Monday sun

 22 Dec  Amarylis double in bloom.  Loving Handke's The Afternoon of a Writer.  Going to go all premature and fall back onto the old m-b grid and declare he just might be the great INFP writer I've been looking for all my life!  Intuition even a prayerful blessing as we've already seen.  Being alone yet not lonely key.  One book even given Feeling in the Title.  And finding the new, the next, the forward, the not yet as essential as possible.  There you have it.  And the feel of the voice just right, the feel of the perceptions and explorations.  Without judgments or warfares.  So may passages I wish I could just paste in and say Yes, yes, that's the way to say that, yes, that's how it is, that's how it feels.  That is what is most important in a scene like the one you describe and the sense of landscape you are moving in and through.  So glad Lentz told me to look into Handke.  I hope I will enjoy Fosse as much down the line, for now it is Handke.  

Then on 64 the whole Hymn to Beauty!  Followed by the scene with the imperious, stinking talker who destroyed the writer's cerebral castle of writing to be written. 

Fine for the writer to write this, but what then of the reader who has not written it but who has (only!) read it?  "By isolating myself . . . excluded myself from society once and for all . . . I shall never be one of them."  69 Can the reader not as well share in this (great, guilty) pleasure/honor/distinction/destiny/desire?

"You are a weakling and a liar," said the dancer.  So he/we needs a legislator figure after all.  Perhaps the J, of the J who is Shadow of the P?  A silent listener who issues not an unvarying rule but a wordlessly sympalthetic rhythm which discharges the parties into silence.  The ideal storyteller, the ideal audience for the storyteller?  

Writing did not bring me inner peace after all.  Only Translating can do that. "As a translator and nothing else, without secret reservations, I am entirely what I am; in my writing days I often felt like a traitor, but now, day after day, I feel that I'm true to myself.  Translation brings me deep peace."  77  His variation on Beckett's Fail, try again, fail better.  Or Booth's today is when they will see what a fraud I am.  

"the same urgency . . . allows me to be refreshingly superficial."  "by displaying your wound as attractively as possible, I conceal my own."  

"the writer followed him in secret (as he often did with friends as well as strangers) "  

the newscaster overpowered by emotion  "like a man clinging desperately to a window ledge from which he would fall with a scream."  

"Why was it only when alone that he was able to participate fully?"  so similar to Joe's early passage in his life story about his need to be alone.  

"Why was it only after people had gone that he was able to take them into himself, the more deeply the farther away they went?

such a lovely ending "To himself he was a puzzle, a long-forgotten wonderment."  quoting Goethe, "but I am nothing."  

The soft beauty of this book, the gentle wisdom, the light, radiates back into the earlier books and promises forward.  I've tried to read his books in the order of publication more or less.  This appeared in 1987.  Like Fosse's The Shining it could be used as a prayer book, read over and over again.  On a daily or monthly or seasonal basis.   This uses winter snow and snowflakes for the light, the light of snow up into the house at night.  

Should I re-write the whole piece into The Afternoon of a Reader?  

---

Now this week we are waiting---for the holy day but more for the kids to arrive.  TV feels empty.  Another Handke book awaits, Across and Repetition, both from 1986.  And the weird tales of Algernon Blackwood.   Can I read those?  "how lucky I was to have such a delightful and charming travelling companion as my friend, the Swede."  

from La Plagne earlier this morning

Sunday

Dave called.  Everyone else out skiing but he has a cold and earlier in the week was diagnosed as having an inguinal hernia.  Docs said to take it easy, has surgery scheduled for Jan 7.  Looking and feeling pretty punk.  Disappointed to see the new tree and how short it is, even up on its pedestal table.  Pleaded with a pitiful emoji gif of a baby-eyed chipmunk.  

Rachel going to stop Tuesday morning.  Have to remember when to shop, Weds is Christmas eve.  

Handke's Afternoon of a Writer now.  "As a rule, these blackouts were put on."  27 

"this circuit of classifications and judgments .  .  . " 33    warring cliques 

"he would be carried away by his words, and later, if the result was published, he would be seized with terror or shame--he would even feel guilty, as if he had broken a taboo."  39  

He doesn't say so but search discovers that he is wandering around Salzburg, Austria, where he lived for about eleven years.  1979-1988 

O holy intuitions, stay with me."  50 

It was only when nameless and alone with things that he really started  functioning. 52

Slowness is the only illumination that I have ever had.  53

Laundry cycle

same Friday morning.  Called Richard and placed order for four cobalt mugs to be sent to PT.  Washer has just quieted.  Misty, foggy morning, raining.  Headache, two advils.  

helpful post from Poetry Chaikhana

Issa   Buddha's body 

         accepts it . . .

        winter rain 

paid the Water Authority Bill.  $1.21  Now to pre-info the car rental at enterprise.  Late lunch party at Walters has us doubled over in sleepiness after tasting some morsels of George's fruit cake under the pretex-pretense of tiding us over.  

