Moar Odradek

I am just now remembering that an_author likened that spindly little creature to an artistic creation; to writing. To literature. And then there is that pang of wretchedness--

"He does no harm to anyone that one can see; but the idea that he is likely to survive me I find almost painful." (Kafka 429)

Let me take a skin that is not mine here and say I am the maker--that family man may not have known where Odradek came from, but I do. I have made it. And even worse, I have made it just enough in his image for him to recognize something in it as familiar--I leave some curtains half pulled back, some skin unpainted; just enough for familiarity. Never enough for recognizability. He does not know what it is, but he sees it. He is charmed by it. Aren't we all charmed by our reflections? How nice of them to reflect us. But this one will survive him--I have tailored it just so. What began as a gift has become a curse, an act of cruelty. The creator Odradek, that is, myself, meant only to make something pretty, something loved, something for you. But what is this? I cause you only suffering in the end. I should not have made this lovely wretch. I should not have made it at all.

I cannot decide if the creator of Odradek is someone else or the family man. Is the family man an author, or a reader? Does it matter? Odradek will survive us both, and I think we feel a similar fond despair when we imagine our lives snuffing out before this creature. But perhaps for different reasons? I am never done with this creature--I am always changing its name, its features, its footwork around that man's house. But when I should die, there will be no one to change it. It will still exist, but in such a static fashion that the family man (should he outlive me as well) will finally be able to say, "Ah, yes! This thing is not sentient--it is a creation. It is matter, and its maker is dead now. Yes, now I can see how it operates." And so a sort of death is mourned.

The family man gets very close to Odradek one time, perhaps. "Please, do not leave," he says. Is he speaking to Odradek or through Odradek? Is he speaking to me, the author, the creator, and asking me to keep changing the little fellow, keep the light show up, keep the music going 'cuz he just wants to dance?
Or if he is the author, is he speaking to Odradek, or, again, through it, to those things from which he has made Odradek? String from a grandmother, perhaps, the star shape from way an old girlfriend's dimpled smile looked, one eye from from a mentor, pursed lips from a dog.

Is this not what authorship is (or can be)--filling yourself up with so much of something that you've gotta have a place for the surplus? But even then, you wanna keep it. So you put it in paper. Paper's good for that kinda stuff.

The last three times I wrote about you, or that-which-I-have-made-of-you (for the things I put in paper are never the same as they were/are in life), I cried. The whole time. All three times. I will write about you again, but not any time soon. I need a break.

Sometimes it is too close. And the writing that is closest is a eulogy. I do not want this. This terrifies me. I do not ever want to catch myself writing a eulogy. It means you are dead. I don't want you to die. Please don't. Please don't. Please don't.

So fuck yes it hurts to know that this thing will survive me, because to survive me it must not have lived at all--and beside this, in my own writing, it often has the habit of stealing the breath from those much loved things it takes after.

It's not my blood, it's yours. And that's what's so fucked up about it.