Franz Kafka’s Diary

Posted on August 24, 2007 by randomyriad
Cover of "The Basic Kafka"

Cover of The Basic Kafka

Franz Kafka wrote in his diary:

October 19, 1921: Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate– he has little success in this– but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different (and more) things than do the others; after all, dead as he is in his own lifetime, he is the real survivor. This assumes that he does not need both hands, or more hands than he has, in his struggle against despair.

October 21, 1921. All is imagery– family , office, friends, the street, all imaginary, far away or close at hand, the woman; the truth that lies closest, however, is only this, that you are beating your head against the wall of a windowless and doorless cell.

January 24, 1922. Hesitation before birth. If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

I am reading “The Basic Kafka” and last night I came across these diary entries and realized that several times in my life and sometimes for long stretches, I have felt exactly the same way. But, what I can’t figure out is when I am not feeling this way am I just deluding myself, or when I am feeling this way am I just focused on the wrong things. I guess that whatever you are feeling is real for you at the time and if you can write it down, or say it clearly it speaks for others as well. You can hold it out and examine it more clearly by using someone else’s words to as a frame.

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Dreamtime 2: Mr. Fixer

Posted on August 22, 2007 by randomyriad

The man came into town to show them all how it was done. He checked into a small motel at the edge of town and went to the little bar across the road. Three men were waiting for him. They wanted to be his buddies. They went to a room in the back of the bar and took some drugs. The three men turned into albino beasts like bull-bear-cats. They slipped and slid over the slick linoleum of the room and out into a yard where it was always a moonlit night. They made patterns of elegance as they ran around and across the dark glowing yard.

The man went back to his room to get some rest. He still had to get up early to show them how it was done and then head back to his life, back home. In the silence of his room he was afraid. That flesh-locked sea of silence surrounded him.

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Dreamtime 1: A Visit to Cat World

Posted on August 22, 2007 by randomyriad


There we were, Hector, Stan and I, out in the middle of this field of short brown grass in the rolling foothills just outside of town. There on the hillside was a set of wooden monkey bars like a sideways ladder with some boxlike structure underneath with loose pine planks covering the top. Stan said that when he started to swing on the bars when his foot hit one of the planks, it popped up, and a black and white cat started to run out. But, the board fell back before the cat could get out. He had tried to lift the planks, but they wouldn’t budge. So we all tried to lift them and no luck. So I decided to swing on the bars and my foot came down on the plank and up it popped. As I dropped I caught sight of the black and white cat escaping.

We decided to head back to town. We shared a cab. When I went into my room there was a pair of enormous black panthers that talked to me in a language I couldn’t understand. One of them brandished knives and other sharp, shiny metal objects from where its claws should be. I left quickly heading for Stan’s. When I got there, Stan said that the cat that escaped from under the plank had been there when he got home.

We hopped on a big motorized skateboard and took off for the monkey bars. On the way phantoms of both the black and white cat and the panthers and other catlike creatures appeared around us. When we arrived at the monkey bars, we leaped onto the bars and started swinging. Suddenly we were plunged into the dim cat world. They wanted us to do something for them, and it was up to us to figure out what. Any other alternative seemed unpleasant at best.

I woke up in a cold, dark house. The power was out and my wife had gone to work.
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Into the Jaws of the Beast I Shout Joy

Posted on August 21, 2007 by randomyriad

“You must empty your pockets, turn them inside out, and spill out your wife and your son, the pets you hardly knew, and the days you simply missed altogether watching the sunlight fade on the bricks across the way. You must hand over the rainy afternoons, the light on the grass, the moments of play and of simply being. You must give it up, all of it, and by your example teach your children to do the same, and then—because even this is not enough—you must train yourself to believe that this outsourcing of your life is both natural and good. But even so, your soul will not be saved.”

Mark Slouka From Quitting the Paint Factory:On the virtues of idleness

Into the Jaws of the Beast I Shout Joy

After my yearly 2 1/2 month layoff, some spent idleness and some in unpaid work, I went back to work today. I work at Head Start as a teacher. It is an important job, but not always a good job. I am ambivalent about returning to work. I work for under funded, overburdened program, and we have to account for every penny we spend. The budget is usually balanced on the backs of employees who in order to work full time are required to spread themselves so thin you can see through them. I love working with children and families, but hate the paperwork and bean counting. I also need to support my family.

