Exercises in situational nutrition, cont'd:  When a cheap bakery chain offers a whole-grain bread as a concession to health, the batch system and the usual methodology sometimes means that it doesn't bake long enough, as whole-grain requires a higher temperature or more time.  So when the outside looks like the cheap, likely additive-filled finer grains next to it on the shelf, the inside is quite possibly dough.  No one principle can identify the healthiest choice in a given situation.  Sometimes the thing the place makes best (and most often) is the healthiest and freshest choice.

Coming to a Ricardian notion of countries and heath-consciousness.  I'm not saying that the present country is necessarily in the recipient category, but the phrase "Eat a salad, live forever" seems to be a bit of a motto.  Not to mention the usher with a respiratory infection a few yards away last night.  (Though in fairness, the ventilation improved with the warm weather.)  And this sort of thing is actually pretty common on the peninsula. Not to mention the abundance of $5 packs of cigarettes.  California, in a Ricardian sense, has an abundance of health-consciousness.  The excess of it in the local market drives them to madness.  It just needs to be transplanted to the Balkans somehow.

 

Absolutely exhausted.  Woke, cleaned out the rooms, carried the road-kit personalty across the river to the new city, did a quick grocery run, showered, changed, walked back across the river for an absolutely abysmal bit of theatre ($6 balcony seat, but given the crowds, elected to stand in the empty standing room), then walked back across the river to the new rooms for the nonce.

Particularly disappointing, as I had chosen that one over a Greek adaptation (with English titles) at the other theatre.  Opportunity costs. And sometimes, opportunity costs a lot.  An interesting concept, sort of the sins of the city on full view as the artist faces his own immolation, but the one making the confession gets a bit too into the storytelling, blurring the confession and the sin, as it were.

Eastern European productions based on Russian novels, or of Russian plays, seem problematic.  Or maybe the Vaktangov and MAT productions just come across well on tape.  I've seen several in the Balkans over the past few years, and they always seem a bit split between the thing itself, and what I can only call the "unbearable lightness of being" element.  That sensibility mainly in Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc., a sort of quiet, ironic self-protection against the cultural colossus to the East.  Which in itself is great -- think Czech films like Larks on a String, etc.  But when you decide do a play by a 19th c. or early 20 c. playwright from a certain country, you can't put too many obstacles in their way based on the current geopolitics. Not to mention the revolution against Stanislavsky, which would have gone much better if a suitable second master had been found. The extreme of these cases was a Moldovan Vanya last summer (at a festival) that was (understandably, given the geopolitics) basically about the fear of the land to the east -- which actually made for a rather chilling evening of theatre.

 But I continue to believe, despite the nature of all the evidence, in the thing itself.

Excellent theatre tonight, shifting rooms tomorrow.  Getting used to this itinerant mode at about the same rate that I'm wearying of it.  For some reason, the Harper in Goethe's Willhelm Meister comes to mind, perhaps because the theatre was an adaptation of a novel of the era.  

Not just whistlin' dixie here, and not just because no one in earshot would have the faintest notion of the melody, let alone the meaning.  It's a bit like carrying the most important thing in the world--a delicate and irreplaceable object--on a rather difficult journey through masses of inexplicably sedate and reasonably prosperous folks.  The incongruity between the CV and the circumstances does lead one to a quiet radicalism.  A peculiar monasticism; if it doesn't become a discipline, the valuable things begin to be lost.

Tuned into the NYC parish and another midtown church when I returned from the theatre, both apparently  opting for the scrutiny lectionary portion -- one line, heard from both houses: "Fill your horn with oil, and be on your way."

As the evening is starting to wane, probably best to set about doing what the fellow suggests.

 Again in the center of the underventilated balcony for a very interesting play ($6).  Spent most of the second half of it leaning forward to try to find the center of my airspace.  A play staged about life under a certain social system within living memory -- these were the figurations of life then.  Farce, yes, but even in high relief, very meaningful.  And the situations apparently still involve the local mind -- audience quite involved once they got into the scheme of things.  (People tend to be livelier with more oxygen -- a fact well known to actors and long-distance bus drivers.)

Interesting story in the news on ambitious plans for another supercollider on a vast scale.  I really have a hard time believing that, if they listed every experiment they planned to do, and then thought up every possible outcome, it still wouldn't be cheaper just to run subsequent technological streams in parallel, and then, whatever works, represented the outcome of the experiment.  Joking.  Mostly.  This sort of thing does awaken the Luddite in me.  Generating unpredictable entities vis a vis time, space, catching the planet on fire, etc. would seem to have to offer extraordinary rewards in order to make the game worth the candle.  Perhaps humanity is simply an ignition device of the planet.

Local realities, as always, are more worth my attention, but sometimes I see these sorts of things on the news and wonder if there might be a moral obligation to raise the point that more people ought to be focusing on their local realities.  Sputnik logic, Heidegger called it.

 

 In another set of circumstances, remote Bulgarian mountain villages where I could work in healthful surroundings according the higher ways inculcated over many years would clearly be the order of the day.  But not knowing how far off-piste it might be safe to wander in the present world, I stick to the cities of appearances.  

Even though I can see fairly clearly that the truth-determinations and questions hereabouts are directed to the elements of my own place that I know to have fallen under a bit of a shadow.  Surviving in the context of others' worlds of appearances.

With an occasional glance at the hills.

The only-as-secure-as-your-own-phone encrypted chat in all the news:  the reality of civilian control of the military within a corporate mindset.  The worse option might be a military-focused decision protocol.  For one thing, it preserves the language against whatever it is that afflicts it within that five-sided building.  If it's sound enough to run a bank in NYC, it's sound enough for decision making in other contexts.  Or at least the thought runs that way among those so inclined.

In Our Time fleshes out an interesting bit of the collective episteme this week.  MM-P, like the rest of the phenomenology-based folks (who were actually my own gateway to understanding the truth in these philosophical claims, even after scattered graduate coursework) rely on the legitimacy of Kant's transcendent encounter with the world, and there is a rift at the heart of that story -- in fairness, well painted-over by those with a bit of Kant in their ruck.

Live nobly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002974s 

Sometimes it seems a bit like the righteous foundling type in Henry James' Princess Casamassima -- his guardians sacrifice to send him for a fortnight to Paris, and he frequents the theatres and the cafe -- James' point being that he's not urbane enough to have the adventures that Strether thinks he's having in Paris in The Ambassadors, meeting and penetrating social circles.  But this is perhaps Henry's own ways and vices clouding the issue.  In the event, foundling types with peculiar notions of the right are best off avoiding his types of social circles.  The city is still there.

