Kaffee Klatsch (5)

KAFFEE KLATSCH (5) 

'Have you finished?' I said, and the Bitch scratched her head. 

'Well, perhaps, for the moment. Why not? But you don't really seem to have that much to say. Are you stupid? Or, have you forgot?'

'Forgot what?' I asked.

'It's the way of the world.

It's the new currency: 

Self-narration, inflation,

That's it.

You'd be lost without me.

I'm your Melancholy.

And, without me you're nothing,

You're . . .  '

'I liked living in Germany,' I interrupted. 'I know I can't erase the past, but I became absorbed in the present - the language the culture the magnificent forest - and, for the first time in a long time, it kind of felt okay.'

Kaffee Klatsch (4)

KAFFEE KLATSCH (4)

She continued. . . 

'I'm that dark morning feeling, 

That mean petty scheming

When everything's brought to account

In your head. 

No more dreaming.

You're reeling; believing

Incensed, it's unfair.' 

So she said.

'But you're probably wrong, and I have to confess I might be partly culpable,' she added.

Kaffee Klatsch (3)

KAFFEE KLATSCH (3)

'I am everything sensate 

That makes you feel desperate: 

The tastes and the touches and smells

That trigger your dreams

And unravel the reams

Of unconscious. 

Your deep buried wells.'

I rolled a cigarette and lit it, which is possible - not illegal - in some cafes in Germany.

Kaffee Klatsch (2)

KAFFEE KLATSCH (2)

I got up, went to the loo, returned to my seat. I ordered another coffee and another piece of cheese cake.  She sat there, staring and smiling, her hair knotted, her face frayed. 

'Just who are you?' I said.

'I'm all that constrains you, alarms you, condemns you

'Your sadness and fear and regret.

'I'm your conscience and memory, 

'Psyche and soul.

'Aren't you thrilled that we've - once again - met?'

Kaffee Klatsch (1)

KAFFEE KLATSCH (1)

'Eh up' said the Witch, 'Is this seat free at all? Do you mind if I plonk my arse here? Well, you've cut your hair short and you've got some new shoes. Have you turned back the past, then, my dear?'

I put another piece of cheese cake in my mouth.

'I read all that stuff on erasure and death, that you penned. What a sad one you are. And deluded as well; don't you know that you're damned. You can run but you'll never get far.'

Märchen (10)

MÄRCHEN (10)

'This was her work, to disappear from all her former venues of aspect and bearing and to become a blankness, a body slate erased of every past resemblance.'

(DeLillo, The Body Artist, 84)

Märchen (9)

MÄRCHEN (9)

'Now she was counting the hours until evening, and was alarmed to find how many there still were. How odd that was - you needed so little time to say goodbye, everything seemed worthless when you knew you couldn't take it with you. A kind of drowsiness came over her.'

(Zweig, Fear, 93)

Märchen (8)

MÄRCHEN (8)

'It felt like home, being here, and she raced through the days with their small ravishing routines, days the same, paced and organized but with a simultaneous wallow, uncentred, sometimes blank in places, days that moved so slow they ached.'

(DeLillo, The Body Artist, 32)

Märchen (7)

MÄRCHEN (7)

'All the man's great themes funnelled down to local grief, one body, out there somewhere, or not.'

(DeLillo, Point Omega, 124)

Märchen (6)

MÄRCHEN (6)

'No trace would remain of an operation which would have been, throughout a period of fifty years, the sole motivation and unique activity of its author.'

(Perec, Life: A User's Manual, 119)

Märchen (4)

MÄRCHEN (4)

'Moral judgement, individual judgement, individuality itself were not clear ideas in the mind of Romanesque man, and I felt my own individuality dissolving the longer I sat in my reverie before the Virgin of Rocamadour.'

(Houellebecq, Submission, 136)

Märchen (3)

MÄRCHEN (3)

'He fell into a sort of neurasthenia, a strange lethargy from which nothing, it seemed, could arouse him. Those who had occasion to meet him at that time had the feeling he was in a state of weightlessness, in a kind of sensorial void, a condition of total indifference; indifferent to the weather, to the time of day, to the information which the external world continued to address to him but which he seemed ever less inclined to receive.'

(Perec, Life: A User's Manual, 234)