Today was all about the new pieces of paper, which are a surprising improvement over the ones we have been using. That in itself made today not so bad. I got to look over my caseload of 19 families, which is nice this early in the year since we have 4 weeks now to schedule initial home visits. I get to actually meet my students before the first day of class and talk to parents and see what home is like for my students. I have a few families I worked with last year and was pleased to see their names on list.

My plan for this year is to be very intentional and about every aspect of my work, see the connections between the paperwork and the services, and when I am feeling irritated about bureaucracy and small thinking, I will look for alternative ways of accomplishing the tedious tasks which always threaten to overwhelm the joy of the work.

There is always joy in seeing families grow stronger and children develop into students and forming a classroom as a learning community. I get to continue my relationships with returning families and develop new relationships with incoming families. Each new year brings another great adventure because no class or caseload is the same.

This year I resolve not to let the documentation overwhelm the adventure, but this being a review year, many reviewers descend upon our program and see if we deserve the insufficient funds we have been granted) could make that a difficult task as the review process tends to make the most easy going administrator tense and tends to bring out the micromanager in them all. But, I am not going to let that bother me. I locked into joy and adventure. Damn the tedium! Full speed ahead!

Posted in can't really complain but, developing relationships, discovery and recovery, Family, make your own world, mindworks, my life, Other peoples words, paying attention, Teaching and Learning, thinking in words, working world | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wonder World 2

Posted on August 19, 2007 by randomyriad

Hidden Worlds

There is no light and very little oxygen in the Movile cave in Romania. There is a lake of warm water rich in hydrogen sulfide that reacts with oxygen in the air to create sulfuric acid that eats away at the limestone enlarging the cavern and depositing gypsum on the walls. And yet life clings tenaciously on the edges of this poisonous environment.

There are 48 life forms from microbes to insects that inhabit the cave, 30 of which were unknown until the cave was discovered in 1986. At the base of food chain are bacteria that synthesize organic molecules from the carbon dioxide in the air and energy derived from the sulfuric acid reaction. Chemical energy is the driving force of ecosystem, instead of absent sunlight. The bacteria grow along with fungi in white mats floating on methane gas bubbles on the surface of the water, or clinging to the sides of cavern in the “air bells.”

All the creatures are without pigmentation and sight, though some retain empty eye sockets. They have developed elongated legs and antennae to feel their way around. Many have developed protections against the poisonous hydrogen sulfide. The water scorpion is covered with a thick layer of bacteria that ingest sulfur.

There are animals that live on the cave walls around air bells and those that live in the water. In each case there are plant eaters and meat eaters. The plant eaters graze on the microbial mats. The aquatic animals live just below the waters surface not more than two inches. They include a variety of flatworms, roundworms, microscopic isopods and snails as well as visible isopods, insects and shrimp-like crustaceans, none of which are more than half an inch long. Three carnivorous species also live in the water: a flatworm with a triangular head, which eats crustaceans; a reddish brown blind leech, colored by the hemoglobin in its blood, which eats flatworms; and the water scorpion, which eats virtually anything.

On the walls are spiders, pseudo-scorpions, millipedes, beetles, and more isopods. Many of the smaller animals feed on the wall and the floating mats. The top predator of the cave wall is the centipede, which feeds on mat eaters.

These creatures have developed in isolation for 5 million years and bare very little similarity to the microorganisms and animals outside of the cave. Many of the terrestrial creatures are more similar to ancestral forms that inhabited the land in more tropical times. The cave spiders are most closely related to those that live on the Canary Islands and in Northern Africa.

For 5 million years life has not only survived but created new ways of surviving. Long before people were people, the life forms in this cave were shut off from the sun and the outside world.

What forms will life take if people are either evolved into something new or extinct? Out of what bubble in time will new inheritors of the earth crawl to inhabit whatever environment is left to them? Whatever occurs there will be life.

Information taken from an article in The Sciences (Nov/Dec. 1994) by Robert Zimmerman and Wendy Marston.

Posted in change, hidden places, Questions and riddles, thinking in words, time travel, visions from the dark side, Wild Life, wonder world | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment