'the two did not coincide' (last days, last nights)

good morning! good morning! it was hot and sunny when horsemouth woke up but now the cloud has boiled up and it has gone darker and cooler. 

from here on in horsemouth presents an almost completely written last night blogpost.

'benjamin told scholem that there where  places where he could earn a minimum of money and places where he could exist on a minimal amount, but the two did not coincide.'  - esther leslie, walter benjamin, p.137. 

it is tempting to identify oneself with benjamin here, in the struggle to make ends meet. 

here is benjamin the unworldly academic cast out into the world as a refugee, still trying to live and work as an academic while darkness gathers (visible to all) around him.  he makes the mistake, he is too committed to european culture, he does not flee to israel, and eventually this kills him. 

he could have got lucky, adorno, horkheimer, hannah arendt, even kracauer, got lucky and ended up in the united states. but luck was not with him.

nonetheless he managed to make it work for a number of years. he leaves germany for the last time march 17th 1933. he dies at port bou in spain 25th or 26th september 1940. probably a suicide in police custody, they had caught him and planned to deport him back across the border to france where he would probably be interned again and then deported to nazi germany.

he decided not to give them the satisfaction. 

on the struggle to make ends meet and the best laid plans of mice.. 

horsemouth had managed to work a nice corner in the seaside towns for the best part of 25 years - he was in a housing co-op (so low rent and low living expenses) and there, in the seaside towns, he could find enough work (supporting deaf students) to make enough of a living to survive. sadly, being a lazy sod, he neglected to install a series of  second strings on his bow, so when the angel of death and redundancy swooped that was his lot. 

there was about a year's worth of redundancy (long since spent) and there's a small works pension (beer money as they used to say). 

there had been an earlier plan (in the event of redundancy or work just getting too annoying) to decamp to portugal to eke out his (pre-)pension years (no work probably but even cheaper rent). but then brexit put paid to that. eight years ago the night before last he was raving it up in porto for san joao - he had a beautiful vision of european unity... and then when they woke up in the morning brexit had happened. 

will horsemouth ever forgive the brexiteers? will he fuck.

horsemouth is in the afterlife of this life trying to stretch it out to his actual pension ('will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four.' er. no they won't (not any more). but they will when he's 67. he just has to stretch it all out until then (he thinks). he thinks it may be do-able. 

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horsemouth became interested in the phrase darkness gathered.  he found instead a 'darkness gathers'.

'how calm! how still! the only sound,

the dripping of the oar suspended!

—the evening darkness gathers round

by virtue's holiest powers attended.' 

- william wordsworth, lines written near richmond, upon the thames, at evening, from lyrical ballads. (this is itself in honour of an earlier poem an  ode occasion'd by the death of mr. thomson by william collins.)

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wait! let horsemouth get a second cup of coffee and he will see if he has any more for you this morning. 

this evening horsemouth returns to the wen. tomorrow (being back among you) he will begin to circulate and mingle. it is his last day in the countryside under tory rule when he returns again the head of starmerite liberty will have been placed on the body of tory tyranny (oh how happy we will be). he has a bet on with his mum - a fiver on the heads of the two tory MPs of herefordshire. he thinks he's going to lose (both are going to get back in), but there's a chance one of them will fall (so horsemouth breaks even).