A highly emotional, stream-of-consciousness reflection that blurs the lines between past romance, grief, and the physical decline of aging.
The text captures a mind struggling with "blinking" short-term memory and physical clumsiness
A central theme is the struggle to articulate profound "sensations for which one finds no words."
“I bump into objects that then fall over ........ I would be lacking nothing ach the sparkling sky, back then I was in Graz with a sm. circle of friends, that is, the BOMBER TROUSERS, I say, and I was in love with ........ but he went out of his way to avoid me : I grew thin, and when I passed by mannequins in shop windows I seemed to myself to be in a forget-me-not fever : branchlets that whirling took on the color of his eyes, 1 pastel-hued sky WHIRLED THROUGH by solitary winter birds &c., so that tears. Just now when I wanted to write down the next thought, it raced off—was it not as though my short-term memory in that second blinked, whereas the little fire-woodlet ........ whereas he, I mean, INCITED the pale-blue rosettes of the little fire-woodlet = (“le kitsch” &c.), somehow I remember that it was getting dark on the Cobenzl or dark-blue thundering in early spring. Jesus Maria called out Luvík Kavín when I CABLED him that I couldn’t come because I was sick, &c., ach, I sparkled in forget-me-nots as we, in Vienna Central Cemetery : I burst into tears because I was so old : and would soon end up there myself, between forget-me-nots and anemones, well I mean, when I buried him 13 years ago I let myself fall into his grave with a little bouquet of forget-me-nots in my hand, I mean somehow I can no longer sit in that restaurant “The Princesses” (because shivering from cold) ........ at the gynecological exam he said, I’ll do it with just my little finger, and then he showed me his little finger. That was 1 passion, I say, to (wipe) one’s b. with one’s fingers, it was 1 passion to see Mt. Blanc rise on the horizon every morning, with gimmicks, I say, the roaring of the landscape, winter ’71 he wrote me, “I scared up 1 great place for us in Zehlendorf, there’s even a nice dog : you’ll be happy here” ........ you see, it was last May when I thought (in my fire cabinet) now no more snow will fall, no birdlet I mean but it was still cold, &c., the sensations, you know, I say, for which one finds no words, as once Mother said before she left, “these sensations for which I find no words; the more sensations, the fewer words,” actually she said that before she died, &c., these waterscapes, you know, ach these rivulets before her death in her eyes (that had lost their flowercolor back then, before her death).
These worldviews, you say. What one can be for another, you say, one can be for another the kingdom of heaven, can’t one, without the other, who is the kingdom of heaven for the first, knowing it. I mean sighing into the heavens while the moon floated namely in the flurry of the wind it (went to pieces) my mind, &c.”
31.1.13
Excerpted with permission from Seagull Books.