Nice meal, fun get-together, relentless rain entering and leaving.  George and Darlene (and Keith) helped us get in and out of the place.  Had stir-fry duck!  pretty good, just my sort of glop and rice.  

Sat morning

Gained about four pounds between the meal and George's delicious fruit cake.  Geo says Hal, his AI friend, assures him that being an atheist Catholic you find the miracle in walking together--three emoji faces with teeth bared.   

Am I ready to like weird literature, classics of the weird tale says the intro.  Just because it is Nicholas's newest interest?  Perhaps and then again perhaps not.  I never succeeded in being as enthused about the novels of Claude Houghton as he has been.  But give it a chance.  Not now though.  Now I'm still in love with the novel by Peter Handke and maybe all of his works.  One love affair at a time.  "Possible Misattribution: It sounds like a witty, modern saying, maybe from a TV show or a contemporary book, rather than a classic literary figure."  Puts me in my place it does this AI genius.  

"It gave him real pain to expel his breath after looking for so long."  114  Did Handke read Modiano before or during writing his book about walking and wandering around Paris and using all the street names and place names to decorate the book, sustain the narrative, create the inner life of Gregory from the landscape of the city?  Or even after?  Or never.  Does Paris make writers use its map to construct their books, it being the literary city qua non?  ". . . and in any event was totally free from envy."  "the poor peasants among whom he had grown up." 

Still sleepy from a nap when I read the last pages of Feeling so I will read it again.  Will also go on to start Repetition and two others.  

Yesterday or was it this morning I threw away a book from its place on the shelf here in the den.  Blood of the Lamb by Peter DeVries.  My name in pencil on the first page with the date 1962.  Hardback with a plastic cover taped on it.  1962 was senior year, graduation from high school.  I had bought the book and read it because Brother Richard had mentioned it as one he had enjoyed, his laughter about it suggesting how much fun it contained, provoked, invited.  A satirical novel, maybe a bit like Evelyn Waugh?  A New Yorker writer.  Brother Richard brought old new yorker to the classroom, put them on the large wide windowsills of the classroom.  Anyone who got their work done early and had spare time could pick them up and leaf through them, read anything in them.  Did I laugh when I read the novel?  Did I understand it as easily and deeply as Brother Richard had done?  Or did I read it so I could drop casually at some point that yes I had bought it and read it and he could see how much his opinion meant to me.  No memory of whether any of that took place, no memory either of whether I did indeed enjoy the book.  It was the trophy value of it.  I had no idea of that at the time.  Why did I want to throw it away now, after carrying it around the country since 1962 and making sure it had a place on honor among many other sorts of trophy books gathered for many sorts of reasons?  Not sure.  Some sadness or reproach or loss it carried on its spine, some memory of high school confusions, longings, aspirations I no longer wished to see on a daily basis, out of the corner of my eye every time I entered and left the room.  

True Feeling

 Handke takes me into places where I had thought a week ago that only Fosse was trying to do.  More of a surprise in Handke.  This novel feels so unusual and fits my readerly wishes and hopes in unexpected ways every line, every paragraph.  I thought, oh, its a Rohmer movie, maybe.  No.  It is Handke and only Handke.  Still learning how to read him.  More delight in that than, ok, Lentz.  I finished the section before Washed and almost want to go back and read it again before going on.  

"He hadn't wished for a sign, but now unintentionally he had E X P E R I E N C E D one. 82

looking up and pasting in google text now feels like committing the worst sort of clerical apostasy, heresy, violation of the whole essence of writing and bookness --- 

Yes, the Austrian author Peter Handke's later work is particularly associated with the search for and experience of a 

"nearly mystical truth" or a heightened perception of reality, often tied to a quest for meaning that lies beyond the surface of everyday life and language. 

