It’s that time, it happens around now, when fall begins or
the beginning of spring, when you look at your surroundings, your life and you
want to just flame throw everything and go far away into some place that has
mountains. I feel this urge to
purge and I am starting with the things closest at hand such as my apartment,
which I am currently half way through re-painting, my closets, twelve pairs of
shoes going to the charity bin, my hair, which I tried dying a bit but failed
at since I’m impatient in this whole transformation business. Sigh. I have been so busy being busy that I have not seen or been
experiencing art the way I want to.
This makes me sad. This I
will change but I don’t see it happening anytime before November, double
sad.
In November I hope to disappear a bit and come back in a
month or two transformed and rejuvenated.
I have been trying to do a lot of stuff to make myself refreshed of
late. Acupuncture, meditation,
message, facials, nicorette gum… This type of external accessory seems popular
now-a-days. Who needs stuff when you can have deep tissue messages? Anywho, I’m pooped and I have nothing
to offer this week since paint fumes and too many carbs are making me want to
pass out and cry via self imposed loathing. Oh the drama, I know.
I hope that you are doing better then me and if not, at
least doing something regenerative and productive. I leave you with this to chomp on until my head and eyes
think or see something worth sharing.
“The
Metamorphosis” Franz Kafka, 1915 (excerpt Chapter 1)
As
Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed
in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were
armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his
dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the
bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely.
His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk,
waved helplessly before his eyes.
What
has happened to me? He thought. It was no dream. His room, a regular human
bedroom, only rather too small, lay quiet between the four familiar walls.
Above the table on which a collection of cloth samples was unpacked and spread
out-Samsa was a commercial traveler-hung the picture which he had recently cut
out of an illustrated magazine and put into a pretty gilt frame. It showed a
lady, with a fur cap on and a fur stole, sitting upright and holding out to the
spectator a huge fur muff into which the whole of her forearm had vanished!
Gregor's eyes turned next to the window, and the overcast sky-one could hear
rain drops beating on the window gutter-made him quite melancholy. What about
sleeping a little longer and forgetting all this nonsense, he thought, but it
could not be done, for he was accustomed to sleep on his right side and in his
present condition he could not turn himself over. However violently he forced
himself towards his right side he always rolled on to his back again. He tried
it at least a hundred times, shutting his eyes to keep from seeing his
struggling legs, and only desisted when he began to feel in his side a faint
dull ache he had never experienced before.
Oh
God, he thought, what an exhausting job I've picked on! Traveling about day in,
day out. It's much more irritating work than doing the actual business in the
office, and on top of that there's the trouble of constant traveling, of
worrying about train connections, the bed and irregular meals, casual
acquaintances that are always new and never become intimate friends. The devil
take it all! He felt a slight itching up on his belly; slowly pushed himself on
his back nearer to the top of the bed so that he could lift his head more
easily; identified the itching place which was surrounded by many small white
spots the nature of which he could not understand and made to touch it with a
leg, but drew the leg back immediately, for the contact made a cold shiver run
through him.
He
slid down again into his former position. This getting up early, he thought,
makes one quite stupid. A man needs his sleep. Other commercials live like
harem women. For instance, when I come back to the hotel of a morning to write
up the orders I've got, these others are only sitting down to breakfast. Let me
just try that with my chief; I'd be sacked on the spot. Anyhow, that might be
quite a good thing for me, who can tell? If I didn't have to hold my hand
because of my parents I'd have given notice long ago, I'd have gone to the
chief and told him exactly what I think of him. That would knock him endways
from his desk! It's a queer way of doing, too, this sitting on high at a desk
and talking down to employees, especially when they have to come quite near
because the chief is hard of hearing. Well, there's still hope; once I've saved
enough money to pay back my parents' debts to him-that should take another five
or six years-I'll do it without fail. I'll cut myself completely loose then.
For the moment, though, I'd better get up, since my train goes at five.
He
looked at the alarm clock ticking on the chest. Heavenly Father! He thought. It
was half-past six o'clock and the hands were quietly moving on, it was even
past the half-hour, it was getting on toward a quarter to seven. Had the alarm
clock not gone off? From the bed one could see that it had been properly set
for four o'clock; of course it must have gone off. Yes, but was it possible to
sleep quietly through that ear-splitting noise? well he had not slept quietly,
yet apparently all the more soundly for that. But what was he to do now? The
next train went at seven o'clock; to catch that he would need to hurry like mad
and his samples weren't even packed up, and he himself wasn't feeling
particularly fresh and active. And even if he did catch the train he wouldn't
avoid a row with the chief, since the firm's porter would have been waiting for
the five o'clock train and would have long since reported his failure to turn
up. The porter was a creature of the chief's, spineless and stupid. Well,
supposing he were to say he was sick? But that would be most unpleasant and
would look suspicious, since during his five years' employment he had not been
ill once. The chief himself would be sure to come with the sick-insurance doctor,
would reproach his parents with their son's laziness and would cut all excuses
short by referring to the insurance doctor, who of course regarded all mankind
as perfectly healthy malingerers. And would he be so far wrong on this
occasion? Gregor really felt quite welt apart from a drowsiness that was
utterly superfluous after such a long sleep, and he was even unusually hungry.