One of the more useful uses of adversity is being able to negotiate subsequent adversities in a bit more of a civilized manner.  The present ludicrously central and inexpensive rooms required some adjustments -- ($6) chinos instead of denim, to accommodate the daily hand-wash, dinners shifted from sautee to slow-boil, etc.  Had good practice in these modes during a comparable run in Bucharest several months back.  

As I look at it, the inability to shift back to the early runs might have been justified by a few factors beyond sloth, but time will tell.  There are some indications that it was the reasonable course.

Could have done without the politically interesting times and the cancelled performances, but it's a small price paid by a random visitor, and a society forming itself has the precedent claim -- saw what I could from out of the corner of the eye while reading at the coffeehouse.  Careful to preserve neutrality, as there would be several points of personal decision that would need to be crossed before I would sign on with any of these armies of the night/day. But the basic stated purposes of this bit of the stay seem to have been accomplished.  Gently down the stream.

Interesting.

 

 

As an American, it seems increasingly clear that to think like one thinks as an American these days would be a mistake.  And one great thing about being American is that you don't have to think as the others think.  Perhaps the generally disastrous mode of thought prevailing in the country now is somehow mysteriously trying to teach us this.

From the beginning of this Greenland thing, I've been wondering if they're trying to thread the crown protectorate/OTAN republic needle, but apparently that's not borne out by the political status.  Interesting well documented back-story on past strategic efforts there, occasionally involving notes on napkins.

Adaptation of War and Peace at the national theatre.  Noticed for the first time that the gilded bas-relief above the proscenium has a violin on one side and a balalaika on the other.  East and West.  I have a peculiar fondness for this city, as it was the first that Strether escaped to a few years ago after the crescendo in difficulties states-side.  Much has changed in the interval, and it's no longer the brief, blissful freedom in a mysterious place in the short period after an absolutely random jump, but it's still a great place to be.

 One of the clarion moments of the past year: at the theatre festival in German Transylvania, the morning performance by the visiting Noh troupe in the courtyard of the most prominent house of the city, now a museum.  The light shifted during the performance, I stayed standing in the sunlight.  With the first blast of the flute, in perfect synchronicity, the bells of the 18th c. Jesuit church across the way began a long, loud peal before the Mass for the feast of Peter and Paul, and continued through the action.

The situs before this was a bit of a visit to the underworld, geographically in der nahne of Odysseus' journey to the same.  A bit outside of the tourist district, in a place which in February is no one's idea of a tourist destination.  The plan was the sea, but the place was developed in such a way that I could hardly tell it was nearby.

Then, here, to very modest digs in the capital city of the old republic (and older nation), filled with crowds of hundreds of thousands of shouting people, and as much $6 theatre as I could manage, though given recent events, I only briefly visited the churches. Nonetheless.

Gently down the stream.

 

Sometimes truth is more approachable by distant analogy.  Contrast two authoritarian systems, neither of which I know particularly well, and both of which I know primarily by the fiction written under them.  In East Germany, a well-educated person who simply didn't go along with the corruption wouldn't find himself sleeping on a park bench.  There was a social order to be preserved.  Contrastingly, in Albania, if someone was reluctant to go along with things, they might find themselves demoted to a low municipal administration -- also not on the proverbial park-bench, but then, given the personality-based character of rule under the postwar dictatorship, you were then a target for others looking to trace another stencil on their aircraft.  Eventually, you might find yourself sent to the mines, and as social structures continued to be subordinated to personal power, in the mixed population of criminals and political prisoners, might be killed by one of the former.   Two oppressive systems of authoritarianism, perhaps of fundamentally different character, despite their doctrinal similarities.

Now, the US is currently not an oppressive totalitarian regime, pace the intemperate howls from the McMansions, but in the most recent political shift, it has become more like one of these two worlds than the other.  True national socialism is rightly inconceivable, because subordinating the power of the state to corporatism leads to very, very bad things.  True socialism as a path to communism has also rightly been determined to be much too dangerous in the context of large states and industrialization. But it is possible for societies, whatever their point on the political spectrum, to have greater and lesser notions of general social order.  The key is to recognize where the social order works to preserve the society against the excesses of right and left, and to preserve it in itself.

The intelligentsia park-bench metric.  A new Benthamite calculus, perhaps.

Significant night in Islam, the night designated as the time the Koran was received, some traditions say the night when the angels were created.  I recall walking through the Muslim side of Mostar on this night last year--very festive and meaningful.  Quite powerful as well.

By the tradition, the one who received the Koran was asked on what night he received it, and as he was going to answer, saw two people fighting, and was caused to forget the exact date.  (Let those with ears to hear, hear.)

These stories, remember, exist first as ideas.  When golden plates were found in upstate New York, inaugurating a new religion, with its texts resembling the apocrypha turning up in archeological finds and rites closely resembling those of the fraternal lodges, the first significance of the event was this: the true nature of the object, in itself, is such that it would be found buried in the earth, and written on golden plates.  As an ordinary empirical description gives meaning in ordinary ways to the world, a religious belief sometimes gives meaning to the spiritual aspects of the experience.  The insistence of the modern fundamentalists that a religious belief must be true in the ordinary sense is perhaps to distinguish their own religion, which consists precisely of events with ordinary meanings.  Someone with a rich array of polytheistic narratives would understand that the value of these narratives wasn't in saying that a certain thing was the case at a certain point in time. Contrastingly, if the ordinary description of events is not true in the Christian narratives, then the faith has been in vain.  And this is a living balance -- mythology-based meaning tends to be associated with any culture of religion.  Hence the need for simplicity.

And yet, it must not silence the imagination.  Christianity isn't a religion of Bollandism and such, but Bollandism and such helps to keep the mind focused on its essential work.  Which is somehow both spiritual and ordinary.  Ordinary can include many things.  If you believe in angels, angels are ordinary, however rarely encountered.

"It is required that you do awake your faith."

Arguably, the critique has been rather constant, at least since Orwell.  In the age of reason, the danger is the loss of reason itself, as it is used for the Procrustean purposes of power.

Also - the Robert Redford character in Three Days of the Condor: "Community.  Jeez, you guys are kind to yourselves."  The pragmatic approach preserves an existing functional network as a good in itself.  The question of whether they, in themselves, are good tends not to arise. 

 

I don't know the platform, but from the outlines of the messaging app story, my concern would be that when the others saw someone flying slightly outside the lines (mysterious stranger invited to the meeting), they didn't squawk.  Laws of the flock.

 

Postprandial web noodling is clearly the next target of the efficiency drive.  Fixed texts, not bright shiny things on scrolling feeds. You end up reading think-pieces about people who composed the shiny scrolling things a couple of decades ago.

If there is an important novel to be written, it's likely about what happened to the minds of this generation as they encountered electronic things.  This seems to have been the big shift.  Perhaps even in a chiliastic sense.  Or perhaps through some miracle, we'll tire of the bright shiny things, and all of the nefarious machines that have been built using the population-wide economic scale of technological development won't end up in the hands of an evil few.

