And So He Did The Hardest Thing

How Was It Possible To Wake Up Every Day And Be Recognizable To Another When So Often One Was Barely Recognizable To Oneself?

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.

Our Kiss Was Niticlimactic. It Wasn't That The Kiss Was Bad, But It Was Just A Note Of Punctuation In Our Long Conversation, A Parenthetical Remark Made In Order To Assure Each Other Of A Deeply Felt Agreement, A Mutual Offer Of Companionship, Which Is So Much More Rare Than Sexual Passion Or Even Love.

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.

To Walk Into A Modern-day Bookstore Is A Little Bit Like Studying A Single Photograph Out Of The Infinite Number Of Photographs That Cold Be Taken Of The World: It Offers The Reader A Frame.