horsemouth (you remember him don't you?) is back with you again having worked (3 hours actual work - two and a half walking in and back). tomorrow he does the same (ok a bit more) with less walking, friday is some hellbooking in the wild west (jesus fucken' christ - the north west - they probably have fucken' snow out there) and horsemouth still with some cough and cold thing. next week he's back to his regular bread and butter bookings (hopefully).
the footnote quoted as the title is from benedict erofeev's moscow circles - a samizdat novel the phrase for 'self-published' would be sam izdatel'stvo, by analogy with the state publishing house gosizdat this became samizdat. as benedict notes the first production run (of one) sold out immediately. the town name omutishche is translated as 'slough of despond' (but slough would probably do it). in the uk the translation was published by writers and readers (it even still has the reviewer copy press release lettter still inside it probably from october 1981).
horsemouth is tired and headachey and the light is poor - he may snooze.
today horsemouth did a preferred learning styles survey - he scored zero as a 'reflector', he doesn't reflect on what happens - this is quite interesting don't you think? (the learning styles are -activist, reflector, theorist, pragmatists). horsemouth simply doesn't care - whatever is behind him is in the past - onto the next thing. (but maybe he only says that)....
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if horsemouth remembers correctly one of boris pasternak's autobiographies (safe conduct) ends with the death of mayakovsky - ah he's found it - here it is -
'Suddenly, outside, underneath the window I imagined I saw his life, which now already belonged entirely to the past. I saw it move obliquely from the window like a quiet tree-bordered street resembling the Povarskaya. And the first to take its stand in this street, by the very wall, was our State, our unprecedented and unbelievable State, rushing headlong towards the ages and accepted by them for ever. It stood there below, one could hail it and take it by the hand. Its palpable strangeness somehow recalled the dead man. The resemblance was so striking that they might have been twins.
And it occurred to me then in the same irrelevant way that this man was perhaps the State’s unique citizen. The novelty of the age flowed climatically through his blood. His strangeness was the strangeness of our times of which half is as yet to be fulfilled. I began to recall traits in his character, his independence, which in many ways, was completely original. All these were explained by his familiarity with states of mind which though inherent in our time, have not yet reached full maturity. He was spoilt from childhood by the future, which he mastered rather early and apparently without great difficulty.'
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