Michael > Recent Status Updates

[T]his letter will arrive on New Year's morning, and will usher in a New Year that should be wholly ours... I am going to buy a calendar with a lovely picture for each day, and every morning in my letter I shall enclose the page with the date of the letter's arrival and have it placed on your desk... we shall [...] live facing the same calendar page, and this will make my life seem sweeter.

For your birthday I of all people must not wish you anything, for although there probably are things one could urgently wish for you, they would at the same time be directed against me — and so I cannot express them; what I could say would be sheer self-interest. To make sure that, as needs be, I do not say anything and express no wish, allow me this once, and only in my imagination, to kiss your beloved lips.

Miss F.B. [...] I was not at all curious about who she was, but rather took her for granted at once. Bony, empty face that wore its emptiness openly [...] Looked very domestic in her dress although, as it later turned out, she by no means was [...] As I was taking my seat I looked at her closely for the first time, by the time I was seated I already had an unshakeable opinion.

My dear Fraulein Bauer,
In the likelihood that you no longer have even the remotest recollection of me, I am introducing myself once more: my name is Franz Kafka, and I am the person who greeted you for the first time that evening at Director Brod’s in Prague[.]

Hold fast to the diary from today on! Write regularly! Don't surrender! Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment. I spent this evening at the family table in complete indifference, my right hand on the arm of the chair in which my sister sat playing cards, my left hand weak in my lap. From time to time I tried to realize my unhappiness, I barely succeeded.

If I were ever able to write something large and whole, well shaped from beginning to end, then in the end the story would never be able to detach itself from me and it would be possible for me calmly and with open eyes, as a blood relation of a healthy story, to hear it read, but as it is every little piece of the story runs around homeless and drives me away from it in the opposite direction.

Again it was the power of my dreams, shining forth into wakefulness even before I fall asleep, which did not let me sleep. In the evening and the morning my consciousness of the creative abilities in me is more than I can encompass.

An immense melancholy overcame her. It was not because she was about to die, but because she was beautiful, and her beauty must perish with her.
(Milos Marten, “Cortigiana”)

Wretched, wretched, and yet with good intentions. It is midnight, but since I have slept very well, that is an excuse only to the extent that by day I would have written nothing. The burning electric light, the silent house, the darkness outside, the last waking moments, they give me the right to write even if only the most miserable stuff. And this right I use hurriedly. That’s the person I am.

‘...But apart from anything else, a good book is what I like best after supper. Always has been. Just recently I read in a prospectus a quotation from some writer or other. “A good book is the best friend there is,” and that’s really true, it is so, a good book is the best friend there is.’
(“Wedding Preparations in the Country”)

This afternoon my hand was still writing, but it isn’t now. It just holds the pen. Under the pen is the paper, and my hand is quietly lying on it. And suddenly the pen begins to move. It trembles like a little spirit flame, and creeps quietly, ever so quietly, from margin to margin.
- Bozena Benesova, “Tale for All Souls’ Day”

How indifferent to his torments was everyone who crossed his path! Although he avoided people, he loved them nonetheless. He loved them from afar. He gave them appearances more beautiful than they had and feelings more beautiful than he could perceive in them.

He was the last scion of a venerable chivalric family, of which a few impoverished women remained, afflicted by hysteria, while several other family members had died of madness.
He often thought about hereditary degeneration. And he often wondered whether the shades that lay plotting in his soul were the same shades that had haunted his relatives who had died of madness.

In the river below there were images of the stars among the waves. He lifted his eyes up towards their prototypes, which were shining more purely and brightly. Their great peace suffused his heart as if in an epiphany. Their language of silence seemed like the promise of some future bliss — indefinite, but immense.
- Julius Zeyer (“Inultus: A Prague Legend”)

Wanka heard the affairs of the “nation” debated, he learned for the first time of its distress and need, of its silent fervent yearning. Suddenly he was overcome with shame like a laughing man who learns that there has been a death in the house, and he wondered how he could have failed to notice this oppression all these years.

Only at one corner, next to the Castle, where the Castle stairs and the steep Spornergasse end, does a gap remain, and deep within it, in splendid panorama, crowded between the Laurence Hill and the Belvedere, lies Prague — this rich, vast epic of architecture. It unfolds before the eyes of the Hradschin, full of light and life, and new, splendid stanzas are always worthily joining the old ones.

In those days a man from the provinces who had not set foot in Prague for, say, twenty years could, entering Strahov Gate and proceeding to Spur Street, find the same shopkeeper on the same corner, the bakery under its old sign, the grocery in its original spot. Everything had its place, and the idea of setting up a flour shop where there had always been a grocery was so absurd as to be unthinkable.

I wish to describe a tragic event, but the merry face of Vojtisek, a face beaming with health and as radiantly red as a Sunday roast basted with fresh butter, shines over the whole thing from the outset.

English photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) is a pioneer in visual studies of human and animal locomotion. This book traces the life and work of Muybridge, from his early thinking about anatomy and movement to his latest photographic experiments.

“Neruda Street is not only the most beautiful street in Prague; it has every reason to bear our author’s name. The entire district of Mala’ Strana — indeed, all Prague, or rather, its shape and history in the not so distant past, the apirit of the place — comes down to us largely through Neruda’s words and images.” (from Ivan Klima’s Introduction)

But it’s better to be unsure,
to dream and hope in vain,
than to see the awful future
before you, clear and plain!

”I was born when she kissed me.
I died when she left me.”

”I’ve sewn the shirts and done my best;
I’ve stored them in a wooden chest.
The flowers now have dried and curled,
my love still wanders through the world,
the wide, wide world; he’s lost and free,
like a stone in the deep sea.
Three years without a word of news,
does he live, is he well? Only God knows.

“We go together. I don’t know how. Maybe like guns and ammunition go together.” - Bart Tate, Gun Crazy (1950)

Mother’s soul, thyme, from our own dear land,
our folktales are filled with you.
I plucked you from an ancient cairn —
to whom should I carry you?

“I never saw her in the daylight — we seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like the smoke from a pack of cigarettes.”

“... In one place, an isolated fir stands upon a precipitous height. It is an old tree; on one side its branches hang over a deep chasm, in the fissures of which, tufts of ferns and juniper shrubs grow here and there; and down below, a stream races over the rocks... I don’t know myself how it happened, but whenever I was grieved about something, or some misfortune had befallen me, I always found my way to that spot.

It was long ago, when last I gazed on that dear face, kissed those pale, wrinkled cheeks, and tried to fathom the depths of those blue eyes, in which were hidden so much goodness and love. Long ago it was when, for the last time, those aged hands blessed me. Our Grandmother is no more; for many a year now she has slept beneath the cold earth.

I would like to speak to the whole world, to
the stars, but — I can only speak to my
nation! and to those few in it who hear me
— and understand me? — No one!!