I think the Dolly Parton tribute sort of set the tone for that LNOP.  Bit of a split on whether Britons never&c shall be slaves or never&c will be slaves.  Quick look to AI indicates that the latter was the original, and in the source poem, with the former coming in with the Victorian changes.  Well, they're certainly not slaves to the lyrics. 

Beforehand, dropped by one of the old historic houses for a culture in the streets event -- opera arias.  Elected to stop a a bakery for a bit of bread beforehand (end of the night, only the heavily sweetened kaiser rolls), so the back of the entryway was as close as I could get.  (Fitting, as I always go for partial view at the opera for the cost savings.)  Interesting pause for the last call to prayer of the evening.  In the older part of town, unlike the city generally, they're pretty closely synchronized, but there are many of them -- putting the din in the din and devlet.  When I was here in the winter a year or two ago, I had a great place overlooking the whole city from across the river, and could stand out on the balcony and track the different timings.  They're very interesting to contemplate, and I'm usually drawn into thinking about God for a bit (though not according to the local formulas), so I suppose they're effective.

The core opera repertory, the sort of energy that unified the central piedmont and birthed Garibaldi, is very interesting to listen to here.  This is a consciously sophisticated city, but some (though not all, or even most) aspects of it are also pre-enlightenment, so you'll sometimes have a neo-Romantic 19th c. piece solemnly observed with the respect due to a cultural effort, rather than sparking the effect that it was written to achieve.  At the same time, they're closer to some aspects of it than the usual international style or the post-Enlightenment crowd.  I recall attending a memorial concert here where the Kindertotenlieder was the main piece, and I thought it odd that the community here would look to a Viennese composer at a time of very personal grief, until my slow-moving mind registered the fact that I was sitting in a concert hall built by the Austrians almost a century and a half ago.  Every lineage is composed of many threads.

It struck me that the amplification was entirely unnecessary, given the setup, but these are legitimating devices -- I learned that observing the first piece of theatre on the last peregrination, a street piece in Bucharest.  A sound system makes it clear that things are official -- whether on the Upper West Side, a stone plaza in Transylvania, or a 16th c. caravanserai in the Balkans.  It says that this is an official performance.  Otherwise, it would just be people singing.  Again, it's universal, but perhaps places like this will rediscover the natural sound of song first, likely long before the street performances in NYC step outside of their girder stages and sound systems.  After all, as I understand it, the reason that the call to prayer is spoken rather than sent out using bells and such was the power and simplicity of the human voice.  

 Last Night of the Proms -- so apparently, autumn is here.  The locals here have a theory on springtime, apparently Turkish in origin, that it comes in three shocks on air, water and land.  Perhaps there's a correlative theory of autumn, with the land most tenaciously holding onto the life of summer.  Will likely tune in to the festivities via wireless (that word still works) after wandering the old city again for a bit in the evening.  It's not my cup of tea, tbh, I'm much more in the Yugoslavian enlightenment/post-enlightenment camp, but for what it is, the old shadows and passageways are meaningful.  In the same sense, the only reason that I'll likely tune into the shindig from Royal Albert Hall is because I have some sense of the place, and the meaning of it.  Though it won't occur to most that this is something that has to be imagined in a positive, outward sense, so they'll just accept the programming.

There's a danger in taking life as read.  When people talk about the meaninglessness of modern existence, it's not because, as Hegel thought, there's a simple mismatch between the enactment of life required in pre-Enlightenment times (Habermas) and the modern free and harmonious rational arrangement of life.  Meaninglessness is simply a lack of imagination.  You have to reach for the world, whether it be the pageant or the game.  The world might be announced to you when it walks in the door, but you still have to go up to it and make conversation.

"Live all you can -- it's a mistake not to."  When people quote that bit of Henry James, they usually miss the fact that the American adventurer seeking a bit of freedom in Paris is at a party with an artist whom he admires and his friends, but instead of going inside and attempting to enter into their society, he sits on a bench on the lawn and waxes homiletic to his young misfit artist friend.  Presumably because they hadn't invented blogging yet.

 

 

Interesting small rabbit-hole this AM in wondering why a ballet was called a "white ballet" (technically, in the original, a ballet staged in the white manner).  As it turns out, at least per Gurgle AI, it is a reference to the white costumes, and indirectly to its classicism.  The interesting thing about this is that "white goods" in this part of the world refers to large appliances -- glancing down that AI rabbit-hole as well, I learn that it is from the white enamel that defined expensive household goods in the middle of the last century, and that "brown goods" are rec-room wood-colored entertainment devices and "grey goods" are computers.  Germany is apparently locally the source of the white enamel on appliances, with that industrialized technique dating from the late 19th c.  I recall Hari Kunzru's recent Red Pill, where the writer visits a foundation in Germany funded by the estate of a chemist who had formulated a brilliant white for just that purpose.

Naming things in that manner is perhaps profoundly democratic, in the Deweyan manner.  One of the oldest mosques here, dating from the 15th-16th c. had a madras nearby  which was formally named after its benefactor, but according to a caption in the museum, everyone called it the place with the lead roof, in comparison to the timber roofs hereabouts (much later shifted to ceramic tile).  Similarly, the fortresses overlooking the bend in the river (which must have been much larger in the past, as I can't imagine ships of any size navigating it) have formal names after their respective parts of the city, but are universally severally known by the color of the stone.  The people talking about it came up with the name, according to the logic of their conversation.  Sort of an unlikely Dewey/Habermas nexus there, perhaps.

In general, this is a very pleasant place to visit -- despite the niceness, there's also some deeply rooted ethics of hospitality.  (One doesn't often get the Kirk Douglas kebab, thanks to local vigilance.)  You can learn a lot from the micro-gestures of the locals in public.  One picks up subtle clues from the way the older women stand at the check-out counter, or shift positions when a stranger arrives on a path or to a bench.  I've muttered to myself on more than one occasion on the morning run in past visits, particularly in winter, that in NYC, people use sidewalks for getting from place to place, but in this part of the world people use sidewalks for fighting over the sidewalk.

But this has to do with the nature of the society.  When I stand aside to let someone pass on a narrow path, they might understand it as a meaningful gesture of deference and courtesy (one that at one time might have been legally compelled, as such things were in the deep South of America not long ago).  The visitor from abroad, however, sees it as a logical thing to do for two people on a crowded sidewalk.  The meaning for the visitor is different.  The one who sees the meaning as courtesy and deference makes the encounter more meaningful to them by enacting their role in the action of courtesy and deference, while the person who sees the meaning as being in efficiency usually expects the other to at least lean a bit to the other direction in reciprocal efficiency, and thereby make the encounter more meaningful.  As a result, there's sometimes a slight bump or a grazing of clothing.  (Which is where the mutual ethics of courtesy and hospitality come in, and it remains just a small stumble, and perhaps revelatory for all involved.)

The uniqueness of this city is that it preserves the strata of pre-Enlightenment, Enlightenment, and post-Enlightenment as living realities.  All are necessary to some degree, as those cities composed entirely of the avant-garde are coming to understand.  But this makes the reciprocal obligations of genuine hospitality and genuine courtesy essential.  (As for those only capable of niceness, they're generally well-off enough to afford an insulated vacation in which everyone around them is being paid rather well.)

The capital city of the last country I visited is unique in preserving the Roman and pre-Roman ruins as sites to be walked through beneath the 19th c. & modern office buildings, in addition to the subway stations.  That same stratified reality can also be present socially within a culture, but only when each of the levels is in fact a living reality, sometimes lightly bumping into the others, but carried along by genuine interest and care.

 Wandered down to the piazza in front of the national theatre (that term has a different meaning in these parts; many cities in a country can have a national theatre in them, though this is the principal one here, built for entertainments in 19th c. Austrian days) for a summertime outdoor free piece.  The local opera choir (whom I've heard at a similar event) and the ballet company (doing their Bolero, which I saw indoors as part of a Carmen/Bolero double bill some time ago).  The choral part had some local songs, but I kept struggling to hear the song itself beneath the conventions of modern choral singing/arrangement.  Much more in keeping with the style were the American bits, "NY, NY", "Wonderful World," etc.  And then the Bolero.  The company, from what I've seen is much more of a (skillful) modern ensemble, and while there was a bit of Jerome Robbins-type classicism, even though the movement were very broad and semiotic, it was basically a modern piece.  If Robbins had choreographed Rite of Spring from scratch, perhaps.  Very enjoyable.  

Oddly, from where I was standing, there was a clear echo from the buildings in back, and during the dance piece, it created a second snare line, just a fraction of a beat behind the first.  In any other city, it would have been interesting (and presumably a huge challenge for the dancers).  In this city, being between two drum lines, with the dancers holding firmly to the first was positively unheimlich.  

 Odd headlines about AI.  Apparently, the people building it say there's a ten percent chance it could wipe out the species within the next decade.  Suspicious double use of the order-giving, easy-thinking order of magnitude.  Why not a seven percent chance across the next twelve years?

The fundamental error of thinking on it seems to be thinking of it as a substance.  It's not a disease or a chemical.  It's a way of connecting existing, conventional machines so that they act more erratically in relation to human understanding, hopefully in a beneficent manner.  Quite simple.  If you don't have a handle on how the machines might act, don't connect them in that manner.

 Near the end of his life, Grotowski seemed to place a peculiar importance on not being divided, not having incompatible things and contradictions within himself.  We might very well contain multitudes, but it would be best, if the multitude had, as in Aristotle's metaphor of thought, changed from being a fleeing army, first by one person, and then more and more, stopping their flight and turning to look at something.

The basis of everything was the conservatory training, and whether it was the right part of the country or type of program for me isn't really a question worth asking.  Once you set off down that road, it is yours for good or for ill.  Then the decade or so trying to get a foothold in a very commercialized and compromising industry while keeping my hands clean.  Not in a moralistic sense, just knowing that I might need my hands to defend myself one of these days.  Heading off to law school wasn't a reversal, there was no farewell to the muse, which perhaps explains why I was once again the odd man out in the Midwest as a NYC method actor.  It served me well in the studies, unrelenting focus, memorization, etc. But it seemed that while I was looking for the marrow of things, the others were eyeing the dessert cart.  Then, after several years of rather dramatic struggle, a sort of last redoubt in the academy, and another misfortune in the Midwest, as it proved to be a very corrupt and craven faculty, so I just set myself up in the library for four years, read, wrote, and took philosophy, history and literature classes in other departments.  After my first philosophy coursework there, the professor took me aside and asked if I wanted to do some independent directed study in the following semester -- but even though the corrupt faculty and mediocre program in my own area was interposed between myself and the art, my stand there was firmly set in the theatre, which was my basis for being.  In the years since, I've read far more philosophy than the PhD candidates at even the most rigorous programs (there once was an Oxon. prof who greeted incoming students with the suggestion that they just spend the first year reading novels, and presumably observing their response), so I have a good grounding in that field.  But perhaps its right that after trying these three paths in the culture, the consolations of philosophy are apparent to me in another context.

Apparently, the pumpkin spice lattes have returned to Romanian Starbucks, perhaps the monoculture equivalent of the new beaujolais.  (And, as it's entirely artificial, it can be rolled out much earlier in answer to demand, not being tied to the pesky material reality of maturing wine.)  The Sbux there are a huge status symbol, apparently.  More expensive than midtown NYC, so I usually go to the local chains.  Contrastingly, the ones on the western (Eastern) part of the peninsula are much more reasonably priced and less crowded.  I apply the same logic to coffeehouses as I do to vegetable markets -- very scenic and an enjoyable atmosphere, but difficult for an outsider to determine which of the vegetables weren't grown with incredibly noxious chemicals.  Hence, I tend to trust the German supermarkets, on the theory that they're doing some supply-chain oversight.  And make my own Balkan coffee to enjoy in a thermos in the park.

McDonalds initially thrived in the US because it was the only place a traveller wasn't at the mercy of unknown kitchens in strange cities.  The ethic of hospitality runs deep here, but given the unknown hygiene of back-room kitchens and all of the political anger about, I tend to bring my own food on the journey.

Interesting, one of the last presidents of the old Republic being laid to rest in the city today  Apparently the last head of the collective presidency whose tenure was entirely held under the old communist party of the Republic.  

I practice a learned incapacity as to these things, and am only an amateur tourist, but the layers are interesting. Andric was a diplomat for the kingdom, and then apparently became a bit of a figurehead under the republic.  Tito apparently stands for the proposition of the synthesis of peoples, and apparently not all nationalists are all that fond of him.  (The old Serbian forces whose name is now an ethnic slur were offered amnesty in the peace after the second world war, which is perhaps slightly different from being merged into the new country.)  But Tito and the ubiquitous Walter are apparently generally popular in several of the old national capitals.

While the doctrinaire tilt of the Republic was perhaps regrettable (being not aligned apparently allowed for a bit of a lean to the east), the scientific theory of government was perhaps the elixir that synthesized the political structures of the different nations.  

The bio of the fellow being laid to rest today is interesting, at least from what I've gotten from a quick web trawl.  Gentlemanly fellow, described as coming from one of the old Bey families.  And then an ardent communist, with a red star on his death notice.  Many layers -- classicism, scientific governance, the old courtly sensibilities.  

Perhaps part of the point is to find a theory of working that allows sufficient space for the transcendentally human to emerge and guide things.  The doctrinaire commissar of the old novels, like his fascist counterpart, has no space to think, none of his own leaven, only that of his pharisees.  

Looking up random bits of history, I'm struck by how many of the wealthy citizens of past centuries in this city are described as scholars and poets.  Perhaps it was part of the old courtly ways, an obligation of the nobility to practice poetry and scholarship, as opposed to the career-oriented vocation of present times.  Instead of seeing this as a cheapening of the art, perhaps we see it as an indication -- if you are free enough to  make poetry and pursue scholarship, there is something about humanity that makes it a good idea to do so.

And then, when you find yourself among the pharisees of your time, there's a measure of grace to be had.

 If the material prosperity of a healthy preponderance is sufficient for democratic legitimacy, we might need to think carefully about certain elements of the theory of democracy.  In the context of industrial prosperity, there are an awful lot of ways to ensure the material prosperity of a healthy preponderance, and it can easily be accomplished while any number of bad people are getting away with any number of bad things.  

Admittedly, though, the historical practice has been to concentrate political influence among a much smaller circle, and then ensure that they are even more prosperous.  So the question becomes whether widening (and heavily mediating) this circle of influence, with the consequent broadening of the distribution of resources, is better, worse, or perhaps just not good enough.

Fairly certain that there were a good bit of environmental toxins around the last Humble Quarters.  Bulgarian vacation property, studio, foot of the mountains in a ski resort area.  Quite popular with domestic tourists in August, as it turned out.  Loud party outside the windows until 5AM during my last night there, though there were some quiet stretches as well.  Very inexpensive, apparently a broker in a third country handling it for the local developer.  Woke many mornings absolutely exhausted.  Air unbreathable at occupancy, took a few days for the chemical scent to lift. And then the 4 mile walk up the mountain with the groceries, though I knew about that in advance, and even looked forward to it.

And yet.

The purpose of the visit was the mountains, so for all the difficulties (no washing machine, etc.), the proximity was sufficient.  The way in which the mountains were good didn't bear relation to the ways in which the place was difficult.  Much like the difficulties with the local grocery in the town before, it was simply in the foreground, only possibly obscuring the more full image in the background.  

Much the same here.  Decent place, almost everyone very friendly, and I've wandered the Balkans enough that I don't take the occasional discouraging word amiss. (And, on those rare occasions, the worst of it invariably is associated with an American accent.  We genuinely don't send our best folks to these climes.)  But the way in which I'm paying attention to this place has nothing to do with the usual modern creature comforts or their absence, or the social niceties, vel non.  The most egregious thing could happen to me here, and my consciousness would still be in the large-frame world on a timescale of centuries.  The only thing such distractions could accomplish would be obscuring the view.  The things that could possibly go wrong simply bear no relation to the good presently at hand.

Small things could go wrong.  The local culture is at a bit of a crossroads, so even existing here is a bit ad hoc.  But if you traverse the time, not by getting away with what you can, but by doing the best that can reasonably be done and not allowing the larger picture to be obscured, then -- sufficient is the day.  Inshallah.  Which is, being translated, God willin' and the crick don't rise.

Grand reopening of the museum at the local Islamic foundation (trust-busting having been thankfully unknown in Turkish circles in the 16th c., resulting in many schools and water fountains).  Free admission, and therefore I was there.  If you've never seen the strongbox of a 16th c. Turkish potentate, it's quite impressive.  Folks in town for the local security conference would likely swoon.  Interesting curation, good mix of the quotidian and the large-scale.  A modernist 1979 mosque that the national government might have had something to do with looked very impressive in photographs.  The photo of the installation of the local religious head at around that time shows him signing the bureaucratic documents, rather than preaching or holding court.  Tito's compact with the peoples.  (And there's a fellow off to the side who to my amateur eye looks like Andric, but almost certainly not, as he was in Belgrade retirement at the time.)

Tapestry that rested on the tomb of the founder of the religion accorded a place of honor, apparently a significant cultural possession.  All of the holy books appeared to be in Arabic-eque (Persian, Turkish, etc.) no codices in the exhibits in the vernacular, and certainly not the 19th/early 20th c. Cyrillic form.  Apparently a classicism that required a sense of distance.

Emphasis on collaboration with the West -- a few photos of the local head, at his installation, processing past the onlookers on the arm of the Austrian/ A-H authorities.  A permission given to the Franciscans in the 15th c. on behalf of Catholics generally is described, perhaps correctly, as a foundational document of enlightenment religious freedom.    

Interesting capsule biographies of the many scholars who have used it as their base over the centuries.  Individual souls are the point of these grand schemes.

There's a production of Loves Labours set in this sensibility that's still percolating in my mind.  Matched perhaps with a postwar Much Ado, in the manner of the recent London staging.

There's something about the language-based elements of the digital age that causes us to see these ewers and lamps and other bric-a-brac with decorative text on them a bit differently, perhaps.  These are social practices, reinforced by a sort of code, programming the mind through text.  But unlike computers, the point isn't running the program.  The point is lifting up the life so that the individual mind and spirit can be freed.  Hence these social compacts and compulsions, and their (largely textual) social transmission.

 Having visited this city in winter, I'm used to the smell of the toxic brew in the air, especially during periods of temperature inversion between the hills.  Simply price in the cost of an air filter to the rental, spend as much time as possible near it, and when outdoors, mask up with a finely spun cotton weave.  (I started using shemaghs during Covid, even before masks went into wide production, and kept on with the Jedi vibe until it inarguably had become a political symbol.)

I'm mystified, though, as to why it hovers over areas in the old town during summer.  It's not the fires in the distance, and it's not the industry.  But this place is very far from California.  My first place here was across from the pharmaceuticals plant, and in addition to the occasional clouds (when you locate a plant at the bottom of the valley, presumably for rail access, smokestack height gives you diminishing returns), on one or two occasion, particulates in the forms of caplets came down.

So, it's not California (continental purity), or Germany (strict regulation), but if you keep vigilant as to exposure, it's still fairly idyllic.  

My last two Humble Quarters were extremely humble, for many reasons, so I'm consciously balancing that out with one or two stays that are closer to the usual median (well below US, and also well below tourist averages in the regions -- when you can look across many countries to find the most logical accommodations, you can usually find a discount or two).  If you book a string of extremely spartan quarters (no washing machine, etc.), the travelling conditions can start to deteriorate, and the ability to work suffers.  Still hewing to a strict budget -- the quintessential 'tomato tourist.'  

(But none of those this week, as the other vegs were on sale.  Might splurge on some cheap cheese next weekend.) 

As a general rule, I try to avoid politically contested ground, several species of which, this being the Balkans, are close at hand.  Not necessarily because of the occasional missile attacks or subsequent passport difficulties, but because the conflict clouds my own status there, and a visitor changes the calculus of any contest.

Religiously contested ground within a stable political order is another question.  Religion has both its political aspect (re-ligare) and its personal aspect.  In its political aspect, it is subordinated to ethnic or political identity.  A culture may be based in faith, but exists first in itself and as itself.

More concretely, in the personal aspect, if you think of faith as a sort of ladder that each person carries around with them, it's a bit of a reach to think that sabotaging other people's ladders is a thing.  Also, if you look closely at the worn spots in the wood, you can tell which ladders have been used, and which are just for ornament.  And then there's the matter of all of those folks walking around without ladders, even for use in their own homes.

I've honestly worked, attempting to do three different things, and encountered some rather peculiar difficulties in my own country and among my own folks.  At the moment, I'm a bit far away from my usual haunts, but I have to assume that there is a purpose to that, which is to say, the forces that have brought me to these places are associated with concomitant forces to which I also bear relation, and can encounter.  Watchmen of the house of God, not partisans of its factions.

Somewhat predictably, the head-feint towards the (bad wines, with all for one, initially) results in the portentous Saturday thinkpiece in the Times on American decline.  More interestingly, the review of the Roy Cohn biography seems especially bare-knuckled and lurid, with some usually disfavoured lines of attack.  The new politics.

I see with some amusement that the pro tennis players are complaining about all of the marihuana smoke and oblivious influencers in NYC.  Elsewhere, visitors to Newcastle are complaining about being surrounded by all that coal.

The age of corporatism, and those taking advantage of it.  A predictable result of the Woodstock to Wall Street generation.  

Beware the children of the winners of great wars.

Sometimes it occurs to me that if I had been Jewish, or more Midwestern in my outlook, I might be a multimillionaire, very powerful lawyer now.  But I didn't go to law school to become a multimillionaire.  After I transferred law schools due to the professorial shennanigans, I ran into some folks from the old school, and as the new school, although in the same tier and in NYC rather than the hinterlands, was ranked a bit lower than the old, their condescension was palpable.  An uncanny moment that helped to teach me that my ways were different from their games.

If you listen to the gossip of the folks surrounding me, who have always surrounded me, you'll likely not think that much of me, but if you take the work on its own terms, you might find it to be worthwhile.

That much for a brief apologia -- απο-λογοσ.  A brief word directed to the present ways of speaking and thinking about things.

Onward.

One of the few times I've been unable to refrain from commenting on the Times/Sunday Times website was when the Japanese lunar lander ended up making a hard landing on the surface of the moon, upside-down.  Underneath the photograph of the event (made by an adjacent probe), I left a simple caption.  "Made it."

It's good to be back at the ancient caravanserai capital in the mountains of Bosnia.  Setup on the Humble Quarters is now complete, and I'm setting up the tasks for the coming weeks.

Made it.

Increasingly aware that all the corruption I've encountered has been in the context of general industrial prosperity in the West.  So the malicious and false things go on, in the easy tenor of breezy conversation, and eveyone thinks that doing things in that manner must be right, because there's so much prosperity about.  

If the world had more faith in ideas, this could be corrected, but part of the Faustian pact was choosing to believe that ideas are inherently illusory or meaningless, and the only things that mattered were what worked.  (Though I've never seen an explanation as to how that last part could be tested without bringing ideas back into the picture by the back door.)

Tempore, mores, we have no bananas, &c., &c.

Costly unforced error of a momentary wrong button-push (after deliberately pausing to think it through)  during afternoon setup.  <$20, but on this budget, a Jackson is a non-insignificant matter.  I have rued for hours, days and weeks missing a classical concert or theatre show that I really wanted to witness,  because the tariff was in the neighborhood of $20.  

In fairness, after a very grueling three day journey.  At one point in the afternoon, I simply sort of slumped over.  I'd like to think that I made a conscious and deliberate choice to do so, but I'm not entirely sure about that.  

It's really the sort of world in which if you don't have private money, your life is made so difficult that having private money is thought to be a necessity.  Of course, if everyone had private money, the economy couldn't function, as most people with sufficient means simply wouldn't work.  With each passing day, Hoover's "square deal" seems a better desideratum.

The adventures in Balkan groceries continue.  Not nearly as bad as the country to the south, in which I had to forcibly extricate myself from what seemed to be a criminal conspiracy after trying to purchase milk and eggs at the most reputable store in the town -- here, just many missing prices, shriveled vegetables,  and one or two rude folks, though most are very nice and helpful.  It's not Germany, and that's perhaps the problem -- being non-German becomes an act of cultural self-definition.  But the Japanese, the Jedi, and the folks on the planet Vulcan all run very efficient supermarkets.  There's something to be said for having models of virtue that are more distant.

cc'd from the wordpress site:

Safe arrived in the ancient Caravan-Serai/National Capital in the mountains of Bosnia, and waiting to set up the Humble Quarters.

Was excellent to return to Belgrade, if only for an afternoon’s glimpse. After the traditional tall Americano in my Starbucks office across from the national parliament, walked down to Studentski Park and spent some quality time with Henry James, and then back up King Alexander street after dark, with the scent of the popcorn vendors on a warm summer evening, annd hopped on the tram to the bus staiton at Zuk’s Spomonik…

…at which point the tram went out of service at St. Mark’s, due to the evening’s protests. So I double-timed it to the bus stop sideways from the Parliament to catch the bus to the train station (also the same one as to the House of Flowers/Pebbles, I think), with the thought of then hopping onto a commuter train across the river, but that arrival board kept spinning in the wrong direction, as perhaps it was going out of service as well. At this point, I discarded all modern mass-transit conveniences, and set out for Brankov Most, as the walk would be at least theoretically possible, if I ran for part of it. (The luggage storage at the bus station has changed their hours, and so I was carrying the knap filled with clothing, computers, cooking pans, etc.) At the bridge, logic dictated that I catch the first bus across, as all buses were going across the river, and the first one that I hopped on happened to be going right to the bus station. Deo gratias.

And so, then a mysteriously long bus ride into the mountains of Bosnia, and then a morning arrival at the capital city. (Where the theatre season starts up a month before other cities in the region.)

The Catechism says that to come to Christianity, one has to first feel the presence of God, or at least something there, in nature and existence as a whole. Then, the God of Abraham emerges in history, and this is the second step. Finally, the events that unfold within that history describe the Christian mystery. I went to the mountains, and I am now in a city where the calls to prayer echo out every evening.

There’s a divinity that shapes our itineraries, rough hew them as we may.

 Overnight in Sofia, wandered through the Palace of Culture late in the evening, a fairly large crowd.  Sofia is a city surprisingly easy to navigate by the names of subway stops, at least in my limited experience of a few breief visits.  The eponymous subways top took me right there, just as "Teatralna" had landed me in a good neighborhood last time.

There seems to be a bit more borderlands intransigence than there was last time.  Perhaps the heat of summer, perhaps the ongoing war with a million individual tragedies in the north.  Small things, all possibly down to miscommunication.  Subway clerk sold and charged me for a 24-hour pass, but apparently rang it up as a one-day, which is a Euro cheaper, but leaves you without a subway pass when racing to the bus terminal in the morning.  (Easily solved by fishing a Euro coin out of my pocket -- always retain a bit of bakshish in the local currency until you're past the border.)  Finding the right gate at the bus terminal involved two quick, wrong answers in confident terms before the bus driver set me right.  Had EES biometrics re-done for some reason when leaving Bulgaria, and they asked me my destination, which I've never encountered when leaving a country before.  On the Serbian side, about a third of the stamp, including the year, was off the page, and when I went back to request the correct stamping, the refusal was rather peremptory.  The southlands have always been a bit less friendly to the USA types, with the exception of a hard 30% who are very nice, many of whom are involved in the tourism industry.

The smells of Sofia in summertime are nothing to sneeze your nose at.  Even just walking through the tunnels after two showers and clean clothes at the hotel leaves a patina on you.  Belgrade is a noticeably cleaner city.  It's like going from Jersey City to the Upper East Side.  Even mow, many hours later, I think there's still a bit of a patina on the travelling clothes.

After a few years of pushing hard on these journeys, with overnight on the mode of travel or in the station between travels, even a $40 hole in the wall (cheapest international chain) feels like the Waldorf Astoria.  A shower in the evening, clean clothes for the night, a shower in the morning, clean clothes for the day.  Rather like that system.

Perhaps much of this has to do with Christianity, a transactional and commerce-oriented faith -- and a something other than the determined simplicity of the faith to the south.  It raises the tone of the interpersonal contact, like the rising reed at the beginning of Gershwin's Symphony in Blue.  This is not a criticism -- for the most part, for all the clean, wealthy cities, we lack that insistent simplicity in the presence of God, and when things eventually come together, we will very much need that from them, and perhaps they will need some things from us.  For the nonce, Belgrade and Budapest are the two lighthouses on this side of the peninsula, and Christianity has much to do with this.  That said, one doesn't just jump into the fight to defend the flag closest to one's own.  These are ethnic wars between cultures based in religion, so in this post-Westphalian world, we should be absolutely neutral in foreign wars and entanglements.  (But try telling that to the cadre currently running things from NYC on behalf of Foggy Bottom.)

Preserving the doctrine of neutrality against the ratings-seeking cable news version of the world hasn't gone well recently.  Be the peace.

Belgrade is chaotic, as I had caught rumors of, much disorienting construction on the one or two routes I've traversed in the last few hours.  But very good to be here for a bit, before transisting to the east.  Folks seem much friedlier than in the last country.

Happenstance put me off the bus to the center on the side St. Mark's, which has figured in a few of my visits.  I decided that this was the entry point, then, and stood in front for a bit.  And just above the architrave in the front, a mosaic of the fellow himself, writing determinedly on a scroll of enormous length.

Point taken.

 "Hamlet is Bosnia."

Kenneth "Thin-Lips" Branaugh, A Midwinter's Tale

 Decollation of the Baptist -- the depths of late summer.  Bulgarian techno/dance music blaring from the buildings and adjacent apartments, stepping out in the balcony risks a lungful of atomized vegetable oil, etc.  Salome and the eternal return.

Perhaps only my sense of things, but the immensity of the mountains and the nature of the social culture here are a very, very odd mix.   Still trying to get a handle on how the basic social nature here fits into the scheme of things.  Very distinct from the Romanian/Transylvanian vibe.  Southlands.

Think of it this way. You are in Paris, and in a good frame of mind.  You feel the historicity of the place, you understand the motives for these palaces of stone, there is a good tone to the afternoon, and the weather is excellent.  You happen upon a street painter painting the river, and given your awareness of the moment, you can read the totality of your experience in the painting on the easel, so you purchase it and take it home.  

The mistake is to think that the afternoon existed for the acquisition of a painting.  It is a breadcrumb, and one doesn't savor breadcrumbs.  It is a marker for your experience, and an incentive to experience.

Much of modern logic would say that the painter, and you, and the city existed for the material purpose of the painter's creation, but that is Gollum's gold, not the good stuff from the river.

Experience necessarily involves the totality of experience -- we don't remember just a specific sensory intuition -- the specific sensory intution is a breadcrumb, from which we assemble the totality of experience as ourselves, as memory.

If reducing the high purposes of life to the mundane experience had by billions all over the world right now seems a bit of a let-down, then you might have gone through a wrong gate upstream, and carried from it the assumption that the everyday is already known and therefore unspectacular.  Everything we will ever have or know or perceive comes through that door.  Beware of reductionism in that regard.

Here ends the lesson, as there's coffee to be had.

If you have young and fit folks, but due to the structure of the society, they're largely forced to do manual labor or other such things, becoming obese and unattractive can become a power move.  The genesis of the pasha, perhaps. These things can be recognized and re-balanced in a society, -- necessarily using television, though that's usually the blunderbuss tactic.

Perhaps its about the notion of perfection being stronger than the notion of power.

 Feast of Augustine.  Tolle, lege.  Apparently heard in Milan.  Sweet ambrosia.

Take up and read.  Very important to remember that these are two distinct, and distinctly necessary, things.

 Again the peculiar morning exhaustion.  Not complaining, just noting the fact.  It's good to make explicit note of where such things happen.  Excellent run yesterday.  Made the goal of running straight to a certain lookout point with a wooden platform.  On principle, continued on a bit past it.

Lawrence (T.E., not he of the plumed serpent) said that the Arab cultures first noticed him and took him into their confidence when they noticed that he was recording everything, including his inner states, in his notebook.  Of course, he was likely working a second job that required a bit of annotation, but the point stands.  It's fascinating the way he's appropriated by folks (pace Said) seeking mystic widom, when the whole gist of the fellow was that this was an incredibly literate Fellow of an Oxon. college, who kept thinking.  Distant Christminster can save.  (Or perhaps there should be a comma after that first word.)  

Current humble quarters basically the equivalent of a states-side $40 motel room with kitchenette within walking range of mountains that go above the treeline.  Which was basically the purpose.  And perhaps foreseeably, the reading and writing dropped off without a proper table in the room.  Still trying to fashion a way of working that relies on none of these appurtenances, but after being raised in a certain culture and in a certain way, I still, chameleon-like, fashion the existence to the room, rather than the room to the existence.  

Perhaps I should start transforming the space.  Make it as close as possible to the lounges in an old college.  Henry James seemed most taken by the private interiors of Paris, the bric-a-brac, the draperies, rather than the monuments and the art galleries.   The space is what draws us into existence.  We have our being by living within this inner cube of the not-I.

At any rate, the text, however electronic, is at hand... So, to it.

 To market, to market, for dry goods, milk and soy milk.  Home again,home again, as that wwas logically the next place to head to.

Walking everywherein the heat here can leave one a bit ripe at times.  All the locals have cars, of course, but there's no local bus service to speak of, and even walking alongside the roads is a bit dicey at times.  I suspect I'll be remembered in this town, if at all, as the slightly ripe large American fellow of slavic ancestry who was always porting rucksacks of food and such.  But the views are quite spectacular, even going up the four mile hill with the ruck filled with soy milk and such.

Much of the last decade has been about accomplishing the necessary work with as much grace as possible, and without the usual bare minimum.  And that's roughly the hierarchy of those needs/ambitions, as well.  If material prosperity ever does come, and I say this as someone with a first-tier US law degree, it will likely be the result of something I've managed to do, not the general industrial prosperity of the race or my social situation.

 Excellent run yesterday, if a bit later in the AM than I'd have liked -- a bit of pedestrian-dodging en route.  (Bringing to mind the notion that Tolkein had based the hobbits on the undergradutes wandering the campus.) But then utterly unrewarding and maddening things until well past 1AM.  

The first moment after noon is frustrating.

 For reasons that make a bit of sense if you think about them a while, the east of the Balkans (colloquially, not geographically) is the Western Balkans, and the west is (for the most part, saving influences of seafaring and the South) the East.  Ovid was exiled to Varna, as once the roads had been built and the sea routes made familiar, the east was the Western bound, and I suppose vice versa.  

An ancient trend -- it's deeply woven into the languages.  Hardly an expert, but it seems that in the east, the diacriticals are there to make a phonic transposition from Cyrillic noises, while in the east, they're more organic to the language.  Interestingly, more than once, though no examples come to mind, I've expected to find a shared word from Latin, and encountered it from modern Romance, presumably Italian.  

And every other year, the orchestras of Europe troop down to the country to the east for a major international festival.  Not this year, as it's a competition year, but there is at least an opening concert.  Having attended concert in the room, I remember the acoustics, and listening to the first symphony of the national composer (whose statue I had a brief hello with most mornings during the run, as it was next to a very large intersection, and I had to wait for the light), the horns seemed perfectly calibrated to the warm acoustic of the former equestrian hall.  

When you're genuinely making art, as opposed to puting together entertainments for the machine, place matters. In a literary context, this is where Auerbach ends his long story of mimesis (written in peripatetic exile)  -- Mann, and a specific region of Germany.  The stories we tell are not a figment of the place, but you can't make worthwhile art as if you aren't in the place where you are.  It doesn't bound experience, or even condition experience, but it does provide a ground for it.

 

 

 Up past midnight... trireme... tempore, mores...  we have no bananas, &c, &c....

 Rested yesterday after the long walks in the heat on Friday.  The tension in this visit is that I'm in a place that I'd like to explore, and that seems to be giving me every indication that I should explore it, but the number of days that I can spend wandering the mountains is constrained by both the desire to keep my mind focused and productive, and the body slowly healing from the adventures of the past year.

 Arguably, one of the more significant effects of Enlightenment rationalism is in consigning everything outside of itself -- literally, every other notion in existence -- to romanticism and historicism.  More specifically, that just these notions and ways of thinking are what are to stand for rationality.  Even just looking at it in terms of legal doctrines, many that found a place on the historicist agenda were thought to be very rational at the time they were made.

And now the present order of things similarly consigns all thoughts outside itself to history, which is to say, the story that it intends to tell.

.....

Reading Foldenyi's history of melancholy.  I recall reading his Dostoyevski/Hegel at a coffeehouse on the rebuilt large stone bridge in Mostar, arguably one of the centers of effective world-history in recent times.  (The bridge was bathed in blue light at the time in celebration of the EU accession.)  Surprised to learn that he's a theatre scholar, sort of in the Robertson Davies Anglo-Canadian correlative, perhaps.  Learning that, the first thing that I did was to start reading his primary sources.  Theatres make plays, and theatre scholars are sometimes similarly very useful in pointing out useful things that they themselves attempt to serve, rather than surpass.  (I'm certain that the Great Scott had a big hand in this text.)

(And I say this as a scholar and  theatre person who was given a Robertson Davies novel as a vade mecum by the head of the masters conservatory.)

 From far afield, I'm wondering if the Cantab sociology crise has something to do with the time-and-motion-based schools of British sociology coming into conflict with the awakened and aggrieved factions now running the American humanities faculties for the most part.  If the appointment was a sop to a certain faction, perhaps it was more directly to the political faction than to individual scholars who happened to be classed as being within traditionally disfavored racial minorities.  The people, the advocates themselves, prevailed -- rather than the point that they were making.

I honestly think that the problem is that the pragmatic way of being an academic is to do and say the things that gain you political popularity, rather than using political popularity as a tool in effecting some changes in the structures of thought that have come down to us, and translating these structures of thought so they can be approached by the minds now living.  The point of doing this, of having these institutions, is what used to be called the deposit of faith -- the intellectual tradition.  As Heid said, ~the work of a philosopher is stating the same thing as has been said for thousands of years, and the ability to do so in the present is the substance of intellectual progress.

Random corrigenda, cont'd.:   The passport-sized booklets being waved around at the curtain calls in the country to the W/nw during the recent student-led protests were not in fact passports.  Some leveret-chasing down rabbit holes with artificially intelligent Gurgling last night revealed that they were academic indexes.  (As it is multiple physical objects, indexes, not indices.  Indices would be indecent.)  Apparently, in this country (and in nearby others, perhaps), the students carry around a small album within which each professor, at the end of a course, manually inscribes the course name, the grade, and their own signature.  And the students carry this booklet around for the rest of their lives as academic citizens, using it to establish identity.  (Obviously, the professoriate is much more respected there, and the entrance into same is more carefully guarded by the society at large.  I can imagine my own version, in which a few pages would need to be ripped out -- not for the grades, but for the traces of the individuals.)

Some interesting minutiae as to their use in curtain calls:  apparently, the visuals were more important than the status of the book as a personally meaningful device, as I noticed that they seemed to be haphazardly handed out in the wings, and occasionally, presumably when the count was wrong, two people would hold up a single book.  Also, the leading actor at one of the theatres made it clear that he didn't take one, but enthusiastically applauded the others -- perhaps not a university type.  

Apparently a long-time icon of the protest movements in this country -- in fairness, to a wandering reine tor, they looked very much like passports.

--------------------

Interesting -- on the stone mountains, where there is an indentation running down the peak that becomes a stream or rain drainage, where the land levels out a bit, the alluvial soil deposit at the base takes on a circular shape.  (It naturally extends downhill in the center, and is bounded by the angled indentation on the uphill side.)  This forms a natural circle beneath a stone rise on one side that would allow sufficient seating for a large crowd.  Perhaps the most primitive form of theatre, with the ritual altar placed at the center of the circle?  

 Long though scenic walk down the highway to a nearby town, and then the narrow-gauge rail to the grocery town, and the now-legendary four mile uphill grocery ruck at sunset.  Long day.  Quite warm.

 

 Despite all of the political changes and wars of the last few centuries, there still still a sense here, underneath everything, that the lowland pashas still claim to govern the mountains.  I don't mean this in a pejorative sense, although that's a thread in the culture ("corn (wheat) eaters" is the traditional insult for the lowlanders in the plain in the country to the north, who are bounded to the north by mountains that I'm also quite taken by.)  I have seen very skillful locals with good souls on the mountains here, but this isn't a mountain culture.  It's very sedentary, the wealthier people tend to the corpulent, and the popular music sounds Turkish to my untrained ear.

