Everything in me is focused on the absolute necessity of getting away from this place, these circles of influence, and this culture. Every iota of my being. Every strength. Every thought.
Ducked out to the Chrism Mass at St. Pat's. Found an out of the way bench in the quasi-transept under an image of O.L. of Guadalupe. Was thinking about the historicity of the church, and what it meant that the Christian sacraments were being celebrated in a post-Enlightenment city. Amid the rabid fundamentalism found in dark, primitive places like the television national news and the Pentagon.
It just seems that the society is increasingly dominated by imitation and repetition, and there's very little serious thought about the way things are. We are in the midst of the technological and civilizational fruits of the Enlightenment, which had a lot to do with Christian notions. Hospitals, skyscrapers, planned suburbs. Very different from some other nations and cultures. Christian nations are generally more economically developed, all else being equal. (Oil wealth makes for some exceptions.) Part of that is the historical accident of being in Europe and America, but still.
And yet, there are some rather bad things going on in these Western cities.
Thoughts that went through my head as I sat under the image of the BVM, remembering hearing the calls to prayer as I sipped kefir and read philosophy in Bosnia.
Part of acknowledging the historical reality is keeping the door open to the other world. Repeated ritual can become rote, or just matter for comforting repetition. But this is where the rift is for us. And if, even in the churches, we begin to think that the present reality is all there is, we've lost.
Heidegger was walking with Arendt in the mountains. They stopped in to a small Catholic chapel. As they left, Heidegger genuflected. Arendt turned to him, very surprised, and asked why. (He had long been lapsed from the faith.) He thought for a moment, and then said deprecatingly, "Well, one must take the historical view of things."
These are events extending far through time. Mind-independent realities that have shaped nations and millions of individual souls. If it seems humdrum in the worship multipurpose room, look out the window (the one that John XXIII cracked open) at the centuries of the past, and the strange and sometimes deeply problematic forms that have resulted from them.
This is what we would be in the midst of, if we attempted to ground ourselves in a true understanding of the time. But it's much easier to watch television.
Midtown does seem at times a de facto gulag panopticon. Ubiquitous surveillance, glowering private security folks, etc. A wealthy city, and all have the freedom of the city, but only some have the freedom of the wealth.
But the difficulty isn't in the structure of things, or the economic system. It's in the way things are thought about. That's what's gone bad. Without religion, the spirit has faltered.
Without a vision, the people perish. A vision is an understanding of things -- cf. the beginning of the Metaphysics. Without a way of thinking about the way things are, individual people lose their existence.
By analogy: the dissident has survived the winter, walking the streets of Moscow. But he knows that even though it is easier to survive when the days are warmer, in the same manner, the society around him is coming back to life, and if he isn't able to make it out of the country, he might not survive the hostile culture in its floreat. The extraordinary challenge that he survived was a physical one. The danger that impends is rooted in the spirit of the place.
“Holy Mary, woman of the third day, grant us the certainty that, in spite of all, death will no longer hold sway over us; that the injustices of peoples are numbered; that the flashes of war are fading into the twilight; that the sufferings of the poor are breathing their last. And grant, finally, that the tears of all the victims of violence and pain will soon be dried up like frost beneath the spring sun” (Maria, donna dei nostri giorni).
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/homilies/2026/documents/20260329-palme.html
During Mass, I heard a strange bell of a distinct tone. Letting my imagination run, I associated it with the Chrism rites later in the day, imagining that the bell was to be sounded when the oils were received in the manner of the French coronation oils.
One must allow the mind to run like this, while reserving belief. Vailhinger. The what if. Cf. the film They Might Be Giants, starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward.
As it turns out, it was the grizzled, venerable fellow who sometimes sounds the bell while pacing Fifth avenue, wearing holy icons like a sandwich board. He was standing up outside the entrance of the cathedral, sounding his bell and apparently blessing it with the cross in his hand. I uncovered as I passed and made the sign of the cross, hoping he wouldn't notice that I was doing it the wrong way.
I've never prayed for my own good fortune. God & I have our own view on the merits of worldly prosperity.
Notice, in the parable of Lazarus and Dives, Lazarus is silent. I suspect his interior monologue was something along the lines of "Oh, thank God that's all over with." Woe, rich ones.
And at the same time, we now have a society in which, like the 16th c. English theatre audience, signs of wealth are signs of favor, displacing aristocratic or royal claims. And, in the fullness if time, it did happen. People pragmatically defined the ultimate good as that which brought empirical wealth, claiming the other notions of good were illusions of the mind. It happened. The writings of the philosophers, like glowing trails in a particle chamber, are evidence of this.
And now I find myself in a position in which the position far less remunerative than I might reasonably expect, given my degrees and experience, but which almost allowed me to read and think and write and discover the world appears to have for some reason suddenly decided become much less remunerative. In such a position, one would be expected to scrounge for money, or at least pray for it.
