Once Upon A Time There Was A

There Are Moments When A Kind Of Clarity Comes Over You, And Suddenly You Can See Through Walls To Another Dimension That You'd Forgotten Or Chosen To Ignore In Order To Continue Living With The Various Illusions That Make Life, Particularily Life With Other People, Possible.

...our Eyes Locked In One Of Those Looks That Sometimes Happen Between Strangers, When Both Wordlessly Agree That Reality Contains Sinkholes Whose Depths Neither Can Ever Hope To Fathom.

I Want To Say Somewhere: I've Tried To Be Forgiving. And Yet. There Were Times In My Life, Whole Years, When Anger Got The Better Of Me. Ugliness Turned Me Inside Out. There Was A Certain Satisfaction In Bitterness. I Courted It. It Was Standing Outside, And I Invited It In.

Maybe The First Time You Saw Her You Were Ten. She Was Standing In The Sun Scratching Her Legs. Or Tracing Letters In The Dirt With A Stick. Her Hair Was Being Pulled. Or She Was Pulling Someone's Hair. And A Part Of You Was Drawn To Her, And A Part Of You Resisted--wanting To Ride Off On Your Bicycle, Kick A Stone, Remain Uncomplicated. In The Same Breath You Felt The Strength Of A Man, And A Self-pity That Made You Feel Small And Hurt. Part Of You Thought: Please Don't Look At Me. If You Don't, I Can Still Turn Away. And Part Of You Thought: Look At Me.

Obviously I've Been Reading Kafka For A Long Long Time, Since I Was Really Young, And Even Before I Ever Read Him I Knew Who He Was. I Had This Weird Sense That He Was Some Kind Of Family. Like Uncle Kafka. Now I Really Think Of Him That Way, The Way We Think About An Uncle Who Opened Up Some Path For Being In A Family That Otherwise Wouldn't Have Existed. I Think Of Him That Way As A Writer And A Familial Figure.