But addressing the norms will get you little good.  Scourging the sea has no more effect than marrying it.  You must go right to the root, and explain the ways in which people think now.

It is said that a biography is the history of what people thought about you at any given point in time.  I agree, with the proviso that said people need not actually have existed. The distant model, as Girard calls it.

On, Sancho.

 Anniversary of the NATO bombing locally.  Seemed wise to keep a low profile today.  One never knows what associations one has for others.

Wilfrid Sellars takes a lot of flak, principally from his proponents, for having a sort of roundabout writing style.  But in his article-length intellectual biography, which has more than a few fascinating turns of phrase, he seems to show regret about his time at Oxford, seeking out the scientifically-oriented, plain-writing minds, as opposed to the writers (later better vindicated in time) who were writing a bit obliquely.  

Anything that can be stated plainly can be discussed in a more careful manner.  And if the thought itself is correct, a sea-green statement of pure intellectual objectivity does it no additional favors.  Let it arise in its time.

Relatedly, in Ph.D. work, I took a lot of flak in the home department (though not in the other areas I studied) for being too theory-oriented.  An American state university -- according to at least one etymological resource, the name originally meant "plain-speakers."  As a result, when I did write a 400-page project for the committee, it was as plain as I could make it, and I shifted the complexity to the architectonic.

 

 

 Incidentally, the eerie bursts of low-frequency sound have been confirmed to be remnants of the tram noise sound spectrum floating up to the windows and through the building.  On an especially still evening, heard a bit more of the noise and felt the rumble.  Genuinely eerie phenomenon--it's a new apartment, apparently.  Perhaps right at the harmonic of the wavelength.

Sunday night mens sana: Interesting talk on Mansfield rescued from my long list of "watch later" on YT.  Mansfield was to the UK economic law what Earl Warren was to American anti-discrimination law.  Law is merely politics by other mean people.

 

Ibsenite drama at the national theatre.  Instead of holding up their passports, the cast held up an enormous code to scan on the cell phone, perhaps more related to the concerns of the play, rather than the politics of the moment.  (As I don't speak the language or carry a pocket device, both were Greek (second aorist) to me. There actually is a way to parse these codes manually, but you have to memorize a series of overlays first, and then work out the sequence.)  Also an interesting moment with Torvald's knitting/embroidering tips.

Many notes, but the most interesting moment was the door closing -- entirely unstaged, but unforgettable from my standing-view angle of sight.  Long applause from the house after Nora's last line, with house lights at half--peculiar, perhaps a European stage tradition?  Then, in the blackout, the actor walked to the nearest exit, lit by the accidental light from outside against the deep red of the carpet, and a click from the modern door behind her.  The romantic, progressive theatre of Ibsen, but there is a world elsewhere -- this was just a brief framing of it.

 

 

 

 

The priority is writing which is valuable in itself, as opposed to working with the manner of hoping to be taken up into some industrial application of the writing.  If everything were to vanish overnight, the work would still be not merely a good thing, but a mechanism expressing a necessary manner of thinking, for which the text is more residuum and source than substance.  

It's a scene study class, not an audition monologue.  And in the city, you can go for years sustaining the work in a good scene study class.   

The peril is that of the parable of the buried talent, safeguarded through the period of difficulty.  But, much like the scene study class, only by preserving the ability to think and write does that thing continue to exist in the world every day, and keep the possibility of making things arise, should the opening appear.

But making text, perhaps much more text, must definitely be the order of the day.  While continuing the pace of reading and annotation.  Like Aquinas dictating treatises as he attended to household matters.  Adorno, Auerbach and Benjamin teach this -- from their situations, when the public world was very much against the type of person that they were.

If the Blessed Virgin were to appear, and ask me if I was happy, I would point to the work that I was doing and indicate that it was necessarily my happiness to survive in this manner.  Less Faust's "Stay, thou art so fair..." than a figure in El Greco's vision of changing light, attempting to remain conscious of it, as opposed to slipping back into the oblivion of life without understanding or perception.

The national socialists were champions of industry, envisioning a mechanized continent that had heretofore slept centuries underneath aristocracy.  And perhaps one moral to be drawn from the event is that an understanding of the social order that requires only a portion of the population for not merely the accomplishment of its purposes, but the full completion of its purpose, risks the types of things that went on just under a century ago.

 I've become increasingly certain that the corruption in society comes from the belief that the notions that generally keep society from becoming corrupt are thought false.  On an epistemological, ontological, or even ontic level, if someone believes that ultimately the only real meaning to their words is the effect that they have on the social dynamics of the group, the game's simply over.  If one side on a football game is trying a new scoring strategy, and the other believes that the game is simply the cover for the forcible acquisition of this bit of turf from the political control of the host city, the belief that the game isn't actually occurring becomes a true claim.  Beyond simply clapping for Tinkerbell, the position of conceptual realism, that there are mind-independent aspects of distinctly human experience that justify standing against the collective order, requires that the moral priority of a claim isn't subject to critique.  "Here I stand, though I can do not this."  Quixotic, but necessary.

 

 

 

Personal context: When I headed to a small apartment in North Dakota as part of the plague peregrinations, on the predawn runs around the city, just south of the airport, in the fields between the airport and the university, there was sometimes an immense while jackrabbit.  Noticed it before the snows, and when there was a foot of drifting snow on the ground, noticed it as well.

 

 The difficulty with confronting corruption in a society under the spell of pragmatic philosophy is that the malefactors, when challenged, make arguments with the form of reason, but these arguments cash out, to use William James' pungent phrase, as either claims that they are within the norm, or as statements of loyalty to the norm, which is precisely the claim made by the people who have persisted/survived and asserted more closely held notions of right.

 The two recent challenges to the soul (the soul being the animating principle that shapes the forms of the fleshy bits and suggests things for them to do): the old Kruschevka in the country to the east, and the country to the south.  Old ghosts, things of earth.

 Which is not to say that things shouldn't exist.  I have a sense that, in the event, every aspect of the human kaleidoscope will  be necessary.  Cultures and faiths of the South that seem very earthy and linked to human power might provide a necessary grounding as the technology of the developed (the term indicates the action) nations grows increasingly apart from the human form and the sort of existence that the human form has on the planet.  The green party might yet prove essential.

 I go mad, I go mad, I shall wear my trousers plaid.

After a day at the table, I have a new theory on the low-frequency noise.  A fragment of the acoustic spectrum of the trams, but without the vibrations, with the apartment being sufficiently above the street so that it's not recognizable, and perhaps on some sort of a harmonic with the intersecting rail lines. It doesn't explain why I only noticed it in the last few days, but it seems the most likely explanation.  Or, you know, it could be the invading aliens here for our 1950s rock and moonpies.

