as easy as the writing down of dreams

the fluxromance is on suspension (horsemouth has left the book the eve of fluxus - billie maciunas  at home. err. oops). 

as far as he can recall the immobilisation therapy ends soon anyway and the christmas season intervenes (with its visit to relatives). the book isn't clear if the planned performance of day and night takes place for new years eve but it certainly takes place on february 28th at the fluxwedding.  there are photographs. there is film. 

instead horsemouth will avail himself of the diary of franz kafka. the writer who isn't writing modern parables. the writer who is trying to get started with the writing. 

'december 16th 1910 - I won't give up the diary again. I must hold on here, it is the only place I can. 

'december 16th 1911 - the moment I were set free from the office I would yield at once to my desire to write autobiography. I would have to have some such decisive change before me as a preliminary goal when I began to write in order to be able to give direction to the mass of events... the writing of the autobiography would be a great joy because it would move along as easily as the writing down of dreams...'

horsemouth does not find the writing down of dreams easy (because he does not remember them - he cannot, for instance, tell you what he dreamed this morning). only pen and paper is sufficiently unmediated to get them down before the business of the day begins and renders them inaccessible. 

by 1911 kafka is much more in the flow of it. but the flow is not what we remember of him, we remember the reticence, the care. kafka wanted the diary and the ephemera burned away (but brod, his literary executor, disagreed - because brod is there in the ephemera but not in the parables). 

earlier (in 1891) the poet rainer maria rilke had returned from military academy (in classic poet fashion too sickly for a military career) to prague. later he traveled to  berlin, to moscow and later on to paris. from here (1902-08) he writes the letters to a young poet, to a franz xaver kappus, born near timosoara (now the border between hungary, serbia and rumania) but then firmly part of the austro-hungarian empire. kappus was, in his life, a writer, a newspaperman, but this, the book he compiled in 1929, is the book he is famous for. kappus begins a fan of leopardi.leopardi is a fan of tasso. 

outside it is grey and rainy. horsemouth hopes he has made the right decision going to the countryside and that everyone will be safe. this evening he must attend a meeting online.