https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flmd.447437/gov.uscourts.flmd.447437.5.0.pdf
The event still has the power to reveal.
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I once read a fun interview with a seasoned wedding photographer, who talked about how he can always tell which marriages are going to last and which ones aren’t. It’s the way the bride and groom act around each other, apparently. Looking bored during each other’s speeches is another key tell. More on that shortly.
international public law
Reading the think-pieces around the two big conflicts can be a bit dispiriting. Having become a commentator, or a publicist, or whatever they're called these days, the writers write pieces saying what the law of nations should be, and then use them for partisan purposes.
The law of nations is precisely what nations have done under necessity, and whatever inferences you can draw from that to the present, with the presumption that things should remain the same, and parties should honor their agreements. But everyone always acts according to necessity. You can't bind a nation in a Lockean or moral-contract sense. Nations feel no guilt, and treaties are frequently "un-signed" these days.
If you're trying to make an argument for an extension of existing law, you're better off trying to predict what nations will agree to, and then inflect that a bit, rather than making an argument about what the law says in itself, so that you can then flog the other side with it if they take the other course. Eventually, that diminishes the power of the idea of international law, which is the most valuable part of international law. It took centuries to build this up, and a lot has been lost in the last five years alone.
Unlike the law of a nation, if the nations don't presently observe a certain precept, that precept no longer exists as a principle of international law.
The law of nations is precisely what nations have done under necessity, and whatever inferences you can draw from that to the present, with the presumption that things should remain the same, and parties should honor their agreements. But everyone always acts according to necessity. You can't bind a nation in a Lockean or moral-contract sense. Nations feel no guilt, and treaties are frequently "un-signed" these days.
If you're trying to make an argument for an extension of existing law, you're better off trying to predict what nations will agree to, and then inflect that a bit, rather than making an argument about what the law says in itself, so that you can then flog the other side with it if they take the other course. Eventually, that diminishes the power of the idea of international law, which is the most valuable part of international law. It took centuries to build this up, and a lot has been lost in the last five years alone.
Unlike the law of a nation, if the nations don't presently observe a certain precept, that precept no longer exists as a principle of international law.
comparison
Imagine moving to a small town in America in the 1950s. The town is distant from the capital city, and has its own distinct culture. You arrive in your wood-paneled station wagon, and ask around about employment. After some prying, people begin to talk about who the powerful people are in the different companies, who you should strike up friendships with, do favors for, etc. You ask about simply applying at the offices, and they give you a sort of sideways smile.
That's the way things are now when looking for a white-collar position, and to some degree, even for blue-collar work. It's not the way it was twenty years ago, so I have to assume that it's even more distinct from the paradigms of early 20th century American life. And no one talks about it, for obvious reasons. One's chances might be significantly damaged if one were to suggest that "networking" might be a euphemism for a way of working that wouldn't have been unfamiliar to the criminal syndicates of a generation ago.
Focus your mind on the thing itself, which has a reality distinct from the pragmatic social practices that society uses to structure itself. We weren't put here just to get by -- the point of your existence is to do something real.
That's the way things are now when looking for a white-collar position, and to some degree, even for blue-collar work. It's not the way it was twenty years ago, so I have to assume that it's even more distinct from the paradigms of early 20th century American life. And no one talks about it, for obvious reasons. One's chances might be significantly damaged if one were to suggest that "networking" might be a euphemism for a way of working that wouldn't have been unfamiliar to the criminal syndicates of a generation ago.
Focus your mind on the thing itself, which has a reality distinct from the pragmatic social practices that society uses to structure itself. We weren't put here just to get by -- the point of your existence is to do something real.
Another late night, and into the morning. Sufficient is the day -- and occoasionally its appurtenant hours.
What I thought was a substantial muscle twinge from the run seems to have mended surprisingly quickly. But it's close enough to the joint that discretion might be the better part of valor.
Gently down the stream. The ramparts of Elsinore are no place for tomfoolery.
Tried to get back to the early runs yesterday. The strays proved amiable and friendly, and there was much less dust on the river path, but a bit of uneven pavement has likely put an end to those adventures before breakfast for the balance of this stay. In context, I've successfully negotiated the same in Mostar and Bucharest for months at a time, so this isn't the UWS entitlement-happy indignant call to the city about a stray tree root. My own error, of course, the end of the run was a bit late here, so I was trying to negotiate the early office crowd at the time. One can be a proficient trail runner, and one can be a proficient city runner, but proficiency in trail conditions in the city takes real skill and care.
Up past two AM on various tasks. Sufficient is the day, but sometimes a bit of stoppage time is required.
The center is most definitely that discipline of the enlightenment that one from the east would associate with national socialism, and one from central europe would associate with the commissars of the historical dialectic. Neither would be correct, of course. But that is the way. The ineffable lightness of being might work in Prague or Warsaw, but in the lands of the south, one must steer a straighter path. Perhaps the same danger that Gauguin decided to make a virtue. Southlands.
Sometimes, I have the impulse to find a room and just read an Iris Murdoch novel from start to finish. Usually, I channel this into reading something more productive, such as a philosopher writing about philosophy rather than a philosopher writing mass-market fiction.
It's good to understand that we sometimes pine for senses of things, not the things themselves.
Interesting -- the country to the east is livecasting their big classical music festival (which would be well outside the budget for this peregrination, were I there).
I've been very miserly with my ticket purchases. The general theory has been good theatre and music for $5-$8 per night. I remember, also in the country to the east, perhaps my first stay there, there was a classical concert I very much wanted to hear -- the pianist had been a close friend of S. Richter, and she had come to prominence by winning the competition in the hall in which she was performing, and now returned to it at the end of her performing career. But it was just a bit over 20 Euros. I did make a point of noticing the hour when it happened, though -- I was staying less than a mile away, and I listened to a Richter performance.
Something to do with the meaningfulness of sacrifice, perhaps. Marking the time.
One good thing about the last country: Sbux at 1990s prices. $2.50, and then sitting and reading for a couple of hours in a bright, air-filled room with interesting things outside the window. Unlike the country to the east, where an Americano would have set me back over $6.
It's not loyalty to the brand, or the material substance of the brew (except for the fact that I'm more confident about the hygiene of preparation and the source of the beans), it's genuinely having the place in the city where you can get a coffee in a fresh paper cup from the counter, watch them pour it, and then sit in a bright, airy room for an hour or two and read. (While everyone around is insta-telegramming their milkshakes.)
The local custom in this country, the southern coastal country of the old republic, and the mostly Muslim nation just to the north is small, dim airless rooms, or close patios with a lot of shade and greenery and cigarette smoke, where coffee is served in mugs. It's a legitimate form of comfort. Hygge, perhaps.
But it is not my way. And I am not for all waters.
In the darker places of the region, you can understand the agnosticism of the cities vis a vis East and West. The point is to get to the light, and the work of the day is to get closer to the light, and transmit more of the light. Faced with a decison between the resources of a distant superpower and the connection to a regional center of civilization and and culture, whatever the political alignment of that city, perhaps part of the deal is that choosing the first option means that spiritually, the place will have to make do for itself. Sufficient is the day. No simple highway.
Taking things on a simple East--West dichotomy in this part of the world is like reading a roadmap when planning a hiking trip. There's also the topological factors to consider. Elevations. De profundis. In situ, these things mean much more than the reality suggested by the simple colored lines.
the gauntlet
The native American tribes sometimes used a punishment called the gauntlet--they would force the prisoner to traverse, in parallel, two lines of people attacking them. Some tried to run, and were generally unsuccessful once the first solid blow was landed (at least according to the historical novels of my youth). Similarly, some tried to single out one of the attackers; this usually worked in the novel, but I have my doubts as to how it might have worked out in the field.
Having traversed a few ritual rites of training and passage that resemble the practice, though, I'm beginning to have my doubts as to whether I understood the nature of the exercise, reading novels in the wilderness about the wilderness. (Yes, that was our practice.) Perhaps the purpose of the exercise wasn't to punish the dangerous enemies of the tribe, but to identify them.
