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Caught Dead In A Place Like This

If I were going to visit my mother on Mother’s Day, I would have to visit a cemetery. Same for my father, as they are side by side. I have done so before – the last time to make sure their tumbled gravestone had been righted. It had.

I have a friend – still happily above ground – who had once been admonished “… not to walk on graves.” She wondered why, as she said it would give her pleasure if she knew people were even dancing upon hers, and enjoying themselves.

And what’s a graveyard if you can’t enjoy yourself?

I have sometimes pondered whether it would be pleasant to live beside a graveyard. It makes great sense to me. That would almost be a guarantee of peace and quiet.

For myself, I had plans for a grand mausoleum. There was to be a reflecting pool and mourning benches, with ornate gargoyles around the sarcophagus. And a whole lot of other things. Wind chimes, for instance – there should be wind chimes. And treed arbours where people can gently weep.

However, my friend (not the one who wishes cotillions stepped-out upon her mortal bones), who was helping me plan this grand memorial garden, has – alas – herself died. And since it was she who was the mastermind behind my final resting place, I am somewhat at a loss.

As it is, I will be going to see her planted, with no mausoleum in sight. I suppose the irony is lost upon her. But maybe not.

So the reverential repose I wish is now up to me. I hope time doesn’t run out before I do.

DE

Exterior of Milton Mausoleum, Markham Clinton, Nottinghamshire. Photo by James Darwin. Not to be reproduced without permission.

{Yeh – something like this.}

(image)

http://www.visitchurches.org.uk/Ourchurches/Completelistofchurches/Milton-Mausoleum-Markham-Clinton-Nottinghamshire/

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Letter To Kafka About Life And Government

Franz_Kafka_Brief_an_den_Vater_

Dear F K:

Although it will give you no pleasure – well, ‘little’ pleasure – you are correct in all your observations.

Governments become the tools of the bureaucracies which run them. It doesn’t matter what type of Government, from the monarchy under which you lived, to the right wing horror of fascists which called themselves socialists, to the inept socialism pretending to be ‘for the people’. All three governments held their sway over the city where you spent your life.  All three oppressed the people they ruled. All three looked after themselves first.

Writers are either writers or they aren’t. The urge to write encircles one like a snake around its prey. Feed it and it won’t quite squeeze you to death. You can not ignore it – even at your peril. It is with you every hour of every day, ever inquisitive and (sadly) always looking for something better.

Love is a see-saw of extremes. Every high guarantees a low. Every low reaches for a high. Every high reaches for a high. When these hills and valleys are eventually levelled, they are still desired.

Sex is highly over rated. The thing of it is, even rated fairly ’tis a consummation devoutly to be had.  Yes – I know – you appreciate Shakespeare. On a par with Goethe, even if you can’t bring yourself to say the words.

People are just one damned thing after another. Of course, so many people have brought you blessings that you throw up you hands to ward off the snake. Sometimes loosening its grip.

There is no castle with walls thick enough to hide against the perils of being human.  Which is why you never tried. Except the grave, of course. Except the grave.

Yours,

D

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Kafka Was Not Tortured, Sex-Starved Or Crazy

kafka5

When Kafka gave readings of his work, he left the audience rolling in the aisles from laughter. He was a polite and considerate fellow, concerned about the people around him. People enjoyed his company. Children adored him.

Reiner Stach has written the most recent – and, it can be safely said – the most definitive biography of Franz Kafka. All three volumes. And he has detailed the life and work of the man, the trials and the dark outlook, the insistent search and recording of the truth that would disturb anyone’s peace of mind. But – almost, it seems, to his surprise – Stach also encountered numerous occasions and writings that show a man far more balanced than most give Kafka credit for. He has collected them in their own book, Is That Kafka? 99 Finds. The book is to be released in an English translation 21 March 2016.

The Nation has printed two excerpts of the book, which I happily include. They show both Kafka’s keen observational eye (he did, after all, write the very first newspaper article describing aeroplanes at an air show he attended) and also his humour. Why, I’m looking at my desk right now.

DE

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Who Was Kafka?
A collection of ephemera complicates the picture of Franz Kafka as a tortured neurotic.
By Reiner Stach
Yesterday 10:32 am

 

The Paris Metro

In the course of researching his acclaimed three-volume biography of Franz Kafka, Reiner Stach discovered numerous curiosities and idiosyncrasies about the writer that, taken together, complicate the image of Kafka as a tortured neurotic. He loved beer and slapstick. He undertook a fitness regime popularized by a Dutch exercise guru. He tried to cheat on his high-school exams. He used his desk as a metaphor for self-parody and waxed lyrical about the Paris metro. Stach details some of these oddities in Is That Kafka? 99 Finds, first published in Germany in 2012 and forthcoming from New Directions on March 21 in a translation from the German by Kurt Beals. The following two finds are reprinted with the permission of the publisher.
Kafka Takes the Subway

