Today I Learned

... that Kafka really did work in an insurance office, handling pensions, statistics, risk assessment and accident prevention.

It's somehow shocking, as if the intelligence of his writing surpassed everything in his actual life the way it would eventually surpass everything else about him.

Kafka was an amazing thinker. He said, "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within." Good lord. That's right on the money, but no one ever said it.

Today I went to the Upper East Side to see the Ukrainian Institute on 79th St.. I ended up listening to a long, boring lecture about the problems of keeping the Institute financially solvent. I just wanted to see the inside of the building, since it was open to the public as part of this Open New York thing. But first there was a talk, and it was simply endless, and quite Kafkaesque, I now realize. (Speaking of the word Kafkaesque, our guide at the Ukrainian Institute said part of Annie Hall was filmed there. What part?? I wondered for the rest of the day.)

We finally all trooped upstairs and stood soberly reading all these posters about a famine in the Ukraine that killed countless people. Someone was quoted as saying at least at Auschwitz they were given a few things to eat. So this famine was worse than Auschwitz. The posters were uniformly grim, with a lot about Stalin and Soviet domination. I thought it was a strange emphasis for something called the Ukrainian Institute. What about those Easter eggs? Is there really nothing but starvation and suffering in the history of the Ukraine?

Well, lo, my ignorance was once again afoot, since when I came out I saw posters on the wall outside advertising an exhibit about the famine. So what I had taken as a general Ukrainian presentation was in fact a specific exhibit.

If I weren't so stupid, life wouldn't seem as puzzling to me. Then again, perhaps my constant mystification provides what few thrills and chills my life offers these days.