Having traversed a few ritual rites of training and passage that resemble the practice, though, I'm beginning to have my doubts as to whether I understood the nature of the exercise, reading novels in the wilderness about the wilderness. (Yes, that was our practice.) Perhaps the purpose of the exercise wasn't to punish the dangerous enemies of the tribe, but to identify them.
I've consciously followed a sort of geometric pattern in these Balkan explorations, and the correlative to this, just as the proportion and length of the fretted string has a correlative in sound and the tension of the harmonic, is that I now have an inner attunement of sorts, pining for the next step in the journey. With autumn, thinking about the northern cities, the theatres, the music. Not as ends in themselves, but it's easier to work and think when you're going to a production of Hamlet that night that has more than a parochial sensibility, and is being staged in the context of the work at the best European theatres. (That said, a truly great production of Hamlet would only have its parochial sensibility, and it would have that sensibility completely.) So I pine for paths, not places. and with the coming of autumn, it's the thoughts of the north, and the cities. God willin' and the crick don't rise.
The European project is the basic attunement of this journey. It would be much less costly to wander the resorts of the south, or the ancient temples of Asia, but I am clinging rather tenaciously to a few lines of thought and work in the West. Listening to the consecration bells broadcast every morning, to a handful of souls, from old cities and colleges to the north. It would be possible to decamp for awhile deep into the East -- a few major philosophers quietly did that after ww2, and focused on translating the sensibility of their work, but they were masters, and had their own work well in hand. We of the West do well to keep to the West, or at least as close as circumstances allow. First, keep the paths of the mind alive and functioning. While making the occasional journeys of discovery.
Very strange LNOP. Extended, maudlin sendoff for a well-connected soloist retiring in her 40s, and then someone apparently thought it would be a good idea to turn a comedian loose on the organ between the national anthem and the song of fellowship. If memory serves, the latter used to begin without the orchestra. Or perhaps that's my memory cunningly suggesting the ideal.
On the other hand, a comedian being turned loose on the great instrument in-between the national anthem and the song of true fellowship is perhaps a true reflection of the times.
Interesting piece on Woody Allen in the Times. Living, in his old age, across the street from the anhedonia of his youth. Interesting detail on the dinners with E. -- not proper meals, more telephones and computers. Rings true as to some of those types. Not the preoccupation with business, but feeling the need to call it a dinner party.
The best advice I could give would be to always focus on the thing itself, and the struggle to understand the thing itself, and yourself as someone whose task it is to understand the thing itself. You'll then be able to perceive when the folks around you aren't concerned with things as they are -- or might be. Otherwise, you might not realize the diection the bus is heading.
νῦν δὲ λογικός εἰμι: ὑμνεῖν με δεῖ τὸν θεόν. (Epictetus)
Λογικοσ--of the logos, and of legein. The mind not as some abstract capablility in negative potential, but that which brings us into being. We speak, as birds sing, to have our being by giving an order to things, and separating things that are ordered together.
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Review of a new biography of (The Young) Tennyson in the Times. There's an anecdote about the time he processed into the Sheldonian to receieve an honorary degree, unkempt as usual, and one of the robed dons in the cheap seats called out, "Mum wake you early, dearie?"
And News Quiz returns for the start of the London season. Somehow it's already mid-September. And Last Night of the Proms tonight. I remember, in the days before ubiquitous wi-fi, walking up and down a subway platform on the long commute, deep in the outer boroughs, trying to cadge a network to catch a few mintutes of it live.
When I was in those years of constant auditions in the city, I actually made a practice of listening to PMQs and the BBC parliament coverage. Seemed like a good way to get the news without being drawn into the labyrinth of mediation. If word could reach the chamber, the topic was probably important, and I'd rather listen to the words that the MPs use to describe it than the writers and television reporters. The λεγειν.
There's a universe of promptings that you can tune your electronic device towards. I've always found it more useful to use it to eavesdrop on the events going on in worthwhile places, as opposed to enjoying the device as an end in itself.
Ave Maria
The feast of the name of Mary. Instituted when Sobieski's news about lifting the second siege of Vienna (more coffee for us) arrived in Rome, paraphrasing Caesar: We came, We saw, God conquered. After wandering the Balkans for a bit, these sentiments are a bit more comprehensible. There are three great historical winds here -- the wind from the West, and Rome; the East, and Orthodoxy; and the South, anciently the Sublime Porte, but Ataturk's republic is still a living force in these southern countries. Possibly, there's another wind from the north, anciently the Saxons and the protestants contra the Habsburgs (when they arrived to lift the siege, treated none too kindly by the local Catholics), and now the industrial developments with loud German shepherds, and late-night classes at the Goethe Institute -- if you look in the window, you can sometimes see the bleary-eyed locals (no doubt after working two jobs that day) scrutinizing the whiteboards.
At present, I'm in the lands the government of which Demosthenes excoriated in the Philippics. It's a peculiar place. They left the old socialist southern republic before things degenerated into war -- from the chatter I've read, apparently they realized they had little interest in the fight, and would simply be used as soldiers by one of the larger ethnic groups. But avoiding the general war of the 1990s didn't make for an idyllic republic. The capital appears to be a placid but divided city, much like some others in the region, with one religion on one side of the river and the other on the other. Just a punter's guess, but perhaps the more recent conflict in the city is from the fact that the population growth after the recent nearby war didn't follow that pattern. The capital is marked with baroque architecture and statues, many from a development push a decade ago, and from a decade before that, there's an enormous lit cross on the mountain above the city. The folks across the river undoubtedly have very firm notions on statuary. (Latin churches in this part of the world seem to make a point of having a statue or two out front, and sounding the bells at the canonical hours, even if the doors are locked at the time. Cf. Ivo Andric's novel, in which the arrival of the French diplomat causes the Christians to wonder if flags might be allowed.) And adjacent to the large cross on the mountain, there is an even larger tower, apparently a telecom tower, which closely resembles the central tower in the Muslim-majority capital city to the northwest. The rocks and stones themselves.
Travelling through these places does bring some very strong dreams, and it does force you to define where you stand in relation to these questions. Someone could live their entire life in North Dakota and never encounter these forces, and there's many who would say that it's not a bad thing, and perhaps even the point of the New World. But it's been my experience, as someone from the New World on a bit of a peregrination hereabouts, that the dreams in which you have some sense of the angels will come even if you are a fast-food and television-reared child of nature amid the suburban comforts. (Kant's only statuary was a bust of Rousseau. It's a beginning.) When they occur in the context of world-historical forces, though, these dreams and intimations have a context within living experience. And perhaps the recent political experience of my country shows the dangers of these intimations of higher things when they arise without any context in the social life. The message can get a bit garbled, and a soi-disant modern Sobieski can launch a crusade against a DC pizza joint, and then make a last-second detour to the Capitol. History is an attempt to synthesize the higher truths of experience within the social fabric. And this can bring the wars in heaven down to earth, either with actual armies and actual pain and death, or in the form of a bridge laden with statuary, almost like primitive charms against the other tribe, lining the paths between the villages.
Rousseau didn't imagine that the children of nature would be dispassionate blank slates, or mild animals content to sleep and feed and work in the factories. This simplicity of primeval (or perhaps primordial) nature was a notion of greatness. The point was that this greatness came about through simplicity, and (long before Weber), disenchanting the people of a few old social charms. And Kant took this notion as a beginning. We of the New World can't pretend, in our innocence and prosperity, that there aren't ancient spiritual conflicts, and occasionally the wars in heaven are being fought out on earth. And perhaps the real danger is that we, with our own personal sense of the numinous, and of faith, might leap into these conflicts precipitously. Where wars of religion are being fought, they often have as much to do with the earthly elements of the two societies as they do with religious doctrines. The reine tor from the New World doesn't intuitively understand that these higher personal truths he senses so clearly have been translated into social experience over long centuries of conversation and daily life. Jumping into a battle because you recognize a device on the flag is a bit foolhardy. Instead, the traveller, knowing their own spiritual sympathies, is best off carefully observing the way these inner sensibilities have been translated into the social fabric, and making peace where it is possible to make peace.
