the journal written in the morning

'the corpse was placed in a zinc casket tagged "fresh oysters"'

so gustaw herling reports of the death and funeral of chekhov in his the journal written at night (excerpts of which are translated and  published as volcano and miracle in honour of gustaw's new home in naples). chekhov was a  doctor he was used to base materiality. the body of a general arrived at the moscow station at the same time - some of chekhov's mourners followed it to the cemetery by mistake. 

horsemouth is telling you this because he read it first thing while he was waiting for his netbook to boot up

horsemouth's is a journal written in the morning (as he is doing now). sometimes (in the evening) he will get bored and type a little into a text file called blackscreen, but mostly you get him as he is now, when the day has possibilities, when he has stuff to do. 

alternatively horsemouth will consult his physical diary (now where is that pesky book? 2023 diary: a day a page. ah. it was there, on the chair.) when the diary is done it will join the others in a box up on the shelves (assuming there is enough room left in it which thinking about it now horsemouth tends to doubtt). 

'at that time he had no literary ambition, but just an instinctive delight in noting everything down, in recording everything, even his dreams. it was the war... which had changed him, by awaking in him the idea that he might die without having achieved anything... only then had he set to work.' 

horsemouth has noted down alphonse daudet's confession to edmond de goncourt (25/01/1885). his motivation is similar to the de goncourt brothers, jules and edmond, to dig himself out of anonymity. 

horsemouth has finished his coffee. the herling (book) is small enough to go in a pocket or a bag. it has been sitting around unread for a long time up on the shelves with the other poles and russians. it is the kind of book that calls for other books - some dostoyevsky, that chekhov etc.  

it's a greyish and dark day at some point horsemouth will go for a wander (to stretch his legs and blow away the cobwebs). he will check the weather forecast (it does look like rain). he will check his emails to see if there is anything urgent. this evening a david webb/ webb david broadcast from new river studios. 

soon enough the weekend/ easter/ a holiday in the cloud forest and a visit to the second hand bookshops of walthamstow.