Of Walking in Ice: Munich-Paris, 11/23 to 12/14, 1974

Meanwhile it's got stormy, the tattered fog even thicker, chasing across my path. Three people are sitting in a glassy tourist cafe between clouds and clouds, protected by glass from all sides. Since I don't see any waiters, it crosses my mind that corpses have been sitting there for weeks, statuesque. All this time the cafe has been unattended, for sure. Just how long have they been sitting here, petrified like this?

An elderly woman gathering wood, plump and impoverished, tells me about her children one by one, when they were born, when they died. When she becomes aware that I want to go on, she talks three times as fast, shortening destinies, skipping the deaths of three children although adding them later on, unwilling to let even one fate slip away—and this in a dialect that makes it hard for me to follow what she is saying. After the demise of an entire generation of offspring, she would speak no more about herself except to say that she gathers wood, every day; I should have stayed longer.

No one, not a soul, intimidating stillness. Uncannily, though, in the midst of all this, a fire is blazing, lit, in fact,with petrol. It's flickering, a ghostly fire, wind. On the orange-coloured plain below I can see sheets of rain, and the annunciation of the end of the world is glowing on the horizon, glimmering there. A train races through the land and penetrates the mountain range. Its wheels are glowing. One car erupts in flames. The train stops, men try to extinguish it, but the car can no longer be extinguished. They decide to move on, to hasten, to race. The train moves, it moves into fathomless space, unwavering. In the pitch-blackness of the universe the wheels are glowing, the lone car is glowing, Unimaginable stellar catastrophes take place, entire worlds collapse into a single point. Light can no longer escape, even the profoundest blackness would seem like light and the silence would seem like thunder. The universe is filled with Nothing, it is the Yawning Black Void. Systems of Milky Ways have condensed into Un-stars. Utter blissfulness is spreading, and out of utter blissfulness now springs the Absurdity. This is the situation.

Friendship is possible with mice.

Only if this were a film would I consider it real

What's really bad is that after acknowledging a wrong decision, I don't have the nerve to turn back, since I'd rather correct myself with another wrong decision.

A hunter, with a second hunter nearby, asked me what I was looking for up there. I said I liked his dog better than I liked him.

Over the mountain forest outside of Sachrang, in the last days of the War, an aeroplane dropped a metal device that was visible in the treetops by its flag. We children were certain the flag was wandering from tree to tree, that the mysterious device was moving forward. During the night some men went off and, when they returned at daybreak, they refused to divulge information concerning what they'd found.

I said that this must not be, not at this time, German cinema could not do without her now, we would not permit her death. One solitary, overriding thought: get away from here. People frighten me. Our Eisner mustn't die, she will not die, I won't permit it. She is not dying now because she isn't dying. Not now, no, she is not allowed to. My steps are firm. And now the earth trembles. When I move, a buffalo moves. When I rest, a mountain reposes. She wouldn't dare! She mustn't. She won't. When I'm in Paris she will be alive. She must not die. Later, perhaps, when we allow it.

The land here is being carelessly killed. (pp 54)

Today I often said 'forest' to myself. Truth itself wanders through the forests.

Only if this were a film would I consider it real.

One solitary, overriding thought: get away from here. People frighten me.

When Santa appeared with his sunglasses up on the balcony, I was completely convulsed by a paroxysm of laughter. A few people gave me strange looks and I retreated to the bistro. While eating my sandwich I ate one end of my scarf as well, which cracked me up so much inside that the whole table started to shake, thought outwardly my face gave no sign of laughter, however contorted it must have been. The waiter started staring at me, so I fled to the edge of the town into the camper, into the showpiece.

In Savieres in der Dorfschule überlegte ich, nach Paris zu fahren, welchen Sinn hat das. Aber so weit gekommen zu Fuß und dann fahren? Lieber die Sinnlosigkeit, wenn es eine ist, bis zur Neige gekostet.

me fascinan las cajetillas de cigarrillos al borde del camino, sobretodo cuando no están estrujadas, entonces se hinchan ligeramente, adquieren cierto aspecto de cadáveres, los cantos ya no están tan definidos y el celofán se empaña desde dentro, es vapor condensado en gotitas de agua por el frío.