I say this sort of thing with trepidation, as it's a bit contrary to the present television-oriented foreign policy of my country. But I have lived in these small towns and cities, in the north and in the south, in North Dakota and in midtown Manhattan. There are hundreds of millions staring at the televisions and imagining that they understand. Life, though, is (if I can make a sectarian point of my own) much closer to the care and encounter of sacrament than the sudden insights and identifications of textual analysis. America wields a rather big stick these days, and the policy decisions often play to the television narratives. But the ancient truths of the world are inscribed on the wanderer's staff. Every encounter is transactional sacrament, not a merely a vindication of simple and intuitive truths you always already knew.
Hold to your faith, and look carefully.
At present, I'm in the lands the government of which Demosthenes excoriated in the Philippics. It's a peculiar place. They left the old socialist southern republic before things degenerated into war -- from the chatter I've read, apparently they realized they had little interest in the fight, and would simply be used as soldiers by one of the larger ethnic groups. But avoiding the general war of the 1990s didn't make for an idyllic republic. The capital appears to be a placid but divided city, much like some others in the region, with one religion on one side of the river and the other on the other. Just a punter's guess, but perhaps the more recent conflict in the city is from the fact that the population growth after the recent nearby war didn't follow that pattern. The capital is marked with baroque architecture and statues, many from a development push a decade ago, and from a decade before that, there's an enormous lit cross on the mountain above the city. The folks across the river undoubtedly have very firm notions on statuary. (Latin churches in this part of the world seem to make a point of having a statue or two out front, and sounding the bells at the canonical hours, even if the doors are locked at the time. Cf. Ivo Andric's novel, in which the arrival of the French diplomat causes the Christians to wonder if flags might be allowed.) And adjacent to the large cross on the mountain, there is an even larger tower, apparently a telecom tower, which closely resembles the central tower in the Muslim-majority capital city to the northwest. The rocks and stones themselves.
Travelling through these places does bring some very strong dreams, and it does force you to define where you stand in relation to these questions. Someone could live their entire life in North Dakota and never encounter these forces, and there's many who would say that it's not a bad thing, and perhaps even the point of the New World. But it's been my experience, as someone from the New World on a bit of a peregrination hereabouts, that the dreams in which you have some sense of the angels will come even if you are a fast-food and television-reared child of nature amid the suburban comforts. (Kant's only statuary was a bust of Rousseau. It's a beginning.) When they occur in the context of world-historical forces, though, these dreams and intimations have a context within living experience. And perhaps the recent political experience of my country shows the dangers of these intimations of higher things when they arise without any context in the social life. The message can get a bit garbled, and a soi-disant modern Sobieski can launch a crusade against a DC pizza joint, and then make a last-second detour to the Capitol. History is an attempt to synthesize the higher truths of experience within the social fabric. And this can bring the wars in heaven down to earth, either with actual armies and actual pain and death, or in the form of a bridge laden with statuary, almost like primitive charms against the other tribe, lining the paths between the villages.
Rousseau didn't imagine that the children of nature would be dispassionate blank slates, or mild animals content to sleep and feed and work in the factories. This simplicity of primeval (or perhaps primordial) nature was a notion of greatness. The point was that this greatness came about through simplicity, and (long before Weber), disenchanting the people of a few old social charms. And Kant took this notion as a beginning. We of the New World can't pretend, in our innocence and prosperity, that there aren't ancient spiritual conflicts, and occasionally the wars in heaven are being fought out on earth. And perhaps the real danger is that we, with our own personal sense of the numinous, and of faith, might leap into these conflicts precipitously. Where wars of religion are being fought, they often have as much to do with the earthly elements of the two societies as they do with religious doctrines. The reine tor from the New World doesn't intuitively understand that these higher personal truths he senses so clearly have been translated into social experience over long centuries of conversation and daily life. Jumping into a battle because you recognize a device on the flag is a bit foolhardy. Instead, the traveller, knowing their own spiritual sympathies, is best off carefully observing the way these inner sensibilities have been translated into the social fabric, and making peace where it is possible to make peace.
I say this sort of thing with trepidation, as it's a bit contrary to the present television-oriented foreign policy of my country. But I have lived in these small towns and cities, in the north and in the south, in North Dakota and in midtown Manhattan. There are hundreds of millions staring at the televisions and imagining that they understand. Life, though, is (if I can make a sectarian point of my own) much closer to the care and encounter of sacrament than the sudden insights and identifications of textual analysis. America wields a rather big stick these days, and the policy decisions often play to the television narratives. But the ancient truths of the world are inscribed on the wanderer's staff. Every encounter is transactional sacrament, not a merely a vindication of simple and intuitive truths you always already knew.
Hold to your faith, and look carefully.
The problem afflicting all of the superpowers, perhaps: the necessity that the politically unacceptable but meritorious folks be able to secure a minimal existence within the civilization. Beneficient corporate purposiveness has its antinomies.
Before the conflict started, I mused about heading to Siberia, with its 19th c. wooden buildings preserved in the cold, to find a small university (somehow with English language instruction) and study and live simply. Infinitely preferable to being caught up in what passes for the political world presently. Dostoevsky wept when he read Hegel's pronouncement that the remote place that he was in was outside history, though. But if the centers of things are caught up in false ways of thinking, perhaps it is better to live deliberately. History is the consciousness of history. If, at the center of things, only those who don't understand are allowed to play a role, then perhaps the nature of history (as we know it, a relatively recent vocabulary for parsing experience) itself has changed.
Back to the books.
Still off the morning runs. Has led to a more civilian rising hour. Just going with it for the nonce. Inauspicious place for the early run (the city has many interesting things about it, but I think even its partisans would concede that it's not California in that respect), and resting the ligatures a bit after a month of lengthening the morning course in the last city. (Up to six or seven miles, I think. Incentivized by the fact that I had to run out of the urban areas to the idyllic forested parts by the rivers.)
Separately -- my route took me past the museum of contemporary art there, which apparently has a practice of playing exotic and threatening bird calls in the mornings to keep the flocks of crows away. Strange how an organization's purpose can be reflected in all of its works. Hegel: the cunning is more than the conscious.
I'm a very big fan of that city. Much more civilized than comparable cities within world powers. Non-aligned. Big military parade next week, though. I spent many evenings at the sbux across from the redesigned space in front of the parliament, and the redesign of the street really does give a Red Square vibe.
But as for today, no run. When I return to it, I will return to it. Now that I am not doing it, I am not doing it.
"The most important thing is not to be divided." (Grotowski)
re: Morning Runs
Still off these for the nonce, for several reasons. There are times when the light brigade should charge, and there are times when the light brigade should refrain from charging.
[In the background, from their various tents, the Light Brigade strikes up a winsome refrain of "All Quiet Along the Potomac" in the flickering light of the campfires.]
It would be useful to be in a place where I could run before dawn without the strays and the pollution, a gym at hand, basic healthy food (coffehouses, perhaps, as well), churches for meditation and liturgy, and a world-class research library to work in all day, but the only scenario that would provide that, if I were to try to jump now, would likely not allow for a place to rest the head in the evenings, so I reckon I'll press on. Though I did mull the prospect.
In the larger view, many more things would be useful, of course. The fact that these things come to my mind indicate that the mind's provisioning task is revealing the nature of the work to be done.
So -- work towards these things, to the exclusion of others, to the extent that circumstances allow.
Notes for something Kafkaish, cont'd:
A protagonist, a bit adrift, attempts to compose the events of the past into a recognizable history, but encounters considerable difficulty. Perhaps he is the child of civil servants, and knows that confidential government work basically destroyed his parents and his family, and also he knows that, after he left their home, networks of corrupt people made short work of what he thought to be his life's work and then two subsequent attempts at a career in the learned professions. The question, the thing that keeps him from understanding the story, is the degree to which these things might be connected. Is it the nature of the country and society that such things happen, or did something happen within the world that encompassed both events and made his experience unique from the others?
