I feel that I have been ill for some time, although I haven’t wanted to admit it to myself. I have lied and through the lie have been forced to live with the crushing doubt of undiagnosed illness pressing remorselessly onto my being. Oh, sweet knowledge, how I crave you. Alas, courage is lacking. I dare not take that gigantic step into the abyss of certainty. I therefore concern myself with others. I project myself into their time, it’s a hundred years in the future and I am there. It’s two thousand years ago and I am in the front line witnessing events as they unfold before my very eyes. I am here, I am not here. Where am I?

I first read the books of Franz Kafka when I was twelve, I am now forty. Which coincidentally was Kafka’s age when he died. I decided that I didn’t like it that Kafka had died at such a relatively young age, so I determined to travel back and concern myself with his death. More to the point, his death and how I was going to stop it.

I did it yesterday. Stopped him from dying, that is. He lived to the ripe old age of seventy seven. Wrote twenty six more books. He had a very happy life, believe it or not. Look it up. It’s history now.

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