Key aspects of this include:

• "A Moment of True Feeling": His novel of this name explores a character who finds meaning when the world becomes "mysterious" and he can connect to it in a non-routine way.
• "Images" and Visions: In works like The Loss of Images (German title), a character experiences her interior life through "images"—a kind of "mystical, hallucinatory vision of landscapes and places"—which is central to the novel's experience.
• Metaphysics and Perception: Critics note a "metaphysic developed in Handke's newer books, which aims to translate the seen and perceived into language". His writing often works from "an area beyond psychology, where feelings acquire the adamancy of randomly encountered, geologically analyzed pebbles," as noted by John Updike.
• Beyond the "Linguistic Surface": Handke has evolved in his career from emphasizing the opacity of language to being "more and more concerned with the possibility of a nearly mystical truth lying somewhere beyond this same linguistic surface".
• Spirituality and Contemplation: While Handke is reticent about using the word "spirituality" too often, his travel writing and notebooks, such as Traveling Yesterday, include annotations with biblical citations and reflections about God and the divine, indicating a clear engagement with spiritual ideas and contemplation of Romanesque art. 

Handke's writing is often described as seeking to "do the world justice" by finding a language that captures an authentic, if elusive, reality or truth. 

------  bravo for this  ----next---how much has Fosse been influenced by Handke's work?  

Jon Fosse has acknowledged Peter Handke as one of his 

favorite authors and a significant influence, although the precise extent of the influence on his style is nuanced. 

Fosse considers himself a "Central European" writer and lists Austrian authors Georg Trakl, Thomas Bernhard, and Peter Handke as key literary inspirations. He has also publicly defended Handke from political criticism, supporting the decision to award him the Ibsen Prize in 2014 and the Nobel Prize in 2019, stating Handke was a worthy recipient based purely on literary merit. 

In terms of literary style, Fosse's work shares a minimalist, spare quality with Handke's, focusing on the "unsayable" and human anxiety, but critics often draw stronger direct comparisons to Samuel Beckett in Fosse's use of repetition and exploration of existential themes. While Handke's work is known for its linguistic ingenuity and experimental nature, Fosse's is characterized by a "quieter disturbance" and a focus on internal rhythms rather than the rage or theatricality sometimes found in other influenced writers like Bernhard. 

In summary, Handke is a highly admired and acknowledged influence, but Fosse has developed a distinct style that uses similar minimalist techniques for different emotional and thematic effects.  

Thursday Dec 18

Question now is how much penalty charge Irving will levy for breaking away.  Nice woman on the phone, thrilled that I am "moving to New Mexico."  

note to Dennis --- 

Enjoyed seeing how the saga ends.  Loved how you gave

Rodney the best line too ---  "“I like it best when everything is quiet. When you can hear your own heart pounding.”  sweet scene, hooray for Stella heading west and fine fun touch with the stranger and the painting.  And the price!!  

Hope you enjoyed spinning it out and that it helped you through this strange, unnerving? period for you.  Surely the chapter page will turn. this is far more than beckett prepares us for in Godot!!  I was listening to an interview with Peter Handke and he says he tries to write from a place and for that place within us that is beyond all arts, whethervisual, verbal or aural.  again it feels as if aging itself drags us there no matter what all else we try to do about it.   

oops

he said later that the book is not finished.  Few more weeks/months it will be.  Wants to know why I like Rodney Plunkett.  Is it just the name?  His haplessness?  

monday 15 December on through tuesday Dec 16

 lost all the precious stuff put into yesterday's post this morning oh well 

"In any case, he thought, a person with a face like that should keep quiet.  With such a mug you've got to have your nerve with you even to carry on conversations with yourself."  33  Handke 

"He was in the mood to underscore every line."  39  I could look up Handke on YouTube for his most recent interview, see what he looks like and sounds like, see how he appreciates me for reading him now.

"At a bookstand Keushnig bought three diner's guides.  He would read them from cover to cover.  One more thing to go by, he thought."  46

Tuesday  Dec 16   Listened to some interviews on youtube with Handke while driving around.  Love everything he says.  Next few pages when K is outside Elysee Palace just beautiful.  Listened to Fosse too, he is musical, as you can tell from the flow of the prose.  Nicholas sent word about Algernon Blackwood, much more about weird dreamlike He posts on his blog --- As I read on, this became increasingly apparent, whether or not particular details were being 'made up', the whole fitted into a deeply believed imaginative whole, and the imagination, properly exercised, is itself a way to truth. We are in a deeply 'Romantic' territory more akin to Blake and Coleridge or Novalis than any of Blackwood's contemporaries (unless possibly his indigenous contemporaries, some contact with which Blackwood had sympathetically had in North America), and it is a territory in which I find myself most at home. Blackwood has a distinctive view of how the world is, and the stories are slivers of this world, and their realism comes from being parts of a wider imagined whole (built upon more expansively in his novels). "  Makes me want to ask Matt Cheney if this is the same territory he enjoys the most.  