Knowing the story seems to take on added importance, as he senses even the smallest, least remunerative opportunities closing themselves off to him outside the world of the corrupt networks, and the darker contacts and context of the old home. Fathoming the reason for the vanishing of the light -- a peculiar impulse, perhaps.
At any rate, an interesting piece of fiction.
The point might be wondering at the urgency of knowing such things, when the knowledge would seem to be of little avail.
From my limited understanding of the present national politics, and my personal experiences in several spheres, I'd be inclined to say that the most salient thing about the present executive is that this is not an outlier or an anomaly -- across the two factions prevailing generally (as against each other), this sort of sensibility seems to be prevalent. And, not incidentally, each offers a world-encompassing explanation sufficient to constitute a comprehensive political ontology for its followers.
I have no way of knowing how many other wanderers there might be. Perhaps I'm the outlier, and the republic is entirely healthy with the single exception of the experiences of one of its citizens. But these experiences would objectively suggest the possibility of a more prevalent difficulty. The presumption is properly against the anomaly.
I actually feel a bit like apologizing to each of these settlements, as it tries to draw me into the sleep of the place, and I assert my inward ways against it. (I'm off the morning runs for a bit, for several reasons.) It's not like I'm holding off, hoping to fall into the spell of a greater city. The attraction of the large northen cities on these travels is precisely that it's easier to stand apart from things there, and think and work. Even in my home city of a few decades, I've deliberately lived, like many of the full-time residents there, at some distance from the madding crowd and their various comforts. The trick is to appreciate the flame that has drawn the forest to the place, without following the moths, and trying to cast yourself into it on arrival.
And yet -- each place does have a message that it is straining to express to the traveller, and it is possible to listen for those things, the things the place wishes to be known, and to try to understand them.
We were the first class of the conservatory (now in the top ten worldwide, by some rankings), so there were some difficulties. I stayed out of the fray, and just worked on soaking up as much of the work as I could. The higher elements, mainly the classical elements (and listening to those concerts and rehearsals were a small part of that), have leavened the other things over the intervening times. Conservatory is about planting seeds for the coming years. Mix in a few redwoods. Cedars. Eastern pine. The parts of it that have fallen away in the course of the years were lesser things from the beginning. There were one or two very passionate but craven teachers, feminist politics, all the right PC ideas, etc. Those teachings won't even endure, let alone prevail. The more careful work of the art lasts.
Frequently attended his concerts and open rehearsals during the conservatory degree. Post-Szell, Cleveland has consistently been one of those rare Midwestern arts institutions committed to careful, historically meaningful art, despite all its old European implications and entailments. Apparently connected to Bonhoeffer as an in-law, which I hadn't known.
On days in which you survey the employment listings, and absolutely everything about the situation makes it seem like you have about as much business (or interest in) looking for a position as a random method actor who has done a few years of Shakespeare in the park (note the lower case) has of seeking admittance to an elite Hollywood bistro filled with lunching power-brokers assembling projects, and guarded by several layers of criminally conspiritorial types, from the bouncers on though the front of house folks -- on such a day, do not send out the CVs.
Time and tide might not wait, but they do have their turns.
Interesting concert at the small hall of the local philharmonic ($6). Postwar western-Balkan ensemble, mostly new-music, but mixed in with some of the romantic repertory. The latter actually seemed to be their strength, interpretive freedom, sweeping emotion, wobbly pitch at times from the low strings (which I've noticed everywhere in the Balkans -- perhaps they hear the instruments differently). The paradox is that the type of musician who would be very strong in the romantic repertory, for these same reasons, is conceptually drawn to new music.
The (excellent) hall is very crisp and bright -- with the romantic swooshiness (in the best Rortyan sense) of the pieces, it was a bit like watching a melodrama on a kabuki stage. Every fricative rasp of the strings as clear as daylight. Very interesting.
The Miami Vice move in the Carribean was flagrant under any standard. So why no reaction? Much to do with the use of unrestricted drone warfare in neutral nations ovr the last two decades, I think. They've simply taken off the fig leaf.
When bad things come, they make good use of the bad aspects of the good.
Meanwhile, in the streets, the War on Wilding continues.
Somewhat miraculously, the neighborhood hubbub diminished, and the workspace was quite idyllic for several hours. Managed a solid 30 minutes on the task, though, before I was distracted to necessary admin planning and due diligence. Tempted just to stay at the desk into the evening, but there is an obligation to the place. So, off to the city center, and I'll hope that whatever Friday charm fell over the place will return.
With every new vector introduced on the path, there comes the risk that you will find that it has led you into climes uncongenial to the specific work at hand. At that point, commit to dispassion, as it will be necessary on the long arc back to the known winds of the trade routes.
It's undoubtedly a pleasant place for the people of the place, but I don't seem to have hit it at the right angle.
Bit of a slough of despond. I have set the tasks, though. It's a simple matter of keeping myself at the desk and doing them.
Pausing the morning runs, at least through the week -- several reasons.
Noticed that the city's national theatre (which might be the national theatre, though that's usually not the case in the Balkans) was doing a play that I remember reading as an undergrad, and the sequel to which I actually saw on Broadway when I was doing summer stock in Massachusetts. But then it become cultural phenomenon, the HBO version, etc. Decided that as an American, I didn't want to investigate that American incursion into the neighborhood. Sort of like the fellow you knew in college whom you grew to dislike, and then you see them from a distance when travelling. No need to force the acquaintance. Looking forward to catching one or two of their other pieces while I'm here.
Felling a bit like the mad scientist orbiting the planet from a distance, plotting his grand strategy, yet somehow always the same distance from the planet. Must be sure to give the areas of the orbit their due, though. These are stange and interesting lands, although I don't want to dissipate the energies by turning away from the central work and just calling the whole exercise an extended gap year. There is work to be done, and I have it in hand.
Heu, quam vicina est ultima terra mihi. (Ovid, also in the Balkans)
AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a wellconstructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.
Thursday. Which I know from the arrival of the TLS in the email inbox (de minimis promotional rate). Like oil running down the beard. The web interface is terrible, basically impossible to read all the way through without opening a few dozen seriatum tabs in the browser, and then it's in random order. The UK seems on a mission to destroy its internationally influential websites. Speaking piecemeal to the nations. The OED was revamped a few years ago, making it basically useless for many purposes. The BBC radio sites have been a complete mess for the past several months; the idea appears to be that they're geo-fencing almost all of the content to the UK, with some content available after a lag of a few weeks. (Perhaps this informed the recent shifts in In Our Time, which would no longer be available same-week worldwide.)
At any rate, with the publicly available snapshots of the first few pages as printed, and the scattershot piecemeal web interface, it's possible to meander through the Weekly Reader, and get some sense of the gestalt. The best way of thinking about the TLS is to imagine yourself as a great Arabian lord standing on his balcony in the evening, and a series of bedraggled urchins sprint into the courtyard and shout garbled versions of the interesting things going on in the other palaces. They're trying to seem impressive as they recite their speech up to the balcony, but the real task is to look past them to see if there's anything worthwhile in the thing they're decribing. One very useful bit is that the reviews will sometimes dismissively run through a list of the old scholarship, which can give you a good reading list.
The consistent ideal for the rooms on this peregrination has been a bright, open minimally furnished place with an abundance of fresh air and sunlight. Ideally, sufficient cultural life in the city--theatre and music, usually around $5-$10 per ticket, as the market hasn't been artificially constrained to make it a luxury good, and the state/foundation support goes right to the art, rather than building the marketing mechanisms necessary for selling the luxury good. More basically, the ability to run in the morning (pace air pollution, dogs, safety). Research libraries in the area with some collections in English have proved useful.