Onward.  

 

Computer troubles of the evening mean that this (otherwise spectacular) day is to be slogged firmly through -- all tasks, no detours or frolics.

 

 (And, to be clear, it wasn't a special trip -- these are the blocks around the current set of rooms.)

 Incidentally, as a matter of academic interest, after wandering around a bit in der nahne, I have a pretty good guess as to the kinetics of what might have happened with all the folks on the street last weekend.  Given the Prime Directive, will save it for a captain's log once I'm out of range of the local civilization (which will likely be some time after I've left their star system).  May all living beings come to enlightenment.

Just as I was preparing to sleep at a time that would have allowed a good morning run, the computer went on the fritz, requiring several hours of rebuilding.  Still very much in the ragtag-fleet mode.  Wing and a prayer, occasionally sans wing.

"You must download, and I must sleep..."

 Aha.  The occasional pulses of low-frequency noise are almost certainly coming from the building, somehow.  Perhaps something to do with the heat, as the temperature has gone down in the last couple of days.  Very eerie sound, but good to know that it's something local as opposed to odd in the city at large.  Possibly some steam mechanism -- no idea how those things work here.  When, before this last visit, I read a recent Russian novel that used the community's shared heating network as a plot point, I thought it was the author's invention.  

Relatedly: cheap pasta over a low-power hob is a tricky skill, but one that must be mastered for digestive health.  Raw wheat isn't generally what the body hopes to gain from the meal.

Bit out of sorts and behind the clock.  The muscle memory of plodding through the end of winter in the last country, when I basically went back to NYC time, is persisting.  While it was a mistake to venture there, the coming spring must be put to good use.  

My best guess on the odd sounds of yesterday was that the tractors used as barricades in the protest park were either having their engines repaired, or being loaded onto other trucks.  Definitely atypical.

Take it easy, but do take it.

 And another half-dozen times since noting that. Low-frequency, bursts of a second or two, like when I was living on 10th avenue and they were excavating the new water main  some distance away.  Directional (turning the head affects it), very low-volume, goes a fair distance into the room and through shutters without diminution.  Likely either construction noises or aliens come to wreak vengeance on the species after some imagined insult in the SETI signals.  On the assumption that it's the former, planning on enjoying a good dinner over a philosophy podcast.

Peculiar.  From the news reports, the opposition has declared a day of noise, and is going around banging pots and pans and whistling (only the latter in evidence locally).  Oddly, perhaps due to some trucking or freight work on the nearby protest site, there have been a half-dozen or so instances of rather loud subwoofer-type noises in through the window during the day, lasting about 3-5 seconds apiece.  

Cupola of the legislature a short distance away lit in red, rather than the UV-violet of recent days--perhaps a sign that they're back in session.  Will continue to keep my ears to the ground, as it were, and if necessary decamp to another capital or a bit further away from the center of things.  Steadily on.

 As noted, being in the middle of a city ennervated according to appearances is a bit contrary to purposes, but one manages.  Part of my distance comes from the fact that the mechanism of the political action here, the social tying-together based on the things everyone knows to be true, the sense that 'we're all in this together' is, in my experience a mechanism of corruption in my home country, especially in the Midwest.  And the universities stateside, outside the technology-based areas, have become a bit corrupt and politically craven.  So while this might very well be a valid local mechanism (the notion of 'academic citizen' is foreign to the US), I am keeping at some remove from things.

Whatever the merits and necessity of this action within the world of appearances, the world of appearances is precisely the mechanism that I've been fighting against for some time now.  Within the appearance, somewhere, in every instance, is the thing itself.  And only then do you reach the useful thing.

Patronal feast of the home archdiocese and cathedral.  Ancient monastic teetotaler, somewhere to be found within the festival of freely-flowing beer and music.

Whenever I have to spend the evening in crowded and underventilated balcony or orchestra stalls, I have the urge to spend the rest of the evening absolutely alone with a book to recover a bit.  The whole reason I got onto the stage was that it was much less crowded there.  

I honestly do find theatregoing unpleasant; this is why you'll usually find me in standing room, if it's available.  (Not at the Met any more, for some peculiar reason.)  There's no contradiction there.  The ability to make theatre and the desire to be in the middle of a crowd are completely different things.

The purpose of this month was as much theatregoing as possible ($5/$6 seats at the two prominent houses in town), and that is proceeding apace. The dojo will shift, inshallah, in coming weeks to evenings with a bit more of the scent of the lamp.

Peculiar, there seems to be some discussion in the local press of acoustic-wavelength crowd-control devices being used during the ritual meditative silence portion of the protest.  [Updated 3/16: Although reported last night by mainstream outlets and the student law faculty twitter, it doesn't look like this necessarily was the case.  Eerie moment in front of one of the state theatres in which it appears that everyone simultaneously decided to get out of the road.  Edit 3/17: Based on the YT videos, it seems things started much further up the road, and the footage near the theatre was a downstream effect, which would have involved a good number of people, even just between those two points.]  At which point, things apparently fell apart a bit.  Odd.  No telling from which direction--could have come from anywhere, in that wide-open space surrounded by tall buildings. The organizers apparently shifted the venue at the last moment from the neighborhood with the crown jewels of the state to the (almost equally iconic) broad, open traffic circle plaza.  Made for rather impressive drone photos.

Even for a neutral visitor, a not inconsiderable danger, though I stayed ensconced in the rooms, safely above street level on the day itself, after wandering around a bit on the eve of the festival, like a visiting foreign king/yogi wandering the camp before battle. Surrounded by hundreds of thousands caught up in the fury of the world as it appears to be.  Hence the Henry James.  Following the thought and the tone of a Henry James novel is the precise opposite of the mentality of the protest -- on all sides, including that of the neutral observer caught up in it.  Basically, a mind-shaped, Tardis-sized room with walnut wainscotting, oil lamps, and crystal chandeliers amid the strife. 

Hegel didn't think much of the beautiful soul--perhaps because he didn't spend enough time talking to Goethe.  Live nobly.

Once you get some distance from the foolish moralizers and the foolish anti-moralists, keeping the body in the possession of the soul, the exterior in the command of the interior, becomes quite a necessary and difficult job.  It is important that the exercise of freedom retain the character of freedom; else it just takes the place of freedom in an always-already-understood world.

Odd to be surrounded by the cacophony of protests on an otherwise peaceful seventh-day.  No idea what role they're playing in the local politics.  Might help those breaking the eggs long-ways, might help those breaking the eggs short-ways.  My only possible point of understanding is the universal human, something to which, by definition, no political faction can lay claim.  Reasoning from this, the tendency of every political movement to lay claim to the universal claim of right is also error by definition.  Heid: we possess speech most fully in keeping silent, and every act of speech is particular, contingent, perhaps necessary, but invariably a derogation of that fullness of being.  There is no originary fullness in logos as logos, or for that matter, eidos as eidos.  But who can keep from thinking or speaking?

