December 29th, 2023

In the café, warm. (croisement de Charonne et Ledru Rollin).

Café allongé. Glass of water.

Reading Handke: vicariously living a no-longer-existant Salzburg through his fragments.

A part of my mind elsewhere in space and time.

An elderly woman eating on the terrace. She mutters to herself.

The rest of the world goes about its business outside and I watch it as I would a silent film but with no interstitial cards, so the narrative is improvised and likely couldn’t be further from reality—this is of no importance.

I study the faces of passersby: difficult to look into their eyes to see the truth as the face can disguise much unless one knows the other well.

The café is filling up, lunch is approaching.

Three Italians sit at the table in front of me: two women, one man. Mother, father, daughter? The youngest my age I think. Accent from the north, soft-spoken. The “daughter” lives in Paris, or did, her accent confident, phrasing effortless.

Kind faces.