The lacuna in the Levant is not necessarily good news for peace.  Things tend to stop and go off the public radar for a bit when the largest wheels are turning.  There was an odd silence between events in Sarajevo and the beginning of hostilities in ww1.  I read a Whitehall memoir once that talked about how even foreign office civil servants thought that the lull meant that peace had a chance.  

The democracy putting highly mercurial people in charge in order to make a political point would seem to raise a fundamental problem for democratic republics.  #notexpert #wiseacring

Ballet.  ($5, back balcony.)  Quite good.  Carmen, which is sort of a local cultural touchstone, and a Bolero.  The ballet here is very much of the place.  Lyric, modern-oriented.  Not the classical lyric of Mariinski or the austere abstract of NYCB, but a half modern/half classical vocabulary, very good at storytelling.  Extended critical piece TK, God willin' & the crick don't rise. 

 Part of my reaching back to 19th c. philosophy and fiction is looking for a grounding in a way of thinking that was current before the modern, the sense of going along with things even if you didn't precisely understand what they were, came over the world.  The latter, which came to ascendancy after the second world war, has its antecedents in idealist/pragmatist philosophy, and has much to do with industrialization.  Even our unthinkingess is historical in nature, if you think about it.

What makes this essential, rather than capricious, is my particular situation.  I've been through these things, and I've been to these places, and I know that much about them is false.  It is simply a mistake to go along with these sorts of things even if you don't precisely understand them, and the present order of things seems to rely on some fraction of the population doing just that, and the rest proving manageable.  

My slate is not clean.  It has valuable inscriptions on it.  Not quixotic, but Socratic. Onward.

 #bookmarking 

https://www.ejiltalk.org/is-israels-use-of-force-against-iran-justified-by-self-defence/ 

https://lieber.westpoint.edu/select-ihl--arising-israel-iran-conflict/ 

https://www.justsecurity.org/114641/israel-iran-un-charter-jus-ad-bellum/ 

https://lieber.westpoint.edu/israels-operation-rising-lion-right-of-self-defense/ 

https://legal.un.org/repertory/art2/english/rep_supp10_vol1_art2_4.pdf

https://legal.un.org/repertory/art2/english/rep_supp9_vol1_art2_4.pdf 

 

Kefir ($1.85) and a biography of Christian Wolff on the rooftop cafe of the grocery, before buying the week's potatoes, rice, etc.  Having a notion of what Kant had to work with at the beginning is proving very useful in understanding the directions things took.  Not annotating -- the annotation pace has slowed so much that I'm going to just read a few to get back up to speed.  

The thing that I shall miss the most about being circumstanced out of the theatre festival in Transylvania this year is the Noh troupe.  Extraordinarily worthwhile.

The attraction to Japanese ritual and contemplative forms might be historically and culturally inflected.  In the late 19th c. many Slavic immigrants had just come over to the Midwest, and Japan had prevailed in a stunning triumph over Russe.  So there was a fascination among the eastern elites (e.g., Teddy Roosevelt) with Japanese culture, and this perhaps became a cultural force, perhaps displacing or preempting the Eastern forms that had reached the US by going west, instead of east.  Just a notion, but the outlines of the facts seem to correspond. Far and few are the ikonostases and Holy Doors in the Midwest.  In fairness, even the Roman church was explicitly equated with the Hindu pantheon in the correspondence of the Framers.  A protestant nation at founding, but a permissive one (hence Baltimore).

But for whatever reason, the eastern forms do stand in my mind for the necessary focus and mediation that keeps a traveller on his path in summer heat and winter cold. 

 I'm beginning to realize that the most dangerous misreading of the present American politics might be that the obvious difficulties are somehow an exception existing only at the top.  The nature of the shining city on the hill is that its characteristic nature is evident to every passerby.  And whether from admiration or from scapegoating, the present difficulties in leadership seem to point to some characteristic sins.

 

Aha.  The German pharmacy chain comes through with reasonably priced muesli and oats.  Was almost reconciled to a time of sweetened corn flakes.  Not to mention the store-brand toilet requisites.  Inexpensive German dry goods and good brushes (tooth, clothes, bath, shoes) can help one go far.

 https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-171/issue-104/senate-section/article/S3411-1

Vis a vis the conduct of foreign affairs, someone might want to point out to the present chief executive that some of these Gordian knots are structural and load-bearing.

Minor Verdi (Attila) at the city's national theatre.  ($5, deep balcony) Excellent programming choice, apparently the full symphony orchestra in the pit, capable soli, large chorus.  The sort of country-house stand-and-deliver Verdi that you might have heard at the beginning of the last century in a regional Italian house in a city of decent size, which is to say, a far more worthwhile evening than you'd probably have at one of the international houses with everything over-designed and planned.  The essence of Verdi.  Much like Shakespeare, it is the psycho-physical condition of the singers, demonstrating the revolutionary practice of freedom.  Some clear local meanings in the staging, to be developed at too much length in a proper reflection TK.

Modalisms and modernity.  Perhaps not unconnected, the point of the latter being that there are deeper currents of being made accessible by simply going along with what seems to be important at the time.  As opposed to living within the already-understood.  Being cool, not all doctrinal, which is to say living within experience, and not experience as divided and structured by words.

And yet, acting according to the spontaneous prompting of the mind and what seems good to the others--there are some obvious dangers to this.  There are many things that can make us think things.

The local church is war-weary.  Perhaps the same war-weariness is also in the Orthodox and Muslim places of prayer.  At the Sanctus at the English Mass, the entire congregation stared silently, and it seemed, sullenly, at the violinist intoning the melody.  Eventually a few voices murmured something corresponding to the text.

