Dawn is cold.

In the next room my mother is entertaining the L. couple.  They are talking about vermin and corns. (Mrs L. has six corns on each toe.)  It is easy to see that there is no real progress made in conversations of this sort.  It is information that will be forgotten again by both and that even now proceeds along in self-forgetfulness without any sense of responsibility.  But for the very reason that such conversations are unthinkable without absentmindedness, they reveal empty spaces which, if one insists, can be filled only by thinking, or, better yet, by dreams.

from Kafka’s diary, 3.24.1912

___

Well, we talk. Which is a wonderful thing. You are not very meta-physical, and I am not very human.  ‘This activity, originating in the midst of men, moves in a direction away from them.’

Moves therefore as you correctly sense towards death— For all my violence, you are a great deal stronger, a great deal more durable than I.

For which I am glad.

from a letter from George Oppen to June Oppen Degnan, 9.12 or 22.1963