I was addicted to writing kafka-esque stories. I would like to say that I started writing them before I started reading kafka, but that would not be true. I used to think that every story needed to have a kind of basic setup. after i read kafka is when i started writing stories where the conflict was beteween the individual and an all-ecompassing, suffused dread. i would like to say i felt moved to write these pieces before reading him, but that was/is not the case. If you feel constatnlyy doomed, what does it mean to feel really doomed? If you’re full of dread how to identify real and present dangers? I felt doomed and concerned about my story and about the vitality of my story and about its ability to survive in the world. And If i could transfer this feeling of doom, into a story…. Well the possibilities were intoxicating.
The squirrel, the squirrel preparing for winter, in central park right where the highway cuts in. I went to the park and I sat on a rock and I was in a footpath. The dead leaves were on the ground and I felt the lowest of low. I oculd not tlel you why. I could not tell you precisely why. I watched the squirrels and they were acting particulalry strange. And seeing them - about three- plotting and scurrying in three different patches - i felt entertained. It was the despair that one could only feel with the strength of midday. In the park the carriages, with their laminated price signs, and the park ‘regulars’ who spoke about different things, about scams, and about how people needed to “read a book.” I walked the mall some times in the park. To have a good time in the park was a nice thing and a sad thing, because when you left the park, you were no longer having a good time. I removed myself from the place i was at and i went ot the park and i got lost. I could not tell my way out. They still had ice skating at the park, although it was so warm. They played music at the rink, music which when it swelled over the kind of natural bowl shape of the land the rink was in, did somewhat cheapen the experience of being in the park. I swore i’d been to the park many times before, as a child, and as a tourist, and it had this heartbreaking inscrutabiliyt for me, this sense of the passage of time which hurt almost, i remember walking over the same swells of the park as a child and wondering where we were, accepting it, all unconsciously. I felt in pain to be in the park among the waxen leaves, and the bench dedications, and the busts. I felt alone in the park because no one would ever come up here with me. I felt grief in the park for the life I was living which no one understood and was always trying to talk me out of. I felt stupid in the park, just a dunce with no cap. I had to remind my self i did not do things for external validation or merit. I did them to do them… i swore i couldnt even think, i felt so crippled by the pain and by the intensity of my deprivation. I felt so crippled and diminutive and stunted by my life and mind, and felt like i was a plant growing itn the shade. In the park i imagined taking your kid here to play, and that kid growing up and having these dismal thoughts. I wondered if my pain was needless. I wondered if it was a sign
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