Careful to observe neutrality here -- walking respectfully through the midst of the crowds.  But this is a rather remarkable event.  I've been to political protests larger than any number possible tomorrow, but this is something different.  Less a protest than the emergence of a political form.  At least on the surface, there is no spirit of dissentience.  More like a victory parade.

Quite the evening in the capital of the old republic of the south.  An hour or so with Henry James in the Starbucks across from the legislature, then, thanks to knowledge of the alleyways acquired on my first visit (as the AirBnb was hidden within them) bypassed the most impassible of the crowds and and managed to get to the largely empty and brightly lit park by the university for a bit more of the novel on a beautiful summer's evening.  Then back by the side routes.  Small panic at the grocer's, as as the tenner I thought had been squirreled away in the wallet was nowhere to be found, before remembering I had some spares in the vest pocket.  Quite the hubbub.  Broad and general festival.  Vuvuzela vendors doing a big business.  Custom-printed buttons appeared to be the second item in the carts.  Perhaps a means of categorizing political rallies by civility: when buttons are in play, we're a few steps removed from the barricades.

 It's odd -- this is one of the few times during the present peregrination that I've been in a largely Slavic city, and it really does seem to make a difference in people's demeanour.  Like walking down the street in Chicago, as opposed to a small town in the central Midwest.  I'm fundamentally American, but of Slavic/German ancestry and Christian -- and the latter two bits sometimes don't go over well in the Midwest, or in NYC (although for very different reasons).  Here, the people are fundamentally Slavic, and largely Christian, but reaching towards the sort of liberal politics, society, and art that America sometimes stands for.   So one becomes increasingly conscious of the inherent antinomies in these views.  The impulse towards one view or the other might be useful, but don't think that it's heading towards a fundamentally different type of world, in which all problems are resolved.  (With the exception of religion.)

Still keeping half an eye on the neighborhood -- overnight, apparently the loyal opposition to the loyal opposition decided to remain in their camp, which has now apparently gained a row of very large tractors.  (Tractors have some ancient political resonance here, in addition to being very large and useful/frightening machines.)  More interestingly, they've closed the parliament even to the members, which the opposition is claiming to be a violation of the law, which might be a bait to some kind of 1/6 incursion.  No inside, or even personally acquired information -- just checking the news sites to check the odds on imminent chaos in der nahne.  Quite likely not, and the folks who live here will likely have an exciting day that makes their country work a bit better, and I'll likely find few distractions from the neo-Kantians and Henry James.

 Incidentally, if things go to plan on all sides, it's my utterly uninformed and amateur guess that conflict is almost certain.  There's a very large encampment of folks loyal to the Powers that Be just across the street from the spot where several hundred thousand people from all over the country are scheduled to show up.  Quite a cacophony in the neighborhood now, even on a normal night. As an itinerant tourist, my Saturday-afternoon Henry James novel stands waiting for me in a room sufficiently above street level.

Update, it appears that the loyal opposition to the loyal opposition will strike their perimeter and retreat in advance of the day.  Apparently announced a few hours ago.  #notexpert  #justawalkingaoundtheneighborhood

Interestingly, the apparent meeting point for the big weekend rally is the two statues in front of the Parliament -- possibly the first place that I visited when I first visited the city with a touring theatre company some time ago.  Walked over from the hotel after arrival, just taking a first look at the city.   Quite impressive.  Also very suggestive of the project of Enlightenment in these parts.  Two men holding back furious wild horses.  Civilization and culture.

On a practical level, the thing keeping me from the customary early runs is clearly the theatregoing in the evening.  After this month in the city, soaking up as much of the latter as possible, hopefully the return to the early morning hours after the difficult winter will be a bit smoother.

Gently down the stream. Take it easy, but take it.

In the local language, there is a peculiar expression: "academic citizen."  Apparently achieved by earning a bachelor's degree, which is perhaps why the trade in illicit degrees for folks with only a high school education who had risen in the world flourished, both here, and in the eastern (Western) countries of the peninsula.  Also on both sides (I think, though I don't specifically know the institution here), there is the veneration of the academician, which I've also seen in a lot of Russian films from the 70s and 80s.  

Perhaps if these structures of society were a bit stronger stateside, the mechanisms that operated to sustain them might be a mite less corrupt.  Frankly, very few people care about who an assistant professor at a local university is, much less what they do.  But the social inertia, as it were, might have a useful effect on the integrity of the mechanism.  Actors in their bios here, and not just the ones first starting out, mention one or two of their professors, presumably indicating both the lineage and the network of influence.  People generally pay more attention to card games where the chips stand for real money.

 Also, the curtain calls are getting more energetic as the weekend approaches.  Catch phrases shouted between cast and audience.  Have secured a solid supply of food, fresh water and sundries, and I look forward to a weekend of staying out of harm's way.

 Heretofore, the quintessential Balkan Western classical theatre moment was the one-word reply of the Captain to Viola: "Illyria."  (In fairness, the 19th c. Romanian translation likely followed Pope's enjambment.) 

But the closing moments of a (generally brilliantly played) Cyrano, in which a shouted "Sloboda" with fist upraised took the place of "mon panache" (I think) might now stand for the quintessence of the strong local reading.

 There is a pragmatic (in the wider sense of the word) aspect to forgiveness.  Part of the satisfaction, it seems, in doing wrong to people lies in the tie that afterward binds one to the other within the structures of power.  One law professor, and ultimately my guess was that this was ingenuous, would boast in class gleefully about the people who thought that he had ruined their life.  

If you are going to tell your own story, and by doing so tell the story of the world, you have to see that intention, and steer clear of emotionally reacting to the events.  Like Cannetti's "stinger", it will obscure your understanding by drawing you into conflict, and ultimately prompt in you the very sort of behaviour you encountered.  By turning the other cheek, you are maintaining dispassion, and keeping the wrongdoer from exercising that hold over your mind.

The world, which is to say your understanding of all things, is composed of people who do such things, not created by the things which are done.

 So, why are you preaching to the fishes, then?

Well, I'm not trying to covert them.  And I'm also not using them as a practice for trying to convince people in the future.  I am maintaining the state proper to humans.  An active engagement in language, commixed with moral belief.  I am such that the world must remain an active proposition.  And the state of that active proposition, the definition of it in patterns or reliable differentiation, as expressed in language that comes from me, is both expressive and tied to specific things in the world. If someone does find my thoughts persuasive, its likely because I set out to think, to reckon with the world in a slightly desperate sense, before I set out to express, signify, or persuade. My attempt to do so is likely more persuasive and useful than any results I might think myself to have achieved.