The local ideas of happiness, though, seem to enter on "cozy", heavily furnished and decorated spaces well insulated from air, and occasionally sunlight. I wandered through the main residential developments over the weekend, and was struck that even in the mountains, they build close, cozy spaces in insular communities. Much the same phenomenon in the country directly to the west that was also part of the old republic. The materials of brutalism assist in this. They become vine-draped caves rather than portals to the light.
Eluding local ideas of happiness is the first, and necessary step to escaping the local sleep. Put me in a cozy, hygge room in the center of the hobbit village, and I will light a small lamp, devote all my energies to focusing the mind, and wait for the opportunity to leave.
Just reading the reviews of the TN in the park is very depressing. They used to do good theatre there. Of course, the same can be said of the city. Now, it's just a means of repeating the sensibilities of the television.
Incidentally, after much mulling, I'm more certain than ever that in the letter and the gulling conceit, we were meant to hear "cross-gartered" as wearing a cross, and "yellow starchings" as the ruff. The joke is that M misunderstands. Both the starched ruff and the cross would have been provocative political symbols. (And possibly "Lady of the Strachy as misprint for Stark(ch)y.")
Nowhere in the variorum.
Quite a week, last week. For some reason, absasmurfly everything that could go wrong from an admin POV did go wrong. Including, most significantly for my purposes, an unforced error or two.
By the weekend, was reduced to what a Victorian prime minister might have called a state of mild nervous prostration. But decided to observe the American holday by sleeping in after a placid Sunday, and now it's back to the fray.
Absolute discipline. Some people might call my approach characteristic of national socialism, others might call it characteristic of a Soviet commissar. The choice in those instances would be revealing of the speaker. But it is necessary to have the intensity of focus and being that was deivided between those two (and then reconciled, as Rory noted, at an extended academic seminar called the battle of Stalingrad). By divine edict, Eden isn't an option. Find the grace.
A peculiar 24 hours, weather-wise. Strong cold winds from the south suddenly appeared yesterday afternoon. Storms in the air, battles perhaps, in the sense of meaningful things contending. The air marked by the acrid smell of the southern air here. Then, apparently, the victory of calmer things, and clean air and sunshine, presumably from the north.
Wandered through one of the malls. Not quite the glittering and flashing desire-machines of the country to the northeast, but a solid place. I seem to be able to sense the thread that goes from the market-based modern malls of the country to the southwest, through places like this, and to the north. Perhaps my imagination, but it seems the vehicle of one of the local social sensibilities, tracing out its idea of what a great, good place might be, and so it might be in some tension with the other groups. Instead of coffee from a small, century-old tin pot, digital espresso machines costing hundreds of dollars arrayed between the televisions and the laptops. Such things can be built from private notions of perfection, or in imitation of distant models, or against the proximate others. In the last case, it might have that character for the others as well. An amiable tabernacle, though.
Stopped in at a shrine of a local saint. Whenever you see a sign or a photo on the wall indicating that a pope stopped in here to pray, you get the sense that you might be in a worthwhile place, as opposed to the place across the street. Or perahsp not. Perhaps he's just indicating the neighborhood.
At every moment of your life, no matter the place, no matter the situation, every other moment in your life has a relation to it, and is hoping for it to be a certain thing. No matter the present situaiton, there will be or were moments in your life when you might think about this situation, and have a needful relationship to it, wanting it to be a certain thing. Our life also has meaning through intension -- these moments rely upon one another. Perhaps the essence of "being true to yourself."
Paradoxically, physical rest and getting away from the urban areas can actually work against dispassion. The water clears, things come into view. Thoughts are heard and held more clearly.
Like the executive in Priestley's "I have Been Here Before" who attempts to signal to his wife that the idyllic country inn might be more dangerous that the city hotel filled with the blare of jazz bands.
Once again, I find myself in the southern Balkans, and pining to flee to the mountains of Bulgaria. (And, presumably, when there, I would sense the path northward.)
Precisely the sensation I had in the country to the south in February. But the art of exploring occasionally means trying the thing you didn't like before, but with a slightly different aspect (different culture, faith).
It's by no means as bad as it was, and the quarters are in a decent neighborhood. I look forward to sussing out the cultural bits in the remaining time, but I don't think I'll linger.
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Orthodox - having the true faith. Western: truly having the faith.
"In the holiness of truth."
There are three things that I'm trying to accomplish now, and today, I was able to spend a few hours on one of them. In fairness, I did spend several hours on CV distribution, &c., which I try to do every several days or so, in addition to the real-time alerts. And yet, I was always doing things.
At the state university, I learned how to plod, which can be a skill when you cover ground in the long run, but that also means that the course of the day fills up with the exercises, meditations, etc. that keep the candle going from day to day. The trick is to know when to draw from those energies to feed the projects, when there are projects that it would be good to spend as much time on as possble. I certainly wouldn't give up the daily routines, the running, the eavesdropped Mass (liturgy of the word only if on tape), the focused morning reading, etc. And yet, the thing carrying the mechanism through the day can fill up the day, and there's usually not much to show for it, though sometimes there's some useful things in the writing.
As Heid observed, the plodding is a form of existence that already knows its end and is working towards it. And that can have an effect on a life.
More mercurial, perhaps. To the extent that it's possible without destabilizing the covered wagon heading down the trail.
Have tried the local water over the last few days, after ascertaining that it was at least theoretically safe. Interesting. From the local river mostly, apparently, in addition to springs, which are likely abundant, given the surrounding mountain ranges. Heavily treated, though. Will let it sit out for a few hours before use, if I continue on with it.
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Returned to Pynchon's Against the Day recently. More and more clear to this pugnacious reader that it's about being shocked, or occasionally seduced, out of the episodic cartoon by the events of the aforementioned day. The plot lines, in a fanciful though likely not entirely inaccurate reading, seem to trace the varying threads of the post-9/11 response to things. But eventually we're inside a labyrinth of more realistic events affecting a slate of characters on a Dostoyevskian scale -- perhaps an uncharitable reading on my part, but I think, about halfway through, we get to the point at which you would have to know and care about the models for the characters to follow the plot-lines. Even given the mind-candy settings (Michaelson-Moreley, higher maths, etc.). Or perhaps it's not the best novel to read whan nomading through the Balkans. It requires the ennui of the UWS coffeehouse in early evening.
Might see it through this time, but time and mental focus, assuming there's a difference between those two things, are precious things.
I've joked about this a bit, but it does reflect some rather serious thought. Given the peculiar times between the beginning of the JD and the present, I would likely take a Socratic, if not Shermenesque, view to serving in leadership or government. As an artist or a writer, or even a plain advocate in the courts, I could explain a few things, and help people out. But in that Tamino didn't knowingly enter the trials, I suspect he would have very little business being in Sarastro's court afterwards. I have my understanding; it suffices. In a way, it does reconfirm the initial vocation, which was run a bit akew in the context of the NYC industry. Vissi d'arte, &c.
Odd, the Great and Terrible Gurgle appears to have taken a dislike to this subsite. Completely de-indexed, even after sitemaps, page fixes, and individual pages sent in. (As I used to do this sort of thing for a living, not entirely clueless in that area.) Also, the archive bots seem to have developed a similar distaste -- last snapshots were in March. (Posted a few pages there this afternoon, perhaps it will whet the bots' appetite.)
Bit odd. Time was, this sort of hand-crafted content was the gold standard for search indexing. A little like realizing that you haven't left any footprints on the trail for the last mile. Might force me into mass-market authorship, just so I can be sure that a copy or two will still linger on Salvation Army thrift store shelves a century hence.
The basic elements, perhaps: a tenfold increase in the global population in the last century, a vast expansion of industrialization in the Western postwar model, and considerable corruption in the Woodstock-to-Wall-Street generation that followed the generation of giants who built the place.
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Not to use the interwebs for grousing or chuntering excessively, but this journeying isn't easy. Away from the highways of air travel and proper hotels, one does land in the place itself. In the pond, which is much more different from the last pond than one sunlit upland hill varies from another.
No simple highway.