Nonetheless. Like Rambo and the Prime Minister of Italy, I take things day by day. Keeping in mind that the days are numbered, I try to do the necessary work, whatever the situation.
Two years ago, Holy week was in Mostar. Interesting services, very revealing modifications in the rubrics. But it's difficult to point out the borderline idolatry to a roomful of people who have just survived a religious war. There is some comfort in the obviousness of such things, and with years of peacetime, the seeds in the practices will lead them back to a more reflective understanding, I think.
The folks from whom I was renting (a rather difficult) apartment told me that there was a Good Friday service at the mountaintop cross, so on that morning, I walked over to the Franciscan church at the base of the hill, had some coffee, and made my ascent. Extremely difficult and somewhat dangerous climb -- the path had just been reopened after de-mining. Finally, I made it to the top, a bit perplexed that I was apparently one of very few people climbing the mountain. At the top, others appeared, and then a huge crowd, all of whom had walked up the paved road on the other side. A very interesting afternoon.
--
And then, last year:
https://defrydrychowski.wordpress.com/2025/04/19/a-balkan-triduum-i-ii/
https://defrydrychowski.wordpress.com/2025/04/19/a-balkan-triduum-iii/
Of this year... it is best to remain silent. Next year in a holy land.
Every iota of my being during the morning workout was pining towards Madedonian Pirin. Gate of the south of Europe.
I am becoming Spartan about this; very little room for Athenian equivocation. As I look around myself and think carefully, with perhaps some heightened perception, given recent spectacular adversity, the problem with my country doesn't seem to be the bad parts, or the bad people, but the general cast of mind. An indolence, sustained by general prosperity, which is easily focused on objects of greed, or ideas broadcast on the television networks. This isn't incidental or accidental -- this sort of neutral, pragmatic (Kant: pragmatic as precursor to moral sensibility; this sense precisely is the one taken up by the American pragmatists of the early 20th c.) cast of mind is an essential part of the post-war plan in which ideas as ideas can't take hold. Problem is, virtue, truth, and honesty are all rather abstract concepts.
So there's a lot of corruption, yes, amid a lot of prosperity. But the problem, the thing that heaven would smite if the heavens still thought themselves valid arbiters of human sensibility, is this idle, indolent emptiness of mind.
"It is required you do awake your faith."
---
Realized this morning that the thing that I'm attempting to attain, a working situation abroad, using far less funding that would be required for a similar setup stateside, while being much more rewarding culturally, is thought a luxury good. I assure you, if you spent some months in the most modest accommodations available in Bosnia, Albania, Romania, et al., you would not have this notion. But it is the general notion in the society. Much as I realized weith a dull shock while doing the predawn runs in Illinois that NYC, which to me stood for difficult housing, scrimping by, waiting hours in audition lines, and finding it almost impossible to do even the smallest roles in the most modest theatres, was thought of as a luxury destination in those parts, meaning that my pining for the city that had kicked the tar out of me for almost two decades would be thought presumptuous, something only the wealthy should aspire to. The same cognitive dissonance happens with theatre generally; it's a very basic activity and art that I understand very, very well -- but in the US it is priced as a luxury good, so when I express my desire towards it, it just seems a longing for the pots of gold for which everyone pines.
In sum, quite frustrating. I would be very happy to return to the days of reading philosophy while drinking kefir on a rooftop cafe over a supermarket in Bosnia, or sipping an inexpensive Americano on the sidelines of a glitzy mall in Romania. These aren't pipe dreams; they're elements of a minimal existence. But to speak of them brings thoughts of luxury vacations to the American mind.
----
I see the Illinois peach-basket team has made it to the semifinals of the national tournament. Don't underestimate the danger of these immense institutions. Many of them are the largest landowners in their respective states, and the penetration of the political mechanism, combined with pure economic force (technological research, etc.) make them analogous to the worst of the English pre-reformation monasteries -- and there's corresponding corruption to be found there, I assure you.
----
Brief game reset:
Unbelievable levels of adversity for many years, over a decade, during which I've kept absolute spiritual, intellectual and physical discipline. Unknown, and likely unknowable source, but I have a few notions as to the first cause of such things.
Attempting to get back to southern Europe in a digital nomad capacity, but the freelancing work level isn't high enough to support it.
I've come to see myself as a sort of American Navalny (remember, he was a patriot of his country). I have a top-tier JD with strong grades and a top conservatory degree with many years of professional work, but all roads have been blocked to me for many years, and I'm unable to find employment sufficient even for a basic existence. So the times are very difficult, and have been so for many years. I am almost certain that this is political -- see the note attached to my online CV for a brief description of how I've resisted participating in some rather corrupt practices at these large institutions.