It's just a slightly desperate lunge towards the light before we vanish.  To do so is what we are.

Late morning.  Woke, felt out of sorts, decided to give the whole waking thing another go after several hours.  Worked for the nonce, but lost the morning.  

Definitely off-pace, after the winter months in a place where you couldn't really go for a morning run.  

Resurgam requisite. 

 A day of piecework.  Like a philosopher exiled to the factory town who puts bread on the table by taking in piecework from the local factory.  The ethos that distinguishes the day job from the work has served me well in recent years.  And one is grateful to be able to glean a means of survival for the nonce from these industrial fields.

The protests here over the weekend, at least from press reports, look to be rather large.  On the order of hundreds of thousands.  What makes them unique, though, if I can get the reality of it through the skillful social media manipulation that is now de rigueur for wars, protests, and large corporations, is that the event has an almost sacramental character, with many groups making the pilgrimage on foot. The narrative is that the society has crystallized around the student movements, and frequently you hear it stated that the students are to be trusted.  Contrastingly, the loyal opposition to the loyal opposition is camped out in front of the President's offices, and with the polarization of recent days, is treated increasingly unkindly in the left-leaning press and by passerby.  And then there are the signs which don't fit neatly into either camp.  Veterans of the wars, in civilian clothes, distinguished only by their bearing and the cluster of sargeant-majors standing at a respectful distance in the shadow of the monument, as the leaders shake hands with a group of young men clearly a bit awestruck to be in their presence.  Things coming together.  Which is interesting.

What distinguishes this from a large DC protest stateside is that this group at least believes itself to be precisely on the centerline of the country, not the partisans of a certain faction. And with this much inertia in play on a given weekend, and with that inertial mass precisely on the centerline, there's certainly the possibility of mercurial changes in the situation.  Perhaps not coincidentally, the agenda for the legislature on that day appears to be the quasi-secession of the entity to the west.  This comes after a year of shared ethnic congresses, and I think a large meeting under the auspices of the church.  Utter amateur at these things, and with no particular information, but there will likely be hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, positively suffused with patriotism, showing up with a need for some sort of event.  The mimetic need, as Benjamin Bloch called it. Or perhaps they'll just find a way to make their society work a bit better.  Traditionally, spiritual exercises are useful for that sort of thing.

As for myself, laying low is the watchword, and hoping that the theatres and coffeehouses won't be closed for too long.  As an ambassador from no one in particular, I have an obligation to neutrality even greater than the ones thought up in Vienna on occasion.    

Interesting, the actors at the large state theatres appear to be holding up their passports (or a similarly colored leather portfolio, roughly of passport size) during the curtain calls. (Not universally of this country, interestingly.)

Scottish play tonight.  The Balkans serve as a rather effective proxy for early modern Scotland.  Absolutely exhausted from watching it. 

Innards roiling a bit, so I stood off in standing room.  There was actually an option at the last itinerary planning point to rent a studio in a five-star resort for basically the same money, but it was all bed and couches and no desk/table.  Frankly, the mens sana and corpore sano could stand a bit of ease given the long peregrination.  

From my limited travels, I might say that the flower of Islam in the Balkans is Sarajevo, Mostar, Blagaj.  The carvan-sarai, and the Sufi mountain retreats.  The stem is the commerce of Skoder, and the earth is Albania.  I found the flower very compelling and spiritually powerful.  But the month and a fortnight amid the fecund earth of its roots was harrowing.  Almost enough to convince me to leave the strange plants in the garden alone.  But that's arguably not a wise way of gardening.

Perhaps: the Balkans are like a glass poured in the 19th century, in which certain colors reached in from the edges -- yellow from the north and west, white and red from the east, and green from the south.  At the time, these were contingent, moving patterns.  But in the interval, the glass has acquired its temper, and the only way of changing the colored patterns is to fracture the object -- an entity which doesn't at first reveal its own existence.

 

 

One problematic aspect of surviving the extraordinary with equanimity is that there's nothing to dispel the false normalcy.  Things are as anyone might think them to be.

Perhaps the point of pragmatism was always that a society could be effective without attempting to describe, explain, or understand what it was doing.  Understandable, given how socially-held deliberate purposes turned out in the beginning of the last century.  But there is a correlative danger at the other end, perhaps.  

The effective nature of shared social work continues, of course, but, again, reaching to the beginning of the last century for examples, it's possible for an effective society to be not the type of society one would want to be in, if one understood the nature of the event.

Crowds in the city for springtime.  Striking contrast to last weekend, when it was empty -- perhaps because of the protests in another city.  Which might seem to indicate that there will be large numbers in the capital next weekend.  For some reason, going from city to city here seems easier than in the eastern (Western) Balkans.  Just as easy, I suppose, but travelling from the capital there to one of the larger cities in the north is an endeavour, not the work of a morning. Perhaps because of the mountains -- and the cultural lines they created. Local press reports here suggest that the legislature will be in session considering the situation of the political entity to the west.  I suppose the genius t'ai chi move would be for a government of national unity to be declared with some sort of alliance, with the ruling party stepping aside, thrilling the hundreds of thousands in the capital who have been on spiritual exercises of political/(ethnic?) unity for the last five months.  Ides of March reversed.  On the other hand, this is not a part of the world known for adroit acts of political t'ai chi.  More the чай tea.

#amateurspeculation #tourist #ridiculouslyuninformed

(It's asserted that the diacritical alphabet here is the only major alphabet in which every sound is associated with its own unique character, and is unique to that character.  Which would seem to singularly serve the essential purpose of the diacritical alphabet -- the translation point between alphabets.)

The constitution here explicitly recognizes the governing ethnicity, I think, one of the few in the world to do that, while simultaneously guaranteeing other ethnicities full rights.  The national church is a key situs of that identity, which explains the sometimes contradictory politics in the port nation to the southwest.  So the entity's situation, which squarely evokes the great historical conflicts of the region, in the local context, is less a distraction with foreign wars than an assertion of endogenous strength.  Again, just an ill-informed tourist wiseacring.

Will be heading back to Transylvania after the Lent here, for fifty days in the highlands of Galilee.  The mountains to the south were a strong allure, but in addition to keeping connected to the European culture, it seemed ill-advised to stay in a remote mountain village in a country with historical difficulties vis a vis law and order, where a sudden absence wouldn't be necessarily be marked by those immediately around me. In V, in one of Pynchon's anecdotes about the wandering British fellow in the Levant, the protagonist wonders how many more of these pools of city light he would be allowed -- it's important to take the high road, especially given the brigand nature of the times.  Safety, light, and work -- and as much mountain air as possible.

