Description of a Struggle

Only a handful of days left in Prague and it is difficult and upsetting that finals are consuming my last free weekend, and not walks along the Vltava and up hills of long grass where I can read and look out over the spires and orange roofs that I'll soon jet away from. I'd love to take some final photographs and reflect and instead all I can do is think in lists. To-write, to-study, to-pack, to-purchase, to-see.

This is my (poor) description of a struggle. A quick post to put off work. Apologies for not posting well recently (to anyone who reads this thing). Finals and class and finals and a good visit from my friend Andrew and finals have taken precedence. And finals have prevented much free writing and thinking. However I've realized that, though both the title and the address of this blog are literary, and though I love those things literary, I've completely ignored the huge literary presence in my Prague life: Franz Kafka.

I'm reviewing all we've covered and I think my favorite was the first story that we read, Description of a Struggle, written before he decided to do away with the ornate in his writing. (Maybe I like it because it reminds me of Kerouac, more sentimental than the classic Kafka. Not that I don't appreciate his mature writing and love for paradox.) So let's finish with a quotation and try and ditch the struggle.

"We build useless war machines, towers, walls, curtains of silk, and we could marvel at all this a great deal if we had the time. We tremble in the balance, we don't fall, we flutter, even though we may be uglier than bats. And on a beautiful day hardly anyone can prevent us from saying: 'Oh God, today is a beautiful day.'"

...To marveling, and the summer that fast approaches!