So, what's to come is still unsure. My thoughts are now entirely on the Balkans, despite the lack of paths leading there. Unless an opportunity to do real work turns up stateside, I need to leave for an extended period as soon as possible (considerations of mens sana and corpore sano).
The event will decide.
Wondering whether my open discussion of hopes to get back abroad at the earliest possible opportunity have brought on the present conditions in which getting abroad looks to be a long way off. I've wondered things like this before, never profitably. Perhaps some karmic jinx of some kind, the universe lining up in instinctive opposition.
So, the light at the end of the tunnel would appear to be an oncoming train -- but only within reality as presently understood by human beings. So, you know, there's hope.
My comfort is in the memories of specific places that pop into my mind, unsolicited, during the course of the day. And of course the whole point is to find a place to think, work, and write, so continuing on with those as best I can in the midtown gulag; hic Rhodus, etc.
Likely one of the last below-freezing evenings in a winter that proved a bit difficult to endure. I am at the coffeehouse that proved to be a lifesaver when I found it open after the morning of the first blizzard.
I've just written a very long essay that was lost completely when the sbux internet connection dropped underneath when writing it. Perhaps some fragments of it will allow the entire thought to regrow.
The psalms begin by blessing one who doesn't sit in the seat of the stranger. Literally, this is the seat of the 'babbler', which some scholarship connects to the travellers between towns, the merchants. The mercantile laws of England developed in relation to the legal orders of the local aristocrats, providing a legal order sufficient for commerce between towns. The one who stands outside the city becomes the foundation of the larger order, not because he is beyond the law, but because he is subject to a higher law; the laws of the world are inscribed on the staff of the traveller.
Likely, I come off as a bit military. This is only because of the limited range of paradigms of strength; a strong and disciplined person is thought to be properly a soldier, just as a someone skillful with ropes and navigation in a seafaring town might be thought to be a sailor.
The Germans divide culture and civilization. Culture is that living force that is awakened conceptually by the others, and it takes the form of visual arts, music, stories, etc. It is an inward strength, but one called forth by the presence of others, and shared with them. Conversely, civilization is the ability to navigate social forms with sufficient dignity. The shared facility of encountering others in ways that are conducive to social projects and productivity. The city is a complex mix of these two things, and the one who stands outside the order of things must preserve their own forms of them.
There is an old Russian film about some soviet earth scientists who travel to the barren north, mapping the territory and seeking mineral deposits. Natural disasters and misfortunes pick them off, one by one, and at the end, the last survivor lashes some logs together and throws himself into the stream of the river, trusting that it will take him to populated areas. At the end, he has a vision of the cities that will come, after these times of privation and struggle against nature.
But the cities are not solutions in themselves to the problems of mankind. Some even make the problems worse. The one that I am in right now seems sometimes to only provide sufficient material security so that the people can function as greedy end-users of consumer products, and fight ruthlessly for position in the local social order. It's not exactly the divine city that the most extreme partisans of the local faiths sometimes make it out to be.
The storytelling of the cities also preserves the notion of the wanderers between the cities. Islamic stories tell of wandering angels testing the hospitality of men. The wandering Jew, Prester John, the ships that travel eternally in the night, Wotan the wanderer, with the laws of the world inscribed on his staff. It's odd that these narratives would preserve some notion of travellers subject to a moral order higher than the local order; the partisans of the city would seem to have little to gain from this. But perhaps these are stories told against the city, preserving the memory of life from outside of it, and the world elsewhere.
There is a sort of purification involved in standing outside of things. Perhaps this is the condemnation of the psalmist. On the coldest of mornings, I was struck by the scents, the microbial life, of those around me -- I had been purified of such things by the cold. Inwardly as well, the body becomes less able to digest things, as the microbiota die off, and the guts become less fecund. Panem angelorum.
But this is a form of death as well. The city will rise up against the traveller; the nature that the city has overcome similarly stands ready with its own attacks. Many of those caught between worlds simply slink back into the depths of the city; the alternate-history Oedipus lurks the dark corners of Thebes, afraid to leave.
There is a priesthood of the one caught between worlds, or perhaps that is a pleonasm, as a priesthood is by definition one caught between two (or more) worlds. Like culture, it is distinctively inward, but it is called forth by the social order that surrounds him, and seems to attack him. A higher discipline and self-regard than the circumstances might tend to indicate.
The laws of the world are inscribed on the staff of the traveller, as they are not inscribed in his heart, and in his relationships with others. Their inscription is objective, not a form of life for him. He understands them, and strives to honor them. Both in the fight against nature, and among the cultures of the cities, the traveller stands apart, purified by the adversities. But the purification of the winter is not the final word. These fragments of remembered truth, now reduced to obective language from memory, grow within him, and from them, there is a higher culture, and a notion of a higher civilization.
Panem angelorum.
He will not survive within their worlds, but he will live.