 I'm not a fan of the English Masses in this part of the world generally.  Functionally, it's useful as a sort of lingua franca Mass, but a traveller shouldn't expect a Mass in their own language; a (novus ordo/modern) Latin rite would do just as well for diplomats, travellers, and foreign workers.  Perhaps the reason why the Masses  were Latin in the first place.  If you know the liturgy well enough, and have the readings, the only longeurs are in the homily, and studying the decorations of the church can easily substitute for listening to the meditations.

The point is the spiritual exercise, the focusing of the mind, the meditation, and the meaningful act.  And it seems no one's doing any of these things anymore.  In American suburbia, they're worshipping their lawns, in the cities, they're playing to the televisions, and abroad, most seem just to be looking to participate in a social event.  Omnis homo mendax.  But one honors the obligation.  Harrumph, etc.

 Oddly soul-less Beethoven's Ninth from Warsaw to close the season.  Like a waterfall of flower petals rather than water itself.  Beethoven without the political danger.  Speed, when it finally came, without passion or fear.  Perhaps deliberately created as a consumer good of comfort. 

Still, though, the ability to just eavesdrop upon a major ensemble playing the Ninth as a matter of course is a good thing.  There must be a better way to get all of the remarkable things going on in the world at any given moment to the attention of more people. So much of the present media mindset was created by bursts of transmission over the air at set times to those in reach of the transmission.  The internet is fundamentally a different thing.

I tend not to write and think about foreign wars, as it's generally not my business, even though the hard-won doctrines of neutrality seem to have slipped away in the last few years.  I doubt that there will be the equivalent of the Alabama settlement after the dust settles in Europe, for example.  (Interestingly, the U.K, as a dominant naval power, always sidestepped the 19th c. neutrality conventions.)  The events of the last few days or so in the Levant are troubling.  Going after general command and control seems to signal an all-out war.  I don't think a conflict can get more across-the-board than that.  These are not proportional attacks in pursuit of declared objectives, nor are they claimed to be.  Which is why I'm puzzled that the news seems to treat it as the sort of one-off strikes that happen from time to time.  Hold on to your... whatever it is that you think that you should grab onto.  #notexpert #justwiseacring

 Muesli has gone up by 33% since my last visit.  Mores, tempore, &c.  Will have to check the German drugstore, but the new version seems to be the prevailing price.  Backup plan: corn flakes and boiled apples.

Back in the city of the Jedi Council.  Interesting trip.  En route, stopped off in the capital of the old Republic to make the pilgrimage that was blocked earlier, as the national church had been celebrating a pontifical liturgy when I arrived, and wanted only those of that nationality inside the building at the time.  No matter.  Some odd dreams in the interval.  An interesting visit to a favorite city.  But traveling by bus in summer does have its peculiar difficulties.  Must find a magic carpet or something.

The rooms here are a bit pricier than the usual budget for these travels would allow.  Some financial shenanigans forced me to book relatively last-minute, off the price curve.   Had wanted to return to the theatre festival in Transylvania this month, but all of the places in the old Saxon capital were outside of the budget.  As it turns out, with the last minute booking, what I'm paying now would have put me in range of a cheap set of rooms timely booked there, so that's a mite frustrating.  But he moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.  Mainly arm-wrestling the invisible hand of the markets, it seems.

Hoping for a productive month.  It is familiar territory.  Hopefully the shadow of war in the Western Balkans will recede once all involved realize that everyone else in the world is panicking over trade routes and there's very little support for vindicating claims of ethnic right.  A peculiar world.  For my part, I just read philosophy and visit the theatres.

 Racine's Berenice, apparently a new production at the Comedie Francaise, at the national theatre here as part of a festival/conference -- back row, top balcony, $10.  Closed my eyes and listened to the Alexandrines for most of it; cast quite skillful.  Interesting characters in the top balcony.  At the end, I might have been the only one in the house standing to applaud, but I was right.

 

La Gioconda at the opera house.  Upper balcony side, about as far from the plane of the plaster line as the conductor was.  ($5.67 via half-price site.)  Consciously summoning up memories of the visit and performance here as an undergraduate.  After that visit, the theatre of this city stood for a certain thing in my mind for a very long time, and I tried, with modest success, to inhabit that idyll.  I suppose you can't go unheimlich again.  But a very powerful evening.

 Oddly, as I stood up at the end, I realized that what had seemed to be a robust zipper on the jeans had somehow given out completely.  Luckily, simply buttoning the coat solved the problem.  Always wear a coat of decent length.  

Interesting that it's on the feast of Barnabas ('Barnaba' is the Inquisition spy.)  Possibly a noticed holiday in these parts--traditionally the midsummer day in old style dating. 

Under no illusions as to the character of the environs.  Though I've stumbled into a reasonably comfortable place for the several days I'm here, this is still the most commercial, class-conscious, and ruthless city on the itinerary.  Sometimes you need to take the low path through the old city.  Though I didn't have any choice in making the interstitial jaunt, I'm hoping to make the best of it.  It does bring some shadows into the mind, but the dawn runs are easier here than in sleepy Transylvania, and much more than the other place before but one.  

The immediate  environs are the biosphere of the Euro-jaunters, which I find a bit frightening, tbh.  But on the periphery, the familiar chain coffee stores where I can sit for a bit with a book.  And the museums and theatres are very reasonably priced, if you're willing to take the most distant seats in the house.  Which has been my course for lo these many years.  A habitual resident of the heavens. 

Adventures in foreign grocery guesswork, cont'd: if the fresh yeast looks like butter, arguably it shouldn't be stored with the butter.  ($0.57)  My error, though--should have recognized the Serbo-Croat word on the alternate labeling.