halos

I was reading through Kafka's Blue Octavo Notebooks. It's a book I've had a long time but haven't opened in years.

At work, I keep a very small item with the words, “There is glory,” taped onto the top of it. The words were cut and assembled from a single strip of paper inside a fortune cookie. How precious. Yesterday, a co-worker left a small note beside the token: “But not for me,” the note said. It reminded me, immediately, of Kafka's famous aphorism that goes something like this: “There is hope in the world, an infinite amount of hope, but not for us.”

Here are two other aphorisms from Kafka's notebooks.

The Messiah will only come when he is no longer necessary, he will come only one day after his arrival, he will not come on the last day, but on the last day of all.

and

There is no need for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't even wait, be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it can't do otherwise; in raptures it will writhe before you.

On the last day of all, hope will be finished and perhaps not fulfilled, but what carried us through this beautiful and terrible and rapturous world? What waits at its end? Will the Messiah be there, smiling at us because he's no longer needed?