It's not a disastrous place, just very underdeveloped. It reminds me of anther city divided by a river, a bit to the southeast. I can't help but think that part of the difficulty is that silent war. Defining your world as a marginal improvement on theirs, rather than a thing in itself, or taking a more distant model. The nation to the northeast had less of that threat from the south, and is focused more on the northern models, to better effect. The vibe is sort of underdeveloped small city in NJ. Still evidence about of rougher times. Banks barricaded behind double-door thick glass. Was waiting between the two doors, and caught a whiff what must have been a cleaning chemical. Essence of the visit, so far. But time for improvement.
On the upside, found a decent English-language bookstore (unlike the US, people read here, so in all of these countries, pehaps save one, the bookstores have been ubiquitous). Everything from abroad, though, so no translated locals. Some of the shops in the last country made a point of setting a corner aside for translated locals, and that was always a good place to stop in for a bit.
On this peregrination, I've tried to keep to the capitals and the tourist cities -- this is about travelling and studying while still within (a certain species of) European culture. This isn't an Indiana Jones journey, in other words.
That said, the southern parts of the peninsula can be a bit rough, as I discovered over the winter -- even in the larger/tourist cities. There was a point of decision in January/February: I would either go out and buy some khakis and head into the dirty areas, or increase the amount of time at the kitchen table reading -- opted for the latter.
I'm in one of the more decent parts of this city here, but there are still some rough edges and inconveniences, just from the nature of the place. Far from what the locals have to go through, I'm sure, but it is a salutary reminder to stay as close to the pools of light as possible when travelling in this manner. And there's always the table to read at.
I do miss books a bit. I've been careful to ensure that there were large research libraries nearby, whatever the nature of the times. Given the peregrinations, though, everything's on the glowing screen of the foldable panopticon.
On the other hand, I've been equally frustrated with the conditions of the books on occasion. The other side of the fence is no idyll, just a marginal improvement, all told.
An ebook reader large enough to handle PDFs might be a marginal improvement, but those are still a bit pricey, and I'm wary of carrying expensive things around. Inexpensive, interoperable, and easily replaced technology has been the watchword on these trips, and that approach seems to have worked well so far.
One of the more revealing things that I've seen in the media from the present American president was the disparaging of the notion that the country is an experiment, a test of a certain social proposition. This is disconcerting, because I've never encountered a historical narrative that didn't hold this to be true. For a very long time, the word was governed a certain way, and then another way of thought started to take hold in the northern European island nations. The colonization of (at least the top half of) the hemisphere was based on this new social order, and if it falls apart after a relatively short run of three or four centuries, we'd lose a lot.
If you're being tested, and you don't know that it's you being tested, if you prevail, it won't necessarily be you who prevails. In the same way, we should be clear that a very specific idea of governance and social order is being tested to see if it is a true way for human beings, and it's being tested in the historical context of other ways of going about things. If things go badly wrong, the conclusion might be drawn that a democratic republic can't be trusted with the mechanisms involved in governing an entire continent.
It is possible to err. In the context of a general prosperity, it's easy to forget that.
(Apolitical -- I have no opinion as to which of the present factions would be most, or least likely to provoke the error. Just pointing out to the baseball players that they are, in fact, playing baseball.)
I am a bit careful about how I look for opportunities these days -- which trees I shake. If any of the several networks of folks who've gone up against me in the past decided to be marginally less evil for a brief moment, I could find myself entering a world with an ordained outcome -- "things bad begun..."
So I emphasize the formal aspects of the qualification and experience--so many degrees, so many courses, so many years of experience of practice at a certain level. But, as I've increasingly discovered, the present order of things relies much less on the way things are than what happens when you talk to people.
(As strange as that might sound, if you paraphrsed it out, you might reach the essence of the problem.)
Skipped the AM run to nurse a bit of a twinge through the weekend. Onward.
This is many years of experience talking: the people who are successful and influential in the present order of things (on every level of society) are, by and large, not good people, and the sense of reality that they create in their interactions is not a good world -- despite the structures of postwar industrial prosperity, and the fact that the trucks of frozen hamburgers still roll into town every week. Perhaps it was ever thus, but it most certainly is thus.
Look to the past. Piece together a world from the relics.
One difficulty with thinking about religious things is that pretty much everyone who has given their ideas serious thought has a rather good point, and yet they occasionally completely disagree. The puritans of the new world, for example, all the way to their antinomy in the (still-thriving) know-nothings of the midlands, were vehement in their criticism of orthodoxy. Several of the founders explicitly equated both the eastern church and the western church to the Vedic pantheon and practices. As I travel, from time to time, I do pick up on some of the same vibes around the orthodox clergy as I did among the sorcerers (almost invariably apprentice-level) in the theatre and experimental theatre. And yet, the mind is a mysterious thing, and the whitewashed walls and clerestory doctrines of the reformation might not bring the whole of the human along on their forays into higher things. Cf., perhaps, "I will draw all things to myself."
It appears that the good air comes from the north here, while winds from the south bring a peculiarly acrid air. I've been in some difficult places in the winter (3x -4x the levels of emergency levels of pollution stateside--HEPA at full blast at the desk, and jedi shemaghs over the mouth and nose outside, before they became a political symbol), but I would certainly not want to be here in January and February. Although I understand that it's significantly better than it used to be.
https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20091104.html
Cf. the Enlightenment vs. the romantic/historical school. Very similar -- indicating an underlying truth about the mind, perhaps.
Perhaps the question we are heading towards: whether a state (as distinct from government) in the service of the 60%-70%, administered by a more or less corruptly selected further subset of the group, is a valid desideratum. The percentages are high, in historical context, cf. Picketty's second book, but given the industrial mechanisms at hand, an ogliarchy in service of the democratic preponderance is not necessarily the only option at hand.
I see this reflected in local conflicts here. There seems not to be a push for elections, as the political machine would have enough influence to carry a preponderance, but at the same time, the mechanisms of social advancement are gummed up by the corruption. (At least in the view of those protesting, or just grousing.)
One misleading notion: that in an increasingly educated society, there are either fewer career slots or fewer signs of social distinction to compete for. The present reality, seems to be that, as JK Galbraith said when equating the universities of India and the American Midwest, you either go along with things, or find yourself out in the field/street. Not really a plumage competition there.
Google appears to have de-indexed the "ephemera" part of this site. Spent some time on the seach console figuring it out, and there are a few oddities. Can't say that I blame it. Taking up valuable disk space that might be used for the things that people customarily use the internet for. Will continue puttering around to see if I might have missed a trick.
Looks like I left the last country just in time. Some of those riot images are places I was walking through & reading in a couple of weeks ago. Some interesting goings-on near the end sugggested to the (perhaps overly imaginative) observer that it might not be the best time for an American to be wandering around. And the rooms were very bad. But a decent, prosperous, and hospitable country (with reasonably priced Starbucks coffee--like NYC in the early aughts). And the capital of the old Republic. Listened to the live Bayreuth stream of Rheingold (from a Sbux) while watching night fall on the legislature's building, and the lights come on. Bit magical.
Like every country, its problems are its own, and should be sorted by the folks with a legitimate interest in the matter. #primedirective
Still mulling the notion that the fantasy novels of Tolkein (read only once or twice) and C.S. Lewis (re-read yearly) have their sources in undisclosed wartime travels in the Balkans and elsewhere. Lunatic notion, but the second Lewis novel has clear resonances with his American travels, and the others seem to have a similar verisimilitude -- and the overarching theme is an Englishman type coming into contact with distant cultures. And then there's the powerful City contacts of Charles Williams. (My hierarchy puts him between the two.)
Every work of fiction is an invitation to fictionalize the life of the author.
One trick in securing the housing is to find a place somewhere between the cobblestoned tourist-catering places and the hobbit villages. Clearly, the present booking has landed me far afield into the latter. Much like the place in German Romanian Transylvania some time ago, the only difference being that the neighbors' chairs facing the windows are much closer here. Will be a bit of an exercise in dispassion. Om.
Quiet day. The goal was to sit quietly and read. Restoring a bit of the focus that was lost last month in the inner-city rooms. Quite successful for most of the day.