One interesting thing about the old 19th c. Austrian (and then, post-compromise A-H) architecture in the largely Muslim country to the west/nw is that it has a Moorish inflection rather than a Turkish inflection -- you see the latter more clearly in the indigenous mosques.  There is a story that the locals in Sarajevo (famously resistant to central authority--regional governors of the Sublime Porte were only allowed to spend a certain number of hours within its bounds, and that's in a country where the rural folks would often rip up roads in the night to prevent the easy commerce with the center), when the Archduke arrived for his infamous visit, were very proud of their new town hall, but as they stood there on its steps, he simply went up and down the line lambasting them for the lack of security, given the first attempt to kill him in the morning.  And then, later that afternoon...  Which is to say -- always make a point of admiring the local architecture.  You'll notice things.

The Balkans are subject to four winds.  The wind from the south reaches to the primitive puritanism of the old Turkish empire, brought into the conversation by the reformers early in the last century (there is a peculiar memorial to Ataturk outside one of theatres in Bucharest -- the "8" in one of years is sideways, for some reason), and through that glass, past the weary warriors of central Asia, one glimpses the classicism of distant Arabia.

 Piecework again until well past midnight.  Rowed the trireme to shore, and then collapsed and slept in the dank shadows of the quay.  (Which, in the empirical event, might have appeared to be listening to a tape of the 6PM news from radio 4 while preparing some pasta, and then collapsing on the couch, but the inner essence governs.)

Resurgam.

Again the immense fatigue upon waking. It has happened several times in this apartment, though possibly a function of the long recovery from the winter. (The innards are still not back to full functioning.  In addition to the short wanders, I've gone on a few long (~ 12h) hikes into the mountains on this visit, but I've been absolutely useless for a day or two afterwards.)  

Rested a few more hours, despite the romantic notion of a run at dawn up the mountain on (local) Transfiguration. 

Staying in each place for only a month or so on these travels is also a means of limiting risk -- many unknowns, and these places can be a bit odd at times.  I'm here for the mountains, and even though I've tried to strictly limit my other interactions with the local commerce and culture, several difficulties still managed to come up with the local sensibilities.  A single travelling American of Polish/German ancestry stands out a bit hereabouts, even if avowedly and obviously a peacenik civilian.

Onward.

 Eve of the Orthodox Transfiguration.  Apparently serves in folk culture as the first shift to autumn.  The sky changes three times, traditionally people stop swimming in lakes and rivers.  Divination at midnight, of course. Holidays are always a good time to try to see things another way.  More empirically: Lammastide -- first loaf, and the harvest to run through the next month.  (Lammastide, astronomically speaking, was apparently precisely eleven days ago, so things seem to be right on course.)

To market, to market, to buy soy milk and musleii; Home again home again, because that was logically the next place to walk to.

Rucking 7L of liquid and a week's worth of dry goods four miles up a hill is no small feat. A largely unnoticed feat, true, but not small.  I remember when I thought it oppressive in that first conservatory apartment in Cleveland to carry the groceries and water much less than a mile on flat ground from the co-op.  Even stopped to rest.  Similarly, the Wal-mart about a mile and a half from the last apartment at the university in Illinois.  We should grow more capable with time.  I know that it's true of my academic work -- when I look back at what I was reading and working on in Illinois, and consider my present agenda, not only has several years of reading given me much more of a background, I'm also quicker to pick up a broader view in a certain area.  I've grown more capable of doing things.

Even in cases of immene adversity, like this past winter, I was able to handle much more capably than when it had happened a few years before.  I was afraid beforehand, remembering it, and it almost killed me (not an exaggeration), but the same thing that was my fear was also my strength in the event, because it was the force with which I met the event.  'Geranimo,' and all that.

Apparent increase in capacity has generally generally the case since  I left the childhood home -- as an undergraduate, I was largely incapable of cooking, housekeeping, etc.  But one picks up how to do things, and if you spend enough evenings cooking with people who know what they're doing, it becomes second nature.  I couldn't imagine using a book, or the promptings of a television.  It would be like not singing while on a long walk.  

 A brief anecdote, to establish that I'm not imagining the difficulties with the local business sensibilities.  I was looking for a certain business in town, and I asked a similar shop if they knew where it was.  They shrugged and said no.  I walked out the door, turned to my left and there it was, three doors down, and marked with a big sign.  And then I went to that shop, and they turned out not to have the one thing that I was looking for, and hadn't a clue when it might be in again, though it's not an obscure product.  Borderlands.  An inherent intransigence.

But I have fixins for meals, mountains to walk on and look at, and books, albeit via electronic copies.  Enough for the nonce.  Onward.

 The real danger in the suppressed meritocracy isn't necessarily the event itself, but the notion that it is a good thing.  Beyond virtue.  Pragmatic.  Those roots will take some untangling.

 The high moment of all of these recent peregrinations was undoubtedly the Comedie Francaise performance that night in Budapest last year.  A close second was the Noh performance in Transylvania.  I am travelling through the Southlands, but I am a creature of the North.

Perhps not the relation I have in my own country, but certainly true in this context.

Interesting -- a small rock formation in a river in Budapest, apparently extending no further out into the river than the height of a person, has apparently been known for centures as "starvation rock,"visible when the Danube was perilously low  A city of millions, for centuries, knew this one small place as holding a meaningful sign.  Not every sign need be massive, or massively reproduced.

---.

Interesting article in the media from a nearby countyr -- a basketabll coach moving to America, as he was tired of the local corruption, of having to have powerful friends in the city and to keep in touch with them if he expected to keep his job.  Yes, well.  The glimmer of truth to that, in the present generally non-meritocratic context, is that when you cross borders, there is a brief time of objectivity, when your degrees and levels of experience themselves are meaningful.  But that only lasts a short while, especially in an interconnected world.

The model for Shakespeare's Polonius was Cecil, Lord Burghley.  Old-fashioned fellow, always did arithmetic in Roman numerals.  He once remarked that to be without a friend at court was to be like a hop without a pole.  Now, I'm not saying that dukedoms should be awarded by competitive examination, but we should be more aware of the fact that the general industrial prosperity has slackened the inherent checks on those sort of things.  Any given fellow will do, for the most part.  

Read the old books.  Focus your mind.  Cultivate your own garden.

 Borderlands.  An essential intransigence.