birdsong sunlight books (a wood pigeon)

yesterday was the first day horsemouth felt truly free. he sat in the back garden sunning himself (it’s still a little nippy). by the end of the day he was a little torched.

this morning he writes this (types this) with the window open but wearing a jumper with his sleeping bag covering his knees.

horsemouth has been reading paul auster’s translation of pierre clastres chronicle of the guayaki indians. the forests are full of dangerous animals that can kill, the nights full of malicious ghosts of former tribe members, the neighbouring tribes are all shunned and believed to be cannibals. then there is the white man and his dogs and guns. the ghosts are lonely in their wanderings in the land of the dead, they must given someone to keep them company or they will come and take someone, it is difficult to keep everyone fed, there is abortion and infanticide to keep the numbers low at the level the environment can support, disease comes and when it does the sick are simply left behind to die. 

‘although I have been back to paraguay several times, I have never seen the guayaki indians again. i have not had the heart to...’ clastres, a student of claude levi-strauss, died in a car accident in 77 0r 78. of the guayaki indians their numbers are in any event declining - soon, if not already, clastres realizes, they will be gone.

auster’s translation was not published when it was made. the only manuscript was lost (only to be recovered from a second hand bookstore bargain bin years later). now we have it. horsemouth found it in a charity shop - not the manuscript but a fully bound paperback book pulbished by faber and faber, they were presumably emboldened by the subsequent success of auster as a novelist.

 ‘no matter that the world described in it has long since vanished, that the tiny group of people the author lived with in 1963 and 1964 has disappeared from the face of the earth. no matter that the author has vanished as well. the book he wrote is still with us... a small triumph against the crushing odds of fate...’