Springtime in the city of the power of evil. Everyone seems very exhilarated, loud, and not infrequently, stoned. I expect that the clouds of vapor at the streetcorners will increase in the coming weeks.
When I moved here at the turn of the millennium, I ran in the park and rode my bike everywhere. There were a good number of folks doing that at the time, but now things have been raised to another level entirely. Platoons of bikers and runners course through the streets and the park lanes in the evenings -- undoubtedly revenue streams for the marketers and organizers, and networking opportunities for all involved.
Apparently, Scotty's still working on the transporter issues. Hopefully, I'll be able to survive a bit of time among the dark souls ennervated and enlivened by the springtime.
Historically, a difficult time for a son of man.
An interesting episode from Pynchon's ATD. Cyprian, the wandering flaneur turned old Balkan hand is solemnly informed by the fellow whom he has been dispatched to protect that he, Cyprian, was by this and through this being proffered to the other side, in exchange for which his masters expected that the others in their family of operatives in the field would be left alone, and perhaps even assisted. Perhaps a mind game on him, but subsequent plot turns would seem to bear the conjecture out. The (successfully completed) assignment involving extraordinary danger and difficulty was not so much heroic as pyrrhic.
Anomalous, almost-superhuman survival can complicate things. Things appear normal, but the one who has survived quite logically declines to accept certain norms.
This can, perhaps, be strong enough a mental reservation that living in one's own country slowly becomes beyond the pale. It might be possible to just head off into the woods, but if one's life is based in the phenomena of culture, this would be another alienation. And if it were to be compelled, i.e., the border were to be closed, this sort of forced rustication would be a second adversity.
Contra Providence:
One concomitant of growing up in a peculiarly well-connected family at continual internecine war is an active distrust of the providential. Gift horses not infrequently with time-bombs hidden behind the molars.
That which happens next is not God. In fact, the present event is frequently the result of machinations of the peculiarly unholy. The providentialism comes in the fact that we might be able to survive it.
Thinking about the MFA in Ohio recently. ("A perfect cretic.") Very peculiar time. For some reason, they spent three years trying very forcefully to drive me out of a closet that I most definitely wasn't in, while the closeted folks around me went on cavorting in the usual manner.
But three years in an art form can teach you much, even in a place a bit bent. I found a few true souls and learned.
About halfway through, I got a big break, an offer to do a reading in LA. The head of the program was against it, but allowed it. Presumably to keep me from getting too cocky, they had me stage manage an undergraduate production of Three Sisters when I returned to Cleveland in January. In theatre, that's called whiplash, and it can put you out of commission for awhile. In the last year, I grew a long beard, read philosophy (beginner stuff: Foucault, the Greeks), and played supernumerary roles at the theatre (and Malvolio at the university, which now makes sense to me in light of the above).
There's a fair amount of anti-Slav sentiment to be found in the Midwest. I remember some comments and events rather clearly.
And then to the city. But I think some of the events in the subsequent years can be traced to the goings-on in Ohio.
I go mad, I go mad, I shall wear my trousers plaid...
---
Really, whoever had the idea to send a lounge singer into the reading room of a major research library twice per day, six days a week, to sing "People who need people" needs to be cashiered out of the library game. Some high school guidance counselor erred significantly, there.
(Now knowing the schedule and the best routes of escape, I'm elsewhere for those half-hours.)
Annunciation. It arrives almost unseasonably, or at least surprisingly. As a homily yesterday observed, it starts the cycle of events that will culminate in next year's Passion. (Although arguably one shouldn't insulate it from the coming events, like two books being read at the same time. It also contextualizes the present moment in the cycle of events.)
And perhaps the unseasonable or surprising arrival carries forward some central attribute of the event. Long habits create rhythms of thought, but the new, by its essence, arrives according to its new logic. Christianity didn't arrive within Judaism according to the logic of the Jewish liturgy or seasons. Not a rejection of the old, but simply the next thing.
One almanac records that this is the beginning of the old Roman hilaria, the first festival after the spring equinox.
φοσ ιλαρον...
On being pragmatical, or Notes for a Notably Non-Benjaminian Exile
--
I should make clear that this constant glancing towards the horizon and pastures new isn't about pottage, or fleshpots (vegetarian fleshpots: pan casseroles with cheese and eggs). It's not about having good, hot meals and a proper place to sleep. Everything revolves around the work, and as I look back through the reading notes on some of the more blizzardy days, I have some doubt as to whether they will be useful. (Not exactly "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," but I'm certain that there was much more in the text than the mind straining to keep focused could unearth.) I'm also cut off from the culture here, both practically and conceptually, and given my background, that speaks to the center of the work, not an issue about things done in the spare time.
