destination. But I’ll want to meet my wife.” He then leaned toward me, across the waggon. “You helped me, you know – in our final dance.” He smiled, then sighed, then pointed beneath me. “My destination is close, I must return.”

I looked down, and saw I was sitting on a coffin – the polished brown one of his funeral. I moved, then bent over, prepared to open it. His fingers touched the wood beneath my hand.

“No. Do not look. You would not like what you found.” His smile seemed forced, there were more teeth showing than usual. “I embrace my new world. But for you, I am well and truly dead.”

(image) http://machedavvero.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/valletta11.jpg

08/04/2016 0

Kafka Sees His History In The Mirror [from: Kafka In The Castle]

angelo-decorative-corner-silver-leaf-bevelled-mirror-deknudt-mirrors-9166-0-1430262718000

04 March 1917

I dreamed I was a prophet. The prophet Amshel, which is my Jewish name. And, I could talk to God. And I was looking at myself in the mirror.

And I was looking back at me. I mean, Franz was in the mirror, looking back at me – the me of Amshel – who was looking in the mirror. Except, I was as much me looking out, as I was me looking in.

The wall behind the prophet was painted red, while the one behind Franz was of brown wood. They both could raise their fists at each other, and sometimes did. In unison, of course. That was the law.

“Certainly, you may speak to God,” said Franz. “What is there in that? Everyone speaks to God – in sentences, in actions, with their lives. No one is more talked-to in the Universe than God. But what a prophet needs, is to have God speak back.”

And then God spoke, from somewhere behind the mirror, but He did not speak to Amshel. He spoke to Franz.

“You are on the wrong side,” said God.

“Speak to me,” said Amshel.

“Wrong side of what?” asked Franz.

“Of the mirror,” answered God.

“Don’t speak to him,” shouted Amshel. “He is from the world of vipers.”

And Amshel raised his fist, but Franz had to hold up his fist in turn.

“I am not the prophet you seek,” said Franz, and pointed his finger at the mirror. “There is your prophet.”

And Amshel was also pointing toward the glass. “Not him – you don’t want him.” He then turned his hand toward himself. “I’m the one you want.”

But Franz was just as vehement, as his thumb arched toward his own chest. “Not me.” For emphasis, he placed his hand over his heart. “In this, God, you have erred.”

And his words echoed those of Amshel, who also had his hand upon his heart. “In this, God, you have erred.”

And the two faces stared at one another, their fingers clutching at the garments they wore.

But God was silent.

(image) http://www.enidhuttgallery.com/images/_lib/angelo-decorative-corner-silver-leaf-bevelled-mirror-deknudt-mirrors-9166-0-1430262718000.jpg

06/30/2016 0

Writing By The Numbers

I have spent the better part of the last four years writing and editing novels. And the better part of this past year just in the editing. One is historical and the other is a thriller. Both really demand that I keep within the rules of the world I have created/entered. Imagination is certainly needed, but I think of it as a prosaic creativity.

I had been planning, this week, to return to a more creative type of writing. More amorphous and not as controlled. More of whimsy if not exactly whimsical.

I already had a short story partially done. I was greatly surprised I had started it a year ago). I wished to use a new name for the character, and have the setting more vague and open. I was going to start it on Thursday, but was reminded that Thursdays have been “my day off” the past year. I am superstitious enough to keep to a working formula. So, I left it until Friday, even though it was Friday 13th.

Not having looked at it for nearly a year, I was gobsmacked to find the first line is: “Hermione Kafka embraces the number 13.”

Her name is now Alison Alexandra.

Her saga continues.

(image) http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02054/number-13_2054848c.jpg

11/14/2015 0

Google Slut Rides The Links

Today’s Google doodle informs me it is Teacher’s Day, 2015. Fittingly, it is also the day that, via Groucho Marx’s mustache, I accept the fact I’m a Google slut.

A character in the screenplay I’m writing referred to his mustache, and said it was taped on. This is a long-ago nugget of information that I thought I knew. However, best to make sure, and that’s what Google can so often allow. It turns out Groucho used grease paint in the movies. He indeed had his own mustache for the TV shows. And perhaps, if I had kept following link after link, I would have found some reference to black tape once used.

It was all relatively moot anyway, because the character uttering the comment is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and could make such a mistake. However, unless announced on high like Mrs. Malaprop’s comments in Sheridan’s “The Rivals”, the doubt probably falls upon the author.

But, just as I this minute used Google to confirm the information about Mrs. Malaprop (I would have spelled Sheridan’s name incorrectly), so, as with Groucho’s mustache, I find myself a willing slave to Google.

Last week I was reading an online Atlantic Monthly article about how our minds are altering with this great influx of information. Our attention spans are becoming fragmented. I have not yet finished reading this article because I moved on to other things. I cut-and-pasted it and emailed it to myself for later consumption. I do this more and more often. For instance, I eventually read Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize speech just last month.

So, does Google bless me as it ruins me? Does it offer me the wealth of the ages yet diminish my own innate abilities? I know I’m not going to rein in my use.

By the way, I just Googled “Google Slut”. According to Urban Dictionary, it is “A person who is on the computer so much that it is like they are f***ing it”.

Well, asterisk them, say I

10/05/2015 0

Kafka To The Day: Writing His Diary

(page from *real* Kafka diary)

One of the most startling situations regarding Kafka and my (re)construction of his *missing* diary occurred when I had been working on the manuscript a couple of months.

I initially (of course) had the hope of literally writing a diary entry a day. Not only did my real life intervene, but some of the constructed diary entries took days to write. Also, there were times when many of my diary entries were but a few lines long. Thus, I might do a number in a day of writing.

In one instance, as I was checking Kafka’s real diaries, I noted one of his entries had the exact date as the day I was reading it. That is, if he was filling in a diary entry on Friday, 19 October (for I forget the exact day I realized this), I was reading it on Friday, 19 October. I looked at a perpetual calendar, and not only was the year in which I was writing an exact numerical year to his, so was the following year.

As a result, I believe my novel took on a more authentic flavour. When I put my pen to paper on the 14th of March, it was also a Wednesday in 1917.

(image) http://swc2.hccs.edu/htmls/rowhtml/kafka/Diaries.GIF

08/25/2015 0