I can't sleep…
It is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun,
but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on earth where the sun sometimes shines
and one can warm oneself a little.
~ Franz Kafka, from Letter to His Father
Notes:
The walkway to the entrance is a shadow, sprayed clean, still moist in its elongated drying cycle in the early morning humidity in August – the industrial hose is wrapped tightly in the hidden wall closet.
The silver trash can standing a few feet from the elevator has been wiped down and emptied.
The rug under the desk is now free of the paper chads that spilled from the three-hole punch that was toppled over when rushing to answer the phone.
The trash can under the desk with the wax paper Chick-fil-A wrapper has been emptied, along with the paper pocket which held the home fries.
The paper dispenser in the men’s room is replenished. The bathroom floors have been scrubbed with a fresh lemon scented cleaner. The sinks are clean and dry, the toilets wiped down, the mirrors are spot-free and gleam.
My desk top has been wiped clean, yesterday wiped away.
My hands rest on the desktop.
Her hands rest under her head. She sleeps now, and she sleeps hard. She’ll be up in a few hours catching a bus for her second job, laundry and folding sheets for a Comfort Inn.
Investigators dusting this scene and applying a flourescent dye stain and a burst of orange light would find her fingerprints everywhere. The desks. The computer screens. The walls. The floors. The door knobs. The sinks. The toilets.
Kafka was right.
People are sewn into their skins and can’t alter the seams.
The phone rings, breaking the spell.
I’m back, back in my skin.
~ DK
Notes:
You think you might give me a run for it, but you can’t touch me. You can’t come close, not remotely close to my Superiority. Top 1% of the 1% in…
Mood Swings.
Close your eyes and think bungee jumper, in an infinite loop, who’s boinging up and down in a zone which pulls up short of Bliss and a whisker from Abyss. Not too hot, but hot enough to pinch, and not too cold, but cold enough to feel frost bite, and once in a while tasting Despair, but never lallygagging in Euphoria.
It’s the 5:40 am train. I have the entire seat to myself on Metro North to NYC.
We’re operating on 4.5 hours of sleep, and hauling the wet slushy snow of accumulated sleep deprivation from the prior three days. Eyes heavy. Shoulders heavy. Words from the morning papers slur together. I set down the smartphone.
Tired. Sick and tired of being tired, and bored writing about tired. Tired³. Continue reading “Riding Metro North. With Sunbeam.”
Like Kafka in his Letters to Milena, I’m trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones.
Yet, I will try, and yes, here it is again. Deep in the marrow of those same bones. It builds.
A sabbatical. From hands balled in fists, squeezing the reins, to ceding it all to a clean-cut pilot, his Aviator Hat tilted ever so slightly to the right: “Thank you Sir for flying with American.”
My head leans on the cool aluminum skin of the 450 ton albatross. 500 mph, and standing still. The only sign of Man, the long white breath of an earlier bird, and us, seven miles up.
Down, way down are the Badlands. The salt flats. The arid plains. The snow capped peaks.
Earth.
The immensity of It. The insignificance of Me.
It’s inexplicable. That soft pull. The freeing of the twisted, braided cords. Release. Continue reading “Flying West. Up, and Back.”
Kafka said, “In man’s struggle against the world, bet on the world.”
Oh Yeah?
Do you agree?
No.
I’m with you.
People like us you bet on the man.
You most definitely bet on the man.
~ Ray Donovan, The Kalamazoo
Notes: