兩在卡夫卡 and Epinephrine

甲 The writer Paul Adler

‘What is his profession?’

‘He has none. He has no profession, only a vocation. He travels with his wife and the children from one friend to another. A free man, and a poet. In his presence I always have pangs of conscience, because I allow my life to be frittered away in an office.’

- Conversations with Kafka By Gustav Janouch

Two: From the Wikipedia (where would I be without you?)

James Hawes argues many of Kafka's descriptions of the legal proceedings in The Trial – metaphysical, absurd, bewildering and "Kafkaesque" as they might appear – are, in fact, based on accurate and informed (although exaggerated) descriptions of German and Austrian criminal proceedings of the time, not well understood by many British or American people, who were familiar with an adversarial rather than inquisitorial system of justice.

A fascinating read which explains this. Highly recommended:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1574870

Love and other drugs

Though a lot of people seem genuinely baffled at times as to why people do the things they do, any first-semester psychology student with a passing grade could explain it to you in 30 seconds. Epinephrine (adrenaline) like any good drug, is a dumb drug. You get a shot of it whether you get punched in the face or win the lottery. And like any good drug, when you get off that high that it gives you, you sometimes do whatever you can to reproduce that situation that gave you the rush. Your body associates the action with the response, which you want, however horrible the action is. It’s why you run back to the scene of the accident, or why that violence that you saw and didn’t like is somehow something you want: because it made your heart race like that girl with the streak in her hair  that you saw for the first time, but would set off the sense whenever you saw it again, hoping, like the first time, it would give you that thrill. A lot of people try to use religion to find their ways out of this. Sometimes the natural high of group inclusion and kindness can be enough to replace what was lost. Sometimes it’s the coldness of a rock that you can lean on, that helps to block out and dull natural responses. If you hold your fists tight and close your eyes tight enough for a long enough time everything may just disappear. But it’ll probably always be there: last in our dreams, but first on our hearts.