It's as if Dave, floating outside the pod bay doors, discovers some repairs that could be done while he continues the long dialogue with HAL, though as he reviews some of the early repairs, he notices that he hasn't been able to do his best work under the circumstances. Incidentally, if memory serves, a stencil on the outside of the vessel indicates that HAL was created at the University of Illinois, which is hilariously appropriate, in a David Lodge sort of way. I was working in what passed for the arts there, but I did make it a point to go to as many of the campus talks as possible. The closest the supercomputer folks came to the public discourse was one talk by a Dean as part of the critical studies lecture series. Absolutely nothing of substance, just an hour of "shouting out" to researchers and professors in the room, seriatum. Hope not for minde in administrators...
But I digress. The point is that the dissentient, persecuted fellow looking for a place to work abroad isn't looking to the Black Forest resorts of Baden Baden, or a fashionable arrondisement. There are a band of countries on the southern part of Europe that have a living European culture and memories of the old republics, and the cultures percolating within them are a microcosm of the energies moving the Western world spiritually at present. And I could afford to travel and survive with the decent minimum required for professional travel and for the work. I've published my theatre reviews from the last visit in an attempt to point out both that there's something there, and that I can see it.
As an example, my thoughts sometimes tend to Studentski park in Belgrade, and to the nondescript Western chain coffeehouses in Sarajevo. In both instances, these places are far from the cultural or tourist notions of destination travel. And Studentski is hardly Versailles--more like Washington Square before it was renovated and turned into the NYU quad. But it is a good place to sit on an old park-bench and read Henry James, surrounded by the buildings of the university, new and old, and it's a short walk from the theatres. Not to mention that there's reasonably priced fresh bread to be found at all of the chain grocers in the neighborhood. My usual ritual in the first escape was to walk over Brankov Most from New Belgrade, get a balcony standing-room rush ticket in the late afternoon, and then, for the several hours before the performance, head over to the park to read awhile with some coffee in a thermos and some bread from one of the stores.
The point is that this immense seething mass of a country that I call home has formally renounced such notions of civilization, finding them old-fashioned. This general mindset likely has something to do with the fact that the corrupt folks that I've encountered have felt free to use the big Slavic fellow as a bit of a scapegoat and punching bag. Not to whine, just pointing out that the last two decades have been extraordinarily difficult, with many years spent in conditions that not everyone could physically survive, let alone keep attuned to the work when within such frames of existence.
But I have survived, and I'm fairly certain that I have understood. And I intend to head to the living places, in order to see what I can find there.
Admin task in the AM took me off the island for the first time all winter. Had been dreading the task, but in the event proved quite quick and painless. Aside from the $7 subway tab. Odd to be off the island -- definitely perceptible. Imagined I was in more distant places when I found myself in corresponding micro-geographies. ("Hic Rhodus...")
The most I can do is fix my mind on the cities and places (mountains) of possible minimal sufficiency for living, working, and cultural encounter. The event can't be ensured, or for that matter, forestalled by any action of mine. The event will bring its own logic.
This comes after well over a decade of extraordinary adversity, though. It's not just the whim of a random person who has been reasonably well off their entire life within a prosperous society, and could learn to live with a more circumscribed existence if the river proves too wide. Especially after this past winter, we are in hardened dissident territory. I'll find a path out, or I'll keep trying to find a path out.
"Graces will appear, and there's an end."
When you come to understand the nature of a place, you need to amend your life to reflect that understanding.
It is important to be antifascist, and also to be conscious of the authoritarian dangers of an overly socialist mindset -- while at the same time, one does need to be as ruthless as a commissar or a private-sector-military type. In a broad sense, my country has deployed one sensibility against one, and another against another, but the dangers of not thinking at all have no inherent adversary. Indeed, there are many who seem very much in favor of it as a collective strategy (e.g., perhaps, the dope-the-ghetto clouds of marihuana vapors on the streetcorners).
The differences between right Hegelianism and left Hegelianism were finally settled, as Rorty was fond of saying, at a six month long academic seminar entitled the Battle of Stalingrad. Society has a right to guard itself against the dangers of collective beliefs. But the guards against collective belief should not necessarily give the rule in matters of private understanding.
To enter into the errors of ether side would indeed be error. But you must become conscious of your own existence (classically, that presence which is not quiddity: freedom), and its meaning, and its morality -- or it will be taken from you, and then done away with.
It's not just that films like The Matrix (Baudrillard/hyperreality) reveal aspects of present-day life in this society -- it's that they are a more clear way of understanding the actual event than the normative, intuitive, unexamined view that most people generally think with.
There's much more going on around you than your general mindset might indicate, and the things that you're caught up in likely mostly serve to generate revenue for someone else. Every Eastern tradition in contact with the West has the same message for Westerners: dispassion and mental clarity.
