in his essay on lightness, one of his Six Memos for the Next Millenium, Italo Calvino closes by describing Kafka’s story ‘The Knight of the Bucket.’ he shares and interprets:
This is a very short story written in 1917 in the first person, and its point of departure is plainly a real situation in that winter of warfare, the worst for the Austrian Empire: the lack of coal. The narrator goes out with an empty bucket to find coal for the stove. Along the way the bucket serves him as a horse, and indeed it takes him up as far as the second floor of a house, where he rocks up and down as if riding on the back of a camel. The coal merchant’s shop is underground, and the bucket rider is too high up. He has a hard time getting his message across to the man, who would really like to respond to his request, but the coal merchant’s wife wants nothing to do with him. He begs them to give him a shovelful of even the worst coal, even though he can’t pay immediately. The coal merchant’s wife unties her apron and shooes away the intruder as if he were a fly. The bucket is so light that it flies off with its rider until it disappears beyond the Ice Mountains.. ………………….But the idea of an empty bucket raising you about the level where one finds both the help and the egoism of others; the empty bucket, symbol of privation and desire and seeking, raising you to the point at which a humble request can no longer be satisfied—all this opens the road to endless reflection.
But the hero of Kafka’s story doesn’t seem to be endowed with the powers of shamanism or witchcraft; nor does the country beyond the Ice Mountains seem to be one in which the empty bucket will find anything to fill it. In fact, the fuller it is, the less it will be able to fly. Thus, astride our bucket, we shall face the new millennium, without hoping to find anything more in it than what we ourselves are able to bring to it.
(emphasis mine). i read this essay in november on a plane, and it has stayed close to me since. this bucket asked me questions: what can i bring? can i bring what i wish to experience instead of hoping that someone/somewhere/somewhat will put it in my lap? what do i even want to bring? and what if i won’t be able to find what i want to bring in the mind or opinion or approval of someone else? also, can i treat people around me as if they also have crucial things/feelings/insights/etc to bring, remembering that they do?
this bucket, the refusal of hope in something external, and continuing to pose these questions goes against the grain of a culture that taught me obedience to authority, hierarchy, hero worship, to trust the experience/word/opinion of other people. they thwart an economy based on extraction, accumulation, and domination. they go against my own grain of seeking seeking seeking answers answers answers, as if answers might make this existence less uncomfortable and bewildering.
so i face 2024, without hoping to find anything more in it than what we ourselves are able, willing, longing to bring; setting down what’s too heavy to fly with.
this year loves you back.