triii

“For him [Kafka], the most tormenting thing about his notion of marriage must have been its ruling out the possibility of one's ever becoming so small as to be able to vanish: one has to be there.”
― Elias Canetti, Kafka's Other Trial: The Letters to Felice

“In Patagonia, the isolation makes it easy to exaggerate the person you are: the drinker drinks; the devout prays; the lonely grows lonelier, sometimes fatally.”
― Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia

“the night was beginning
and i was standing before the
plate glass window of a
restaurant
and in that window
was a roasted pig,
eyeless,
with an apple in its mouth.
poort damned pig.
poor damned me.
beyond the pig
inside there
were people
sitting at tables
talking, eating, drinking
i was not one of those people
i felt a kinship with the pig
we had been caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time
i imagined myself in the window
eyeless, roasted, the apple in my mouth
…
i walked away from the window
i walked to my room
i still had a room
as i walked to my room
i began to conjecture:
could i eat some paper?
some newspaper?
roaches?
maybe i could catch a rat?
a raw rat?
peel off the fur,
remove the intestines
remove the eyes
forego the head, the tail
…
i walked along.
i was so hungry that everything
looked eatable:
people, fireplugs, asphalt,
wristwatches … my belt, my shirt
…
i sat in a chair
i din’t turn on the light
i sat there and wondered if i was crazy
because i wasn’t doing anything
to help myself

the hunger stopped then
and i just sat there
then i heard it:
two people in the next room
copulating.
i could hear the bed spring
and the moans
i got up, walked out of the
room and back into the street.
but i walked in a different
direction this time
i walked away from the pig
in the window
but i thought about the pig
and i decided that i’d die first
rather than eat that
pig.
it began to rain
i looked up.
i opened my mouth and let in the rain
drops… soup from the sky...”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“The freedom to fail is preserved, as a sort of supreme law, which guarantees escape at every fresh juncture. One is inclined to call this the freedom of the weak person who seeks salvation in defeat. His true uniqueness, his special relation to power, is expressed in the prohibition of victory. All calculations originate and end in impotence.”
― Elias Canetti, Kafka's Other Trial: The Letters to Felice