And as for the locals, as absurd as the precepts of Scientology might be, the general notion that the highest good is the clarity of the mind is admirable. But to reach this, people first have to try to be good, and second, have to try to be good in the right way, and I don't think the culture generally is even to first base on that one anymore.
Things are seldom what they seem
Skim milk masquerades as cream...
A minimally sufficient life in a place of real culture. This has been my aim when means were sufficient, and when they have been insufficient. Witness the Wittgensteinian camp bed, table and chair, with the addition of stacks of books. And a kitchen and WC, of course. (Dining in college not being an option.)
W never visited Oxford during the war. Enemy alien, perhaps. And, more dangerously, one who stood outside the world of appearances.
I should make clear that there is no logical reason for me to have been fighting for my life, and fighting to do real work, on the streets are of my country all of these years. I have no bad habits, lead a very clean life, keep in intellectual, physical and spiritual shape. No mendicancy ever, strict daily disciplune. My degrees were strong (first tier) and my experience in theatre significant and wide ranging. And yet, decades of fighting to survive in impossible situations, almost invisible.
Perhaps it has so something to do with my family's work (not mine) or perhaps I stepped on the toes of some soi-disant master if the universe.
There's been a string of these notes in the blog with springtime--the mind thaws. But I do need to make this clear -- there is no logic or reason to the excruciatingly difficult position I've been in. See the note attached to my online CV for details on the slog.
I entered the Temple of St. Sava reverently. It had been a long journey. Some months ago, I had found myself in rural Virginia, near my undergraduate university, almost tapped out, as I had been unable to find an apartment using the last of the Covid savings, and I realized that I could last longer abroad. I then checked the airline prices and the rental costs, and with a day, I was flying to Belgrade, in order to spend the days looking for work online. Of course, since the standing room tickets to the national theatre were less than $5, I was frequently there. And I spent many hours walking around the city and reading in the park. I found a job, but it required a Windows machine, and I only had a Chromebook, so I pressed "pause" on that, and kept looking. I was living in a rental in an old outdoor mall from the days of the Republic -- Kumecivo Sochache (sp?), inside one of the stores that had been converted to tourist rental. I kept to myself, drank coffee, baked bread, read Henry James in the park, and looked for work.
Finally, I found a position in India as an Assistant Dean and professor, teaching American constitutional law and international public law. I had extended the stay by a few weeks, as I had been unable to bring myself to abandon the quest before I found something. Unfortunately, Turkish Air and I didn't see eye to eye on the rebooking, which cost me the price of a new ticket, hastily rebooked after being turned away at the airport on the day of departure and then booking an extra night at the rental and a second ticket.
The rental was actually my second place there. I had initially found a place in New Belgrade, right across from a small university, apparently rented by a local government official, perhaps now retired. A 24-hour chain bakery two blocks away. Michael, the government official, was a bit more savvy than he let on. We were using Google Translate to communicate, passing the laptop back and forth -- on the first pass, he made a befuddled face and punched some keys apparently at random, bringing up my entire (innocuous) search history. It had been difficult to find him at the airport -- I think he might have had second thoughts when I showed up in an old winter coat and with a BW knapsack, as opposed to the usual American attire and rumble suitcase. We talked a bit on the drive over; I mentioned that I had wandered through the temple during renovations on an earlier visit in 2002. I was with a theatre troupe, and we had an excellent Italian dinner with our hosts on King Michael street, just across from the JDP. They indicated the structure on the hill, and I mentally decided to explore it later on. Luckily, the gate was open, as the small chapel and gift shop was open. I wandered into the main church, finding a few candlelit icons on the back wall. The floor was dirt, and the stones around me were rough-hewn ("when building a great dome, one does not use finished stone" Hegel, I think). I purchased an icon and kept it with me for some time. When I described my visit during the renovations to Michael on the drive in, he gave me a bit of inquiring side-eye, as the temple had been under construction, not renovation, something that had escaped my perception, being considerably more intrepid than knowlegable.
At any rate, the van to the airport departed from the traffic circle at the bottom of the hill. I asked the driver to wait a moment, got out, and had a brief colloquy with the distant Temple, mentally resolving to return to that particular place.
After the confusion with the airlines, I had lost my deposit on the planned rental in Cleveland, and the indolent fellow from whom I had rented before refused to proceed without it. I put out a call to a fellow who I knew rented inexpensive rooms near the university in Illinois, and he agreed to rent me one for a few months, so that I could prepare the courses for India. India proved to be chimerical. They sent the wrong paperwork twice, and the third batch was mysteriously held up for over a week with the courier, arriving the day after I would have had to file it in Chicago. Now inarguably completely tapped out, I returned to NYC for what proved to be a difficult winter, which broke in spring when I returned to the Balkans, first heading to Bucharest, and then Sibiu. But now I was back in the temple where I had been for the previous year's easter night liturgy, and many Sundays reading the psalter after Catholic Mass at the tiny cathedral near the Parliament.
