'and the fates gather at some standing stones...'

the cats have batted him awake (at one point he awoke to find them combing out his beard) and he is up early (by his own standards). he has fed them but they have left most of it on their plates and have not even said thank you.

and the fates gather at some standing stones (gossipy bitches).

having been found and spun the thread waits

- so how about that horsemouth then?

- him!!! pfft...

- still 'waiting' is he...

the scissors are produced (a pause) 

- another time maybe sister... time transparent. now arts connect...

- time transparent. now arts connect...

and they are on to the next bit of string.

back in 2020 tom phillips (by means of gysin/ burroughs cut up) had predicted the future (well the present in which we were living). there is a line in his cut up novel the humument (made by colouring over a victorian novel the human document), ‘time transparent, now the arts connect’.

a year before that horsemouth was arguing that brexit could not happen because it sinned against capitalist rationality. could it be that he was wrong?

in horsemouth's accessions diary 

3 gothic novels - frankenstein, castle of otranto, vathek 

(50p salvation army walthamstow).  they are still running 4 for £1 on books and CDs but there was nothing else he fancied, there was nothing for him in the ruby street book box either. 

it is in the cream bordered penguin classics edition rather than the penguin english library edition. horsemouth once owned that edition (he took it to portugal with him when he was wandering about the south in the 90ies). the author of vathek (slaveowner and millionaire william beckford) had been to portugal (or so said the guide book). 

elsewhere a friend has been arguing that frankenstein  is not a science fiction novel (here on the cover of 3 gothic novels it clearly implies it is a gothic novel). but of course it is a science fiction novel (even if that term had not been invented yet - his friend's argument). horsemouth suspects his friend of mere shit-stirring. 

horsemouth has recently posted a number of photos of himself wandering round (as if exploring) a few neglected corners of the canal system, spaces that have not found their place in the leisure economy. at some point they had been integrated into the new london (there was a spiral ramp leading up to a disused footbridge) only to be sealed off and forgotten again. 

in a cul-de-sac that he had turned up by mistake (believing there to be a cut-through to the road he is staying on) horsemouth found a little wooden box.   it has a faded design of two small children (a boy and a girl on it surrounded by leaves and the name 'amalin(?)'  (ah it used to contain jewellery)

amalin used to be a girl's name in the gothic language (allegedly). 

in it he has placed his temporary (travelling) library- the hrabal, the silverberg, the three gothic novels, the covid test kit, the paracetamol, the strepsils, a spare pen. despite his precautions horsemouth thought his small notebook had vanished  into the great pile of kipple that is the world (but then he found it lurking blackly at the bottom of his bag.  

'all my book I relinquished for one can get more books wherever one goes' confidently remarks the hero of robert silverberg's a time of changes (so far in his exile he has not mentioned books). 

and here we see horsemouth begin to reconstruct a library. the careers advice teacher who had the young horsemouth pegged as a future librarian was not so wrong. he's just not (and never was) a scientist.

today (now that he is awake) horsemouth plans to hit the charity shops on the market. tomorrow he may be assisting howard with decorating (physical labour horsemouth? yes physical labour). at some point he expects the delivery of travel documents.