triii

“I don’t feel guilt at being unsociable, though I may sometimes regret it because my loneliness is painful. But when I move into the world, it feels like a moral fall – like seeking love in a whorehouse.”
― Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

“The trouble is, I am not at peace with myself; I am not always "something," and if for once I am "something," I pay for it by "being nothing" for months on end.'
—Kafka, quoted by Canetti”
― Elias Canetti, Kafka's Other Trial: The Letters to Felice

“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

“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