A guard approached and told me that I would have to leave, as there was a liturgy with the Patriarch about to start, and only Serbians were allowed to be within the building. I was taken aback, but reasoned that a church without walls would have a hard time building a ceiling, so it would be best to go quietly. (The walls and ceiling, incidentally are covered with brilliant mosaics and pietra dura paid for by Gazprom.) I asked if I could stand outside the doors on the porch and look in, and he agreed, but later came back to say that this was to be prohibited as well, and asked me to stand some distance off on the grass. I obeyed, peering at the small bit of the inside I could see, until the Patriarch and his party arrived on the porch, and then I headed off to Starbucks.
It had been a bit jarring, but also inspiring. The Christian place of worship was meaningful enough to them that they felt they had to defend it against all other peoples (Americans understandably not being high on the list). It was a rare inhospitable moment in a country famous for its strict rules of hospitality, and that made it even more meaningful. I felt a bit like a missionary playing pickup baseball with a remote tribe who suddenly find the game so meaningful that they keep all the equipment for themselves, and make it a part of the tribe's life. I don't think I've ever seen a more clear demonstration of the conquering power of Christ.
I returned to the city some months later, as part of the extended Balkans travels. First, a tiny studio across the street from St. Mark's, the parish church near the Parliament built in the 1940's, and I visited it a few times, but I respected the discipline of the church, and kept away from both the temple and the patriarchal cathedral closer to the old city. I had a peculiar dream one night connected with an angel -- he cast salt in my face for some reason, and I shifted into lawyer mode, demanding to know who was in charge there. Shrugging, he pointed to some small figures far below, clearly prelates of the national church. The angel had an immense face.
Although I visited the parish a few times, that stay much more often found me at the Starbucks across from the Parliament ($2 Americanos) and the JDP and the national theatre down the street, tickets at both well under $10, as culture is thought a necessity there, rather than a luxury good. I had a small wooden table in the rental, which was good for reading, and the strong hotplate made for some savory dinners. (When I am forced back to the city for these difficult winters, the coffeehouses and the dinners abroad tend to come into sharp relief in memory.) One night at the Starbucks, I listened to the live broadcast of Rheingold from the season opening at Bayreuth -- at the end of the evening, the parliament building was brilliantly lit across the street, filing the windows, just as Valhalla is revealed. (An uneasy cultural synthesis, of course, as the Germanic horde and Belgrade aren't on the easiest of terms historically.)
After the month or so across from St. Mark's, I decamped to Zemun, to a apartment rented from a local musician and scholar -- the bombed out air defense building was visible from the window, and on the other side, there was the distant strobe of Usce Mall, which had been an excellent place for necessities until I figured out the markets. I spent my time there writing, gratefully. Walking into the city from time to time, across Brankov Most for a bit of theatre or some coffee, and then the long walk back at night. And the full kitchen and the nearby Lidls made for many healthy repasts. I was able to see theatre, read, think, and write. Belgrade has offered this to me on occasion, and it has come to stand for the proposition of a safe station on the road, where I can stop off and write or explore for a month.
But it is one of two countries in the world whose constitutions begin by declaring it the home of the dominant ethnic group, and those others who live with them.
It has its mystery, and its discretion. But when I've occasionally visited for a bit of respite from an inexplicably difficult life in my own country, I've been grateful even for its reticence and defensiveness. Such things are real, and indicate realities.
Anniversary of the birth of Ovid, who figures in the Balkan consciousness thanks to exile in Varna. Just discovered Andric had an early collectiuon if poetry/prose based on the letters. (If it is in English, nypl doesn't have it.)
Have considered learning Serbo-Croat for the sole purpose of reading the Andric sign in front of JDP. A quest.
In sum, a rather difficult winter. Blog notes such as 'bit of a nip in the air' were more bread crumb than unmediated description.
I'm of two minds in the alleged Saxe+Coburg motto 'Never cuomplain, never explain.' On one hand, it works out rather well for the sovereign if everyone does it. On the other hand, it does help keep mental focus. At munimum, it's good to note when to mend.
Surrounded by the sorts of things one would expect in a place like this, I continue to work determinedly to return to a place of basic sufficiency, living culture, and discovery. Belgrade. Sarajevo. Cluj. Mostar. Bucharest. Sibiu. Pirin mountains. Bar.
And yet, to get to the place where I could work, and be incapable of work, would get me nothing. So I focus on what work I can do here, knowing that I'll be reaching to the same sources in the distant, more neutral countries. God willin' and the crick don't rise.
This can be a difficult place, not least because of the clouds of marihuana fumes and the surprisingly large percentage of folks who seem interested on copulating with a fellow (and the corresponding number who seem to think that a fellow wants to copulate with them). These and other troubles will likely increase with springtime in the coming weeks, the difficulty and trial shifting from phusis to geist.