The Metro seemed very empty to me back then, particularly if I compare it to my trip to the races, when I was sick and alone. Even apart from the emptiness, the metro’s appearance showed the influence of a Sunday. The dark steel color of the walls dominated. The work of the conductors, shoving the doors of the cars open and shut and swinging themselves in and out, was in keeping with the spirit of a Sunday afternoon. People walked slowly along each long correspondence (i.e. transfer). The unnatural indifference of the passengers, their acceptance of this travel by Metro, became clearer. The way that people turned toward the glass doors, that individuals disembarked at unknown stations far from the opera, appeared capricious. Despite the elec. light, changes in the daylight are clearly visible in the stations, particularly when you have just gone down, particularly this afternoon light, just before dusk. Entering into the empty terminal station, Porte Dauphine, a mass of pipes comes into view, a glance into the loop where the trains are allowed to travel in a single curve after such a long, straight trip. It is much more unpleasant to go through a tunnel in a railway train, in the Metro there is no trace of that oppression that the passenger feels beneath the mass of the mountain (even if it is held in check). You also aren’t far from people, it is a city facility, e.g., like the water in the pipes. Leaping backward when disembarking, then moving forward again, all the more forcefully. This disembarking on the same level. Small offices with a telephone and a bell apparatus, usually empty, direct the operation. Max likes to look in. The noise of the Metro was terrible when I took it for the first time in my life, from Montmartre to the grand boulevards. Aside from that it isn’t bad, rather it even intensifies the pleasant, calm feeling of speed. The advertisement for Dubonnet is very well-suited to being read, expected, and observed by sad and unoccupied passengers. Elimination of language from commerce, since one does not have to speak when paying, or when getting on or off. Because it is so easy to understand, the Metro offers the best opportunity for an eager, weakly foreigner to assure himself that he has quickly and correctly made his way into the very essence of Paris on his first try. Foreigners can be recognized by the fact that they are already lost by the time they reach the topmost landing of the Metro stairs, they do not exit the Metro and seamlessly lose themselves in the life of the street like Parisians. And upon exiting, reality only slowly begins to correspond to the map, since, if we had come on foot or by hired car, we never would have made it to this square onto which we just emerged without the guidance of the map

 

Kafka’s Desk

Now I’ve taken a closer look at my desk and realized that nothing good can be produced on it.

(more) http://www.thenation.com/article/who-was-kafka/

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Franz Kafka And His Kafkaesque Life

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was born in 1883, so he would probably be dead had he lived.

I wonder what Kafka would think about the worldwide communication and information of today. He was a rigid fixture of the staid (he hated using the telephone). He also was a keen observer of the world around him (he wrote the first newspaper report about aeroplanes, and he invented the safety helmet). It was more this deep divide in his personality which caused him his problems, about which he so famously wrote.

He did not fit into his personal world, yet he fit into the real world perfectly. He was adored by his friends and by many ladies. He was respected at his work and rose to a position of power. His stories were published to acclaim in his lifetime.

Kafka lived a Kafkaesque life. He died a Kafkaesque death (he caught tuberculosis because he drank “pure” unpasteurised cow’s milk). He was rigid in his personal beliefs (until proved wrong), yet he was a beacon of compassion to others.

Kafka was always on a tightrope. He looked at things with such accuracy that his comments can seem bizarre. Supposedly his last words were:  “Kill me, or you are a murderer.” They were to  his doctor, as Kafka beseeches for an overdose of morphine.

I have written much about Kafka. This is a diary entry I had him write in my novel “Kafka In The Castle”:

03 July 1917

The anniversary of my birth. In honour of the day, I do not make it my last.

DE

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God And Death Keep Me From Poetry

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Admittedly,  I had set out later than I should, but the poetry readings were to go from 7-9. Enough time to attend some of them.
However, when I was a few blocks away from the harbour ( I was also going to stop by the harbour first) I heard Latin chanting. I greatly enjoy Latin chanting, so imagine my surprise.
 It turned out there was a large tent set up in a parking lot beside the Roman Catholic cathedral. Six men were chanting a service for a small group. It seemed related (in some way) to the jazz festival happening in the city. They had mics and lights. I lingered by the  fence and listened. Evocative and effective.
I did feel I should go to the poetry readings, so off I went. But I gave in to my temptation of visiting the harbour.
As I sat looking out to sea,  an elderly, white haired man struck up a conversation. A visitor who had arrived by train for a week of vacation. The first vacation without his wife, dead these fourteen months. She was eighty-four. When he said this, he saw the look of surprise on my face.
“Bet you can’t guess my age,” said he.
I answered, with some truth, that I never answer that question.
“Eighty-one,” he said.
I granted I would have shaved a dozen years off his age.
“Married sixty years,” he said. Always had travelled with her. Always went by car. “But it wouldn’t be the same,” he said. So he took the train.
So – yes – I stayed to talk to him.
“Get up every morning to fill the day is my motto,” he said.
I answered his questions about the islands, and if the helicopters flying overhead were military, and if all the ships needed the use of the tugboats we were standing beside, and was there somewhere close he could buy magazines, and how he got this real good travel deal through CAA, and how he talks to everyone.
“Is that really the ocean out there?”
He pointed.
I nodded.
It was.
DE
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WHEN THE GOVERNMENT HATES YOU

Regardless of whether it is fascist, communist or capitalist, all governments hate Franz Kafka.

Kafka, despite his reputation as a depressing malcontent, was an honest humanist. He didn’t belabour the philosophy, he just lived the life. Two stories from his real life stand out which show his basic decency. These are told by other people, for Kafka did not blow his own horn. However, I suspect he did not even think he had done anything special.    

When Kafka first met Oskar Baum, who became a lifelong friend, he bowed his head when he shook hands. This was the formal custom of the day. Oskar felt Kafka’s hair graze his head, which was the only way he could tell that Kafka bowed, because Oskar was blind. To Kafka, the fact that the other man was sightless was no reason not to treat him with the full dignity he would express to any other.      

Later in life, Kafka worked as a lawyer for the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague. This organization was an odd blend of a government and private insurance ‘company’, that paid benefits to injured workers. Although Kafka’s main job was as an administrator, he did sometimes find himself representing the Institute in a court of law.  

On one occasion, he was acting against a worker who was refused benefits for an injury. Kafka believed the worker deserved his benefits, but he would do no less than his best to win the case. His solution was to, from his own pocket, hire an excellent lawyer for the worker. Kafka put forward the best case he could, yet lost. He was greatly pleased.

DE

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