To be productive, occasionally you need to think of yourself as an animal, and cause the animal to do the useful things by manipulating surroundings and habits. While always reserving the capacity of free will that could accomplish everything in an un-caused and spontaneous fell swoop of success.
Gently down the stream.
Postprandial cinema: Trial and Error (The Dock Brief), 1962. John Mortimer play, on Broadway the previous year, adapted for film with Peter Sellars. The Proto-Rumpole. Very mid-century UK, a bit like a J.B. Priestley, with morals and apercus of a masonic tincture scattered in among the macarizing. Worthwhile.
Pisistratus is still the classical paradigm, perhaps. Some of the details are almost eerily on-point. A tyranny brought to power by the people over the oligarchs. His supporters wearing characteristic garments that one historian said kept them on the farm because they looked ridiculous in the cities. Reaching out to the conventionally highly-regarded poets and writers, so long as they wrote in service of his golden age.
I have to wonder if part of the chaos in the country now is from no one explaining the different thories of power, how they relate, and which of them (after a pragmatic alliance with the right-wing think tanks), has suddenly come into almost unchecked power.
These are the corporate types of New Netherlands. This is a specific theory of power, and virtue (Weber, Gierke, etc.). Instead of voting for their own representatives, the people voted for their neighbors' boss, in the hope that their neighbors would get what was coming to them. And now, at least for the nonce, it's America, Inc.
That's the dark view. There's another way of seeing it, in that very old forms of statecraft are being used in the manner of free-enterprise corporations, and there's an outside chance that new forms of statecraft might result.
It's a vertiginous moment, and one that could still go either way, but very few people seem to realize the nature of the event, and the history of these forms. Or how far we might be from the ground.
I see that India is trying to get a handle on the stray dog problem, interestingly through judicial means. When the poor neighborhoods are marked by hungry, roaming, suffering carnivorous animals, civilization needs to adjust a few things. Those in the neighborhoods come to symbiosis with them, of course (with lapses and exceptions), but I can vouch for the fact that they have a different approach to the stranger.
The northern countries have solved the problem admirably by sterilizing them and leaving them in place, but the root of it is that people bring them into the place and then cast them out.
Local strays I've encountered have seemed quite docile. Much more like the country to the west in that respect than the one to the southwest.
I'm not exaggerating the noxiousness of Balkan smoking and vaping. Part of the culture, so you just have to accept that the air will be a bit poisoned in the polis. One reason the morning runs are always calculated to hit the point between the dogs and the first waves of smoking/vaping humans on the sidewalk. Inter canem et lupem.
Walked through an absolutely noxious cloud on the way to the grocery. It's a bit like biking through Harlem -- once you have the first indication of the scent, you try to figue out the vapor trail and pick another vector. Thought I might need a month of detox afterwards. And then, in the evening, to the old market on the apparently largely Muslim side of the river, though in fairness the constant mild tincture of sweetness in the air from the vapes was likely coming from the crowds of visitors. Walked to the mosque at the top of the hill, with the path ending in a sort of parking lot. Perhaps the wrong approach. Walked back down the other side of the hill, past a sort of WSQ 5-on-5 halfcout setup. Some decent shooting, but defense is not an emphasized skill here, nor apparently is rebounding -- the latter ceded by common consent to the tallest fellow underneath. Perhaps a hesitancy from politeness.
Admittedly, a vegetarian nonsmoking actor from the city would always have some difficulties in this part of the world. On the other hand, the ubiquity of smoke in the American downtowns now is one reason why I think it would be unlikely that I would head back to a big city. Dope the ghetto. Interesting times.
When in a difficult situation, the most important thing is to keep the situation clear. The international law of armed conflicts began by forcing the warmakers to make clear the beginning and end of the conflict, who and what was involved, and what they were seeking. This took centuries.
Present ways are different than this -- think the John Houseman character in Three Days of the Condor: "I miss the clarity."
Some difficulties arise when not all of the secrets belong to you, of course. But making the the situation clear out of a decent respect for the opinions of mankind can be accomplished with the necessary discretion. Whether it will be at all effective, or really, if anyone will notice, is a secondary concern. Always ensure that your derring-do is under the right flag, nailed to the mast if necessary.
Feast of the Assumption.
In which I remember arriving in a new city to begin graduate study, not having secured an apartment in advance. (Such things were possible, once.) Walking through the carnival for the feast in the old Italian neighborhood, asking at the raffle table where there might be listings for apartments. They pointed me to the rectory next to the old brick church. I knocked at the door and asked if they knew of anyone looking to rent an apartment. They went back into the kitchen for a moment and came back with a typed list, using which which I found an upstairs one-bedroom in an old wooden building a few blocks away.
One of the first things I bought were some small basil and oregano plants, kept on the old kitchen counters. The orchestra was a short walk away, and the tickets were inexpensive. The brand-new university library wasn't immense, but it was sufficient. The artistic studios were the same rooms that were in use in the 1920s and 1930s, in the first popular flourishing of the modern American arts. It was a beginning.
Commemoration is memory. Remembering is an action; it can either be the case or not be the case. Simply speaking the word "memory" isn't some sort of a spell that can provoke the condition. You must do these things, however small and insignificant they might seem.
Interesting, one detail that I missed in the last country: the derisive name of the youth coalition supporting the government is a malapropism suggesting a spelling error in Cyrillic when trying to write "students". Basically the "skollers".
The academic structure is taken much more seriously in this part of the world. Having a degree effects a qualitative change; you become an "academic citizen." Professional actors list their professors in their bios throughout their career. Random choruses of the Gaudeamus break out at bus stops and lunch-counters... [no]
The "unfinished solution" approach the protest groups have been taking there is interesting. Still not quite sure what to think of it.
In fairness, the title "students" isn't a name without negative connotations, when it comes to political groups -- cf. Afghanistan.
Never expect vindication. They're using that stick for other things now.
By all means, if you know a particularly worthwhile circle and want to attempt to convince them, that might be a good idea. But don't launch yourself into the world with a lantern in the expectation that the great and the good yet unknown will recognize the truth in your reasoning.
Contrary to much of the prevailing philosophy, it is possible to observe, and to reason, and to understand within private experience. Kant never left his city; Socrates left only to serve in the foreign wars. The ability to think the critical thought, and the ability to speak to others about it are equally necessary things -- neither can substitute for the other, and both must be the case.
Also, they're not the same thing.
Feast of Maximilian Kolbe. Travelled the world, became an influential scholar using the latest means of the mass media of the time, and yet even within his cult, largely only remembered for the manner of his death.
Perils of not getting a decent autobiography to an influential publisher before the deluge, perhaps. Though arguably that's not the best use of the brief candle.
No special knowledge or insight on this, but -- if you look at the projections on most European maps of the Crimean area, Sevastapol seems to be just an enclave off to the side. About a year ago, I noticed an old Russian naval map that put the port at the center, and it makes a very big difference. The mineral resources and ethnic populations are of course factors as well, but if you look at the land taken in the present conflict, there seems to be a good chance that the incentive to do so came from trying to protect the place where they keep all the boats.
Another 19th c. view:
The highlight of recent months was undoubtedly the Comedie Francaise performance in Budapest. Back balcony, about $7. Amplified, but still, the Alexandrines -- the verse. (Marred slightly in one scene by the older woman a few rows down pulling open a beer tab to the general amusement of the section. I imagined her to be an anarchic former actress of the company.) Not a touring production, a cultural exchange of a recent show. A brief glance at the distant homelands of the spirit -- 'but to whet thy almost-blunted purpose.' Looking further back, the Normandy Moliere piece and the Noh pieces at the Transylvanian theatre festival brought similar, and similarly brief, illuminations.
In the depth of the winter in the Jedi city, I survived by purchasing a month's access to the London stage tapes web channel -- just listened to (and occasionally watched) the tapes from the last two RSC seasons: the λεγειν. And Wodehouse adaptations from time to time. Preserving the ability to reach into experience with the mind. We weren't put here just to survive the experience.
