Mathias B. Freese

That’s the title of this blog; now let’s get on with it. The Hanukah candles are lit by this atheist who respects the immense Jewish contribution to humanity. I can even say the prayers in Hebrew, 56 years after my bar mtzvah. Oh, the power of conditioning and how sweet it is and can be in certain instances. I am also writing a few paragraphs about snow for my Homage to K, a riff on Kafka trying his hand on writing about the Holocaust. (Oh, the grandiosity.) Can you just imagine what he’d have to say about the Holocaust, but I refer you to my last blog about him. I am entering emails of European scholars into a database, quite diligently, quite laboriously, for the next edition of the tetralogy which has been sent off to the printer. At least 3000 individuals will get a gander at my PR email which goes out in January. Hopefully the cover will appear here and other goodies as Jane is quite well versed in this cybershit I humor and hope never to master — why allow it to creep into my brain cells?

Jane Elizabeth Holt has decided that we will wed very early in January. Realizing that as a Jewish man and a future Jewish husband my ancestral instincts, an inflamed sciatic nerve, genetically tell me to take care of my new bride. She will now be covered by my medical plan. Given that she will pay in 2010 almost $300 monthly for her anemic plan, one without a prescription plan (!) at all but just a plan for dire circumstances, she will now be protected by my teachers’ plan which will provide ample coverage. (What altruism on my part.) I remove from her brow the burden of being poorly insured not to say that she finds the payments burdensome. And what do I get for all this? I get Jane, poor girl. She is my built-in hospice, literary editor, amanuensis, pragmatist, lover, jack Mormon who adores all things Jewish, especially Jewish men. She is delighted to find out that this actor or that writer is Jewish for she is one of the few people I have come across who are not darkly inhabited by prejudice.

She is studying to be a librarian which she recently acted upon and while  engrossed in her studies I “meekly” prowl about the house unattended to, unloved, uncared for, doing my Larry David impressions. Jewish men need care: water us, feed us, schtoop us occasionally and we are contented cats. With a first class mind, I enjoy that at 51 she is cutting through her studies like a hot knife through butter. Our mutual dream is that she gets work so that we can finance a tour to Israel before I croak, visit the Wall where I will weep and collapse into terminal ethnicity. I enjoy these quaint atavistic traits I own. In any case we will pick one of those sleazy Vegas chapels and have some clerk in sleazoid fashion pronounce whatever jargon makes us a couple. We have been together three years and in effect, we are married, heart and soul — poor girl. What I keep telling Jane, although she has two masters, is that she should think beyond being a librarian, because in spirit she is a writer who will become a librarian. However, my sense of her is that she would make a very sharp therapist — sensitive, excellent memory, huge plasma webs of feeling, the ability to thread together random thoughts into a tapestry of a kind. Like a very good therapist, she would provide a superlative “hold” for her clients. And the best trait of all — a cosmic ability to laugh at herself. I enjoy the tinkling laughter she has.

And so this potpourri of daily living comes to a close.

The new book of short stories lies fallow while I wait for jane to finish up her first course in librarianship. All the stories are spanking new, therefore, I am suspect of their quality but once again Jane will read the manuscript, make comments and suggestions and I will acquiesce or not. The other day, influenced by reading Kakfa, I wrote a story called “Homage to K” which reflects the insane density of his writings which are often like repetition compulsions to me written in swirls of deep, rich chocolate. Sometimes I think he is putting on the reader, spinning out cosmic jokes. I remember how many years ago I was mightily impressed by “The Burrow” and “In the Penal Colony.” Reading them made me feel trapped, especially “The Burrow” as if I were a neurotic creature burrowing beneath, perhaps  a metaphor for each of us as we move toward our insignificant ends. “In the Penal Colony,” which is exquisitely harrowing, made me think of what Kafka would make of the Holocaust and how he might write about it. (I have learned that two sisters died in the camps.) With that for inspiration I wrote “Homage to K.” I refer to the Great Wall of China in the story, referencing his strange story “The Great Wall of China,” just recently read by me, a perplexing, riddling whirl of prose.

I will go back to “Homage” for I am working on making it more dense, a la Kafka. I want to write about snow falling in the camp, the old symbol for dying and death in literature. I will try to make the reader feel the volume and depth of the snow which is a significant feature in the story. I can only try. I really don’t read other writers, lesser or greater lights, although the conventional wisdom has always been that this is the way to learn. I agree, I suppose, but I go my own way. All my writing is self-taught and given my being an autodidact in the field, I go my merry — and miserable — way. In an introduction to a collection of Kafka’s stories, John Updike writes that he only produced six slim volumes. But what stories! What intrigues me, in fantasy, is what a book by Kafka might say about the Holocaust. I cannot imagine the crazed intensity and riveting sentences he might have written. So like a puny putz, I wrote my homage to the master. By the way here is a piece of amazing trivia. Kafka invented, yes, invented, the safety helmet and had it patented and when he came to be buried people from another world came to pay their respects and they had no idea about what he was doing in literature.

I have about 20-25 stories in the manuscript and not a few, I imagine, will be deleted. Hoping to put it out in the spring, I am suffering from a lull, a post-natal depression after having given birth to this child. I am in a lull, the time between then and now and what will be. I fish around in mind about what is next, combing through old stories and old files, seeking out fragments of aborted stories. I enjoy this browsing because it is meditative. I know full well this cannot be expedited. I will know when the next book is upon me. I do know I am “done” with the Holocaust. My unconscious knows full well what will be while my conscious mind is a tabula rasa. What surprises most of us, if we are open to it, is that the real engine that drives us, no pun intended, we are unaware of;  it hurts our vanity to not feel in control or sensible to our intentions. It reminds me of the push of genes, how we are controlled profoundly by them, how our breathing  and cardiovascular systems are purely autonomic. We are unknown to ourselves which makes me trust in the unconscious as a writer, for I do believe what is written has already been written in large degree by our inner self. Wouldn’t it be fascinating if we could learn how to nurture our unconscious in order to make better literature, and other things as well.

Perhaps Kafka’s unconscious took over completely when he wrote and what an unconscious that was. Perhaps that occurs to other writers who can write for six to eight hours in one flow, channeling the voice within. I wrote The i Tetralogy  largely by tapping into what I felt, mostly, without censoring what I wrote, by just putting down the words as if I was being moved by a Ouija Board. I do most of my writing in this manner, trusting myself, knowing I can always throw it out. I don’t secrete language but allow it to be a cataract. The lull at this time, I believe, is the unconscious replenishing itself, for it is never, never empty.