It's Wednesday. Let's read Kafka and hope for rain.

1.
I've been reading Kafka's "In the Penal Colony" with my classes this week, and I'm struck by how much it seems to tie together ideas from Foucault and Agamben. Today, I'm particularly interested in the the inscription on the tomb of the Old Commandant:

"Here rests the Old Commandant. His followers, who are now not permitted to have a name, buried him in this grave and erected this stone. There exists a prophecy that the Commandant will rise again after a certain number of years and from this house will lead his followers to a re-conquest of the colony. Have faith and wait!"

The new society of the colony, under the leadership of the New Commandant, embraces the humanist values of the European Enlightenment, but this promise of a sovereign, this promise (threat? possibility) of the re-emergence of the embodied power of the state, remains.

2.
Today, it feels like the oak trees are winning.

3.
What I need is a short trip to a place like this:

Last time we were there, my allergies cleared up within an hour.

4.
Or some rain. I'd settle for some rain. It rained here yesterday, but it lasted less than a minute.

5.
For #1 above, see also Guántanamo Bay.

6.
For #4 above, if it's going to rain, please not on Friday. We're hosting the District Meet on Friday.

7.
Also, if you know of any new music I should be listening to these days, please let me know. I've been spending time with Justin Townes Earle's new album, which has grown on me more as I've listened to it. And I'm looking forward to the new album from Civilian. But what else?

8.
And also, if you have a moment, you should take a trip over to Letters of Note to read this straight-talking letter from Jack London to an aspiring writer:

You have not begun your apprenticeship yet. The proof of it is the fact that you dared to write this manuscript, "A Journal of One Who Is to Die." Had you made any sort of study of what is published in the magazines you would have found that your short story was of the sort that never was published in the magazines. If you are going to write for success and money, you must deliver to the market marketable goods.