pure bad luck (and a sign of the times)

'books must be thrown away' says marguerite duras in the film version of destroy she said (but not in the book version). it gets repeated in the rivette and narboni interview with her from cahiers du cinema (la destruction la parole 1969). 

and this scandalises the bibliophiles, notably jean-claude  carriere in his (and umberto eco's) this is not the end of the book a full thirty years later.  

'I've talked a lot about writing, but I don't know what it it.' 

duras has a parallel career as a film maker (to her career as a writer) and even in her career as a writer there is a tension between her autobiographies and her fictions because they are brought so close. paradoxically for a film maker she holds that the text as read is enough.

in le camion she gets gerard depardieu do an on-camera read-through of a movie script. she comments about the characters, their motivations, her motivations, the actor does too. that's all. like colette in her proposed staging for le blé en herbe (voices from a darkened stage) she only really has faith in the words. 

once, when horsemouth was visiting paris with darsavini and denise back in the 90ies, a fashion designer had done a show based on the fact that duras always wore the same clothes, her outfit was repeated in a variety of colours (like a warhol).

horsemouth is reading her practicalities again (it is what women talk about) and reading/watching a few things online to back it up. 

two movies yesterday - a late dirty harry (the dead pool containing a betting game on who was going to die next) and flood (the thames barrier fails, london under water, british character actors look stressed). 

horsemouth has discovered that the downstairs next door got flooded during the recent rain storms  (as well as the basement flat two doors down). this is both pure bad luck (and a sign of the times). of course this is surface water run off flooding rather than storm surge flooding but it does give cause for concern. the 'seaside towns', as horsemouth tends to refer to them, are in a marshy river valley with appreciable meander and considerably tidal. 

horsemouth (as he often remarks) lives next to the marshes. 

today horsemouth must get on with some writing. horsemouth must get forward onto the front foot and state that the proposal is a good idea (rather than being on the back foot arguing that it is not a bad idea).  in the afternoon/ evening he must do some child minding.