from a 2015 entry on a blog called Truncheon  or antimatter-camerlengo.blogspot.com  Reading Blackwood, one gets the very distinct sense that he actually liked men. I'm not being a bigot here- whether he intended to or not, there's plenty in his work that could be constituted as "homoerotic." He often had several flattering physical descriptions of his male leads, and even longer descriptions of their closeness to other characters. This closeness of course, is only between two men. Despite some notable female leads (The Lane that Ran East and West, The Touch of Pan, The Empty House's Aunt Julia), the majority of his characters are men, and they happen to be men who are often in situations that have them get close with other men. Without further ado, let me give you some horribly decontextualized, eyebrow-raising snippets from his works to try and paint Algernon Blackwood as Anglo-American horror's LGBT representative. Of course, these examples could simply be my mind jumping to conclusions. 

on another topic I cheated and asked ChatGPT to do my readerly duties for me---it is amazing what a great job it did---in one sense of course--the old masterplots readers digest mode that worked for earlier generations of overloaded readers.  here it is ---  

Plot Summary

Set over several February days in 1952, the story follows a close-knit group of queer hustlers, drifters, and bar regulars centered around Stella, the narrator, and their friends in a wintry city neighborhood. Much of their daily life unfolds in bars like Xeno’s and on the streets, where they survive through sex work, petty theft, and informal economies while constantly navigating police harassment and violence.

Stella, tough, volatile, and fiercely protective, becomes fixated on the idea of self-reinvention. As she turns forty, she talks about quitting swearing, giving up hustling within ten years, and eventually opening a respectable tearoom for society women—an unlikely dream that nonetheless takes hold after a brutal winter and a street attack that forces her to defend herself physically. Despite her rough exterior, the assault crystallizes her belief that dignity comes from strength, not politeness.

Around them, the dangers of their world remain constant. Corrupt and abusive police target the community, including a notorious officer who is quietly fired after raping a runaway girl, though he avoids prosecution. Friends and lovers drift in and out: LouLou fights back against harassment, Rodney narrowly avoids police entrapment, and Dextrose describes surviving jail through a coercive sexual arrangement. Violence and exploitation are routine, but so are loyalty and care.

A parallel thread hints at deeper corruption and crime. Michael Rudd violently assaults a man he believes was involved with his wife before her suspicious death, reinforcing the sense that murder, bribery, and silence underpin the city’s order. Witnesses choose not to speak, knowing exposure would destroy them.

As days pass, the narrator continues pickpocketing to survive while observing shifting alliances, drug dealing, and the arrival of a striking new red-haired police officer whose presence unsettles and fascinates the community. Stella ultimately recommits to her long-term plan of escape and reinvention, insisting that she, the narrator, and possibly LouLou can someday leave hustling behind and start fresh—symbolized by a planned summer trip to San Francisco.

The story ends with an unsettling reminder that the past cannot be fully escaped: a man recognizes the narrator as the subject of a nude painting he owns, revealing how exposed and commodified their lives already are, even as they dream of becoming someone else.  

here are the final lines in real prose ---- john rechy inspired? or another similar writer --- 

Xeno’s for supper. Floyd and me. Rodney Plunkett comes and sits with us. No Coralee tonight. Xeno’s is only doing a floor show on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights now. New pissant policy. Maybe that will change when the weather gets warmer and people come out more. Katlyn is in Chicago doing some clubs up there. Stella comes in and plops herself down.

“What a day,” Stella says. “Fucking and plowing. Fucking and plowing. Got me an old friend, remember the guy I call Turberville Danny? Hell, he was in the tearoom today. Haven’t seen him in ages.”

Turberville Danny had Stella hook me up with him once. As soon as Stella says his name, I remember him. He was a funny fart character. Only wanted to try me once. Guess he is not bent my way. He fucking talked a lot.

“Shit,” Stella says, “he never shuts up. I was fucking blowing him, yabber, yabber, yabber. Then I was fucking plowing his goddam ass and that bastard never stops talking. More yabber, yabber, yabber. Fuck me if I was listening. Hell shit fire, oh, the swearing. Old Stella’s foul mouth…Anyway, he jabbered and jabbered and jabbered all the time old Stella worked him over. Paid me $200.”

“Well,” Floyd says, “did you enjoy it.”