The mind keeps returning to the beginning of charging admission in the early modern English travelling theatre. Something happened there, perhaps, when the (already divided) Reformation met the empiricism prevailing on that island, especially in the colder and cloudy northern bits.
There is an epistemological argument for the apotheosis of the currency, and it traces to the beginning of the last century. Basically it runs something like this -- we are inculturated with old habits of mind that have become unproductive, and led to things like war, papistry, etc., and the best way to live is to do what works, and the gaining of the dollar is therefore the objective indication that you're doing the right thing. A very darksome view would see this at the root of much of the know-nothingism, the explicit anti-Catholicism prevailing at the land grant universities of the 19th c., etc. A kingdom of moral ends, that first light of the enlightenment, actually confounds this worship of wealth, so having a moral center is made identical with conceptual and ethical notions about the physical body.
And this epistemological sense is at the root of the actual glee that some have when seeing others without money. Avarice has its reasons. It's just that they're not very good ones.
There's no easy answer. These truth-seekers and fellow travellers who have been fighting each other, over the last couple of centuries especially, have distilled various necessary elements of larger truths within their fenced-off private domains, and you do have to try to understand everything in order to get anywhere.
No simple highway.
When landing on a market-based, advantage-seeking planet, you have to know how to get where you're going, while losing as little as you can. The exchange rates at the bus terminal were actually fair, a small spread between the buy and sell points. Bypassing the half-dozen invites for taxi rides on the way out, I went up to the only licensed vehicle I could see, and he quoted ~$12 USD for a 2 mile ride. I left without comment, but checked the other entrances, as it was after dark, and I wasn't exactly sure of the way. Unfortunately, the line of licensed cabs at the doner kebab were all out of service, so I shouldered my bags, checked my compass, and headed off into the night.
As it turned out, everything was safely lit, and I was walking through the town center on a summer evening, so it was quite pleasant. Got a first orientation (I had looked at online maps before arriving, and sketched out a rough plan of the town) about a third of the way there from a tourist map, and then got my bearings from the Catholic cathedral. I checked en route, but since I had written down the second name of the street rather than the first, the polite elderly fellow taking out his trash merely gave a friendly shrug, which I returned with a knowing smile and wave. After 2/3 of the journey, I was reasonably sure I was on the correct road, but had no idea how to mark the right cross-street, so I asked a cab driver at another doner restaurant, who good naturedly gave directions (which were undoubtedly logical for a cab mindset, but pointing back to the main road and saying that it was the next big intersection would have worked as well). I thanked him, but just before setting out, decided to take the cab instead, at the quoted rate of ~$6, as the evening was growing late.
Then a quick walk around. ~$8 for 2L of milk, two packages of crackers, three liters of water, 100g of coffee at the convenience store found on Google Maps, then walking about discovered a proper box of health cookies that would serve for cereal (~0.90) and a loaf of sliced bread (~0.50).
In the end, the destination was reached with sufficient nutrition. The costs were unreasonable, but landing in a place is the journey from unreasonableness to reasonableness. Not to be forced, but to be determinedly advanced towards.
There's a sort of latitudinal line that you cross when travelling south, when the bus changes from noisy passengers with loud conversations and music and a dour crew, to noisy conversations and loud music from the bus crew, while the passengers grow quiet. I noticed this in Bosnia/Croatia as well -- and when the bus travels closely to politically contested ground, the music changes, the conversations seem to change in character. Defining their relationship to the place, perhaps.
From the plain governed by the country to the north, the contested region here is bordered by mountains, so I understand the almost mythic sense of gazing longfully at the mountains from the flatlands. On the other hand, even the cities governed by the northern country on the border seem mostly to be marked by minarets.
Several large fires visible along the route -- midsummer in the Balkans.
Absolutely exhausted. Walked around a bit, combining Google Maps with commonsense wandering to secure enough food for the next few meals, which is no mean feat in an ex-Yugoslav city on a Sunday night. Between a few convenience stores and a late-night fried-things bakery that sold bread as well, sufficient grub secured, at around half the cost of a couple meals sourced from a proper grocery.
Very strong contrast, not only with the average American city (which, in fairness would me much less walkable) but also with the more Western countries to the east and the north. It's basically the same logic as going to Wal-Mart all the time when I was working in outdoor dramas in Kentucky -- going to the distant places is much easier when you can handle support and supply issues quickly and efficiently. The German hypermarkets were my base in the country to the east -- even in the largest cities. When the means of securing necessities are clear and direct, the complexity can shift to where it's more profitable -- the thinking, the making, the reading, the exploring, etc.
The most important thing is to think clearly, and to adopt whatever practices and disciplines (or, occasionally, lapses in discipline) serve that end.
This statement, which is true, is true only because of the limitations in our notions of importance.
Part of the reason that I've been such an enthusiastic advocate of Girard's theories is that I can see virtually everyone around me living mimetically, because that was how they learned to live.
This way of thinking would have served me well (and did) as a professional maker of theatre, but the means of making theatre in my country have become industrialized, which is the opposite of organic. Organic is from organ, work, a form, like our internal organs, which also exists as a function, and gains its identity from that. The opposite, industry, if you could imagine the pieces of your body for a moment as industries, would be the forms of the organs working in order to serve the others, but without thinking of themselves as part of that larger thing. Each function of the body would think itself very useful, and sometimes essential, for the body, but it wouldn't think if itself as part of that thing that its function served, any more than a worker in a fast-food restaurant would think himself part of the community of people sitting around him and eating. In the second case, the form is from a purposiveness conceived ex ante, not function.
So when an art form becomes industrialized, the roles are preserved, but as jobs. And often those jobs are given according to corporate favor, or to those who more closely correspond to the secondary purposes of the industry. Rather than theatremaking, which would happen even absent any scheme for compensation. (Cf. Demothsenes: "I paid for the staging, while you merely danced in the chorus) rising up into a scheme for sustaining it, the form is created ex nihilio, purposively, by giving a fixed number of people jobs, along with some vague idea of what it was that legitimate theatre should do.
I well remember talking with a NY producer with who employed me for several years as a website editor, and the contempt he appeared to show when I said I would rather play the smallest role on a stage than produce the biggest show on Broadway.
The urge to make all things new runs deep among those of us driven to the hinterlands of things. The useful part of that is the increased incentive to look closely, and try with all the force of your being, to understand what's going on, and how it all hangs together.
To the hardware store to restock some of the kit. Always restock the central bits in the big cities. I've walked a mile and back with luggage on a layover once to visit this hardware chain, as it has the perfect bath brush for travel.
Being the type of person who would walk two miles for a decent bath brush is a a substantial and uncontroversial virtue, I hope. One doesn't always have to whistle Col. Bogey's March on the walk, but it does help.
It's very important to distinguish things said in a rational tone from rational words. this is how the politicians and imitators gain power and influence in organizations. Look at the mechanism of the thought in the words that they say. Does it function?
Notably, the majority of both professional philosophers working now would likely say that, in essence, there is no difference between the two. But I suspect that they've just exaggerated their notions of essence in order to disagree with the concept of essence. Much as people exaggerate their notions of God in order to create something in which it would be much easier not to believe.
If you ever need proof that humans as a whole can be used by inhuman forms, look no further than the industrialized cigarette.
The wise ones open the box, look inside, and then realize that this isn't the best way of using the thing that is wrapped up inside of it. Excellent way of limiting the pensionable years, in an actuarial sense. The vaping is perhaps worse. I carefully avoid those clouds and scents, particularly hereabouts. The ingredients that are advertised and sought out are bad enough, but essentially spraying an unknown industrialized chemical compound into your lungs is the worst idea you could have, short of injecting it directly into your bloodstream.
Calls to mind the LDS 19th c. prohibition on "hot drinks." Especially at that time, there was no telling what it was that was boiling in the percolator -- as Gurdjieff and others pointed out.
(And any point that Gurdjieff and Brigham Young were both making probably merited attention.)
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