Historically, a difficult time for a son of man.
To will to stand before God is an ontic resolution.
To be against the erasure is an ontological axiom.
To resist the corruption is a pragmatic (Kant) determination.
The world of appearances is the confluence of these levels. Be wary of those who appear powerful. What seems simple requires differences and distinctions.
Hm, okay -- it's not the tourist swarm that causes the loss of energy. Apparently, it's sitting down in a firm chair in a climate-controlled room after the evening and morning. Understandable. Just need to catch it on the swoop downward, do some breathing, and caffeinate a bit at the right moment. #science
I appear to have taken on Peirce's fortunes, at least as to the financial aspect. We share a simple befuddlement at not being able to get on when doing important things that you're supposed to be doing, and that you trained a rather long time to do. His relationship with Wm. James (and possibly Henry) must have been interesting -- the famous prolific philosopher, a Bostonian of private means, patrician son of a Swedebourgian industrialist, who never claimed much depth academically, in contrast to the ever-swotting, completely unrecognized, penniless, greatest American philosopher of the time, who was completely blacklisted from the academy generally, and more importantly, Harvard.
(And who, in fairness, also had an unwise love affair and risked a grand gesture of purchasing certain real estate.)
I'm not making the argument that those who resist corruption in my society are hived off from the rest, given a hard time and perhaps even done away with, as that would invite a very broad debate touching very large social questions. Frankly, my society doesn't have the social mechanism for addressing these types of concerns. At most, they would be addressed as a claim by an individual, and so my energies are best devoted to surviving the situation, whatever the larger social resonance, and however many others might be in the same position.
Things do look a bit dark at present, and these sorts of notes are the kind of thing I would want to have said, were the time of saying things to come to a close. I'm certain that, at minimum, it will be mined for sentence structure and word choice by some AI bots trawling the web and perhaps used to build a bot to sell cosmetics or luxury time-shares on a website, so, you know, at least some good came of it.
Still mystified by the peculiarities of starting the day in the libraries. After the workout, Mass, breakfast, and about an hour of reading, I go through the security search, get into the building, find a place, and then a swarm of tourists descends for a little over an hour. In the middle of which, almost invariably, all of the energy vanishes from my body rather quickly. Still can't fathom that.
I could delay the library for an hour, but then finding a place would be difficult. I could go to the other side of the room, but they apparently have the vents on double there (and nil on the better side, which leads to some thin air late in the afternoons) which makes for a drafty day.
And to top it all off, they're staging some incredibly misconceived immersive theatre performance twice a day when a lounge singer comes in and belts out "People who need people..." twice a day for twenty minutes apiece. I abscond for the duration, but can still hear it in the distance.
The collections are really the only useful thing about the city for me at present, but getting to them is starting to drive me a bit mad. Onward -- steady as she goes.
Interesting time getting to Mass -- finally found out that it was in the Lady Chapel, and managed to get through the security for the patrocina grand event. This is a complicated city; I've recorded many of the complications in this blog. But the church manages to still provide a window, a windowed monad, perhaps, on the reality of the faith. The difficulty is that almost everyone is caught up in rhythms of habituation, imitation. and competition -- the thing itself is obscured, and it would take some doing to point out that there is grail there to be uncovered, let alone the disposition and work involved in bringing the inner truth of the event to light in the present time. Never let the world teach you about unworldly things. At most, it provides a window.
The church is a ladder supply warehouse, not a ladder machine. I prefer this metaphor to the analogy of a hospital (apparently one with a peculiarly ineffective psych ward).
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Standard daily paean to southern Europe -- the desire to return to a minimally sufficient existence, interesting cultures and art, and the dignity of civilizational context. I'm remaining calm and carrying on, but this departure and return really does need to happen rather soon.
Was doing some private devotions on the walk from the gym to the cathedral, and encountered a father talking to his very young son in what I suppose he thought to be a normal voice, but one which any sufficiently well-grounded observer could tell was primarily an instrument used to attack a hostile world.
Contrary to the received view in the New World (Prospero: "Tis new to thee...") civilization can also preserve innocence.
Eventually, all of the notions that you projected onto the City wear away. This takes time -- decades, sometimes. Then you see its actual nature. And you vow never to return.
Really, the only reason I moved here many years ago was to work in the theatre -- that was why I kept to midtown and the west side, when the east side was clearly the better part. Now that all of those doors are not only closed, but obstructed by vegetation that's grown in the interval, I look at the place in considerable disbelief. Midtown has become what was, even a couple decades ago, only found in the raciest parts of Chelsea and the East Village. And the old bohemian areas are simply wealth-extraction points via the rent. Between the enthusiastic young epicures and the money-raking owners, there's not really a place for a serious artist, writer or thinker to stand.
Homo, fuge!
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