Kafka love

I quit my corporate job at the beginning of this year and have been traveling and writing since.

Since my income now is entirely coming from my creative work, sometimes the back to back long hour routine of creating and writing does become tiring and draining especially when it is on emotionally difficult subjects.

On such challenging days, I lean entirely on my in-between havens of reading books. There is not much money to spend so I rely on my wonderful city libraries.

However, very recently I was passing by a very old bookstore in Pittsburgh and had to go in to check out their collection and book-romantic space. They had a dollar book section but unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything of my taste there.

I was looking for some Jack Gilbert poetry in their used books section but couldn’t find one. As I continued to walk that aisle an old sunshine yellow cover of Kafka’s book instantly caught my eyes.

I am a firm believer of the theory that universe aligns your eye sight and attention with books that you need to read at that point of time in your life.

I had read some stories of this collection before. The book claims that these stories are what Kafka had said are his only important works. “ Of all that I have written the only things that count are: The Judgement, The Stoker, Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, A Country Doctor, A Hunger Artist.”

I had to pick it.

I also felt an intense desire to read ‘A Hunger Artist’ and ‘Metamorphosis’ again. It all felt very relevant at this point of my life.

For me Kafka has always been the surrealist elder brother I sneak in the intentionally hiding room of, during my days of misery, and read his stories straight out of a dream I had myself but I couldn’t remember it, or shape it to write it, so he wrote it for me and I can read it now; my very own dream written by the pen of the most abstractly rich artists of our time. What a magical gift I have here in my hands.

In his Metamorphosis I find my loneliness in a capitalist world driven by greedy corporates. I find my nonaligned and noncomplying existence. I see the creature that I was forced to become only to be banished eventually.

In A Hunger Artist I find my suffering in art. I find my misunderstood existence and my desire for attention only to be disappointed by its brief and non-satisfying visit, to be taken over eventually by my madness in art. I see my alienation by an audience with taste of bestsellers on their tongues preferred over the individuality of expression. I find my failure to secure interest and entertainment. I see my passion. I see my insecurity. I find their hypocrisy.

In short, I find in Kafka’s stories all my difficult experiences that I would have never learned to read in myself, let alone express, if not for a writer like him. He enters realms we don’t have the audacity to step into because either they are too painful or too incomprehensible. To shed light on a very foggy dream of immense personal value, who can do it better than Kafka?

I am spending my next summer days with him in the nearby forest of the town. I won’t return as a giant bug but I will return as a rainbow butterfly for sure.

~

Vaishali Paliwal

Huge thanks to Dennett for this beautiful new publication. No digital screens can replace the magic of holding a book in our hands and turning its flower pressed old pages. I am very excited to find out what my favorite writers here on Medium are reading on paper these days:). Tagging a few…Thank you all

Shringi Kumari, Simon Heathcote, Agnes Louis, John Piantanida, Guérin Asante, Anisesh, Johanna Naomi, Hawkeye Pete Egan B., kurt gasbarra, E. Scott Alighieri, Tre L. Loadholt, Troy Camplin, Will Schmit, Sean Michael, Trails of Magic, Ashwini Dodani, Elle Rogers, Bonnie Flach, G.R. MELVIN, Michael Stang, Farida Haque, Leah J.🕊, Matthew Smith, David S., Deborah Christensen, Jack Preston King, Tracy Aston, Shruti Sinha, Pablo Pereyra