Tuesday, September 1, 2009

kinder kafka



"die verwandlung" - very loosely - leipzig, 1915.

kafka's children


Apologies, siblings. The last week or so has seen me jumping through more bureaucratic hoops than one might comfortably entertain after an entire summer of reading Kafka; a civil service nightmare of transition from singleton to married benefit beneficiary with all attendant material facts required in triplicate. And then some. Thi
s in itself is not anything more than should respectfully be envisioned, burden on the state that we are, but even at a snail's pace - with due lubrication and obsequiousness - all is far from running smoothly.

Monies suspended until the bitch with the sovereign ring who registered my claim tires sufficently from analyzing the latest instalment of the X-Factor on her tea break to get to grips with the relevant paperwork and encrypted DWP forms.

A language of disjointed cypher and insult.

Meantime, of course, I am doing my best to unearth a paid job in this climate
of recession if not outright depression, add to which I have finally gotten around to redecorating our communal landing with pilfered eggshell acrylic paint and a nefariously obtained gloss of epic institutional bias; having long discarded any fantasy that the GHA might ultimately recognize its civic remit regards building maintenance and the restitution of resources collected through rents.

I painted madly like a possessed young Adolf, while Rosa scrubbed away the stench of decrepitude with the lingering scent of coconut bath oil and opium.

In short, it has been a fortnight of Stalin meets Thatcher on a Brighton bank ho
liday. The totalitarian red forked knobbing of a blue rinsed grocer's daughter on sulfurous sands. Honeymooning in the ashpits. On the whole nowhere near as black as I may have made it sound.

All is in stasis. And - yet - all is far from so.

Do not be alarmed if all here should fall quiet. The situation is only temporary; key accounts on hold. And, yes, strictly speaking Kafka was Czech.

Kinda Bohemian, despite the Ger
man mutha' tongue.


MICK JAGGER: MEMO FROM TURNER from "Performance (OST)" LP (Warner Bros.) 1970 (UK)

THE DEVIANTS: METAMORPHOSIS EXPLORATION from "The Deviants #3" LP (Decca) 1969 (UK)


2 comments:

davyh said...

A new coat of paint! Happy days eh?

I thank you not for the red forked knobbing of a blue rinsed grocer's daughter bit, mind.

ib said...

Oh, the new paint is certainly temporarily uplifting. No magic marker mentions - or spray paint manifestos - yet, touch wood. (Those door frames will suffice.)

I don't blame you at all for actively disliking that Stalin mounting Thatcher metaphor, Davy. The analogy is as unpalatable as the ongoing reality of creaking New Labour decrepitude. Sadly, the quango culture of yesteryear does not appear to have been diminished by our latest banking fiascos.