The political bits also a bit surreal, watching the characters drum on the stage, with the streets filled with protesters.  Reminded me of listening to an authoritarian supreme court head talk about ways of thinking about constitutional rights while (unrelated, but chaotic) protests were going on outside the window in the lobby.  The events on a stage, or the thoughts from a podium, by their nature, are more carefully presented, less instinctive, and less based in social imitation.  Laboratories of the spirit.  Holding the nature up to the mirroring.

A rather intense play about a madman, in a language I don't understand at all.  Just your average Saturday night ($5.55).  

Was meaning to skim the novel this afternoon, but tried to make some inroads on the neo-Kantians.

Was quite the decision, between the southern mountains and the northern libraries, theatres, and coffeehouses.  Ultimately, I realized that when I looked at the comfortable earth-tones of the former, I was subconsciously relaxing, which made the choice for the north clear.  Perhaps why the costly vacation experiences (at least in their ads) lack the ersatz comforts.  Preserving the tone and life while in the mountain air.  Which is usually possible, if you take the decorations down and move most of the furniture out of the way.  But any middle ground between the energy of the city and the solitude of the mountain has its dangers.   

The intuitive view seems to be that the corporate form is of a higher order than the state, as its progeny.  But if you read the old constitutional histories of England, a private household focused on its own public image and consumer desire and capable of bringing force to bear as opportunity arose in the mesne holdings far outside of its effective ownership or control was the archaic form of monarchy. 

Perhaps there is no higher form than a consciousness of the totality. 

Much talk in the local press about a march on the capital planned for the fifteenth.  Apparently the intention is that it will be quite large, and the organizers haven't yet said what the plans are for the day.  Jarts and dominoes, perhaps.

 Ides of March...

 First theatregoing, the Sophocles, lost to a quasi-general strike, which mostly proved to be an afternoon out at the cafes.  Which isn't insignificant.  The central practice of the protest has been people standing silently together.  Heidegger: being with another is distinct from inaction. 

Not particularly disappointed about the Sophocles, though I'd usually tend to that sort of thing.  Skipped the production in the capital to the southwest, as it looked a bit atavistic, and I was focusing on keeping things together.  An elevated tone can, at times, be a life-sustaining practice. λεγειν.

The protests from Democrats continued throughout the speech, as they laughed at the president’s talking points and loudly grumbled.

Interesting.  I didn't watch the tape, so it's possible that this was genuinely the event, but it's odd that the laughter and chuntering weren't events in themselves, but acts of opposition as opposed to approval.  If you don't know how to think about experience, experience narrows.  

Read a think-piece on the splinter futurist sect of modest size on a dark-side-Bonnie-and-Clyde run in the states. Noticed that their leader spent some time at one of the Midwestern land-grants where I studied and taught a bit.  Unsurprising--precisely the sort of derangement that comes from a university that has more to do with cable (do we still call it that?) television drama than long hours in the stacks.  I recognize the tone of their manifestos from the papers that I (endlessly) graded.  One of the largest academic libraries on the planet, and on any given day, an infinitesimal fraction of the tens of thousands of are to be found inside.  Much to do with corruption there -- and that sort of thing does have knock-on effects.  The care of souls.

 The analogy might be to a situation in which the Bond villains win, and take control of society, both the large systems of power and the management of small stores and cafes, and then they collectively realize that to hold power, they have to solve these problems which have nothing at all to do with their unending and eternal battle with Bond, Q., et al.  As if a hostile corporate takeover had populated the Yankees bench with nepo prospects.  You're still watching them try to win the game, and sort of wondering if they can. Pragmatism and corporatism. The beginning of the ebb of the state, perhaps.

Perhaps I should take up fly fishing.

 

Western Balkans seem to have gone from sixes and sevens to foreseeable conflict, virtually overnight.  Part of the general unsettling, perhaps.  Though the western part of it is a long-simmering judicial process with a foreseeable timetable.  Peculiar.  Some local press here explicitly linking Europa Resurgent to the contretemps, the notion apparently being that Austria-Hungary et al. are now eager to assert their protective influence in those climes. Big meeting by the local head of state tomorrow noon with an ancient ally, according to the local press. 

There's a haunting image in the national museum here of 'the Germanic horde'.  In fairness, that was before army units had to be Instagrammable. 

Perhaps the world is controlled by conniving folks of all stripes and sorts, continually attempting to do chaotic things in order to gain power, and only held in place by the people trying to do even worse things of much greater momentum and scale who are locked in stalemate above them.  Once the latter destabilizes, and there's no longer a stalemate above, the (much larger number) of people working in lower-stakes situations might see it as their hour.

Apolitical, as always.  I have taken a seat in the grandstand of philosophical self-detachment. (O'Neill)

My only interest is in hoping that the theatres and coffeehouses stay open, but like any good Kantian, I have no attachment to this good, and respect the superior interests of the local folks.  Apparently, the high schools have called a general strike for tomorrow; will play it by ear. Plenty of books and coffee in the rooms, should the worst come to worst.  

Generally though, the city is basically Brooklyn during a particularly contested mayoral election.

The primitive shaman shaking his rattle around the head of the patient prefigures, and perhaps results in, the neurosurgeon with his scalpel, millennia later.  The attention, the will to accomplish something, is being preserved within the human condition within time, or perhaps acting within time, and being understood by the people within each time in a different manner.  An inner realism.

Perhaps every aspect of the human exists in every age (and culture), however obliquely. 

Well, the new administration seems to have achieved its goal of increasing the defense spending as a portion of GDP among the NATO allies, but I'm not sure that the tactic, i.e., pointing out that they might need guns facing the other direction, was that wise.  

In the last country, fleeing to the Bulgarian mountains seemed like a rather good idea.  (And it would have been, but one pays for rentals by the month.) But with the shift in mindset that followed, the painted churches, soft cheeses and mountain air are deferring to a more northern purposiveness.  Entirely a creation of the mind, of course, but I'm feeling some regret about not taking the southern route.  Almost a female presence.  Echoes of an ancient Athena? 

The enemies of Socrates.  The ones who defended appearances so emphatically.  Ultimately, they did so out of love for their own lives.  A faction and a manner of thinking perhaps presently in the ascendant, ubiquitous and systematic.

In every journey, there is the grace of arrival.  The day or so to set things up.  Usually, in automobiled American suburbia, this involves spending the day walking to the shops to secure the necessary goods.  And then the deeper shifts start.

On one level, I'm going from forty days or so in a city that has some peculiar parallels with Odysseus' underworld to the first Christian, then republican, capital in the region.  On another level, I'm going from one set of rooms to another.  Opportune moments to emphasize either frame of reference.