“Oh, honey,” Stella says, “heaven on a clam shell, Old Stella loved it. With kick smoke Danny jabbering away.”

“Well,” Floyd says. “That’s the important thing.”

Rodney Plunkett says, “I like it best when everything is quiet. When you can hear your own heart pounding.”

“Sweetie, little man,” Floyd says.

Rodney puts his small hand on Floyd’s big hand. It’s such a gentle gesture, I just melt. These sweet gentle gestures so often get lost in our lives. 

Then I see someone that breaks the mood. The man I saw the other day on the subway platform, or was it in the fucking street. “Do I know you?” he said to me and I ran away. Shit. Why is he here. Damn fuck shit, he’s walking this way. Damn, damn, damn, is he going to create a fucking problem. How does he remember me? I never lifted his wallet. Did I? Fuck vomit shit piss. Damn. Damn. Damn.

He pulls a chair from an empty table and sits with us. “I know you,” he says to me. “I bought a painting,”

“Oh the painting we forgot to fucking see,” Stella says. “Remember, we bought Coralee’s photos that day. Only one swear. Getting better, old girl.”

“Anyway,” that stranger says. “You were naked in that painting. That Daffodil woman said she could try to convince you to pose for another and I said I would buy it.”

“Obesession,” Floyd says. He turns to Rodney and they chuckle.

“No thank you,” I say.

“Say, honey,” Stella says, “How much did you fucking  pay for that painting?”

“$300,” says this guy.

in other news  ----  signed up with Dead River---the staff guy's name is Andrew---took that as a good sign----moved up from Salem a few, five years ago, now lives in Bristol, coaches high school wrestling.  Feels good to have made the change.  Like the website already, much better than Irving's. 

Also liked so many details in the interviews with both Handke and Fosse I'll have to log them more carefully.  I ordered the books Nicholas wrote about and I will see if I can read them.  His description and explanation is much more clear than some of the earlier discussions.  Perhaps I know more what to expect. 

Both Fosse and Handke speak about the inner silence from which their writing comes from.  I like how Handke ways literature is not like music.  Later he allows the visual to be invoked, for him film, cinema.  Of course, his friendship with Wim Wenders and writing for the great film Wings of Desire.  And his directing of Left-Handed Woman.  The way he talks about Cezanne's monte sainte-victoire and Giotto--that their images are beyond genius.  Genius, like Beethoven's, is too dramatic.  The art beyond genius speaks from deeper, deepest inner silence.  

It is clarifying for Nicholas to explain that his sense of the spiritual, while earlier he used Jung to help describe, is more aligned with what we now call weird literature.  Which is to say ghost stories and mysteries.  (Note too Barbara Schwartz's love of ghost stories.)  

"As I read on, this became increasingly apparent, whether or not particular details were being 'made up', the whole fitted into a deeply believed imaginative whole, and the imagination, properly exercised, is itself a way to truth. We are in a deeply 'Romantic' territory more akin to Blake and Coleridge or Novalis than any of Blackwood's contemporaries (unless possibly his indigenous contemporaries, some contact with which Blackwood had sympathetically had in North America), and it is a territory in which I find myself most at home. Blackwood has a distinctive view of how the world is, and the stories are slivers of this world, and their realism comes from being parts of a wider imagined whole (built upon more expansively in his novels). 

The writing is excellent - beautifully descriptive both of the natural world about the characters and of the characters' own psychologies - and the often mutually accumulating suspense of mystery. Delightful to drop into a new writer able to extend the possibilities of the world and your own imagination, and who is emotionally satisfying. I look forward to reading more."

Snow Sun Day

All morning, more than we had expected.  Saw the kids on Rock U.  Eliot singing, on bass and on drums, Emma singing and on bass with her group, The Internet.  What a difference in development for each in the year.  Both on stage presence superb, Emma even more graceful.  Nice voice, pre-lanadelrey, hope the fam sees that as praise.  

Bela finishing Sound of Music.  

I am back to A Moment of Feeling, which I love, line-by-line.  Amazing in each paragraph.  The sound of water flowing in the gutter of the street---"It gurgled over an occasional jutting stone, and the longer he listened the more his vision expanded; the flowing water turned into a brook, whose gurgling flow related to an almost forgotten event. The pencils . . . and suddenly Keuschnig couldn't remember his own name. . . out of danger . . . . yet always come back to this place . . . . an embodied wish . . . or a long-outgrown memory a present emotion. . . .as if it were somewhere high in the sky. Ecstatically Keuschnig closed his eyes to keep from crying, but also to relish his tears the more." 22

ugly suffering  but if someone were to understand him silently then he would feel disgraced.  !!!!

