Showing posts with label Kafka. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kafka. Show all posts

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Suzanne

Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river
– Leonard Cohen

Today, Suzanne mused again sentimentally on her blog about washing and its close relationship to loving and longing, hanging up bunches of unnatural things for drying. As if the sun would ever get to them down there by the river.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Notes
Mixed media – digestion of a poem about washing found on a blog and XOR operation with Leonard Cohen's song Suzanne. By the way, Leonard Cohen was the one who gave half of this pseudonym, the other half coming from Franz Kafka.

Thursday, April 5, 2007

Kafka's Gallery

First it was a short paragraph of black on white called a short story in a Kafka story reader, then it became a steep old cinema with thickly padded plush folding seats, and my senses were up, close to the projector, darkness and the dust moth-flecked conical beam pointing. It was an empty theater, not even I was there, really. And no movie was playing.

– Leonard Blumfeld (copyright 2007)

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor

One evening Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor, was climbing up to his apartment - a laborious undertaking, for he lived on the sixth floor. While climbing up he thought, as he had so often recently, how unpleasant this utterly lonely life was: to reach his empty rooms he had to climb these six floors almost in secret, there put on his dressing gown, again almost in secret, light his pipe, read a little of the French magazine to which he had been subscribing for years, at the same time sip at a homemade kirsch, and finally, after half an hour, go to bed, but not before having completely rearranged his bedclothes which the unteachable charwoman would insist on arranging in her own way. Some companion, someone to witness these activities, would have been very welcome to Blumfeld. He had already been wondering whether he shouldn't acquire a little dog. These animals are gay and above all grateful and loyal; one of Blumfeld's colleagues has a dog of this kind; it follows no one but its master and when it hasn't seen him for a few moments it greets him at once with loud barkings, by which it is evidently trying to express its joy at once more finding that extraordinary benefactor, its master. True, a dog also has its drawbacks. However well kept it may be, it is bound to dirty the room. This just cannot be avoided; one cannot give it a hot bath each time before letting it into the room; besides, its health couldn't stand that.
(The beginning of the story by Franz Kafka)

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Hello World!

This is Leon Blumfeld's contribution to the world, which he considers so wide that, even if you flitted around and around it, you would never reach the end of it, particularly because it is in constant change.

Leon has been and hails from many places, including the Florence of the Sinclair Lewis novel that gave its name to this blog.

He also feels an affinity for Kafka's Blumfeld, even though there's no blood relationship.