~Fools Return to Their Folly, Dogs Return to Their Vomit~

Week No. 29

On Kafka

The use of the sentimental is that it is a vision that emerges in the day, it casts back, but, inevitable in that gesture, must be carried forward, by how far and with what momentum it can and does cast back. It never angles for the immediate surroundings, the immediate people it could find there, but instead towards a memory.

Kafka is read in the June of life—before the blooded heat of July, a time of expectation, of unresolved sentiments. I have grown up with Kafka, I have not excused him. The poor dogs that drink at the bar speak of the June of life as if it had sentiment. In reality the June of life has sentiment because it resembles a false sense of control, the teenage years.

Venerating any character in a Kafka story is moot, there are no heroes, the only thing remotely resembling heroicism is the sentimental childhood (and puppydom) of the characters. Kafka’s characters lack anything Human (Human—as a word with a lot of breadth), omitting Humans in ‘The Investigations’* grants back the height of existence. That existence—which is the fun of reading Kafka—is that without ties there is somehow an urge to leash one’s surroundings; the omittal: dogs without owners become their own tyrants.

A friend in Amsterdam that I first met in my studies nine years ago gave me back a small paint-stained square-shaped Penguin edition of two short stories by Kafka. The book is titled ‘The Judgement and in The Penal Colony’. We both expressed that we never read, or, we never finished the second story—it’s hard to know in the June of life.

Books have always been objects to me, something to perform. I remember turning the pages of an edition of ‘The Complete Works of Arthur Rimbaud’ not understanding, feeling, or getting anywhere, with it in my possession; I thought girls would speak to me. Turning the thick book of poetry over. Looking at the cover image of the portrait of Rimbaud with his thin down-turned mouth, and getting out less than I put in.

At what age does sentimentality occur? Not in the June of life. But why do old dogs strive for it?

*Investigations of a Dog, 1921, Franz Kafka

Week No. 30

The Man Without an Unconscious
A Short Story

“But I found it here Nina. In his diary. Everything he did today. Just this morning, when he, impatient as he is, when we reach that moment each month that one of us must refill the coffee beans and I berate him every time to use the scissors, but he tears the bag, and the beans spill everywhere on the counter.”

Maddie holds the diary so the cursive script is read by Nina’s eyes, which inch from left to right.

Tear open the bag when Maddie complains.

“See, It is vile.”

“Vile it is, but he might need some sympathy. Why the man feels the need to have a planned unconscious… sympathy may unlock why he feels he has no— or feels himself so scarce that what little he does have… we all must have a little something other than ideas in our head, even your husband, surely(?)— but so little, so scarce that he feels he needs to plan his unconscious throughout the day…“

“You and me both know that we do things without thinking, I assume the man I married does the same? He has a well-paid job, he drives our children to school, as he complains of driving in the winter, when the sunlight causes daybreak accustomed to our bodies’ organs, evenly, he enjoys the summer drives, are we led to believe that all of my husband’s actions are to be taken consciously?

Nina puzzles her mouth.

“The well-paid job, have you ever asked him what he does?”

“No, well, yes. I know it involves the translation of a German author, and he considers it ‘slow work’. Yet the moment he decided to change his career, I remember: he said ‘Maddie I’m going to change’ and he came through the doorway all wet, and said he was tired of staying out late and performing. And the story he told. Of jumping out of the tour bus, and the way he looked in the doorway. I wasn’t sure if it was the rain or the tears but he was wet all over. He said Maddie, he said ‘I’ve got to change’. And I kissed him and told him he was mad to go back to university, but he did. And it took some time, but we started young, and now we have two kids to show for it.

This was too true for contradiction, unwelcome as it was Nina gave only an affected sigh; whatever the case with the man’s opinions of himself, that moment he decided to change his career, afforded them, along with Maddie’s finances, the house that the two women were talking to each other in— and as Nina saw Maddie’s spirits affected, she immediately led to such a branch of subject about the two children, obfuscating the truth that she had read the diary during Maddie’s passionate deviation from her first (and only) rebuke in the conversation. She hadn’t the heart to tell her that moment he decided to change his career was written precisely as Maddie spoke it, predestined in the diary.

Week No.31

On Winnicott

Winnicott served three audiences: Mother, Child, and The Reader. The audience of The Reader was the only one not in the room—but that’s not to say The Reader doesn’t exist, or didn’t exist when Winnicott was all the time serving the other two. I posit that leaving The Reader distracted, on equal footing with the Madonna, is what makes his servitude; is what makes his psychoanalysis abundant.

There is faith in wanting to be understood. And speech itself is folly. So little of speech is speech to be understood—instead, speech is oftentimes used to placate. We want to be liked, and speech allows that. Without a recording device, our illiterate ancestors had less meaning; had more symbolic understanding.

The acceleration of communication collapses speech into recording. It is from these devices—group messaging apps, posting, when communication is solely as the aim—recording lies in wait, and the drag of work commences.

Reading is a lot of the time working with a servitude that Winnicott examines in his practice. Enjoyment of the text is curtailed; the formings of an idea come up—often tyrannical and well-tried. It’s at this point the assumption of not-knowing is tried, which is the essential start of any piece of writing. Using Winnicott as a way to research, bouncing from the game of the child, to the concern of the mother. Just because The Reader’s not in the room doesn’t mean he can’t be distracted.