Panoramic coward with the eyes of a glider pilot.  

Saturday 5:26 pm

 Fosse's A Shining  a remake of Jack London's To Build a Fire? but with surprise at the end: "we walk barefoot out into the void, breath by breath, and suddenly there's not a single breath left but only the radiant, shimmering presence that lights up a breathing void, what we're breathing now, with its whiteness."  

Sleepy day all day after cold morning waiting for the oil truck and heat to come back on.  Temps now back to usual.  Chatter on news tv about shooting at Brown.  

Bela sleeping all evening, even though we put on The Sound of Music.  Heavy cream clam chowder calcium?  Stress of the morning meltdown and cold house?  

A Shining----really seems as if I did read it before!  Only two years old but still.  I think I read it along with starting the Septology as was too impatient or something at the time to give myself fully to it.  

Berkshire Fir

 thin tree, 4.5 feet.  Will disappoint perhaps but much easier and cleaner.  Balsalm Hill artificial tree.  Calling the shuttle soon.  Plan to leave the tree in place all year, lights off or on.  Kids leaving on the 1st so be here six nights, five take out the arrival night and factor jet lag.  Great chat online with them yesterday. Tomorrow the big rock u concert all day long.  

Still reading Antunes, two pages a day.  Now to start Handke's A Moment of True Feeling, 1975. Written in Paris in 74.  For Fosse am going to leap ahead and start A Shining and put the Septology on back burner.  A Moment is from 2023, after all the prizes but before the Nobel?  Le Monde blurb on back cover calls him the Beckett of the twenty-first century.  Guess we will go out to walmart later this morning.  Xmas photo cards all addressed and stamped.  

"; I can't conceive of continuing to live as I've lived up until now, but no more can I conceive of living as someone else lived or lives."  8 "Keushnig had always been curious, though he disliked involving himself in things."  

Great line.  My whole view of things.  That paragraph, that page, the whole book, that is how I coulda/woulda/shoulda written some books about our travels.  One book for each two week stay in all of those places.  

Now Saturday morning.  Sure enough, no oil and only enough hot water for my shower, gave out during Bela's shower.  Then I melted down.  Headaches now, after breakfast.  Called Irving after checking the oil tanks.  So want to switch to dead river and see if their service would be any better.  This no oil happens every year at this time or so it seems.  Seems like the familiar pattern year after year.  That was what the meltdown was about.  Mostly.  Rock U concert tomorrow not today.  Parkinson's caused more by water supply contamination than genetics, new theory.  Headaches mostly from dry air, allergies.  dehydration.

Guzzling fluids to test out.  Even drinking Mormon tea.  More peace of mind to switch from Irving to Dead River in the summer rather than in the winter!! Before the next fixed price contract gets inked again. How do I know if Dead River having same problem with supply brought about by this cold spell showing up earlier and for longer than algorythmic history predicted?  Still my Intuitive sense always kicks in at this time of year.  That might be much more reliable than algos which are mechanical-electro and not nearly as connected to the universe as is the human body divine.    

What was the meltdown?  Just as well to call it a Visit from Pan.  A gift of the gods, divine energies terrorizing us, remarking our lives.  

Fosse and Handke counterbalancing.  Wandering Paris meaning lost.  Drive into the forest no idea where or why.  

"It was so cold

that no sooner had the clouds of smoke rising from the fire left the shelter of the boulder than they dispersed into wisps and vanished."  53   Is there a German song called The Left-Handed Woman or did he make it up?  Nope.  American blues singer Jimmy Reed sang it in 1964.  Must be on Youtube then.  Well, it is cold today, super bright sun on snow.  Wind picking up and will more so later.  I hope we can stay home.  Colin canceled piano because school canceled, carbon monoxide problem with the heating plant. 

Handke's slight novel is just wonderful.  So hard to describe exactly why, how.  Poetic not the right word because that has too much universal baggage with it, that word.  Surprising line after line, paragraph after paragraph.  Intriguingly so, a kind of fascination with the scene and characters and what exactly is going on that is just unusual, idiosyncratic.  Again, too ponderous a word.  They are hiking in the cold on a mountain side.  She recalls an abstract painting exhibit by an American of the stations of the cross and the effect on her vision of blurring after image of moving from the black painting to the white painting, from descent to tomb/resurrection.