labour time (ten yards of linen) 5779

horsemouth is saddened by his return from porto. he’s back - thursday, friday there’s work even. the year starts (back down the rabbit hole for you horsemouth).

and yet (four of pentacles) he is relieved - because at least now he knows where his money will be coming from.

pessoa is on a tram. he looks at the dress the girl in front of him is wearing - at the cloth (it’s type, how it was made, where the flax, cotton etc. were grown), the stitching, the different types of yarns (and he thinks about how they were made), the overall construction of the garment (imagine scissors cutting) and all of a sudden he sees all the labour of the all people that went into the dress, he sees them all crowding round. it is like marx’s discussion of the labour and in particular the labour time in a coat in capital volume 1 chapter 1 (and it is unlike it).

curiously this is like the (half digested) notions of labour time (socially necessary labour time) and its extension (that negri lifts from it in time for revolution) that horsemouth was blithering on about while drunk at john’s birthday party to a lawyer and an artist . both nodded.

horseemouth took pessoa’s the book of disquiet with him - it had fitted his mood very well before he went (slightly anxious/ slightly bored). as the turkish surfer girl horsemouth chatted to said on the park bench observed, pessoa is a little sad.

‘to write is to forget’ says pessoa the contrarian, omar khayam, almost derridean discussions of what it would mean to be remembered as a writer (but to be dead, to no longer be there). he lives inside his own head (and deliberately so). he has made himself a creature of habit. horsemouth has dipped into it, not read it consistently beginning to end to tick it off his list, he cannot find the dress section now, but the pleasure if this is that the book is not yet finished, there is still more of it to read.

because ‘to write is to forget. literature is the pleasantest way of avoiding life’ horsemouth did not blog while he was away (so as not to miss anything or distort the weight of it). he did however keep a diary of excursions to help his (feeble) memory in later years.

this year horsemouth worked right up until the summer solstice and starts back a little ahead of the autumn equinox.

while horsemouth flew back there was the abbots bromley horn dance - it is also (simultaneously linked only by time that most tenuous of things) the two day sunset to sunset transition of rosh hosannah the jewish new year - when it completes at sunset tonight it will be the year 5779.