But the lesson of antiquity seems clear -- don't run off the roof, chasing the departing ships.   

ψευδο-οριζοω.

Gently down the stream...  God willin' and the crick don't rise.

 

 The last port of call was rather difficult in its own way.  Certainly the closest to third-world conditions I've encountered so far.  The westernmost point of the travels; the pre-Roman name was Epidamnus, which made them slightly uncomfortable.  Like the Yugoslavian cargo port/resort city to the north, one of the ports across from the principal trade routes emanating from Bari (St. Nicholas, translated -- an iconic saint for commerce, and international travelers).  Odysseus ventures into the underworld at his westernmost point, and there were a few uncanny experiences.  The rental turned out to be about an hour's walk from the cultural sites (e.g., old Roman amphitheatre and forum), and that part of the world in February is no one's notion of an idyllic place to be, so there was much reading at the kitchen table and baking bread.  The streets outside seemed not to have been washed in a long time, and there were plenty of (amiable--a characteristic of the south) strays about, so no runs, and no walks into or back from the cultural center after dark.  I showered and changed clothes after each journey out, even to the grocery a short ways off -- the usual practice in southern Europe a century or two ago.  The small grocers seemed like the places that I would seek out, rather than the garish national chain, but given the short stay and the non-EU food regulations, I thought it wiser to stick to the highest path, however inviting the small shops might have seemed.  And after discovering a few unwanted visitors in the morning muselei, I adopted an airtight-container-only rule for the food.  But there was an old-fashioned, 1950's-America type kitchen in the old masonry building, and a firm table, so it proved to be a good place to work for a bit.

Philology, particularly literature studies, is neither a science, nor an art, but a philosophy.  Peculiarly, though, it's one that customarily adopts the prevailing philosophy uncritically as its own.

 Don't mind me, just padding out the chapter in Bartlett's.

Was nervous about the political situation, but things are very calm, rational and economically thriving.  Basically Brooklyn during a particularly contested mayoral election. The odd black banner or (Cyrillic, notably) graffito. I learned in Mostar to pay attention to the graffiti in order to suss out the (hyper-)local mood.

Food prices a bit high.  There's clearly an effort to make staples available -- you just have to comparison-shop the chains to find the full array.  Troublingly, things like Eurocream seem to be generally made available.  Le pate des bourgeois.  Quite the contrast to the easten Balkans (which are the Western Balkans), where food prices are very, very good at the moment, even though the politics are similarly convoluted.  Like the Greek actors, I travel freely between warring city-states, but like every 'tomato tourist', I keep a cautious eye on both the prices and the politics.  On the rare occasions of looking up from the books.

 

Part of the reason that direct Presidential statements now seem so peculiar is that he doesn't know who he's talking to.  The previous President was talking to the public as a public official, having sufficiently imagined both.  He spoke to the Court of the Aeropagus and the citizens assembled on the field at Gettysburg.  If you concieve of government as happening by company and enterprise, a faction seizes the mechanism of governance and runs it as a corporation.  But if you conceive of government as an answer to the question of social order, you are drawn into a different relationship with the people, and you can address them in that way. There is a certain collective someone you are speaking to.  The corporatist, as opposed to the publicist, has no one to address when he addresses everybody. Compare a CEO giving a general talk, and a CEO talking to the people of the company.  In the first case, they simply haven't imagined the public in general.  Perhaps this is why there are so many television personalities in the administration -- they have a manner and a vocabulary of speaking to all and sundry, but they haven't imagined the folks on the other side of the camera as being particularly worthwhile.

Perhaps this is another aspect of the Republic and the Machiavel. Rhetoric flourishes in the republic, or at least complete sentences.  The Machiavel has a different approach to meaning.  The language becomes, not strained, exactly, but where the language becomes important, they're almost at antinomy, because the Machiavel's order is originary, not classcally ordered.  In making all things new, individual words take on a strange, rather than familiar, context.  Think of how many debates in the first term focused on odd terms abstracted from their constitutional context -- they become headlines, or perhaps captions, and their meaning becomes the present use.  Now, you can do that with individual words, but not sentences. The Machiavel sounds like a parody when he speaks, because he is waiting to one day unseat the classical order of the sentence.

None of this is criticism -- these are the two necessary aspects, synthesis and diaresis. But it is much more logical to be governed by the synthesis.  

 Last port of call was a bit bad, but the time before it, in Hungarian Transylvania, was very interesting.  The Kruschevka housing was a bit dispiriting, but the theatre was there, and the coffee, and some (centuries-old) academic/urban energy to the place.  This constant flitting is wearying.  It seems as soon as my system finds the rhythm of the coffeehouse reading, and groks the local theatre, it's north/south/east/westward ho. This is another reason why coffeehouse chains are a good thing. Even when places turn them into their own sort of thing, e.g., drive-through milkshake caffeinated milkshake stores in the American Midwest. "I Have Been Here Before."(J.B. Priestley)

 Travelling novel -- The Philosopher's Pupil again.  Sometimes, an author can have a hidden conceit or game that ends up giving the novel structure, and the novel can be read on its own terms, without knowledge of the 'Inside Baseball' stories.  But I thin, for this one you do have to know the gossip, or at least the story that was put into the mix as gossip.  When you see that, and know the relationship, everything sort of falls into place.  Conversely, once that reticulated, purposive structure appears, everything could equally be dismissed as just a bit of gossip.  Not a rack behind.

 On the Feast of St. David, no less.

Without question, my favorite name day was the afternoon reading the Mabinogion at an UWS Sbux, and then seeing the Stratford Lear at Lincoln Center.  Afterwards, it almost seemed as if the city were made of gold.

Safe arrived at the ancient capital of the southern republic.  City preternaturally quiet on a seventh-day morn.  Interesting rooms in a slightly dodgy neighborhood very near the center, the dome of the parliament outside the window.

Journey difficult, but not nearly as difficult as it was the last time I followed this path, as I made sure to ask for an open car, rather than compartments -- they had to call down to the yard to check.  Still, though, climate control proves elusive on this line (which, in fairness goes into the mountains at points).  Exhausting journey, and then the last several hours might have qualified as a medical coma, as I didn't so much drift into unconsciousness as slip off the continental shelf of consciousness.

 Interesting layover in the nation to the southwest.  Walked about a mile to the banking district to see if I could get some of the destination currency.  None was available, oddly.  Many folks in camouflage in the banking lines.  (though there was a good rate available in the station when I arrived).  Then walked back to the station and then a mile in the other direction to a hardware chain that I knew had good wooden bath brushes.  One should try to be the type of fellow who would walk two miles for a good bath brush.  Keeping up standards.  Like daily shaving in the trenches in the Great War.  Surprisingly difficult to find a wooden brush in these parts, even in the German sections of Transylvania.