Moles

Generally speaking, he didn’t feel like communicating. He did when he had to, and not badly, but given his druthers, he enjoyed introversion.

Right then he felt like being alone, perhaps napping a bit, but when he tried he discovered that he really felt like reading, but when he tried to read, he dozed off, but just a bit and very lightly so that all too soon he was awake again. Not unreasonable given that it was only early afternoon.

So he daydreamed a bit, flitting through the embers of other’s stray memories and found himself, for some reason, speculating on what a mole’s life might be like. Whether burrows were cold and damp or warm and cozy although of course, in all probability, they were very dark. He wondered whether or not claustrophobia could be perverted, in a rather positive manner, into a delight, kind of like what masochists do with pain. Then he wondered just what made moles different than rats. Couldn’t just be size he concluded, given the increasing size of the latter, and then he started wondering whether the increase in rat size was a recent or cyclical phenomena. Then he found himself wondering whether moles and rats could interbreed and what the resulting progeny might be like. It all comes back to sex he recalled reading somewhere, but the thought, in a mole – rat context, turned him off.

Pretty obviously he was bored but still reactive to intellectual stimuli, although what might have stimulated this particular cognitive chain might prove somewhat disturbing.

Kafka he thought, it must have been Kafka. Possibly coupled with a meal somewhat heavier and more flavored with spices with exceeded recommended expiration dates than might have been prudent. He was not all that careful about expirations dates suspecting that more than safety measures, they were money making conspiracies concocted by accountants and lawyers during what for them passed as jam sessions. He wondered whether there was any symbolic relationship between moles and rats on the one hand and lawyers and accountants on the other, and if so, which was allegorically representative of which.

Back to Kafka suddenly he wondered why Kafka wrote such compound, complex, complex compound sentences. He wrote in German came to mind, and of course, so much depended on the translator’s talent. He wondered whether Kafka knew what he was writing as he wrote or whether it was as puzzling to him as it was to others, or at least some others, or maybe to everyone and some people, feigning intellectual sophistication, just acted as though they understood what he meant. When he finished short stories by Kafka he always wondered at what seemed missing endings and then wondered why, when as so often happens, stories start somewhere towards the end, or at best in the middle, he didn’t wonder about missing beginnings. He wondered if others felt the same way.

Then he wondered what kind of food Kafka ate before setting down to write and whether he wrote very late at night or in a more disciplined fashion, during set times in daylight hours. He intuited that Kafka was a more nocturnal creature but didn’t know why. Then, as Kafka somehow coalesced in his imagination, somewhat blended for some reason with Edgar Alan Poe, he recalled that one of Kafka’s short stories might well have involved an insecure mole, and then wondered whether moles and ravens ever hung out together. Not as unlikely as it seemed, given his prior speculation concerning accountant – lawyer jam sessions. He wondered whether moles and ravens had more in common with lawyers and accountants than did moles and rats, then wondered at what might have led to that speculation and whether it might be something he shared with others, perhaps recently divorced husbands living in dwellings that brought to mind burrows.

He wondered whether moles too married and divorced.

So, he thought, it’s back to moles, is it?
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2016; all rights reserved